popular vote

[pop-yuh-ler voht]

noun

1. the vote for a U.S. presidential candidate made by the qualified voters, as opposed to that made by the Electoral College.

2. the vote for a candidate, issue, etc., made by the qualified voters, as opposed to a vote made by elected representatives.

Word History and Origins

Origin of popular vote¹

An Americanism dating back to 1830–40

Example Sentences

Rob Jetten, a 38-year-old centrist, will have the first shot at forming a government after his D66 political party roughly tripled its number of seats in the House of Representatives and won a bigger share of the popular vote than Geert Wilders’s far-right Freedom Party, which prevailed in 2023.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

In the Buenos Aires election, the leading Peronist party, the Justicialists, won 47% of the popular vote.

Read more on Barron's

The popular vote was, indeed, very tight, with less than 2% in it.

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A year later, a white political candidate whose campaign showcased a reactionary lie that his Black predecessor was not born in the United States assumed the presidency, losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College — itself an institution born of white supremacy.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

If this happens, Democrats’ current narrow edge in the national popular vote won’t be enough to push House Republicans into the minority.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal