All About Politics: Final Analysis of Trump Victory, Clinton Defeat

**Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin**

With all the data pouring in, it is difficult to pare down the essential and the non-essential. Suffice it to say that Hillary Clinton could have lost mega-states Ohio (18 electoral votes) and Florida (29 electoral votes) and still won.

Ohio was always going to be tough. Jimmy Carter in 1976 won it barely by 11,000 votes. Barack Obama won it twice but by very narrow margins.

Obama also won Florida twice, but that does not mean that every Democrat would continue to have that good fortune. The Sunshine State voted for George W. Bush twice, and George H.W. Bush won it once. Michael Dukakis lost it in 1988; John Kerry lost it in 2004.

The real surprise came in these three states: Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes), Michigan (16 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes). That’s a total of 46 electoral votes. Pennsylvania went Democratic in presidential elections the last six times. Esteemed political analysts, such as myself, mistakenly thought there would be a seventh straight time. I guess it was wishful thinking.

Clinton did do very well in Philadelphia; she won by more than 450,000 votes. In the past, that has been enough. But she did better than Obama in only one of the 36 counties that have populations under 100,000 (according to Politico).

Trump’s margins were double and sometimes triple those that Romney got in the rest of the state in 2012.

Michigan in 2012 was so bad for Romney that he stopped campaigning there weeks before the election. But 2016 was not a repeat of 2012. According to Politico, in Wayne County (Detroit), Clinton got 78,000 less votes than Obama. That in itself was the margin. It looks like Trump won Michigan by a mere 12,000 votes. Add to that, Trump “over-performed Romney in 75 of the state’s 83 counties,” per Politico.

Finally, there is Wisconsin. Clinton had not been in the state to personally campaign since April. She had not been there at all during the general election. In Milwaukee, overall turnout declined by 40,000. She lost Wisconsin by a mere 28,000 votes. Trump made 13 visits to Wisconsin.

**The Trump Crowd**

At a panel discussion about the election, Janet Hook of the Wall Street Journal made some particularly insightful and perceptive observations. She covered the Trump campaign and went to many of the Trump rallies.

Hook said that Trump had a simple message. It was this: “I’m strong. You are scared. I’ll keep you safe.”

She went on to say that Trump’s supporters felt that “the country is something I don’t recognize.” And the best of all, “They didn’t care what he said. What came out of his mouth did not make a difference.”

How terribly sad. Couple these sentiments with “hating Hillary” and that was the outcome.

**The Electoral College**

Let’s get rid of it. I know it takes a constitutional amendment, but let’s start the process. Five times in American history (1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016), the candidate with the most votes still lost the election because of the Electoral College.

No other election in the U.S. is conducted in this way. It’s crazy and patently undemocratic and unfair. (Clinton, at the end of the day, might win by nearly 2 million votes.)

**Obama and the Democratic Party**

After eight years, the Democratic Party holds just 17 governorships. The Republicans have 33. The Republicans control 66 state legislative chambers out of 99.

D.C. still has no vote in either the House or Senate. This president took an oath of silence on D.C. voting rights and D.C. statehood.

**The Women Vote**

Clinton won by only five points (51 percent to 45 percent) among college-educated women. Will somebody please explain to me that meager margin?

College-educated males went for Trump by 10 points. That is downright insane.

*Political analyst and Georgetowner contributor Mark Plotkin is a contributor to the BBC on American politics and a contributor to TheHill.com. Reach him at markplotkindc@gmail.com.*