It's a question that Democrats have been struggling to answer ever since Trump won the presidency: Was 2016 about voter turnout or voter turnoff? There are those - mostly progressives - who are adamant that it was the former. They say that Democrats' abandonment of the core issues that had come to define the party for over a generation led to a lack of enthusiasm among the base. A candidate like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren will result in the turnout that is needed to defeat Trump.
Then there are those - mostly centrists - who believe it was the latter. They insist that it was the Party's pandering to identity politics that alienated many people in the Midwest and provided Trump with a narrow pathway to the White House. A candidate like Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg or Amy Klobuchar would straddle the line between the Left and the Center for the first time since the days of Bill Clinton, and could potentially rebuild the big tent Democrats used to take for granted when they had senators in states like Arkansas, Louisiana and Iowa.
To be honest, both sides have a valid point. It was clear that Hillary Clinton, despite her impressive resume, didn't exactly excite a lot of Democrats. Between the two, Trump's supporters were far more motivated to vote for him. than Clinton's were to vote for her. And even among Independents, support for her was lukewarm at best. For many voters, it was a tossup going into the election. And that's not a scenario that any Democrat would want to see duplicated.
A progressive nominee would certainly excite the base in a way Clinton could never do, there's no doubt about that. And given that Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in 2016 by less than eighty thousand votes, the conventional wisdom is that even a slight improvement in Democratic voter turnout in 2020 could flip those states from red to blue.
So who's right? I decided to crunch the numbers and find out. Below is a side by side comparison between the 2016 and 2012 general elections. The numbers were taken from Wikipedia.
General Election:
2016 Total votes: 128,838,342; Clinton: 65,853,514; Trump: 62,984,828; Net gain: 2,868,686.
2012 Total votes: 126,849,299; Obama: 65,915,795; Romney: 60,933,504; Net gain: 4,982,291
In both elections, the Democrat received more votes than the Republican, but in 2016, Trump won the Electoral College. What caught my eye was that while Clinton got almost as many votes as Obama, Trump got two million more votes than Romney. Now let's look at three individual states, two of them swing states, the other a blue state.
Pennsylvania:
2016 Total votes: 5,897,174; Clinton: 2,926,441; Trump: 2,970,733; Net loss: 44,292.
2012 Total votes: 5,670,708; Obama: 2,990,274; Romney: 2,680,434; Net gain: 309,840.
Even though Clinton lost the state, she received almost as many votes as Obama, while Trump received over three hundred thousand more votes than Romney. Next up is Florida.
Florida:
2016 Total votes: 9,122,861; Clinton: 4,504,975; Trump: 4,617,886; Net loss: 112,911.
2012 Total votes: 8,401,203; Obama: 4,237,756; Romney: 4,163,447; Net gain: 74,309.
Like Pennsylvania, Clinton's totals were quite impressive; she managed to get 267,219 more votes than Obama. The reason she lost the state is that Trump got 454,439 more votes. Now onto the blue state.
New York:
2016 Total votes: 7,375,658; Clinton: 4,556,124; Trump: 2,819,534; Net gain: 1,736,590.
2012 Total votes: 6,976,373; Obama: 4,485,877; Romney: 2,490,496; Net gain: 1,995,381
A pattern is emerging. Once again, Clinton surpassed Obama in total votes, but Trump significantly outperformed Romney by 329,038. The reason for Clinton's margin of victory being smaller than Obama's was due exclusively to Trump's strength, primarily in the suburbs. To break it down further, let's look at two counties in each state.
Philadelphia County, Pa:
2016 Total votes: 692,773; Clinton: 584,025; Trump: 108,748; Net gain: 475,277.
2012 Total votes: 685,273; Obama: 588,806; Romney: 96,467; Net gain: 492,339.
Luzerne County, Pa:
2016 Total votes: 131,139; Clinton: 52,451; Trump: 78,688; Net loss: 26,237.
2012 Total votes: 122,642; Obama: 64,307; Romney: 58,325; Net gain: 5,982.
Miami/Dade County, Fl:
2016 Total votes: 958,145; Clinton: 624,146; Trump: 333,999; Net gain: 290,147
2012 Total votes: 874,421; Obama: 541,440; Romney: 332,981; Net gain: 208,459
Pinellas County, Fl:
2016 Total votes: 472,902; Clinton: 233,701; Trump: 239,201; Net loss: 5,500.
2012 Total votes: 452,362; Obama: 239,104; Romney: 213,258; Net gain: 25,846
New York County, NY:
2016 Total votes: 643,943; Clinton: 579,013; Trump: 64,930; Net gain: 514,083.
2012 Total votes: 592,233; Obama: 502,674; Romney: 89,559; Net gain: 413,115
Suffolk County, NY:
2016 Total votes: 654,521; Clinton: 303,951; Trump: 350,570; Net loss: 46,619.
2012 Total votes: 586,210; Obama: 304,079; Romney: 282,131; Net gain: 21,984.
It's clear from the data that the reason Trump won in 2016 was that Republican turnout that year far exceeded turnout from the previous presidential election. In short, Trump energized his voters in a way Romney was unable to do. Despite claims to the contrary, with a few notable exceptions - Detroit and Milwaukee, for instance - Clinton got her base out to the polls; Trump was simply better at turning out his.
