Crunching the Post-Election Numbers

My understanding is that there are hundreds of thousands of absentee/mail-in ballots that have yet to be counted in states like California, Washington and Utah. It'll be weeks before we have the full, final election count, but here's where we stand right now.

128,620,303 votes have been counted. That's over 400,000 fewer votes than in 2012. Again, it's still possible that 2016 will exceed 2012's vote total, but compared the number of eligible voters, it still means turnout was down. Not the lowest in 20 years as some reported. But it is down. It looks like Trump will get Michigan so the final electoral college count is 306-232.

The popular vote count in 2016:
Clinton - 61,350,758 (47.7%)
Trump - 60,583,838 (47.1%)
Others - 6,685,707 (5.2%)

The popular vote count in 2012:
Obama - 65,915,795 (51.1%)
Romney - 60,933,504 (47.2%)
Others - 2,236,107 (1.7%)

Obama won 26 states, plus DC. This time Clinton won 20 plus DC. Six-state swing. Those states were Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Plus she lost the 1 Nebraska electoral vote Obama had won. 100 electoral votes.

If she gets 69,000 more votes in Pennsylvania, 14,000 more votes in Michigan, and 28,000 more votes in Wisconsin, she's the next president.

A few thoughts after the election

1. No one knows nothing. All of the conventional wisdom was wrong. In 2012, we learned that we should actually trust the polls. In 2016, we learned that no, not really, almost all of them were wrong. I mean, if you take the margin of error into consideration on the polls that came out within the last 48 hours and give the benefit of all of them to Trump, the answer was there, but he still needed a lot of those to go his way, but no one predicted he'd actually win Wisconsin. Except the Trump team.

2. There are still some votes to be counted, but it looks like total turnout is going to be at about 2004 levels. Trump will probably ending up getting barely more than John McCain's 2008 numbers, but McCain lost by 9.5 million votes. Since Clinton will win the popular vote, there'll be more calls to get rid of the electoral college. To do so would require a Constituional Amendment, and we're so divided, it's going to be along time before we pass another one of those. But each state has the power to do what Nebraska and Maine did. Most states have no motivation to do so.

3. I was amused that a smaller percentage of Utah Mormons voted for Donald Trump than those non-Utah Mormons.

4. This came down to turnout. Hillary Clinton lost about 5 million votes that Barack Obama had in 2012. That means you're a bad candidate. This loss comes down to Hillary Clinton. If I guaranteed to you that Trump would get fewer votes than Mitt Romney got in 2012 - by over 1 million - wouldn't you think the Democrat had this in the bag? The fault lies with her. Her candidacy, her campaign.

5. The two articles I feel like best explain to those to the left of center the mindset that helped Trump win are this and this.

6. I have seen many national liberal figures say to the effect: "We cried 'Wolf!' with John McCain and Mitt Romney, but they wouldn't have destroyed the country. But this is different. Trump is the Wolf!" But if you remember the ending to the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," the election results become far less surprising.

7. I was Never Trump because I thought he'd be a bad president. I don't think he has the temperment, judgment, discipline, personality, or humility to be president. I also thought Clinton would be a bad president, but I emotionally accepted she was probably going to win several months ago. So this was unexpected! I do see Trump as uncharted territory. I hope he proves me wrong. I hope he surrounds himself with good people.

8. I look forward to worrying about politics less. Much less.