When winning an election is based upon winning electoral votes, you run a campaign to win electoral votes. If the election had been based upon the popular vote,Trump would have run a campaign to win the popular vote. Trump didn't even campaign in states like New York, California, and Illinois because he knew he had no chance of winning those states. California and New York are where Hillary's big popular vote came from . If winning the election were based upon winning the popular vote, Trump would have campaigned in New York, California, and Illinois and he would most likely have greatly reduced Hillary's margins of popular vote victory in those states.