The Numbers Don’t Lie: Trump Needs to Do Better by 2020
The year 2017 and the inauguration of a new president are upon us. And though the historic, stunning election of November 8, 2016 is behind us, it looks like the final data on what happened that day are very close to being at last finalized.
I’ve watched that data carefully on pretty much a daily basis since November 8, courtesy of the running tabulation collected by Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, who has been the superb go-to source for people tracking this data. In the first two weeks after the election, Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead over Donald Trump expanded somewhere in the range of 100,000-plus votes per day, which was shocking to behold. We have truly never seen anything like it.
Thus, while most pundits have moved beyond post-election analysis, I think it’s crucial to pause to revisit the numbers now that we have nearly finalized hard data. We can draw some fairly definitive conclusions.
So, looking at this from the winner’s perspective — that is, Donald Trump’s — let’s call this the good, the bad, and the ugly.
First, the good
Trump’s amazing win was an Electoral College triumph — the only victory that counts in winning a presidential election. It is striking just how narrowly Trump defeated Hillary in the crucial swing states that secured his win.
If the total percentage of victory in states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were flipped by a mere one percent — or in some cases 0.2 percent — Hillary Clinton would have won them all, and thereby taken the overall election handily. Of course, they weren’t reversed. Trump flipped those states in ways that recent Republicans presidential nominees were unable to do. I wrote a piece on the eve of the 2012 election predicting that Mitt Romney would win Pennsylvania. Close, but no cigar. Trump, however, pulled it off — and it was a great accomplishment.
More good news from Trump on the swing states: As I looked closer at the 13 swing states, I see that Hillary did not reach 50 percent or more in a single swing state. That’s pretty significant. Trump did so in two of them, Iowa and Ohio, where he crushed her in both by margins of, respectively 9.4 percent and 8.1 percent. He got 51 percent in each, which was a major feat. Other swing states, like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were very tiny margins for him but major victories nonetheless. He also blew the Clinton campaign out in Indiana, a state that Barack Obama won in 2008.
And still more good news from Trump on the state data: It’s interesting how low Hillary’s percentages were in some states. She got under 40 percent in 18 states. She actually got less than 30 percent in six states (Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming). Trump earned less than 40 percent in 10 states and the District of Columbia. He didn’t get less than 30 percent in any states but almost did so in California, the most-populous state, where he was annihilated by Hillary, securing a mere 31.6 percent of the vote. And forget all that bunkum from Trump pom-pom boys about how their guy could compete in New York. He got his butt handed to him in New York with a mere 36.5 percent of the vote there.
Moreover, don’t make the mistake of over-inflating Trump’s seemingly sizable Electoral College vote over Hillary. The final tally was 306 to 232, which was good, but far from great. As Nate Silver pointed out in an enlightening historical analysis of Electoral College victories, Trump’s Electoral College margin was nice but well below average. Out of 54 presidential elections, his Electoral College margin ranks 44th.
Now, for the bad and the ugly for Donald Trump
The sheer depth of Trump’s popular-vote loss to Hillary is literally unprecedented in how bad it is. It is a terrible defeat for a winning president, and Trump enthusiasts should not delude themselves otherwise. They ignore or dismiss it at their and his future political peril.
Looking again at the latest cumulative popular-vote tabulation, Hillary’s lead over Trump as I write is 2.865 million. Her popular-vote lead still might hit three million, but will probably come in just under that. Still, those who (going forward) write about it or casually remark on it will probably tend to round it up to three million.
How dreadful is this for Donald Trump? The previous record popular-vote loss for a winning president was George W. Bush losing by only 543,000 votes to Gore in 2000. Trump’s loss dwarfs that by over five-fold.
Even more alarming, Trump’s percentage loss is 46.1 percent vs. 48.2 percent for Hillary. It has continued to fall and still may slip under 46.0 percent.
The 46.1 percent figure gives Trump a lower percentage than not only Hillary, but also Obama in 2012 (51.1 percent) and 2008 (52.9 percent), Romney in 2012 (47.2 percent), Bush in 2004 (51.0 percent) and 2000 (47.9 percent), Kerry in 2004 (48.5 percent), and Gore in 2000 (48.4 percent).
For a while, I thought that Trump might get lower than who was 45.7 percent, but that probably will not happen. Of course, here as well, historians and pundits and others will round down Trump to 46 percent, just as they tend to round up McCain to 46 percent. It will then look like basically the same vote percentage for both.
(By the way, Michael Dukakis in 1988 got 45.6 percent of the vote, which likewise is usually rounded up to 46 percent by historians. And amazingly, with that Trump-like popular-vote percentage, Dukakis was obliterated in the Electoral College, 426 to 111.)
Some Trump enthusiasts will likely dismiss all of this shocking data by arguing that if we simply removed California, New York, and Illinois from Hillary’s vote totals, Trump would have won the popular vote. That’s just downright absurd. The same could have been said for Romney, for Bush in 2000, and maybe even for McCain, R-Ariz. (F, 32 percent) (I would need to do the math). It wouldn’t be fair to do that to Hillary’s vote total any more than it would be to remove Texas and the South from Trump’s vote total.
Trump also countered that he would have campaigned in places like California had the presidency depended not on the Electoral College but on the popular vote. Sure. But so would have Hillary. In fact, Hillary thus would have campaigned in Texas and the South as well.
This is an asinine argument. If a student of mine made this argument on an exam, I’d give him an “F.”
Look, Trump admirers, your guy got crushed in the popular vote in historically unprecedented fashion for a winning president. So be it. Accept that and move on. You’re far better off conceding your liabilities, so you can work to improve them next time around. Making false assumptions and excuses will be your political downfall. You were extremely fortunate you didn’t get burned by them in November 2016.
So, for Trump supporters who have been emailing me gloating about how brilliantly right they were, in defiance of the literal 90 percent-plus of polls that had him losing to Hillary (i.e., getting less votes), cut the nonsense. The polls were actually right. You were wrong. Be humble and be thankful, because you and your guy are extremely fortunate, even as (yes) his Electoral College triumph was a great achievement.
And here’s where your gloating can come back to bite you: If Trump gets 46.1 percent of the vote in 2020, he’ll be the first one-term president in a while, after three consecutive two-term presidents, and four of the last five.
Keep this recent but crucial historical fact in mind: Barack Obama in 2012 actually got fewer votes than he did in 2008. He got fewer popular votes, fewer Electoral College votes, fewer states, fewer counties, and a lower overall percentage vote. He still won, yes, but his margin of victory over McCain in 2008 had been very significant. He had room for error his second time around. Donald Trump does not.
Don’t gloat. Trump almost achieved the impossible: becoming the only Republican who could’ve lost to Hillary Clinton.
But let’s wrap up on a positive note, circling back to the good from November 2016: Donald Trump deserves tremendous kudos for squeaking out Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida, and for sizable margins in places like North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, and all-around for a solid Electoral College win. Those are the numbers that really count. And that is why we will watch Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton taking the oath of office in about three weeks. (For more from the author of “The Numbers Don’t Lie: Trump Needs to Do Better by 2020” please click HERE)
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