2016 Election

The 2016 US presidential election between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump was marked by low satisfaction with candidates from both parties, and was viewed as excessively negative and focused on things other than policy issues. Despite this, interest in the campaign was high and polling revealed stark racial and ethnic differences in support for the candidates.

As a candidate, Trump pushed false claims that "illegal" votes would be cast, and predicted that if he won the popular vote but failed to win the electoral college, his supporters would riot. Rumors of inappropriate ties to Russia on the part of Trump persisted, with Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham leading calls for investigation. (Those have since been substantiated.) Trump also said his opponent should be "locked up" for her use of a private email server.

On November 8, 2016, Hillary Clinton won 48.03 percent of the popular vote. Trump received 45.94 percent of the votes. This meant Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes. Trump won the Electoral College, with 304-227.

Race was a decisive factor in voting. White men and women voted 63 and 53 percent respectively for Trump. All other races voted overwhelmingly for Clinton.

See Russian Meddling in Election and Trump Relationship with Russia.

Subtopics

Timeline

2017.10.04	Two former heads of the CIA said Russia probably didn’t have the ability to microtarget U.S. voters and districts in the 2016 presidential campaign on its own, meaning some sort of assistance would have been necessary. bloomberg.com (See also Russian Meddling in Election)
2017.10.19	CIA Director Mike Pompeo incorrectly asserted Thursday that U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia's interference campaign did not affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. nbcnews.com (See also Mike Pompeo, Russian Meddling in Election, False Statements)
2017.10.26	Twitter said Thursday it would "off-board" ads linked to Russian state outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik over concerns they tried to influence the 2016 election. axios.com (See also Russian Meddling in Election)
2017.10.30	Facebook plans to tell lawmakers on Tuesday that 126 million of its users may have seen content produced and circulated by Russian operatives, many times more than what the company previously disclosed about the reach of the disinformation campaign during the 2016 presidential election. washingtonpost.com (See also 2016 Campaign, Russian Meddling in Election)
2017.11.14	On Aug. 3 of last year, just as the US presidential election was entering its final, heated phase, the Russian Foreign Ministry sent nearly $30,000 to its embassy in Washington. buzzfeed.com (See also Trump Relationship with Russia, Russia) The wire transfer, which came from a Kremlin-backed Russian bank, landed in one of the embassy’s Citibank accounts and contained a remarkable memo line: “to finance election campaign of 2016.”
2017.11.30	Donald Trump over the summer repeatedly urged senior Senate Republicans, including the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to end the panel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. nytimes.com (See also Russian Meddling in Election, Conflicts of Interest, Russia, Legal Issues)
2017.12.13	Donald Trump Jr. met with the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee for 9 hours, as part of the panel’s investigation into Russia, the 2016 U.S. election and whether his father’s election campaign colluded with Moscow. reuters.com (See also Donald Trump Jr, Legal Issues, Trump Relationship with Russia, Russian Meddling in Election, 2016 Campaign)
2017.12.14	Donald Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia supported his run for the White House as part of an unprecedented assault on a pillar of U.S. democracy. washingtonpost.com (See also Russia, Trump Relationship with Russia, Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, H.R. McMaster, John Kelly, 2016 Campaign)
2017.12.15	Special Counsel Robert Mueller has requested that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for President Donald Trump’s campaign, turn over documents as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, according to people familiar with the matter. wsj.com (See also Legal Activity, 2016 Campaign, Steve Bannon, Russian Meddling in Election, Trump Relationship with Russia)
2017.12.22	Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon and his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski have been asked to testify to House lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. bloomberg.com (See also Steve Bannon, Russian Meddling in Election, Legal Issues)
2018.01.03	The White House announced Wednesday that Donald Trump is dissolving his voter fraud commission after states failed to hand over requested information. thehill.com (See also Voter Fraud, Voter Suppression, False Statements, Reversals)
2018.01.04	Donald Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election. nytimes.com (See also Jeff Sessions, Department of Justice, Corruption, Russian Meddling in Election)
2018.01.17	US authorities are poring over hundreds of newly uncovered payments from Russian diplomatic accounts, including transactions by former ambassador Sergey Kislyak 10 days after the 2016 presidential election and a blocked $150,000 cash withdrawal five days after the inauguration. buzzfeed.com (See also Russian Meddling in Election, Trump Relationship with Russia, Corruption)
2018.01.18	The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, as it is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections. mcclatchydc.com (See also Russia, Trump Relationship with Russia, Legal Issues)
2018.02.08	The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election. nbcnews.com (See also Russian Meddling in Election, Department of Homeland Security)
2018.02.09	Rachel L. Brand, the No. 3 official at the Justice Department, plans to step down after nine months on the job as the country’s top law enforcement agency has been under attack by Donald Trump. nytimes.com (See also Resignations and Dismissals, Department of Justice, Jeff Sessions)
2018.02.13	Russia is already meddling in the midterm elections this year, the top American intelligence officials said, warning that Moscow is using a digital strategy to worsen the country’s political and social divisions. nytimes.com (See also Russian Meddling in Election, Russia, Trump Relationship with Russia)
2018.02.16	The special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations with illegally trying to disrupt the American political process, including efforts designed to boost the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump and hurt that of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. nytimes.com (See also 2016 Campaign, Russian Meddling in Election, Legal Activity) The indictment represents the first charges by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, for meddling in the 2016 presidential election — the fundamental crime that he was assigned to investigate.
2018.02.27	The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election — but never told the states involved. nbcnews.com (See also Russian Meddling in Election)
2018.03.12	Over two-thirds of U.S. House of Representatives Democrats urged Donald Trump to enact sanctions on Russia, the latest push by lawmakers for a response to investigators’ findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. reuters.com (See also Trump Relationship with Russia, Russian Meddling in Election)
2018.03.16	Facebook is suspending the Trump-affiliated data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, after learning that it failed to delete data that it had taken inappropriately from users of the social network. washingtonpost.com (See also Corruption, Steve Bannon) The company was funded by Robert Mercer, and Steve Bannon once sat on its board.
2018.03.17	Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, John Dowd, said that he hopes Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will shut down Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s election interference. thedailybeast.com (See also Legal Issues, Russian Meddling in Election, 201)
2018.03.19	Senior executives at Cambridge Analytica – the data company that credits itself with Donald Trump’s presidential victory – have been secretly filmed saying they could entrap politicians in compromising situations with bribes and Ukrainian sex workers. channel4.com (See also 2016 Campaign, Corruption)
2018.03.20	Donald Trump called on Tuesday to congratulate President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on his re-election, but did not raise with him the lopsided nature of his victory, Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election or Moscow’s role in a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter living in Britain. nytimes.com (See also Unpresidential Behavior, Trump Relationship with Russia)
2018.03.28	A top Trump campaign official had repeated communications during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential race with a business associate tied to Russian intelligence, according to a document released on Tuesday by the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the election. nytimes.com (See also Russia, Russian Meddling in Election, Trump Relationship with Russia, Legal Issues) The campaign official, Rick Gates, has pleaded guilty in the investigation by the special counsel into Russian election interference.