Who really wins in an election?

After all is said and done, who really wins? It is not the best person that wins, it is what party had the most supporters.

George Washington said it best:

‘However [politcal parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.’