title:  Donald Trump’s Claim That He’s The Strongest GOP Candidate Ever Is Bulls*it
text: Donald Trump loves to brag that he is the strongest Republican candidate ever. As proof, he offers the fact that he received 13 million votes during the primary. Reagan, Trump says, had fewer than 8 million votes. He also bypassed Romney by about three million.Here s what Trump says about it: Look, you know the Republican Party has largely come together. They agree with me, and they believe in me, and I got more votes than anybody in the history of primary elections,  Trump replied.  Nobody s ever even gotten close, the Republicans. I got more than Ronald Reagan, I got more than Richard Nixon, I got more than Dwight Eisenhower, I got more than anybody But I have to say, the Republicans better get smart, they better start sticking together.  Source: Breitbart.comTrump s claim is absolutely true. Do you feel that? That s a collective chill going down the spines of every sane person on the planet. Fortunately for all of sanity, it s not as simple as Trump or some in the media claim. Trump did not bypass Ronald Reagan or even Mitt Romney in the popular vote, and here s why: In the simplest of terms, we have a lot more people than we did when Reagan ran in 1980 and even when Romney ran in 2012.The truth doesn t bode well for Trump:In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 7.7 million votes in the Republican contests in a country that had more than 80 million fewer people of voting age. Further, more than a dozen states held non-binding caucuses that the candidates largely ignored. Adjusting for the population increase and the number of meaningful primary contests today, Reagan likely would have won close to 14 million votes   significantly more than Trump received, according to a HuffPost analysis.Adjusting George W. Bush s 12 million votes from 2000 the same way suggests he might have won 14.5 million votes. And adjusting 1952 s numbers, Eisenhower might have received 13.6 million votes, while Taft might have won 18.6 million   both more than Trump received.But the biggest GOP winner in modern times, according to the HuffPost analysis, was Richard Nixon in 1960, when the sitting vice president won 5 million votes in just 13 contests   suggesting Nixon could have won 25.6 million votes with today s voting population and primary schedule.Source: Huffington PostLet s compare that to Hillary Clinton. In 2008, both she and Barack Obama nearly tied with more than 17 million votes each. This year, her vote totals are lower (about 16 million) but they are still greater than Donald Trump s.Of course, like most of Trump s boasts, these numbers mean absolutely nothing. Primary voters tend to be a different group of people than general election voters and we are still several months out, but we do know that he s not in a position to do better than Ronald Reagan or even than Mitt Romney.Featured image via Sara D. Davis at Getty Images.