What I do think the results indicate is that neither party is effectively capturing the support of a large majority of Americans. The typical observation is that we are a country divided, but I rather think that there are a large number of Americans who would prefer voting for a synthesis of typical Democratic and Republican policies, but that isn't possible. Some of those people fall on the Democratic side and some fall on the Republic side during an election and that changes depending on the candidates.
It's obviously impossible to say what the outcome would have been, but the campaigns definitely would have optimized differently.
It's very close and the lead switched at least once. We won't know who finally won the popular vote until the counting is done.
What's even crazier to me is trump has yet to pass Mitt Romney vote total. He didn't even beat the last republican candidate but won the election.
or he passes Romney
Direct voting was intentionally discouraged by some of the founders, to prevent the "tyranny of the majority". The goal was to force a candidate to appeal to as many types of people as possible, and not allow someone to just focus on what the simple majority of people want.
It could be argued that in this election the electoral college technically performed the function it was originally designed to do -- that is, give rural areas a small but possible opportunity to out-compete urban ones in an election despite having less total citizens.
Donald Trump is clearly the President-elect of the United States and will become the chief executive of the country.
But that is different than the election demonstrating that he is the ideological leader of a majority of the country.