Donald Trump Hush Money Payment To Stormy Daniels Likely Changed 2016 Election Results, New Poll Finds


A new poll released on Wednesday found that 5 percent, or one out of every 20, of voters who cast a ballot for Donald Trump would have voted differently if they heard a news story that a pornographic film actress claimed she had a sexual relationship with Trump, Newsweek reports. While 5 percent of all Trump voters may appear to be a small share, it represents more than 3.1 million votes — in an election that saw Trump lose the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million.

But Trump’s personal “fixer” Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels — the pornographic performer who says she had an affair with Trump — $130,000 to keep quiet about her story, and Cohen has said under oath that Trump ordered him to make the payment “for the principal purpose of influencing the election,” as the Inquisitr reported.

Based the results of the new YouGov/The Economist poll, Trump and Cohen’s concern that news of the alleged Daniels affair could have cost Trump the election appears well-grounded, and their attempt to “influence the election” appears likely successful.

In fact, Trump’s margin of victory in the electoral college — which gave him the White House despite losing the popular vote by a 2.1 percent margin, according to data compiled by the election site 270 To Win — came from three states in which Trump’s total margin of victory was fewer than 80,000 votes. Those states were Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels (depicted in the sign above) could have changed the outcome of the presidential election, a new poll finds.

“Those three wins gave him 46 electoral votes; if (Democrat Hillary) Clinton had done one point better in each state, she’d have won the electoral vote, too,” The Washington Post reported.

If the YouGov/Economist poll conducted by is accurate, of the 62,980,160 votes Trump actually received, a full 3,149,008 would have voted for another candidate if they had heard about the allegation by Daniels that she had an affair with Trump while he was married to his current wife, Melania.

While the poll does not break the results down by state — making it impossible to know exactly how many electoral votes Trump would have won had he received only 59,831,152 total votes — with, as The Post noted, Trump winning 18 states by a total margin of fewer than 250,000 votes the difference appears likely to have been enough to swing the electoral college to Clinton.

A protester holds a sign stating the number of votes by which Hillary Clinton won the popular vote over Donald Trump.

There may have been other factors explaining why Trump was able to win close states. As Inquisitr reported, in September of 2016, Russian hackers stole important analytical data from Democratic computer servers. Shortly after the hack, Trump’s campaign suddenly altered its strategy, pulling ad dollars from certain key states and making a strong push in others.

“His furious, last-minute blitz throughout the Rust Belt to win white, working-class voters, combined with the lack of resources Clinton invested, essentially handed their combined 46 electoral votes to Trump,” Vanity Fair reported.

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