Posted on 12/26/2016 2:36:08 PM PST by Lorianne
Without a doubt, Trump campaigned much smarter than Hillary. Now Michael Moore and his ilk are upset because Trump lost the popular vote. Had the rules been different, Trump would have campaigned differently.
Salil Mehta at Statistical Ideas explores that question in Popular Vote Besotted.
“No one complained in early October about the Electoral College rules, no one complained that Russian President Putin was hacking our election system, no one complained that the results would be illegitimate if too many Whites versus Blacks come out to vote, and no one complained that Americans were going to have a negative view of Hillary’s e-mails (from servers, to leaks). When asked at the 2nd presidential debate whether the election outcome would be accepted, it was Clinton to had to call Trump’s response “horrifying” and a “taking down of our democracy”. Why not; it was game over after that Access Hollywood gift, and it’s time to plan expensive fireworks over the Hudson River on election night. Those fireworks never happened.
Who campaigned more prudently?
We have been hearing Donald Trump’s side claim that he was simply more ingenious in picking the “key” states to campaign in, and if the traditional rules were to win the popular vote then he would have changed his overall strategy to win that way.
Since Kellyanne Conway emerged as Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, more than a couple months prior to election, we have a record of all the major campaign appearances for both candidates in order to see who took advantage of the vote decision-making time better. Hillary Clinton simply went to 2/3 as many appearances, and each time to smaller audiences, versus her rival. But she did appear from time to time at some music concerts, confidently assuming that was enough (it wasn’t and outside of millennials, she lost the popular vote in the rest of the age spectrum).
We also know that there were 6 economically worse-off states that flipped from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. She campaigned with less appearances in each of these 6 states. No that’s bad and indefensible. As a portion of all of her appearances, her relative efforts were competitive in five of these 6 states and very strong in Ohio. Yet even in for Ohio’s growing population, her total votes fell ruinously, and her popular vote margin was even more disastrous: from (Obama +3%), to (Clinton -8.1%).
Hillary Clinton wasted nearly 7% of her campaigning in two blue states [California and New York], only to increase her popular vote margin by a total of 1m! But for no good reason as the popular vote margin % was already in the low-20s% in her favor. So this is just another example of unwise campaign strategy.
What if the original rules were the popular vote, then what likely changes would have happened among these two tough contenders? What if Donald Trump spent less time in the 6 states noted above, and instead campaigned harder in states such as California (he never did), and Texas (only one appearance). This would be sufficient to wipe out the current lead Hillary Clinton has in the popular vote, simply by blunting the margin difference between elections (seen in map below). Not enough to suggest Mr. Trump would have had an easy advantage however.
So this is where we need to take an additional leap, from probability theory to game theory. We would have to assume the magical change for 2016 would have spurred up additional voter turnout in these otherwise disparate large states, as they did in the manufacturing, Rust Belt states. The messaging would have therefore have needed to be altered, and there is every reason to believe Donald Trump would have been able to be at least enough effective in that to be successful on the popular vote metric. Whether this means 70% chance, or 55% chance, it is still an effective consideration.”
Excellent Analysis once again by Salil Mehta. Nate Silver totally blew this election from start to finish.
map at source not included above
By not obtaining a majority, H->! lost the Popular Vote too.
Maybe, PROBABLY a lot of states like Oklahoma that WE KNEW Trump would carry, some stayed home, knowing it wasn’t critical. So, yeah, if it were a popular vote, more people would have gotten out to vote.
If she had really campaigned more, more people would have realized that she offered less.
She really didn’t offer anything.
If it was a popular vote contest, Trump would have campaigned differently, and a lot of people who stayed home in reliable republican states, would have come out and voted.
Clinton, from what I’ve heard, was obsessed with the idea that Trump would win the popular vote, but lose the electoral vote, so she spent a lot of money to up her popular vote total in CA, IL, NY, and even ran a ton of ads here in MN. She essentially lost track of the fact that it was an Electoral College race, whereas, Trump never took his eye off the ball. Early on, he did campaign in CA, but soon realized that he didn’t stand much chance there.
he hit the states he needed, multiple times, especially towards the last hrs...
he knew what he needed to win...Mich...Ohio...Pa..Wisconsin...and Florida....he spent his time there....
he didn't throw money into states he had no chance...
he won the majority of state electors by popular vote, period...
on one state can stuff the ballot box and think they can steal elections...so there California...
Now, send Hillary and every member of the family to jail ! !
Another example (To be added to many!)that calls to question the notion that Hellary is the “Smartest Woman in America”!
.. or hires the smartest people.
The election is based in 50 popular votes.
Doubtful, because an election based on the national popular vote would have the candidates campaigning in a completely different manner.
They would have primarily campaigned in NY, FL, TX, CA, IL and possibly a few other large-population states, and mainly in the larger-populated cities.
Since 2010 the dimorats have lost ground in every arena, they lost the presidency, the House, the Senate, state governorships, state representatives virtually all the way down to dog catcher. This is no coincidence.
The Popular “Legal” Vote or the Popular “Illegal” Vote?
Exactly right. A popular vote for president is an entirely different scenario. By the way, this is typical leftist rhetoric. Look at the results, then make a straight-line analysis and don’t consider other factors. And so in liberal logic, you end up with:
1. Hillary “won” the popular vote. We should just ignore the circumstances and give her the victory; problem solved.
2. Rich people make too much money, we should tax them at confiscatory rates, so they have no more than the rest of us; problem solved.
3. Having an unwanted pregnancy or handicapped child is a big problem, we should just have abortion on demand; problem solved.
4. Minorities are not getting into college at the same rate as Asians and Anglos, we should just have affirmative action for them so they can get into any university; problem solved.
5. College is sooo expensive now; we should just give students free loans for college; problem solved.
And so on ... you get the idea.
IOW, Hillary, that lawyer, didn’t know the constitution. Glad she lost if she didn’t know about the Electoral College.
I wonder if that idiot Vice President would become the President after Hillary is impeached. Funny the media never discussed Hillary going to prison. That is more realistic that her fantasy.
The left has a huge advantage if we eliminate the electoral college. Using only total popular vote to decide is much more likely to yield a fraudulent or stolen result. That gives the left a huge advantage because it’s how they play naturally. We’d lose almost all the time when you consider how supercharged they can heat election fraud when they want to.
The Electoral College is equally fair and is much less susceptible to fraud so it’s just the better procedure to use.
The fraud attempts we saw this time at the college were very alarming. The integrity of the college vote must be 100%.
Please subtract all illegal votes
1st we need to implement Voter ID! We can't have cheating going on in a Popular Vote Election!!
Clinton lost to Trump by 33.7% to 60.6% in Arkansas, and she should have more connection to Arkansas than Trump.
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