What Actually Happened

We now have the benefit of almost a month, and plenty of post-mortems to understand the 2016 election. That's good, because the number of hot takes and accusatory conversations in regards to the election have spiraled out of control. I hope that by now, we can have a real discussion of everything based on some semblance of facts.

First, let's understand exactly what happened. In 2012, President Obama won the election with 66.5 million votes, and 51% of the electorate, while Mitt Romney lost the election with 61.5 million votes, and 47% of the electorate. In 2012, President Obama received 332 electoral votes, to Romney's 206. In 2016, Hillary Clinton received about 48% of the vote with 65.5 million votes to date. Donald Trump is approaching 63 million votes to date, and received just about 46% of the vote. In terms of actual results, this is what happened.

So how did this happen? Hillary's diminished returns, as compared to President Obama's 2012 run, are caused by a substantial drop among white working class households, but also a smaller percentage of African-American votes in a smaller African-American turnout. She managed to not drop off more because of a particularly strong showing among Latinos, especially in the West, but concentrated in Arizona, Texas, and also in Georgia (all of which she lost, but much closer than President Obama). Trump, by inverse, won with astronomical numbers of white working class voters, and improvement among African-Americans. Despite exit polls saying differently on Election Day, it does not appear that Trump did very well with Latinos at all. Trump's surge among white voters, and to a lesser extent African-Americans, helped him to win in the key swing-states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Hillary's substantial surge with Latinos was concentrated in fairly large, but ultimately still red states along the Southern edge of the U.S.

All of this should be taken to prove a few points about this election, many of which people are saying the opposite.

1. This was not a low turnout election at all. In fact, it's probably the second most attended election in American history- in raw vote terms.
2. The polls were not off, nationally. They said Hillary had about a 2-3% lead. She won by 2%, in the popular vote, which is what they polled.
3. While there are some party leaders and would-be leaders who want to talk about turnout and organizing, these were not Clinton's issues. She had a ton of organizers, and they turned out lots of voters.
4. White working class people still matter. They will in the future too. It's time to deal with it.

We can debate why these things happened- and will in future posts- but it's important that we start to agree on what actually happened. You can only move effectively forward with facts.