Charts for Context

I often say that context is everything when assessing anything.

Here are a few charts to add some context to the election results of last week.

The first shows a comparison of how much Donald Trump spent to win compared to how much Hillary Clinton spent to lose. It seems to prove the point that when more of your money is on the line you treat it a little bit more carefully. May the same money mindset prevail in The White House when it is our money that is being spent.

Credit: CNBC

We are also hearing a lot of protestors arguing that Trump's victory is illegitimate because Clinton is leading in the popular vote count. Of course, that is irrelevant under the Constitution, but what does that mean to these people anyway? By the way, neither candidate captured 50% of the vote. More than a majority voted for someone else. Does that make both illegitimate? Here is one other way to look at the popular vote count. (using current vote totals as of 11/18/16)

Hillary Clinton currently leads Donald Trump by about 800,000 votes nationwide. However, she carried one county by itself---Los Angeles---by a margin of almost 1.2 million votes. That means Donald Trump actually won the popular vote for the remainder of the country by almost 800,000 votes.

Clinton's overall margin in California was almost 3.6 million votes. Her margin in New York was another 1.5 million votes. It gives you some perspective on how powerful "flyover" country was in this election. Trump had to overcome all those votes and he still essentially tied her in the popular vote.

Here is another interesting example of "flyover" country in Pennsylvania. It compares the vote margins in Philadelphia and Allegheny (Pittsburgh) counties relative to the rest of the state.

To put Pennsylvania's numbers in further perspective, Romney beat Obama by 273,000 votes in "the rest of Pennsylvania". Trump improved on Romney's margin by over 350,000 votes in "flyover" Pennsylvania to win the state by 66,000 votes.

You might also remember that when Donald Trump clinched the GOP nomination it was popular for the "Never Trump" crowd to argue that he would be a disaster for the GOP, in particular as it related to down ticket races. Control of the U.S. Senate was the most obvious example used to explain their concern. We know now that proved to be totally wrong. However, I found the chart below by the Center of Politics to be particularly interesting with respect to the Senate races.

This chart show the percentage of states where voters in a state voted for both the President and the Senate seat of the same party. In other words, a straight ticket was voted for both offices rather than splitting the vote between a President and Senate candidate of different parties.

In 2016, there was not one state of the 33 in which a Senate seat was up for grabs that the voters did not vote the same party in both races. This is the first time this has occurred since the direct election of Senators was established in 1913 by the ratification of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. Pretty amazing.

Credit: CenterforPolitics.org

Finally, President Obama has been speaking recently that the election results in no way were a rejection or repudiation of his policies or his Presidency.

That is an interesting perspective to have in light of the devastating losses that Democrats have sustained from the courthouse to the state house to the White House since Obama became President.

The actual number of Democrat losses per the Center for Politics since Obama became President.

The Republicans have not held this much power via elected offices since 1920.

And what are many Democrats suggesting the answer is to reversing their fortunes with voters?

To nominate as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee a far left, liberal who was the first Muslim elected to Congress and who has longstanding ties to the Nation Islam and has been a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood of America.

Looking at the charts above, what part of what you see would indicate to you that Keith Ellison would do a better job for the Democrats than Barack Obama could do?

Have at it.