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The winner of last week’s US elections was not Donald Trump if we take into account all those who were eligible to vote. It was NOTA (none-of-the-above). The turnout rate was 58%, the lowest in all Presidential elections since 2000. It is true that some votes are still being counted and this could go up a bit, but it does not appear the picture will change drastically. One of the main reasons behind a low turnout rate is that a lot of adults in the US cannot register to vote and as a result, it is ranked 30th among developed countries in terms of the percentage of the voting-age public who are eligible to vote.
The winner of last week’s US elections was not Donald Trump even amongst all those who showed up to vote. As I write, Hillary Rodham Clinton received close to a million (0.8 million to be precise) popular votes more than Donald Trump, giving her a margin of 0.7%. Therefore, the opinion polls, correctly criticised for getting the final outcome wrong, did not get who will get more popular votes wrong (3.5% was the average margin of Clinton in various polls).
Yes, of course, the US has an electoral college system. It is a bit like how Indian states have a certain number of parliamentary seats and so it is possible to win a parliamentary majority without necessarily winning a majority of nationwide popular votes. And Donald Trump won the electoral college votes fair and square given the rules. Given the structure of the electoral college system, a few battleground states play a major role in determining the final outcome. This election was effectively decided by 107,000 people in three states, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (0.09% of all votes). None of these states, however, had voted for a Republican since 1988.
Now, to understand the outcome of elections, we should look not at groups whose voting pattern is steady. For example, Southern states tend to vote Republican and Coastal states tend to vote Democrat, more whites tend to vote Republican and more minorities tend to vote Democrat, more men tend to vote Republican and more women tend to vote Democrat.
Rather we should look at three groups of voters that can potentially change this pattern. First, the energised voters who normally stay home but are fired up enough at a given election to turn out and vote. Second, the swing voters who move from one party to the other in any given election. Third, the new voters (first-time voters and naturalised citizens).
In the three critical states that sealed Clinton’s electoral fate, the turnout percentage was lower than in 2012. It is likely that some of the Bernie Sanders supporters or Obama supporters did not turn up as they did not find Clinton to be a credible enough candidate for change. This is consistent with the findings by a careful study by David Autor of MIT and his co-authors, which shows that areas more affected by job losses due to Chinese imports chose more ideologically strident candidates in congressional races, reflecting a desire for change. In Democrat-leaning states, these would be the Sanders voters, and in the heartland, these would be right-wing populists, represented by the Tea-party and now, strong supporters of Trump. Clinton clearly failed to energise a section of Democratic voters to turn up. So why turnout was low is as important a question to understand the election results as why voters chose Trump.
The second nail in the coffin of Clinton’s electoral prospects were swing voters. Exit polls suggest that the number of registered Democrats (9%) who voted for Trump was higher than that of registered Republicans who voted for Clinton (7%). Around 10% of those who approved of Obama as President voted for Trump, while only 6% of those who disapproved voted for Clinton. As some of the interviews suggest, even some of the stereotypically Republican voters had voted for Obama because he was viewed as more of an “outsider” than Clinton.
Third, first time voters voted two is to one for Obama relative to Mitt Romney in 2012. In this election, they voted only marginally in favour of Clinton to Trump (56% to 40%). Clearly Clinton failed to enthuse the millennials.
So Clinton was not favoured by the turnout, or by the swing and first-time voters. But what about women voters? After all, this was a historic election where a woman was in striking distance of being elected US President. Women could have played a big role in favouring Clinton if there was a higher turnout of women who lean Democratic and a lower turn-out of women who lean Republican, or, if some female voters not usually leaning Democratic had swung to vote for her. In an earlier piece I wrote, I suggested that all the factors were favouring a Trump victory except for the vote of white women. All the minority groups that he had repeatedly insulted during his campaign did not constitute an electoral bloc as big as that represented by women, who constitute 52% of voters. This is where all the disadvantages that Trump faced concerning this particular demographic group was supposed to open the path for the first woman President of the United States. Sadly, this is where the narrative went horribly wrong for Clinton.
While Clinton received more votes from women in general than Trump (54% to 42%), more white women voted for Trump (53% to 43%) — and for Romney in 2012 (56%) than for one of their own kind. This could have made a vital difference in the battleground states. Despite all the sex-scandals and misogynistic statements by Trump, the swing was relatively small (Romney received 44% of the women's vote in 2012, and 56% of the white women's vote), while in the opinion polls the swing seemed much higher.
Clinton did worse than Obama in terms of turnout, swing, as well as first-time voters. Despite winning a majority of popular votes, she lost to a candidate repudiated by major sections of his own party. The US voters were clearly looking for change. Whether they get real change, spare change, or get short changed is something we will have to wait to find out.
