Ten thousand nattering pundits are out there this morning telling you that Trump’s victory represents a seismic shift in the electorate. That “the Rust Belt is moving to the Republican column for a generation” or that a horde of voters angry at … government, or health care costs, or foreclosures, or … you name it, rose up and formed a coalition to drive Donald Trump to power.
That’s not what the numbers show.
WISCONSIN
|
2012 |
2016 |
CHANGE |
DEM |
1,620,985 |
1,377,588 |
-243,397 |
REP |
1,407,966 |
1,404,376 |
-3,590 |
Diff |
213,019 |
-26,788 |
|
Of the “Rust Belt” states that swung the election Tuesday night, only in Pennsylvania might it be argued that there was any significant shift of voters from column blue to column red. What the numbers really indicate is that the issue wasn’t a conservative white nationalist uprising among low-income former Democrats. It was just a marginally lower turnout. It wasn’t who showed up. It was who didn’t.
Donald Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney in Wisconsin. But Trump won where Romney lost. The total number of votes in Michigan? Down. Wisconsin? Down. Only Pennsylvania had a tiny nudge upward in total votes.
There were no “hidden Trump voters” who crawled out of a cave on Election Day. There were simply Democratic voters who didn’t show. In Wisconsin alone, a quarter of a million voters … didn’t.
The result was a razor thin margin in enough states to change the outcome.
A 1 percent shift in just a trio of states, and rather than talking about Trump’s victory this morning, we’d be discussing how President-elect Clinton pulled out a surprisingly close race.
And where might we find that 1 percent? First there was the strategy of the Trump campaign, which for weeks was meant to de-energize and depress Democratic turnout. It’s also not a coincidence that the states with the sharpest drop can be found on this map.
Then there was the strategy of the Clinton campaign, in which Wisconsin received exactly zero visits during the general election. Previous to Comey’s letter, the Clinton crew was so focused on expanding the map, they failed to nail down the basics.
And speaking of Comey, there’s also the matter of voters who decided in the last week. Only 13 percent of the electorate made up their minds in the last few days, but those were these days ...
The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced in late October that it was looking at more emails connected to its investigation of Clinton’s use of a personal email server while secretary of state.
This isn’t to suggest that there aren’t structural issues in the Democratic Party that need to be addressed, or that the party doesn’t need to reinforce—or even reintroduce—itself as the party of working class voters (where working class doesn’t automatically equate to “white,” as it did in so many election night broadcasts). Parties are always a work in progress, and progressives really need to do some work.
But it also means that the idea of some massive change, or ravening horde of enraged voters appearing from nowhere were the cause of this failure … isn’t true.
Michigan
|
2012 |
2016 |
Change |
DEM |
2,564,569 |
2,241,930 |
-322,639 |
REP |
2,115,256 |
2,258,166 |
+142,910 |
Diff |
449,313 |
-16,236 |
|
Pennsylvania
|
2012 |
2016 |
CHANGE |
DEM |
2,990,274 |
2,844,084 |
-146,190 |
REP |
2,680,434 |
2,911,986 |
+231,552 |
Diff |
309,840 |
-67,902 |
|
Note: In all these states, results aren’t final for 2016 and the end numbers are likely to edge upward, but it’s not likely to change results or erase the point.