But as we see from the numbers, Trump did exceedingly better the further he got from the cities. Suffolk County, New York is a case study of what went wrong for Democrats. Despite having almost identical vote totals in both elections, Democrats lost the county by almost fifty thousand votes. It was like that throughout most of the country. I counted almost two dozen instances in which Clinton was beaten not by low Democratic voter turnout, but by vastly superior Republican turnout. Clinton may have gotten almost three million more votes than Trump, but in suburban counties all across the nation, in states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin, Trump's additional two million votes were enough to win the presidency.
So where does that leave us? If we proceed on the assumption that Clinton was not to blame for 2016, then who was? The answer may frighten you. From what I've been able to discern from the numbers, Trump seems to have tapped a reservoir of voters who heretofore had not bothered to vote. The sea of red we saw all over the map that election night was not due to Obama voters abandoning the Democratic Party for the GOP; rather it represented a whole new wave of voters who saw something in Trump that motivated them to go to the polls, many of them for the first time. And what's alarming is that there's no evidence that they intend to sit out the 2020 election.
To get back to the question at hand: Was 2016 about voter turnout or voter turnoff? I suspect the answer is a little bit of both. On the one hand, there might've been some progressives who sat out the 2016 election because they weren't "enthusiastic" about either candidate. On the other hand, Trump has somehow tapped a vein within a segment of the electorate that is more engaged and incentivized to support him than any other Republican in recent memory. This may explain in some part why the GOP was so reluctant to take him on after he won the White House. Their internal polling undoubtedly shows the same thing that any half-way decent statistician knows: that Trump's base will turn on anyone who threatens him.
So if that is the case, what can Democrats do to defeat him in 2020? The good news is that changing demographics within the country seem to be coming to the rescue here. According to a piece written by Myra Adams a year ago for Real Clear Politics, whites, as a percentage of the electorate, are slowly decreasing, while non-whites are increasing. In 2016, whites comprised 70 percent of all eligible voters; by 2020, it is estimated they will comprise approximately 68 percent. Adams writes,
In 2016, Trump won 57 percent of the white vote compared to Clinton’s 37 percent. In 2020, it is anyone’s guess how much Trump will need to increase that 57 percent in order to win re-election because, pre-election, non-white vs. white voter turnout are variables that can only be estimated and modeled.
But, common sense dictates that the shrinking white vote could negatively impact Trump’s chances of again winning the three traditionally Democrat-leaning battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin with their predominately white populations and combined total of 46 electoral votes. These three states boosted Trump’s total to 304, well over the 270 needed for victory — despite him losing the popular vote to Clinton by 2.9 million votes — 2.1 percent of the total cast.When you consider that Trump won those three states by just under seventy-eight thousand votes, just duplicating that same percentage of the white vote likely won't be enough to win a second term in office. I say likely because, as Adams adroitly observes, all three of those states are "predominantly white." In other words, a 2 percent drop among whites may not mean all that much in light of how few non-whites there are to begin with. Still, it's encouraging knowing that this sick game Trump has been playing by preying on the fears of white America will inevitably fail; it's just a matter of when not if.
Then there's the prospect that as good as Clinton's turnout was, there's still room for improvement. If Democrats can get an additional two million more voters to the polls in 2020, that would likely be enough to beat Trump. Two million may seem like a lot, but it really isn't. The 2018 midterms had the highest voter turnout in over a century, which allowed Democrats to retake the House. Consider also that in 2008, Barack Obama got 69,498,516 votes compared to John McCain's 59,948,323. Is it really asking too much for a party that has been actively trying to get rid of Trump ever since he was sworn in to split the difference between Obama's '08 and 2012 election results? I don't think so, but then that depends on who Democrats nominate and whether they can collectively get behind him or her. Right now the jury is still out on both.
The Iowa caucuses are upon us. By Tuesday morning, we will know who has won the state, the first in the nation to cast its votes. As of now, Bernie Sanders is the odds-on favorite to prevail. And given that he has a sizable lead in New Hampshire, Joe Biden will likely need to win both Nevada and South Carolina in order to keep pace with him going into Super Tuesday.
Then there's Michael Bloomberg. He's spending a boatload of cash running ads everywhere from here to Alpha Centauri trying to gain traction in the polls, and it appears to be working. As of this writing, RCP has him in fourth place ahead of Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar. Whether he wins the nomination or not - and just to be clear he needs to get at least 15 percent of a state's vote total in order to win any of its delegates - he is already having an impact on the race. Every point he gains is a point Biden loses, thereby helping Sanders. This is the thing that worried me the most when Bloomberg jumped in: another centrist Democrat in the race splitting the moderate vote, thus paving the way for a more progressive candidate to win the nomination.
With Republicans all set to acquit this president Wednesday in the first Senate impeachment trial ever held without witnesses, Trump will be free to do whatever the hell he wants to whomever he wants. He is bereft of a moral compass, and with the aid of a complicit GOP and a lackey for an Attorney General, if he decides to cheat his way to a second or possible third term, there'll be no way to stop him.
Be afraid; be very afraid.
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