Saturday Morning Thoughts

This was the first time since 1986 that both parties entered the election with the exact same senate seats they won in the previous election. In both years there were no mid senate term specials. There was one appointee running in 1986 and two this year. Even more remarkable is that in both cycles no House seats had switched parties either in a special election. So both parties again had the same seats they held after the previous election.

I said that Trump would have a big improvement over Romney in Rhode Island and he did. I said he'd improve in Northeastern and Midwestern states and he did. I said that Clinton would have a big improvement over Obama in South Carolina and southern states. She didn't.

I said there'd be 140 million votes and there won't be. We are at 128.5 million and will surpass 2012's 128.9 million on Monday and 2008's 131.5 million by next weekend. The final number will be north of 133 million. I said Trump could win the electoral college while losing the popular vote and he did. I said the polls would be off and they were.

I said Democrats would win 3 senate seats. They won 2. They lost 2 I thought they'd win and 1 I thought they'd lose. I predicted Democrats would win 11 Republican House seats and Republicans would win 3 Democratic seats. Others predicted bigger Democratic gains. Democrats won 9 Republican House seats and Republicans won 3 Democratic seats. Eight of the 9 House seats Democrats won were on my list of flips. Two of the 3 seats Republicans won were on my list of flips. So I correctly predicted 429 of the 435 House seats.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. It’s worth noting that she won the popular vote because she improved on Barack Obama’s percentage of the two party vote in California, Texas, and Massachusetts. Clinton spent no money, didn’t campaign in, or had a GOTV effort in any of these states. She did worse in the states she did try in. Should she get credit for winning more votes when she didn’t have anything to do with it?

I've heard people say that Trump only won because Democrats stayed home. They point to Trump and Clinton both getting less votes than Obama and Romney. This is wrong in several ways. First, people were only taking the number of votes on election night and post-election night counting will result in an increase in total voters. Trump will pass Romney's total. Clinton won't match Obama's total, but there will be over 7 million 3rd party votes in 2016 than 2012. These weren't all Obama voters. Some Obama voters did die, leave the country, became infirm, or chose not to vote. Some Romney voters did too. Considering that Romney won voters 65+ 56% to 44% it's likely more of his voters died.

You have to look at where the votes were to see that Obama voters voted Trump. Dailykos, a liberal website, did an analysis and found Trump won 1/3 of the counties Obama won twice! If Hillary Clinton had held Obama's voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin she would've won the election.