Donald Trump is leading all Republican candidates in the 2016 Presidential race per all sites keeping records of election results. Per the Green Papers website, Trump has accumulated 11,273,417 votes in his race for the Republican nomination for President to date. This is 41% of the Republican votes cast this primary season and much more than the second place candidate, Ted Cruz, who is reported to have accumulated 7,457,980 for 27% of the votes to date.
Some pundits claim that Trump is fairing rather poorly when comparing his current results to prior campaigns. George Bush in 2000 accumulated 62% of the Republican primary votes in 2000, John McCain accumulated 47% in 2008 and Mitt Romney accumulated 52% in 2012. All of these Republican candidates received a higher percentage of votes than Trump has to date in this year’s primary season.
However, this year set a record for the most candidates in a race for President in a major political party. The Republican Party started off with 17 bona fide candidates in the race for the White House – a record.
When accounting for the number of candidates in the race, no candidate since 2000 (and maybe ever) has accumulated more votes that the average number of votes received per candidate in a Presidential year than Donald Trump. Donald Trump is averaging 697% of the votes in the primaries this year, which is more than any candidate this century.
The closest any candidate has come was in 2012 when Mitt Romney ran against 11 other candidates. However, the 2016 primary season is not yet over. There are another 6 Republican primaries and Trump is expected to continue to receive more than 60% of the vote in these primaries. Once this season is over, Trump will have another record, the most votes by a candidate above the average number of votes when accounting for the total number of candidates in the race.
(Note that Green Papers reports a higher number of votes for George Bush in 2000 than previously reported. Trump will surpass this number reported above on June 7th to record the most votes in a Republican Presidential primary season ever.)