Trump Regrets Poll Shows ‘Trumpgrets’ Voters Could Have Changed 2016 Election With Small Swing In Close Race
Despite numerous media reports of “Trump regretters,” voters who cast ballots for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, but now wish they hadn’t, a new poll shows that those reports may, in fact, be exaggerated — with only a small number of Trump voters now saying they wish they had voted for someone else, or not voted at all.
But even that small number — if they had voted last November the way they now wish they had voted — almost certainly would have been enough to turn that election around, putting Democrat Hillary Clinton in the White House rather than Trump.
The poll, sponsored by ABC News and the Washington Post, was conducted between April 17 and April 20, and was released last Saturday. The poll showed that an impressive 96 percent of Trump voters would vote for Trump again today — but that 4 percent would not.
That 4 percent translates to more than 2.5 million Trump votes that would not have been cast for him. Though she lost the Electoral College vote, and as a result, the presidency, Clinton was, by far, the more popular candidate with voters, winning the official, nationwide vote count by nearly 2.9 million.
But the difference in the election came down to fewer than 78,000 votes cast in three states — Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Combined, those three states accounted for 46 electoral votes.
Had those three swung the other way, Clinton would have won 272 electoral votes, surpassing the 270 required to win the White House. But in Michigan, she lost to Trump by 10,704 votes. In Wisconsin, the difference in Trump’s favor was 22,748. And in Pennsylvania, Trump narrowly prevailed by 44,292 votes, according to final certified results.
Those 77,744 votes, less than 0.06 percent of the total votes cast — that’s six 1/100ths of a percentage point — in last year’s presidential election, had they gone for Clinton, or for that matter, any candidate other than Trump, would, in all likelihood, have swung the electoral college narrowly in Clinton’s favor and given her the presidency in addition to her popular vote win.
The ABC News/Washington Post poll does not break down the numbers of Trump regretting voters by state, so it remains impossible to know exactly how the hypothetically reversed votes would have been distributed. But the poll revealed that 1 percent of Trump’s voters now say they wish that had voted for Clinton.
Another one percent say that if they had it to do over again, they would vote for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, while another 2 percent said they would vote for someone else, or possibly no one.
Losing that 4 percent would have left Trump with 60,460,451 votes, or 44.2 percent, compared to the 46.1 percent he actually received.
Clinton actually won 48.2 percent — but adding in the 1 percent of Trump voters who now say they would have voted for her gives Clinton 66,474,406, or 48.7 percent, and a popular vote winning margin of more than 6 million votes over Trump’s revised total. Trump’s own campaign pollster, Tony Fabrizio, said in December that the election came down not just to three states, but to a mere five counties.
“If you change the vote in five counties, four in Florida, one in Michigan, we’d be having a totally opposite conversation right now,” Fabrizio said at a post-election forum held at Harvard University. Those four counties, won narrowly by Trump, would have given Clinton a winning 277 electoral votes had they voted the other way.
Given the extraordinarily small number of votes that would have been needed to be cast differently in order to give Clinton the election victory, it appears statistically unlikely that Trump could have won if voters who now say they wish they had voted either for Clinton or anyone else — or not voted at all — had actually done so on November 8, 2016.
The ABC News/Washington Post poll also showed that a full 15 percent of Clinton voters said they would have voted differently. But the number for a losing candidate, by the Post‘s own admission, is unreliable.
“It’s not hugely surprising that the losing candidate in an election would see this kind of drop-off,” the Post article on the Trump regrets poll noted. “People don’t like voting for losers, and if you look closely at polls after an election, some voters won’t even admit to having cast their ballots for the losing candidate. The winning margin for the victor is generally exaggerated.”
EXPLORE THE DONALD TRUMP INQUISITR ARCHIVE
Trumpgrets: Regret Voting For Donald Trump? Check This Site For Fellow Voters Already Let Down By PEOTUS
More Trumpgrets: Trump Supporters Regret Voting For Him, Site Asks ‘Are You Sorry Yet?’
Trump Syria Attack Poll: Support For Strike Lowest Among All Military Actions Since 1983, Except One
Donald Trump Polls After Syria Strike: Are Polls Showing America Rallying Around Trump After Attack?
Trump Impeachment: Trump Tower Server Holds Key To End Trump Term, Report Claims
Trump Russia Scandal: Trump Caught On Tape With Russian Spy, New Report Claims
The Donald Trump Russia Connection: 5 Facts You Should Know About Trump’s Possible Ties To Putin
Donald Trump Golfs, Dines At 3 Trump Properties In 2 Days, Melania To Mar-A-Lago
James Comey Trump Russia Hearing: 5 Incredible Moments Nobody Is Talking About
Trump Russia Hearing: Russians Used ‘Cut Out’ In Leak To Wikileaks — But Who?
Donald Trump Approval Rating Crash Continues: 60-Day Mark Half Of Jimmy Carter’s
Trump Obama Wiretap Charge: Russian Propaganda Was Source Of ‘British’ Spy Claim
New Poll: Donald Trump Trails Oprah Winfrey In 2020 Presidential Race – By A Lot
Health Care Trumpgrets: Trump-Ryan Plan Slams Trump’s Own Voters In The Wallet
Trump WikiLeaks Collusion Seen As Farage, Stone Make Contact With Julian Assange
Donald Trump Met Russian Ambassador Last April, Lied About It Later, Report Says
Donald Trump Linked To Iran Through Shadowy Hotel Deal, Explosive Report Charges
Trump, Russia, And Malaysia Airlines MH17 Shootdown: New Suspect Has Putin Link
Trump-Russia Connection: Four Russia-Linked Characters Trump Claims Not To Know
Donald Trump, Russia, And Rosneft: Vladimir Putin Oil Mystery — Shares Once Offered As Trump Bribe
[Featured Image By Olivier Douliery/Getty Images]
