Posted on 11/14/2016 10:33:53 PM PST by RC one
Democrats are taking solace in the fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 election. Some supporters are even using this fact to implore Trump's electors to overturn the result of the electoral college and install Clinton as the rightful president.
And Trump himself on Sunday night reiterated that he preferred the popular-vote method: "I’m not going to change my mind just because I won. But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes."
The reactions to that comment were similar — that Trump would have lost the election under his own preferred format!
Except, it's impossible to know that for sure.
The fact is that just because Trump lost the popular vote last week doesn't mean he would have lost a popular-vote election.
What do I mean by that? Basically, losing the popular vote in an electoral-college election isn't the same as losing the popular vote in a popular-vote election. The former involves a very specific strategy that may cost you when it comes to winning the nationwide popular vote. But you pursue that strategy because the latter doesn't matter. You need to get to 270 electoral votes, not a majority or plurality of all votes.
An electoral-college election involves making explicit appeals to and advertising in around 10 or 12 out of the 50 states. It means Trump didn't campaign or advertise in California or Massachusetts or Washington state and that Clinton didn't campaign in Oklahoma or even Texas (despite polling within single digits there). They knew it would be wasted effort to try to turn a 30-point loss in those states into a 22-point loss, or a 14-point loss into an eight-point loss.
It also means they tailored their messages specifically to voters in key states, which happen to be disproportionately Midwestern and on the East Coast. It meant Trump had little incentive to appeal to Western voters — outside Nevada, at least. And he pursued a very specific strategy that appealed to the key Rust Belt states that wound up delivering him the presidency.
Would his message have been significantly different in a truly national election, in which he had to appeal to moderate Republicans in Orange County along with conservative former Democrats in coal country? Maybe. Maybe not.
And to be clear, it seems more likely than not that he probably would have lost a race in which the popular vote and not the electoral college decided the president. After all, he currently trails in the popular vote by 0.6 points, and that number is growing as results from California and other coastal states roll in. Clinton's margin is likely to grow from here — to as much as two full points, according to some estimates.
But California is a telling example. In fact, it's Case Study No. 1 in why Trump might lose the national popular vote by as much as he is.
Numbers tallied by the Cook Political Report's David Wasserman show Trump is currently trailing in that state 61.5 percent to 33.2 percent. As things stand, that 28-point Democratic win is the biggest since FDR in 1936 — bigger even than Mitt Romney's 23-point loss in 2012. It's a bloodbath, and even as Trump did better than Romney, he's doing worse in California.
There are more than 4 million ballots left to count, but Clinton is already netting nearly 3 million votes in California alone — a number that is bigger than her overall 728,000-vote lead in the nationwide popular vote.
But if Trump simply would have taken 37 percent of the vote in California — the same as Romney took in 2012 — he would currently be about tied with Clinton in the national popular vote. And that's just an adjustment of about four points in one inconsequential (albeit huge) presidential state.
Those were votes, of course, that neither he nor his campaign needed, and so they didn't even try to get them. Had he and Clinton both sought them and made direct appeals to Californians, perhaps the margin would have been similar. But we'll never know for sure.
What we do know, though, is that less-competitive states tend to have lower turnout. According to the United States Election Project, several swing states ranked in the top 10 in turnout: New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia and Florida. California currently ranks 44th in turnout. Only an estimated 53 percent of its eligible voters have had their ballots counted (including the 4-plus million that haven't been tallied). Making states like California consequential seems likely to draw a significantly different — or at least significantly expanded — electorate.
Trump's deficit is growing and could soon be historically large for the winner of the electoral college. But it's simply impossible to say for sure that it means he would have lost a popular-vote election.
The popular vote doesn't mean a damned thing in presidential elections and it never has. ever. and you aren't ever going to change that because there will never be enough states in between California, New York, and Florida that are going to vote for that plan.
So, by all means continue your pointless little tantrum but just know that, although it is highly entertaining, it is pointless.
Trump would have won the popular vote if 3 million illegals hadn’t voted.
Based on comments this week....roughly 3 million dead people are still listed as active voters on the 50-state rolls. Some calculate that as many as six-million illegals also voted in this election. At the very least, probably four million folks (minimum) were non-valid voters for Hillary.
It’s actually bullshit once you factor in democrat votor fraud and the illegal alien vote.
we have concrete examples of out right fraud..
I’m not even going to acknowledge the popular vote until every single vote cast is scrutinized, validated and proven to be legally cast.
This is such a non-issue. If people want to change the rules, go ahead.
The Democrats have 13 state legislatures. Good luck.
Clinton would have won this election if she had gotten to 50% of the popular vote (looks like she’ll end up around 48-48.25%). The fact that 5.5% of the voters opted for a 3rd party candidate says a lot about this election. Some of the most mediocre 3rd party candidates (as a whole) I have ever witnessed, and they have received over 7.1 million votes (and counting).
3 million confirmed votes by illegals.
No... he did NOT lose popular vote.
He conquered MASSIVE voter fraud...
Which you cannot do without a total blowout landslide popular vote.
Clinton was crushed.
“Trump would have won the popular vote if 3 million illegals hadn’t voted.”
==
That and the fact that more people voted against Hillary than voted for her:
Trump and other candidates:
67328661
Clinton:
61422098
Hilary’s popular vote total was full of empty calories. She ran up the score in places like ca, ny, and il, which were more less not contested by trump.
do away with the electoral college, and presidential elections will never leave large cities and heavily populated states; that’s why it’s there, to force presidential candidates to appeal to the broadest possible swath of the voters’ interests.
that’s why she lost.
Is the popular vote officially tabulated and reported ? Headlines here and elsewhere, some with clinton winning and a few saying trump won. I know it doesn’t matter anyhow but why are there so many conflicting stories on the issue ?
Yeah, it would have been a different race.
He would been in Cali and in Texas and in NY and I think, won it.
And in fact he did win even now minus illegals/dead people/felons.
I would rather officially have it but I like how made it makes them, Their whining never hurt Bush in 2002 or 2004.
Exactly. It’ll be weeks before we know the total and if she moves ahead even more so what. The writer of this article pretty much sums it up; it’s all about California. I knew that to election night, because Trump was ahead in the popular vote all the way up until about 3 or 4 in the morning when California’s precincts wrre all counted then he went behind. He never campaigned there why should he, it wasn’t going to win the election, it would be a waste of money.
yeah I thought the numbers were 62.9 to 62.2 with Trump winning? What gives?
The electoral college is a very significant protection of the essential concept of the republic as a conferedation of states. That element is being swept aside by modern communications and culture with the troubling consequence that the urban culture is more and more becoming the normal rather than the exception.
American exceptionalism was created by the feats of many citizens from flyover country; that made the cities great, but the cities now figure that they should run the entire show. The cities are wide open to the manipulations of globalists, forces who are not entirely loyal to the republic and in some cases not even located within the confines of the nation.
The electoral college should remain the method for electing the president. Toss it out and you will have nothing but a steady decline as presidents like Obama become the norm, community organizers and grievance mongers in touch with urban angst rather than the spirit of building and innovation that persists beyond the inner cities.
They’re still counting votes. California won’t start on their mail-in ballots until tomorrow (today was the deadline to receive them - must be postmarked by Election Day).
3 million illegal aliens voted for Hillary. Trump won the citizen vote.
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