Her effort in Wisconsin is costing $3.5 million. Three days of recounting have occurred in which about 1/5 of the counties have been tabulated. Clinton has picked up the grand total of 3 votes on Trump.
Stein did not post a $1 million bond in Pennsylvania which would allow her to attempt to continue to contest the results through the Pennsylvania judicial system. She may attempt to file in federal court tomorrow.
In the meantime, the recount in Michigan is stalled in the courts where the State Attorney General is arguing that the recount is "expensive and frivolous" and should not be allowed to go forward.
With all of this going on, I thought I would do my only type of recount in my home state of Ohio.
As I have written before, the vote in Ohio was particularly interesting this year when you consider that Obama won Ohio by almost 5 points in 2008 and 3 points in 2012 only to see Trump win the state by over 8 points in 2016. That is a double-digit move towards Trump.
How did it happen?
This is how the Ohio election map looked by county in 2012. Obama in blue. Romney in red.
Obama won 17 out of Ohio's 88 counties in 2012 including all the big, urban counties that included the cities of Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron and Youngstown. He won 6 counties with margins of over 60% of the vote.
 |
| Credit: Wikipedia |
The 2016 map looks like this. Clinton won only 8 counties of 88 counties, and only two---Cuyahoga (Cleveland) and Franklin (Columbus), by over 60%. In the meantime, Trump turned 9 counties into the GOP column and expanded the GOP margins in just about every other county.
 |
| Credit: Wikipedia |
I thought I would take a more granular look to get a better idea of what was really going on at the precinct level to understand the results.
To do that I looked at the numbers in 6 inner city precincts in Cincinnati (Hamilton County) that I wrote about after the 2012 elections. These were essentially African-American precincts.
In the 2012 election these six precincts voted for Obama over Romney 99.5% to .5%! You read that right. Obama beat Romney by 99 points in these precincts.
Did Trump make any headway with these voters in 2016?
Here is a comparison of the results. (all of the voter data below are from the individual county election results that are available on the internet).
Trump was still drubbed but he got 2.2% of the vote compared to the .5% that Romney received.
However, Hillary was hurt the most by the lack of turnout in these precincts. Overall, her vote total in these six precincts was down 31% compared to what Obama did in 2012. Trump actually increased his vote total in the precincts over Romney from 22 votes to 59 votes! That is a 168% increase if you want to have some fun with the numbers
One of the reasons I looked at the data for 2012 was I was curious why the African-American vote was so monolithic despite that fact that there is such diversity of opinion among human beings on so many issues. Yes, I understood the historical and cultural significance of Barack Obama on the ballot. That may explain the turnout in 2008 and 2012 but the black voter trends to the Democrats are much bigger than that and have been so for a long time.
I continue to find it mind boggling whenever I look at exit poll data regarding the votes of black voters. It is as if there is no other candidate than a Democrat on the ballot. I am not sure Putin or Castro ever received such overwhelming majorities of votes in any "election" they participated in.
It defies all logic that any one group of people could vote in such a monolithic manner when you look at the diversity of issues involving politics. Issues like abortion, national security, tax policy, immigration, foreign policy, jobs policy and the like.
You don't see it in any other demographic group so why do we see it with African-Americans?
By comparison, I looked at vote totals in one of America's richest enclaves---The Village of Indian Hill in suburban Cincinnati. This would be considered the bastion of wealthy, white, privileged Republicans in Cincinnati. In fact, the zip code that includes Indian Hill donated more money to Romney than any other in the entire state of Ohio 2012 and is the epitome of the "Establishment" that we hear so much about.
As you might expect, Romney carried Indian Hill's six precincts with 75.5% of the vote in 2012. However, that is still a lot less than the 99.5% that Obama got in the inner city. Trump won the vote total in Indian Hill but he only got 62% of the vote in Indian Hill---almost 14 points lower than Romney's total.
Indian Hill is a real life example of how Trump had difficulty with college-educated, high income voters compared to GOP candidates in the past.
However, Hillary's failure to turn out black voters combined with the overwhelming response of rural and blue collar voters turned the tide for Trump in Ohio.
You see that in looking at two counties in Ohio---Erie and Trumbull counties---which have been reliably Democrat in the past but turned to the GOP with Trump. Both would be considered blue collar, "rust belt"counties.
Trumbull County (Warren is the county seat) saw Hillary lose 23,000 votes compared to Obama while Trump was adding 6,000 votes compared to Romney---a shift of almost 30,000 votes. This is a country that Obama won with more than 60% in 2012 and yet Trump totally turned the tables in 2016.
In Erie (county seat Sandusky), Clinton lost over 5,000 votes compared to Obama while Trump was adding over 2,000 more to the GOP ledger compared to 2012.
It is one thing to look at a red and blue chart.
It is another to see the votes up close and personal.
No matter how you recount the Ohio election results you still have to be impressed with what Donald J. Trump was able to do at the polls in a state that was considered a "swing" state.
Indeed, it did swing. Almost all in his favor.
No comments:
Post a Comment