Yes, It Was Very Close

Now that a week has come and gone since the election, the numbers of votes are beginning to be finalized.  As it stands now, over 131 million votes were cast with Hillary Clinton having won the popular vote by around 1.5 million votes.  But, Donald Trump won the election because he won the Electoral College 290-232 (with a possible 16 more EVs to come once the mess in Michigan is sorted out).

Both sides are reacting predictively as a result of this outcome.  The Trump people continue to “high five” each other for getting a very flawed, inexperienced candidate into the most powerful job on the planet.  Christian conservatives are also taking bows – given the numbers showing a large percentage of support for Trump.

On the Clinton side of things, they want to “burn the place down” because their candidate, while winning the votes of most of the voters, has lost the election.  They either don’t understand or have utter disdain for the Electoral College system as it now exists.  (Some are still smarting from the 2000 election when essentially the same thing happened.)

On both sides, wild claims and counter claims are now circulating throughout the world of social media.  In an effort to help true patriots and concerned Americans see through all the smoke and avoid looking like ignorant fanatics and fools, I add to my previous analysis of the election outcome.

Last Wednesday evening, I wrote the following article for The New Americana - Let’s Separate Numbers from Hype, Shall We?  Although quite a bit more is now known from the election’s numbers, my basic points are still correct:

Donald Trump won a closely contested race.

Hillary Clinton failed to turn out her voters to the same extent that Barack Obama was able to do.

Essentially, it came down to 3 states which determined the election – Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin.

 

 Much has been made about how wrong the polls were prior to the election, but they really weren’t that far off.  They all showed the race tightening.  Many of the outcomes of the states, vote-wise, were within the pollsters’ margins of errors.  Yes, they missed some critical states slightly, but such was the close nature of this election.

Let’s look again at the important numbers:

Trump won PA, FL, and WI by around a total of 209,000 votes – around 1% in each state.  These 3 states have a total of 59 electoral votes to award.  If a little more than half of these 209,000 voters vote opposite in just these 3 states, Hillary Clinton wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College  - 301 – 231 (without factoring in Michigan either way). 

Again, if around 58,000 Floridians, 34,000 Pennsylvanians, and 12, 000 Wisconsinites vote for Hillary instead of Trump, the election outcome would be reversed.

Now, the reason these 3 states are critical is the fact that most of the other states went the way they were predicted – either red or blue.  Iowa and Ohio went for Trump, but they have been flipping back and forth between red and blue for the past few elections.

Pennsylvania has been blue since the 1980s.  Florida tends to swing back and forth.  Wisconsin has been a blue state until the “Walker Revolution” has transformed it.

In Wisconsin, it has been reported that around 40,000 Milwaukee voters didn’t show up for this election who did vote four years ago.  If Hillary would have gotten those voters out again, she would have won the state.

In Pennsylvania, Half of Hillary’s vote deficit came from just two cities – Philadelphia and Scranton – where her numbers were over 35,000 shy of Obama’s from 2012.

We could analyze Hillary’s turnout failure ad infinitum, but let’s just say she was nowhere near as popular with Democrats as Obama has been.

So, how small was the Trump EC victory?  If we take these 209,000 votes and divide them into the 131 million votes cast, we see a Trump victory that is around 16 hundredths of 1 percent (.0016).

Those who are boasting about a huge landslide for Trump are just not dealing with reality.  Yes, it was dramatic.  Yes, it was unexpected.  Yes, millions have breathed a sigh of relief that America has been spared more of “Clinton, Inc.” infesting the White House again.  But, a landslide?  Not hardly!

Analysis has been done comparing Trump’s Electoral College victory to that of recent and all of the previous Presidential elections.  Here, in graphic form, it is laid out:  http://thefivepilgrims.com/2016/11/16/an-electoral-college-landslide/

From this chart, two very clear things emerge:

First, Trump’s margin of EC victory puts him in the 22^nd percentile of all American Presidential elections.  That means he performed better than 21% of other winning candidates.  But, he performed worse than 78% of other winning candidates.  In other words, Trump sits near the bottom of the chart of Presidential electoral successes.

