Does winning the popular vote mean winning the election?

no, it has happened in 3 out of the 5 past elections that candidates who one the popular vote still lost the election.

Explanation:

In America??

Not necessarily. There have been instances where the electoral college went with the second candidate who did not have the greatest popular vote.

There were six of these kinds of results. I think the weirdest one was the victory by John Kennedy. This one depended on not only the electoral college but how Alabama was to have it's members represented in the college. By some freaky accident, Kennedy was elected.

There was only 1 election where the loser had more that 50% of the popular vote and still lost. That was the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. Tilden, his opponent had 50.8% of the popular vote and still lost.

The most recent one was the election of Donald Trump. Hillary actually had more than 2% more of the popular vote than he did.

the answer to this question is the third option. hope this