Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States of America. No, that wasn’t a joke, I have no punch line. Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but maybe if we say it out loud more than once, that’ll help this clearly flawed reality set in.
Early projections and polls stated that even though this would be an extremely close race, Clinton had this in the bag, but as we all discovered on Election Night 2016, that was far from the truth…very far.
A lot of political sources are suggesting that Republicans came out in droves this year to support their candidate, but according to a new graph showing popular vote totals from the last three elections, it looks like millions of Democrats simply did not vote this year.
Turns out it's not a Trump insurgency, but a Clinton collapse. A graph that cuts straight through today's punditry … pic.twitter.com/x41cyyy2XI
— Jonathan Webber (@jonathanwebber) November 9, 2016
Hillary Clinton didn’t lose the election because Republicans grew their base. She lost because the Democrats chose not to vote this year, compared to the previous two elections, in which Democrats came out in much larger numbers to support Obama.
On top of that, according to Thursday morning (Nov. 10) projections from the United States Elections Project, out of the 231,556,622 eligible voters, only 131,123,000 voters actually went out to the polls to cast their vote (leaving over 100 million votes on the table).
If you look at the graph above, the number of Republicans who voted for Donald Trump was less than the same number who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008.
In 2008, nearly 70 million Democrats voted for Obama compared to the 60 million Republicans. In 2012, the number dropped down to 66 million Dems compared to around 61 million Repubs. But in 2016? The number of Democrats voting dropped SIGNIFICANTLY, with just under 60 million, compared to the just under 60 million GOP members who voted.
So, this year, around the same amount of Democrats voted as Republicans, which explains why Donald Trump was able to win so many battleground states.
Blame it on Hillary Clinton’s background, or blame it on the lack of enthusiasm most Dems had for her campaign, but for whatever reason, millions of Democrats chose to either stay at home this year or vote for one of the third-party candidates…or the likes of “Hurrambe” and “bullshit.”
Had Democrats actually got out and voted (or voted for Clinton instead of third-party candidates), Secretary Clinton would have likely won the Election and we would be preparing to swear her into office instead of Donald Trump.
So, if you really wanted Hillary Clinton to win, and you’re looking for a group of people to blame, don’t blame the Republicans; don’t blame the insanely large number of white men (and women) who voted for Trump; don’t blame the media; don’t blame the FBI; don’t blame Florida. And don’t blame social media.
As of today, there are 1,454 days until Election Day 2020. Democrats, we have a LOT of work to do between now and then to unify the party so that this never happens again.
