As it turns out, turnout is important — Hillary Clinton lost (or is losing) MI, PA and WI by a combined total of around 105,000 votes. Those states (a combined 46 electoral votes) would have put Clinton over the top (she currently has 232). And it’s not because whites turned out in greater numbers — it’s because minority voters turned out in smaller numbers than for President Obama in 2012 in those states.
According to the cited article:
- WI: Vote total is T + 27,250. In Milwaukee County, Clinton received 39,104 fewer votes than Obama in 2012, while Trump received over 32,000 fewer there than Romney.
- MI: Vote total is T + 11,423. In Wayne County, Clinton received 77,806 fewer votes than Obama in 2012, while Trump outperformed Romney there by only 14,738 votes. That’s about a +63,000 votes Clinton could have had.
- PA: Vote total is T + ~64,000. Perhaps not as clear-cut here, but Clinton did lose around 25,000 votes in Philadelphia County compared to Clinton, and around 10,000 more around Scranton. A better GOTV effort could have garnered an additional 31,000 votes for a narrow win.
If you add the vote differences and round up a bit, that’s about 105,000 voters Clinton lacked in those three states that could have tipped the election for her.
In Wisconsin, it is clear that voter suppression efforts by Republicans in that state bore fruit. And if earlier reports are to be credited, many minority voters felt less inclined to vote for Clinton than for Obama; a better outreach on her campaign’s part could have helped.
And it’s not increased turnout by whites that won the day for Trump; it’s already been established that he did no better than Romney in 2012.
All of the above is ironic given that Clinton currently enjoys a popular vote victory of over 1 million voters.
Moral: Get the votes out. Energize your base and constituencies. And reach out to your constituencies to let them know you need them. Also, relying solely on demographic shifts is not enough — you need to actually connect with voters.
Postscript: None of the above is directly germane to the crisis Democrats face in the interior of the country and at the state level. We have a ways to go on many fronts.