This will prove to be a flatly false narrative as a look at what happened in Pennsylvania will demonstrate.
It may be true that many establishment Republicans did not vote for Trump, but Trump did not underperform Toomey in PA. Trump had 2,912,941 votes compared to 2,893,833 for Toomey.
What's more interesting to me about PA is that Trump's vote total exceeded Obama's 2012 total (2,990,274) by 77,333 and exceeded Romney's 2012 total (2,680,434) by a whopping 232,507, or 8.6%.
What also may be a false narrative is that Clinton failed to turn out the Obama coalition. She actually had more votes in Philadelphia (560,542) than Obama did in 2012 (557,024). She had more more than 10% more votes than Obama's 2012 total (251,063 for Clinton to 227,561 for Obama) in Montogomery County outside of Philadelphia. There Trump underperformed Romney (169,903 for Romney to 160,803). It appears the establishment Republicans of Montgomery County who favored Romney would not vote for Trump. In Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, once again Clinton got more votes than Obama (363017 for Clinton to 348151 for Obama) and Trump underperformed Romney (257488 for Trump to 259,304 to Romney).
So Clinton beat Obama's 2012 vote totals in big Democrat centers, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Montgomery County, yet statewide she had 145,569, or nearly 5%, votes less than Obama in 2012. For her statewide totals to be less than Obama's while outperforming Obama in the traditionally big Democrat vote centers, Trump had to have converted a significant number of 2012 Obama voters into 2016 Trump voters in the outlying counties. Not only did Trump achieve this, he increased Republican and independent voter turnout for himself. In Lancaster County, a traditionally stalwart Republican County (and where I live), Trump outperformed Romney by 6% (137145 for Trump to 129364 for Romney). I suspect that some of that 6% increase was from the deplorables I stood in line with and who probably did not vote for Romney in 2012.
According to my wife, one of the poll workers at our voting location told her the Amish turnout was triple what they saw in the last election. So the Trump billboards with the buggy pictures seemed to have paid off, as did the calls for drivers to help get the Amish to the polls.
The bottom line is that Trump won Pennsylvania because he increased turnout in the counties outside the big population centers while he also captured the votes of some of the 2012 Obama voters. This most definitely was not a low turnout vote in Pennsylvania.
Have to correct my previous post. Trump’s total was 77,333 LESS than Obama’s 2012 total.
Good point. The other false narrative is that C cannot compare national campaigns to local. Rubio ran nationally and lost every state but one and lost his home state. Cruz ran nationally and was destroyed in the last 6 consecutive contests before dropping out. How were these guys going to outperform in a national race when they got destroyed by Trump in the national primary?
Exactly.
In Lancaster County, a traditionally stalwart Republican County (and where I live),
whereabouts in Lancaster County...?