Second, even if we don’t want to go too far back into American History to make a comparison, going back only 10 elections to 1980, Trump’s is ranked 8^th out of the 10.  Only George W. Bush performed more poorly.

The kook fringe out there is attempting to assert that Trump also won the popular vote as well.  Again, this is far from reality.  Every credible source of vote totals has Hillary growing her popular vote lead to around 1.5 million votes.  It has risen steadily since election night due to the rest of the west coast vote trickling in.  Yes, Trump’s numbers have risen in the past week as well, but he hasn’t kept pace with Clinton who is still getting votes counted from blue states that she was expected to win handily.

They may point to the fact that the total votes in this election are growing higher than ever before. That is turning out to be true, as it should; given the continuously growing U.S. population.  But, as the following analysis also proves, this year the percentage of eligible voters is actually down amidst the higher number because that number should be even greater: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/15/more-votes-were-cast-in-2016-than-in-2012-but-that-doesnt-mean-turnout-was-great/

In fact, this analysis shows that the percentage of Republicans who turned out stayed pretty much the same as in the past.  Democrat voters were down.  But, 3^rd party voters were considerably higher - around 7 million votes.

One other important point which must be made concerns the 81% of evangelicals voting for Trump claim.  As I reported previously, this number was up 2 points from Romney’s support in 2012.  But, the following analysis challenges the 81% figure as accurate.  It raises some important considerations:

http://www.christianpost.com/news/81-percent-evangelicals-vote-trump-eric-teetsel-joe-carter-171542/

The conclusion of this research is that the actual figure is that around 46% of white evangelicals voted for Trump.  This does not take into account Hispanic and African-American evangelicals and how they voted.  Most probably, if anything, including them would drive the percentage of votes for Trump down somewhat.

My point in all of this is to separate fact from fiction.  Yes, Donald Trump did win the election.  Yes, he will take office in January, 2017, barring unforeseen circumstances.  And yes, Hillary Clinton’s political career is over, at least for now.

But, what these numbers do show is that we continue to have a deeply divided country.  Governing will not be an easy task, regardless of who won the election.

Unfortunately, it appears Mr. Trump still hasn't "gotten it."  He recently took to his weapon of choice - Twitter - to discount Hillary's lead in the popular vote:

Trump has shot back, tweeting Wednesday: "If the election were based on total popular vote I would have campaigned in N.Y. Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily."

Trump is delusional if he thinks that just by campaigning harder, he could have won New York and California.  And, since he did win Florida, campaigning harder there might have added a bit to his popular vote numbers, but it wouldn't have given him any extra Electoral Votes to win "even bigger and more easily."

If this arrogance continues after January, he will have a very difficult task ahead of him.  He simply can't dismiss the fact that far more people in America voted against him than voted for him.  His percentage of the popular vote now stands just under 47%.  And, Hillary Clinton is on pace to finish the election with as many as 2 million more votes than Trump (maybe an addition million or so depending how much still is out in California and Washington).

It would have been far easier for Trump to govern if he had also won the popular vote.  But, now he will be continuously hounded as not having a “mandate” from the people to govern.

Hopefully, the course Barack Obama has had America on for the past eight years will now change.  It has to change if we are to survive.

But, that change will not come quickly or easily.  The left will not go away now that the election is over.  Those proclaiming the demise of the Democrat Party are just as naïve as those who proclaimed the demise of the Republican Party after the 1992 and 2008 elections.

If the Trump Administration wants to achieve governing successes, it must be humble but confident in its vision.  People will come around to a conservative vision of America as long as Trump believes in it as well.  If he compromises his promises from the campaign, he will give the Democrats new life in 2018 and 2020. 

The way to significantly change the course the nation is on is to move forward with the vision, as fast as the people will accept.  Changing hearts and minds must happen if change is to be permanent.  Being as draconian as Obama was with his agenda will lead to only temporary gains at best.

But, the first step in this long process is being honest about what happened in the election and being honest with the American people.  We are now a divided people.  Only the truth will bring unity and the healing of our divisions.