Even more bizarre information is being revealed regarding this presidential election. There is no doubt that the media proved that they were not the most reliable source of information this go-round regarding the poll statistics. However, there were a number of variables that were not in play as these numbers were released throughout the course of the road to the White House.
As of now, The New York Times is reporting that, if everything stands, Donald Trump won the electoral vote by the score of 279 to 228. The closeness of Trump over 270 goes to show that if even one state out of the five that he flipped to Republican – Ohio (18), Florida (29), Michigan (16), Pennsylvania (20), and Wisconsin (10) – would have remained a blue state, Trump would not have reached the targeted goal.
Based on the voter turnout, the pivotal points of Trump’s win is due to the significant increase in rural, small-town support, a surprising increase in Hispanic support, and drop in African-American support for Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s appeal to the white, working-class voter seemed to be one dimensional, but was the key to his success.
Asma Khalid of National Public Radio confirms .
“So if I can give you some perspective, in the 1990s when Bill Clinton ran for president, blue-collar whites were pretty much evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Last night, Donald Trump won this group nationally by roughly 40 points. And that was even key if we look at states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. Those three states – Barack Obama seemed to do well. He seemed to win the white working-class vote in 2008. All three of those states – the working class vote went for Donald Trump.”
Although there were many ads from Clinton highlighting Trump’s harsh words toward women, it seemed as if it did not have a substantial impact on the overall voting results. In addition, there was not a flood of white women voters who switched over to Clinton, either. DeathandTaxes reports that 53 percent of women voted for Trump, while 43 percent voted for Clinton.
In fact, the numbers show that due to the disdain of both nominees from registered voters, the bigger blow for Clinton was the resounding number of people who just did not go out and vote this election.
Interestingly, according to Mashable , nearly half (46.6 percent) of the 231,556,622 eligible voters refused to vote for anyone and just decided to bear the result.
This shows the power of a write-in vote weighs much more than people would expect. Hypothetically speaking, if there was some kind of revolt of not having either presidential nominee in office, and society campaigned through social media to write in one name for president, he or she would have had just as strong of a chance as the top names that were on the ballot.
Yes, this seems outrageous, but it goes to show how important it is for people to actually vote if they really want to make a difference. Additionally, from a counting standpoint, the write-in vote is not highly regarded and is not even an option in eight states.
The Washington Post describes how writing in a vote, at the end of the day, really does not mean much when it comes to determining who the president is.
“…even if a write-in candidate wins the popular vote — an extremely unlikely scenario — their votes won’t be counted if the candidate hasn’t pre-registered. States often throw these write-in votes for unregistered candidates into an ‘All others’ category and don’t tally them up individually.”
Speaking of the popular vote, Hillary Clinton won that.
[Featured Image By Toby Talbot/AP Images]
