Hillary Clinton collects more than a million votes more than Donald Trump - and the number keeps rising

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Hillary Clinton is on track to win the popular vote by more than two million votes when all the absentee ballots are counted.

The win would give her a larger margin than any presidential candidate who went on to lose in the electoral college but it still trails behind the victories of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

Ms Clinton has already received one million votes more than President-elect Donald Trump – more than the amount won by John F Kennedy, who is often regarded as America’s most popular president.

In her first public appearance since her concession speech, Ms Clinton admitted she had struggled to accept her loss.

Speaking at the Children’s Defense Fund gala in Washington DC on Wednesday, she said: “I will admit, coming here tonight wasn’t the easiest thing for me.

“There have been a few times this past week where all I wanted to do was just to curl up with a good book and our dogs and never leave the house again.”

She said her appearance was one of the toughest she has had to make over the past year and acknowledged her supporters’ disappointment but said they needed to carry on.

“We need you. America needs your energy,” she said.

More than 4.3 million people have signed a petition calling for electors in the Electoral College to change their vote to Hillary Clinton when they meet in December, calling Mr Trump “unfit to serve”.

The US election is decided by the number of votes a candidate wins in the electoral college. The 538 votes are allotted to each state based on population size with a candidate taking all the votes in that state regardless of the ballot breakdown.

Some states force electors to vote according to their states’ wishes but some are technically allowed to vote for the other candidate.

These people are known as “faithless electors” and would simply be subject to a small fine for not voting along with their state.

Some 179 electors have not cast their vote according to their states' wishes on 22 different occasions in US history but no presidency has ever been changed as a result.