Politics
Commentary
Outside California,
Hillary Clinton lost the popular vote by 1.4 million to Donald Trump.
Democrats who are
having trouble getting out of the first stage of grief — denial — aren't being
helped by the fact that, now that all the votes are counted, Hillary Clinton's
lead in the popular vote has topped 2.8 million, giving her a 48% share of the
vote compared with Trumps 46%.
To those unschooled
in how the United States selects presidents, this seems totally unfair. But
look more closely at the numbers and you see that Clinton's advantage all but
disappears.
As we noted
in this space earlier, while Clinton's overall margin looks large and
impressive, it is due to Clinton's huge margin of victory in one state —
California — where she got a whopping 4.3 million more votes than Trump.
California is the
only state, in fact, where Clinton's margin of victory was bigger than
President Obama's in 2012 — 61.5% vs. Obama's 60%.
But California is the
exception that proves the true genius of the Electoral College — which was
designed to prevent regional candidates from dominating national elections.
In recent years,
California has been turning into what amounts to a one-party state. Between
2008 and 2016, the number of Californian's who registered as Democrats climbed
by 1.1 million, while the number of registered Republicans dropped by almost
400,000.
What's more, many
Republicans in the state had nobody to vote for in November.
There were two
Democrats — and zero Republicans — running to replace Sen. Barbara
Boxer. There were no Republicans on the ballot for House seats in nine of
California's congressional districts.
At the state level,
six districts had no Republicans running for the state senate, and 16 districts
had no Republicans running for state assembly seats.
Plus, since
Republicans knew Clinton was going to win the state — and its entire 55
electoral votes — casting a ballot for Trump was virtually meaningless, since
no matter what her margin of victory, Clinton was getting all 55 votes.
Is it any wonder
then, that Trump got 11% fewer California votes than John McCain did in 2008?
(Clinton got 6% more votes than Obama did eight years ago, but the number of
registered Democrats in the state climbed by 13% over those years.)
If you take
California out of the popular vote equation, then Trump wins the rest of the
country by 1.4 million votes. And if California voted like every other
Democratic state — where Clinton averaged 53.5% wins — Clinton and Trump end up
in a virtual popular vote tie. (This was not the case in 2012. Obama beat
Romney by 2 million votes that year, not counting California.)
Meanwhile, if you
look at every other measure, Trump was the clear and decisive winner in this
election.
Number of states won:
Trump: 30
Clinton: 20
_________________
Trump: +10
Trump: 30
Clinton: 20
_________________
Trump: +10
Number of electoral
votes won:
Trump: 306
Clinton: 232
_________________
Trump: + 68
Trump: 306
Clinton: 232
_________________
Trump: + 68
Ave. margin of
victory in winning states:
Trump: 56%
Clinton: 53.5%
_________________
Trump: + 2.5 points
Trump: 56%
Clinton: 53.5%
_________________
Trump: + 2.5 points
Popular vote total:
Trump: 62,958,211
Clinton: 65,818,318
_________________
Clinton: + 2.8 million
Trump: 62,958,211
Clinton: 65,818,318
_________________
Clinton: + 2.8 million
Popular vote total
outside California:
Trump: 58,474,401
Clinton: 57,064,530
_________________
Trump: + 1.4 million
Trump: 58,474,401
Clinton: 57,064,530
_________________
Trump: + 1.4 million
