Reassurances, part 1

Hey, all. I've been heads down in Tampa on work since Sunday, so I haven't been able to update this blog as much as I'd like. And apparently all the polls went to hell while I was down here, so the whole "Florida is terrible" thing is apparently meta, and applies to my entire world when I'm here. Sorry to drag you along.

Anyways, since some people that I love and care for are doing a fair bit of freaking out (nothing I certainly haven't done ten or twelve times this election season), I thought I'd re-visit the argument I put together earlier this year for why Hillary will win. And even with FBI shenanigans afoot, the math still holds.

Okay, so let's start with some basics.

Baseline

In 2012, Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by 4% nationally. Yes, with the vagaries of our electoral college system, that doesn't necessarily mean that Mitt Romney needed to match President Obama's popular vote to win the election - ask Al Gore - but he would have needed to get within half a point for it to be close enough to sneak out an electoral win by any sane set-up. So let's say he really lost by 3.5%. I've bolded that number because we'll come back to it a lot.

That's the hole Donald Trump started in. (Yes, it was actually worse, but you're getting ahead of me. Wait for it.) For Trump to beat Clinton, he needs to do some combination of three things to change that popular vote total: he needs to convince people who voted to switch from pro-Democrats to pro-Republicans; he needs to convince pro-Democratic voters to stay home; or he needs to convince people who stayed home in 2012 to come out and vote Republican. And his combinations of those things need to add up to 3.5% (call-back #1).

So - where will Donald Trump get those votes? Let's break down the electorate and take a look at where he might get more votes, or might cost Hillary votes.

First group: is Donald Trump going to get more votes from African-Americans?

Okay, stop laughing. This is a Socratic thing, we actually have to take it seriously.

But, yes, you're right. Trump isn't going to change African-American voter minds or bring out a massive wave of new pro-Trump African-Americans. I mean, we know he had at least one. But in most polls, Donald Trump's support level with African-Americans ran on our about "margin of error", at one point polling behind Johnson and Stein. So, yeah, no new massive wave in his favor.

But what about dampening enthusiasm? Maybe African-Americans might stay home because they hate Clinton and all her corruption and 'super predators' and all of the other reasons a lot of white millennials insisted that Bernie Sanders was the 'real' pro-African-American candidate. But the reason those arguments were being made was to try and counter the massive wave of African-American support that came out to vote for her in the primaries. Clinton won African-Americans by 50 points over Sanders, which was the main reason she swept the primaries in the south. There was a massive outpouring of support from African-American communities for Clinton. So it's unlikely that the group that came out hardest in the primaries is going to suddenly decide they don't like her and stay at home, especially with Barack Obama out campaigning for her.

Next group to discuss: Hispanics. Could Hispanics come out to vote for Donald Trump in numbers better than they did for Mitt Romney?

Okay, really, stop laughing. This is still a Socratic exercise.

Look, even excepting the wall talk and the impugning a judge's integrity over his being a Mexican and the generally anti-immigrant rhetoric, Republican presidential candidates were losing support among Hispanics. George W. Bush performed historically well among Hispanics, but prior to him the GOP had slipped to less than 25% support among Hispanics, and ever since Bush, the percentage of Hispanics voting Republican has dwindled back to 1996 levels. Which means that any Republican - even one who didn't generally call Hispanic immigrants racist - was going to have trouble catching up to Romney's support with Hispanics.

Add in the other non-whites - most of whom have family who immigrated after LBJ loosened restrictions on Asian immigration in the mid '60's, and many of whom are Muslim - and it's hard to see how Clinton would underperform Obama or Trump outperform Romney, but for the sake of argument, let's say that general ennui and distaste for whatever Clinton did with e-mails equals all of the shitstorm that Trump has stirred up with or against this group, and it all evens out. Trump still needs a 3.5% shift in the electorate (call back #2).

So, next group to discuss - white women. Will Trump outperform Romney with white women? Okay, come on, please stop laughing, this is getting demoralizing. But again, you're right. Even before the Access Hollywood tape, Trump was massively underperforming in polls of white women. This stands to reason - Hillary Clinton is the first female nominee for President, and it's only to be expected that some women are going to cross party lines or discard their normal apathy in order to cross a historic barrier and elect the first female president. We can argue about whether culturally developed attachment to bourgeois categorizations impedes the true cause of radical communo-feminism, but in non-internet-activist land (i.e., reality), people like to vote for people who are like them.

But, again - despite the fact that Trump was underperforming with white women by double digits before the Access Hollwood tape came out - let's make that same assumption that it's a wash. So we've looked at all non-whites and at white women, and decided to give Trump the giant benefit of the doubt that somehow, some way, he'll do just as well with all of them and turn them out in the same numbers as Mitt Romney did four years ago. He still needs to make up 3.5% of the vote (call back #3).

And that leaves white men as the last group to look at. Now here, we all agree, is where Trump will make gains. Here is where Trump will drive people to the polls that otherwise would never vote; here is where Trump will convince Obama voters that they should shift over to the GOP; here is where normal Democrats will decide to stay home because they're just conflicted and everyone's too awful.

What Donald Trump has to do slightly better than

But, again - 3.5% of the vote. White men make up 32% of the electorate. Which means that Trump needs to up his numbers with white men by 10%. Mitt Romney won 60% of white men. Donald Trump would need to win 70% of white men to make up the difference Mitt Romney lost by. Or he would have to up turnout of a group that has roughly 75% of their numbers turn up. These aren't just "good" numbers, these are "turnout and vote share that Ronald Reagan did not get in 1984".

This is why it's not possible for Trump to win. The people he is campaigning towards, the people he is most attracting, the people he is rousing up - they aren't as big a part of the voting populace than they were previously. And the groups Trump is insulting - women, African-Americans, Hispanics, immigrants - are growing sections of the population. This isn't just Trump's problem. This is why the GOP itself is in dire straits as a national party - they're narrowly focusing on a dwindling population and using off-year elections and gerrymandering to drive results rather than developing a large enough coalition. I'll definitely talk about that more after the election results come in and give a better sense for how fast the GOP's chickens are coming home to roost. But in the meantime, take a deep breath, review the math, and understand that Trump does not have the support or appeal to win an actual plurality of votes.

Still, you goddamned well better go vote. And volunteer if you can!