Posted on 11/13/2016 11:44:29 AM PST by LS
Boy was I wrong. All along I had Trump at between 62 and 64 million votes. Our overly optimistic friend "Sundance" at www.conservativetreehouse.com was completely off the charts unrealistic, with a projection of 73 million.
Yes, Trump won the electoral college---as I predicted---big. As of today I think he is at 304. Another 720,000 votes in seven states would have given him an additional 43 electoral votes.
But unfortunately I was right in another prediction: the margin would be large, but each state would be decided by a small fraction of voters. Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and Florida all hinged on fewer than 180,000 votes. To appreciate how close that is, Obama won reelection in 2008 by under 480,000 votes, and I thought that was very close. I did correctly predict that the dominoes would all fall in the same direction, and, more or less, they did. We lost VA and NH in the east, and NV and CO by larger margins in the west, but the battleground tier of OH, WI, MI, PA, IA, NC, and FL all fell to Trump.
So it's time to put good feelings aside for just a moment---we'll have plenty more in the coming months---and appreciate just how close . . . how MIRACULOUS . . . this election was.
You begin with Hillary Clinton, the equivalent of a new coach being given a Super Bowl team with All Stars at every position and a free agent budget the size of Jupiter (less the emigrating Cher). Cankles had 90% name recognition, a sitting president more or less behind her, a docile party obedient to her whims, and a fawning media such that Saddam Hussein or Napoleon would have been fortunate to have.
And with all that she got six million fewer votes than Zero in his second election (where he got millions fewer than in 2008). It's darn near unfathomable, looking at it objectively, to figure out how she lost, given the numbers.
She'll likely end up winning the popular vote by 500,000 to 1 million, held the expected liberal vote treasures of New York, Illinois, and California, held Obama's western states without exception, eked out a narrow win in New Hampshire, and got Virginia as expected.
Yet she was crushed in the electoral college by a guy who spent HALF as much as she did. How?
*She didn't make any inroads at all with females---supposedly Cankles' calling card. White women went for Trump. There was no big "gender gap," except with men, who couldn't stand her.
*She lost millions of black and hispanic votes. Pew's research is unreliable---these guys did polls, remember? ---but they say Trump only got 8% of blacks. (I find that very unlikely, especially when every other poll was showing him at nearly double that.) But if blacks didn't vote for Trump, they sure didn't vote for Cankles. In FL and NC, when all is said and done she probably lost several hundred thousand African-American votes.
*"Da Yuts" were repelled by her. They stayed home.
*She lost the northern tier of rust belt states because she just didn't care. Cankles made NO visits to Wisconsin, only a couple of desperation trips to Michigan and Pennsylvania in the end. That message got out.
*Trump was indeed hurt by the tape, and vote counters in Ohio found that erstwhile R absentees dated right after the tape release suddenly had a very high percentage of Johnson votes. I'm guessing the tape cost Trump NH, possibly MN.
Still, the tape cannot account for the lack of turnout for Trump. NeverTrumpers? Some. For whatever reason, though, Trump did not turn out the large number of new voters that was expected by his supporters such as myself. (The limited data we have says that 90% of Republicans voted for him).
That leaves us with one explanation: Trump's election was a miracle. Some 60,000-70,000 voters in MI and PA saved the country. WI was a nice addition, but without one more state, WI's 10 electoral votes wouldn't have put Trump over. No, this was divine intervention.
And, in a way, it is perfectly in keeping with the Bible, for it was Gideon who prepared to go to war with 30,000 men . . . "the old fashioned way." God told him many were not committed, and to winnow them out. When only 3,000 remained, Gideon was told to cut the number further. Finally only 300 fully committed men remained. The message was that God wanted Gideon to know that it was His power, not numbers or the skill of the troops, that would bring victory.
So in the end, our "monster vote" never materialized. God cut the number down to under 180,000 in five states so that no one could doubt Who really won this one.
My pleasure. I truly appreciated her efforts. She was a lifelong devotee to our cause.
I think that if the Dems had run Sanders, he would have easily beat Trump.
Their foolish mistake.
Wonderful news to me, if it can bear up. This would help TRUMP a lot.
Pray MORE!
May God be pleased to increase the “popular vote”. / Amen.
Sorry. I sent this to myself. I went back to look at what I had said, and then commented to it. Oops. Thanks.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3493693/posts?page=81#81
I got that, dear one.
The D’s knew this, and that’s why they were so damned arrogant all cycle, they never in a million years thought this could happen.
That’s correct. PA hadn’t been a red state since 1988? And it was Madame Secretary’s arrogance (and a campaign manager perhaps) that kept her from going to WI-MI-PA.
This election will become a case study in many Poli-Sci classes if academe can separate itself from it’s liberal bent for five minutes.
Well WTF do you know! I may still remain officially secular, but I wont doubt you good folks (or Him) again!
For me, that day will be 20 January.
“:^)
I’m glad. Thank you.
Come on over!
I have had more fun and more joy in the last four years since I asked Jesus into my life than the previous 40.
It did not hurt that I retired about the same time.
Hard to believe. Who would have thought it...
<< This election will become a case study in many Poli-Sci classes if academe can separate itself from it’s liberal bent for five minutes. >>
Oh, let what you said come true.
Marxists have an origin— US Public Education and academia. Parents herd their own kids into these dangerous grounds, for “shaping” and wonder why our nation is in collapse morally, economically and socially.
Thank you, Paradox, for your encouragement. Our little herd will be a remnant by the time this stint on earth is over, and your kindness makes us grateful. Cool.
Rita.
Working class women by 30 points? I thought I heard he got about 53% of them.
I am sorry, but that seems to be wrong, I believe the original source for that number got the numbers backwards.
Absolutely agree. Since 2008, I prayed the same 3-word prayer about her. Please, lord, no.
Thankfully, my new 3-word prayer is:
Thank you, Lord!
“Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and Florida all hinged on fewer than 180,000 votes.”
You should have phrased this differently or at least added the word “each,” because it makes it sound like he won by fewer than 180,000 in all those states combined, which is of course not so. He won by almost 180,000 in just NC alone and by 140,000 in FL. (I agree that his election was a miracle though!)
http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president
“without either MI or PA, we would have been short.”
Yup, the factors I described made Trump competitive, but Trump’s effort in MI & PA put him over the top. Hillary didn’t visit MI in the last 2 months and only sent surrogates to PA. Hubris sunk Hillary.
That was my take too.
Don’t really know what to make of it.
I can’t find other sources that even have those vote numbers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.