The United States presidential election of 2016 was the 58th quadrennial American presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. The Republican ticket of businessman Donald Trump and Indiana Governor Mike Pence defeated the Democratic ticket of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senator from Virginia Tim Kaine. Trump took office as the 45th President, and Pence as the 48th Vice President, on January 20, 2017. Concurrent with the presidential election, Senate, House, and many gubernatorial and state and local elections were also held on November 8.

Voters selected members of the Electoral College in each state, in most cases by "winner-takes-all" plurality; those state electors in turn voted for a new president and vice president on December 19, 2016. While Clinton received about 2.9 million more votes nationwide, a margin of 2.1%, or 48% of the total cast, Trump won with 56% of electors in the Electoral College, winning 30 states with 306 pledged electors out of 538. He won the perennial swing states of Florida, Iowa and Ohio, as well as Clinton's "blue wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which had been Democratic strongholds in presidential elections since the 1990s. Leading up to the election, a Trump victory was projected unlikely by most media forecasts.

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