Hillary Clinton’s Reduction In African-American And Hispanic Support Caused Her Election 2016 Loss To Donald Trump
Well, the polls were not rigged after all. They were just wrong. Donald Trump’s shocking win in the 2016 presidential election, despite trailing for most of the head-to-head process and being favored to lose by most polls, turned the media upside down. As the electoral votes started to add up early for Trump, the media was not very startled due to the states that Clinton was expected to obtain having a greater number of electoral votes. However, as the evening progressed that calmness changed.
Before Tuesday evening, Donald Trump had a very steep path to victory, and Clinton was statistically just one or two states away from clinching the victory. However, the momentum began to shift downward after the FBI investigation was reopened by Jim Comey, due to a swarm of emails being released through WikiLeaks, as reported by FOX News. However, the investigation was closed, and the issue was seemingly left behind.
On the day of the election, Hillary Clinton had impressive early voting numbers, which is something that her campaign heavily focused on. In addition, the quest to maintain the African American vote, which significantly benefited President Barack Obama, was also high on the list.
In fact, both President Obama, as well as his wife Michelle, were highly active on the campaign trail.
With this support, Clinton banked on receiving similar numbers from the African-American voting bloc to solidify her appointment to be the next president of the United States.
However, something went wrong.
Based on recent data, according to Wired, the African-American turnout actually decreased from the previous election. Along with that, which may have been the coup de grace for Clinton, is CNN‘s reporting of a huge drop in Democratic support for her, compared to Obama, based on the African Americans who did vote.
While she did receive 88 percent of the vote, which is still an incredibly high number, it was 5 percent less than Obama, who received 93 percent. Another interesting point is that the African-American vote actually increased by 1 percent for Trump, compared to the support of Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.
The decline in the African-American vote is one crucial factor in the shocking turnaround in poll numbers on the day of the election. In fact, Trump was able to obtain the states of Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all of which were won by Obama in 2012.
Telegraph showed exit polls of major voting blocs and how they fared from the previous election. The most glaring observation was how Donald Trump was able to increase the rural area vote by 12 percent, which was the driving force behind his win. Meanwhile, Clinton was not able to maintain the women, college-age, or rural votes, decreasing an overwhelming 14 points in the latter, from 48 to 34 percent.
After all the backlash received from the Hispanic community from his views on immigration, the turnout for Trump surprisingly increased 2 percent. However, Clinton’s Hispanic support dropped five percent.
Daily Mail breaks down the numbers regarding the percentage of votes each candidate received from whites, blacks, Latinos, and other ethnicities.
Race and Gender voter breakdown in 2016 US Presidential election 11.8.16. pic.twitter.com/jaIr4FU24Z
— Kirk MacDonald (@kirkmac) November 9, 2016
The simple reasoning behind these decreased numbers is that the “Change” mantra presented by President Obama seemingly failed to resonate in Hillary Clinton’s campaign this election. Heading into the debates, Clinton already had a resounding 56 percent unfavorable rate, according to the Washington Post. While Trump’s numbers were similar, he was able to effectively reach out to many of the small towns throughout the country to propagate his message on producing jobs.
Apparently, this method worked, based on the significant increase in the rural vote received for him, along with the sizable decrease of support for Clinton.
[Featured Image by Gary Robertson/AP Images]
