05 January 2017
All the President’s Numbers
Mrs Clinton’s majority
by J.R.Thomas
Enough of those endless Christmas break Sudoku’s. Time to play around with some real numbers. Maybe we should start with those startling figures that President-elect Trump is only too well aware of, as is his erstwhile opponent Mrs C, and, given that lady’s feisty reputation, you might be surprised that she is not being much more vociferous on the subject. The numbers we are talking of are not jobs saved from export to Mexico by a single tweet, or $ per mile of fence per illegal incursion, but those of voters in the recent Presidential election.
In spite of the commentaries about the resurgence of the intolerant right, the rise of the disregardeds, and Mr Trump’s remarkable “success” in creating a constituency of the marginalised, the unhappy, and the dissatisfied, the figures show that he garnered in his granary of the unhappy just under sixty three million voters. Mrs Clinton had the support of almost sixty six million electors. That, oddly, gave Donald the Presidency on 46% of the vote – and means that Hillary lost it on 48% of the vote (the balance is mostly that of Johnson/Weld, the Libertarian ticket.)
This is by no means the first time that Presidents have won in the Electoral College and been awarded the keys to the White House, whilst failing to convince a majority of the voting public that they were the right person for the job. As recently as 2000 we were all agog at the Mystery of the Hanging Chads, the humid air of Florida apparently deterring crisp action on the voting machine by Democrat voters, to the termination of the political ambitions of Al Gore and to the opening of the Presidential career of George W Bush. Even ignoring those chads which failed to drop, Mr Bush persuaded only fifty million of the electorate that another George Bush presidency was a good idea – against fifty and a half million who thought it wasn’t – but Mr Bush nevertheless got the job, thanks to the strange vagaries of the Electoral College. That was a gap of a mere half of one per cent; in 2016 Mr Trump was 2.6% of the votes behind and still got the job. For those of an historical incliation, that was by no means the highest discrepancy; that prize goes to John Quincy Adams in 1824, who was a somewhat startling 10% behind his opponent (Andrew Jackson) in the popular vote – a three way contest at that – and still got to move to Pennsylvania Avenue, pretty much brand new after having been burned by the British in 1814. Politicians then seemed even less popular than they are now; the turnout was a quarter of those eligible to vote and Adams only achieved office after some remarkable political manoeuvring in the House of Representatives. Jackson had his revenge. He ran an intensely personal campaign for the next four years, destroying both Adam’s reputation and his Presidency and was, at his next attempt in 1828, elected President, and just to make a point, again for a second term in 1832.
You may think it somewhat surprising that with two mis-awarded (arguably) elections within sixteen years there is no particular outcry or call for reform, especially from the Democrats. There have been in total five Presidential elections which have fallen to the loser, as it were; and in each case the Republicans were the beneficiary – although Adams was a Democrat-Republican, so might be counted on either side. But politicians and electors both seem prepared to live with some odd results; such is their respect for their constitution. (Though one might ponder if Mr Trump would have been so respectful to precedent if things had been the other way around.) One also wonders if Mr Obama, who has strongly hinted that his career in politics is not over, oddly given the 300 games of golf he has played whilst in the job, and that he is available for promoting change, may be prepared to try to take on the considerable task of promoting reforms to the system that governs the Electoral College. It would though be a brave politician who tried to tinker with the enormously complex construct designed by the Founding Fathers which is the US constitution. It was carefully designed to try to produce a working and democratic system of government – but also one where change is very difficult to achieve unless there really is a strong and widely accepted call for something to be done.
Which is not to say that change is not possible. The rules of the Electoral College are themselves a product of the 12th amendment to the constitution passed in 1804; the latest amendment was the 27th, which deals with the pay of members of Congress and was passed in 1992. Those of our readers of a conservative nature will be pleased to know, though, that this amendment was originally proposed in 1789 and that it took 202 years to become fully ratified. Mr Obama may well decide that improving his golf is less frustrating than trying to change the rules of the Electoral College.
Over the next few months the vast input of data that Americans provided when they voted on 8th November – they thought they were just turning out to vote but in reality what they were doing was not only giving Mr Trump a job but keeping hundreds of political scientists and analysts and lobbyists in their jobs – will be crunched through in the finest detail. And then we will discover whether any of our pre-election theories as to who was supporting what had any connection to what was actually going on. We know some general trends; for instance that older persons tended to incline to vote for Mr Trump, and younger persons preferred, electorally, Mrs Clinton; and that there were some pretty big switches in voter behaviour in rust belt states. Both those behaviours suggest that what was assumed to be the base of Mr Trump’s support was indeed what we thought – the economically downward-moving white working class. But there are some counter-intuitive patterns as well. Donald polled 29% of Latino heritage voters, not great but much better than expected, and even more unexpected, 53% of women.
There is one simple statistic from the Presidential combat that really might raise an eyebrow or two, though it has not especially been picked up much by commentators so far. That is the turnout, which was at 58.6% of the eligible electors (and aficionados of Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream* will know that the eligible voter registration figure is itself very low). Since the Second World War the pattern has been a highish turn out, in the mid 60%’s, for fresh candidates, and lower, mid 50%’s for an incumbent President running for a second term. Here we have one of the noisiest elections for many years, fought by candidates who scored record lows for unpopularity. And, and this is not irrelevant, good weather on polling day. One would expect an exceptionally high turnout if only of voters trying to stop the candidate they really disliked. Indeed voting intentions seem to have been high. So what happened? The best guess is that the new populist franchise that supported Trump did turn out, but traditional Republicans couldn’t bring themselves to; and all those enthusiastic young anti-machine ex-Sanders supporters dragged their feet when it came to supporting the ultra-machine politician Clinton. We are surmising; but we suspect that rebuilding political party loyalties on both sides is going to prove very tricky. We may well be in for a long period of unpredictable behaviour, unpleasant rhetoric, unstable loyalties, and emotional politicking. Golf does sound like an ever more appealing way to spend some time.
*Not that eating premium ice-cream in itself will give you a particular insight into voter behaviour – but reading the carton might – B&J has been running a major campaign to get voter registration up – and coming from the home state of Bernie Sanders that is not because they were cheering on a Trump victory…
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