Sunday, November 27, 2016

Update on US Presidential Election

The vote count continues. Turnout in 2016 is clearly up on 2012.

Dem_2012              65918507
Rep_2012              60934407
Other_2012             2384728
Total_2012           129237642
Dem_2016              64641091
Rep_2016              62438763
Other_2016             7673054
Total_2016           134752908 

For me the big story is the growth in the other party vote. In the US system of first-past-the post voting, these are largely wasted votes. My contention is that these votes were largely lost from Democrat voters, and they cost Clinton the election.

The first chart following is percentage point change in the other parties vote (without Utah, because it was a special case). The second chart is the percentage change in the number of votes cast for other parties (without Oklahoma, because there were no other party votes in 2012). The final chart is the vote share for other parties

The Democrat count is clearly down in the industrial mid-west. The first chart following is the vote share for the Democrats in each state. The second chart is the change in vote share (in percentage points) from 2012 to 2016. The final chart is the change in raw vote count from 2012 to 2016 (expressed as a percent of the 2012 vote count).

For the Republicans, the story is a mixed bag: votes were up in the mid-west (but a close result), but down in Texas, and the west of the country.

While the Michigan count is still not declared (and is now subject to a recount), the indicative results give Michigan to the Republicans.

A quick acknowledgement: I sourced the data for this analysis from http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/.