While the counting has not finished, it looks like five and possibly six states will flip from Democratic in the 2012 presidential election to Republican in 2016: Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. The states where the count is still in doubt are New Hampshire and Michigan.
In this first chart, I have plotted the likely state winners according to American sensibilities: the states which Trump/Republicans won are red and the states Clinton/Democrats won are blue. The states that have flipped from one side of politics to the other are in a darker hue.
The biggest swings to the Republicans (on a two-party basis) were in the industrial upper mid-west. This suggests the economy (and the challenges of managing economic change in those states previously heavily dependent on the industrial/manufacturing sector) may have driven the Trump win. There is an irony here: Bill Clinton won the 1992 with the catch-phrase: it's the economy stupid.
The bigger swings by state follow. In this table, a positive swing is to the Republicans, a negative swing is to the Democrats. In Utah, the measurement of a two-party swing was compounded by Evan McMullin an independent and former Republican, who took votes from Trump.
Hawaii 10.402887 Indiana 8.836585 Iowa 15.197928 Maine 12.587298 Michigan 9.742464 Missouri 9.761118 North Dakota 16.080305 Ohio 11.492718 Rhode Island 12.140835 South Dakota 11.772774 Utah -29.320763 Vermont 9.187492 West Virginia 15.004805 Wisconsin 7.751092
If the economy was the distal cause, the immediate factor I find most compelling in explaining the election outcome was the decline in raw Democratic votes in 2016. Put simply, Clinton was not as attractive to voters in 2016 as Obama was in 2008 or 2012. This outcome is driven less by a decline in turn-out and more by an increase in votes for the Other parties. In the US first-past-the-post voting system, these third party votes are effectively wasted. Of note: Maine voted on a referendum to introduce ranked-choice voting for the next Presidential election. (Ranked-choice voting is what we have in Australia).
Before looking at voting patterns by party, let's look at the change in overall turnout between 2012 and 2016. At this point in the count some 128.5 million votes have been counted. In 2012, there were 129.2 million votes counted in total. I expect the final 2016 vote count will exceed the 2012 count.
In the next three charts, we will look at percentage changes in the raw vote numbers by state for Republicans, Democrats and Others. The most significant thing to notice here is the dramatic increase in votes for other parties. But also of note, the decline of the Democratic vote in many states, compared with the neutral or slight growth in Republican votes.
The table of percentage changes in vote count, by state, as set out in the above charts follows.
Delta_turnout Delta_Rep Delta_Dem Delta_Other State Alabama 1.910248 4.658399 -8.796324 224.990096 Alaska -15.597930 -20.805096 -24.162590 129.167615 Arizona -5.535995 -12.783973 -3.453852 137.245401 Arkansas 5.213714 5.252229 -4.000162 137.342120 California -27.072075 -34.879166 -25.381954 40.718861 Colorado 3.527116 -1.778285 -3.800161 255.222752 Connecticut 1.609885 2.175307 -4.469738 272.546747 Delaware 6.671321 11.855527 -2.886835 256.244661 District of Columbia -2.549325 -45.966045 -2.563747 172.896669 Florida 10.707080 10.657011 5.897012 237.066350 Georgia 4.378169 0.306924 5.403909 123.319726 Hawaii -6.232617 1.119696 -17.158528 344.105923 Idaho 5.401512 -2.528325 -10.528839 297.344211 Illinois 3.193796 -0.797905 -1.391417 234.500124 Indiana 3.674430 9.364862 -10.209785 145.281806 Iowa -1.581868 8.996916 -20.956447 281.246769 Kansas -0.897513 -4.899907 -5.710285 174.477800 Kentucky 6.968557 10.646897 -7.438656 190.809197 Louisiana 1.711629 2.261031 -3.641763 114.950095 Maine 3.292296 13.793469 -12.165530 163.210532 Maryland -5.847539 -8.262225 -9.363087 137.265248 Massachusetts 2.012901 -8.867863 2.237895 219.212456 Michigan 0.840977 7.689755 -11.688592 270.282940 Minnesota 0.349763 0.288436 -11.490609 262.405051 Mississippi -9.565847 -4.637944 -17.887766 89.881403 Missouri 0.464235 6.969118 -13.801892 136.501140 Montana 0.116206 2.310695 -13.564276 147.788272 Nebraska 1.259726 2.155078 -9.568626 166.380411 Nevada 10.648348 10.300992 1.200663 269.996997 New Hampshire 2.934855 4.816955 -5.699736 226.555295 New Jersey 3.286754 5.435946 -3.089847 230.071427 New Mexico 1.093579 -5.565118 -7.912408 184.228106 New York 0.445977 6.002740 -7.498578 207.735610 North Carolina 4.071784 3.058278 -0.714748 229.003640 North Dakota 6.415458 14.864772 -25.075504 249.341081 Ohio -4.471185 4.153658 -18.060840 147.541950 Oklahoma 8.848788 6.485962 -5.224249 inf Oregon 7.923902 0.593894 -0.472443 219.613974 Pennsylvania 4.822087 9.001266 -4.489789 200.825561 Rhode Island 3.164675 14.132592 -10.646210 236.409250 South Carolina 6.294428 6.970219 -1.867564 245.386703 South Dakota 1.712959 8.114999 -19.027296 204.971834 Tennessee 0.689381 3.938646 -9.561272 135.283243 Texas 11.603998 2.445314 16.918713 211.061714 Utah -11.301832 -43.420065 -0.330404 727.731299 Vermont 5.270808 2.873848 -10.372969 459.377125 Virginia 2.607012 -3.299823 -0.501009 283.482135 Washington -13.282854 -21.421277 -16.438627 147.327113 West Virginia 5.995962 15.750081 -21.770352 162.957703 Wisconsin -2.970212 -0.066621 -14.684775 374.432034 Wyoming 2.702149 2.001029 -19.227550 188.709860
This table tells a fairly consistent story of votes leaking from Democrats to the Other parties.This raises the interesting conjecture on whether Bernie Sanders would have done a better job at holding the flow of votes. My suspicion (without supporting evidence) is that he would have held more votes lost to others on the left, but may have lost more votes to Trump on the right.
Some have contested that Trump doesn't have a real mandate because he did not get more than 50 per cent of the vote. Arguments can be made about the fairness of the US voting system: particularly as it looks like Clinton won more of the popular vote but not the electoral college vote. However, these arguments are not resolvable. Fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The American founders decided to weight their voting system to those who are engaged (through voluntary voting) and to those who live in the less populous states (by giving all states two electoral college votes, and then one or more votes weighted to the population of the state). They also decided on a first-past-the-post system for counting votes. While compelling arguments can be made for and against each of these design elements, ultimately the Presidential election was conducted under the rules accepted by the American people.
Finally, a quick acknowledgement: I sourced the data for this analysis from http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/.
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