Hillary Clinton calls Electoral College 'an abomination' in Netflix doc 9 years after 2016 loss
Hillary Clinton Still Blames the Electoral College for 2016
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) June 22, 2026
In a new Netflix docuseries, Hillary Clinton once again calls the Electoral College an “abomination” and continues to express frustration over her 2016 loss.
The Founders were wise to create the Electoral College. It… pic.twitter.com/2UpafDqkYS
WASHINGTON, DC: A decade after her stunning defeat, Hillary Clinton still appears unable to shake the sting of the 2016 election.
The 78-year-old former First Lady lamented the 2016 presidential election result in Netflix’s new docuseries 'The American Experiment', breaking her silence on the electoral college that cost her the win against Donald Trump.
Although she won the popular vote by nearly three million ballots, Clinton fell short in the Electoral College after Trump flipped the traditionally Democratic Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin by a combined margin of roughly 80,000 votes.
Clinton’s dissatisfaction with 'Electoral College'
Reflecting on the system that cost her the presidency despite winning the popular vote, Clinton said she views the Electoral College as an "abomination," adding with a laugh that the reason was "for obvious reasons."
"I knew I would be asking former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton about one of the most painful moments of her life," director Brian Knappenberger told Variety of the moment in the forthcoming series.
Knappenberger insisted that Clinton will bring “a unique perspective as one of only five people in American history to lose the presidency after winning the popular vote.”
“The 2016 election also stands out because Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in the popular vote by such a significant margin,” he stated.
'The American Experiment' is a five-part documentary series that explores the origins and evolution of the United States, featuring interviews with prominent political figures and historians, including Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, Al Gore, and Nancy Pelosi.
The project was released to mark the 250th anniversary of America's founding.
Hilary Clinton’s frustration over 2016 election result
While Clinton has spoken about her stunning 2016 defeat before, she rarely has done so in such blunt terms, taking direct aim at the Electoral College system that allocates votes to states based on their congressional representation.
The system gives smaller states a disproportionate number of Electoral College votes because every state has two senators, regardless of its population size.
Speaking of the election, previously in a 2017 memoir, 'What Happened', instead of the Electoral College, Clinton blamed the loss on a combination of sexism, racism, and blowback from the email scandal.
"I was running a traditional presidential campaign with carefully thought-out policies and painstakingly built coalitions," she wrote in the book, "while Trump was running a reality TV show that expertly and relentlessly stoked Americans' anger and resentment."
In the same year, Clinton sat down for an interview with CNN, where she maintained that the Electoral College “needs to be eliminated” and, “In a democracy, we should respect the will of the people, and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.”
Along with Clinton, about 56 percent of Americans would approve of amending the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College and replace it with the popular vote, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll.
