Hillary Clinton wins ... the popular vote: why her hollow victory may stir calls for reform

If current tallies hold, Donald Trump will have won the US presidential election while losing the popular vote, making him the second straight Republican commander-in-chief to do so - and likely raising calls for electoral reform.

Results were still trickling in on Wednesday as districts continued to count ballots including those from absentee voters.

Watch: “Accept this result and look to the future,” Clinton says

Late Wednesday, Democrat Hillary Clinton was ahead of Trump in the popular vote by a razor-thin margin, 47.7 per cent to 47.5 percent, or 59,813,919 votes to 59,611,551.

But because of the nature of the state-by-state winner-take-all Electoral College system, Trump prevailed by clinching a majority of the Electoral College’s 538 votes.

Robert Shapiro, a political science professor at Columbia University, said critics will likely push for US officials to abolish the arcane system.

“There might be some initial clamour, but then it will disappear,” Shapiro said, noting that fully scrapping the Electoral College would require amending the US Constitution, an extraordinarily difficult task.