What people miss when comparing 2020 to 2016: Trump didn't really out-perform Romney from 2012.

[Drunken Irishman]

There's kind of a perception out there that Trump won in 2016 due to the GOP expanding its base, converting some Obama voters and first-time voters coming out in droves for Trump. On the very basic micro-level, this might be true. In states like Iowa and Ohio, Trump absolutely out-performed Mitt Romney, who, of course, lost to Obama in 2012.

But most other states? It didn't happen. Trump either only marginally increased his vote total compared to Romney - or, in some instances, actually received a lower percentage overall.

Take Florida. A state Trump won.

Trump won Florida with 48.6% of the vote. Romney lost Florida four years prior with 49.03% of the vote. Trump actually did .43% worse than Romney and won.

In Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Trump increased his total percentage compared to Romney by one or two points. That's it.

Yet he won all those states.

Why?

It wasn't because Trump out-performed Romney. That had nothing to do with it. He should have lost based on those numbers alone.

It's that, and you can debate exactly why this is (I am not going to get into that because it's not relevant to this post) Hillary significantly under-performed Obama from 2012.

In Florida, she won 47.41% of the vote. Obama, in 2012, won 49.9.

It's worse in the three rustbelt states she lost.

In PA, she won 47.46. Obama, in 2012, won 51.95%.
In MI, she won 47.03. Obama, in 2012, won 54.04%.
In WI, she won 46.54. Obama, in 2012, won 52.83%.

Those are significant drops. There's also a consensus forming here: Hillary won, on average, 47% of the vote in those four states listed.

Her national total? 48%.

Obama, meanwhile, averaged 52.8% in these four states in 2012.

His national total? 51.01%.

Not staggeringly different, right?

So, how does this pertain to 2020?

Well, for starters, there's fewer undecided voters than in 2016.

On this day in 2016 (6/13/2020), Hillary led Trump 44.1% to 38.6% - or a margin of 5.5%. That's actually not a bad margin at all. Her final margin, on election day, was 3.2 and she won the popular vote by 2.1%, so, about a point difference than the average of polls (pretty accurate for those who like to talk about how off the polls were).

But on this day four years ago, Hillary had a comfortable lead. 5.5 is a decent national margin. And had her polling average been 5.5 in 2016 on election day, it's likely her overall popular vote margin improves and those gains are enough to flip PA, MI and Wiscosnin, delivering her the presidency.

But there was one constant in these polls, and an obvious sign on those numbers from four years ago: Hillary didn't come anywhere near 50% in the national polls.

In fact, not once, from that point forward to election day did Hillary hit 50% in national polling. For most of the race, despite a persistent lead, she stayed hovering around 45% or below - especially when you switch over to a four-person race.

That change won't happen until three days from the polling data I pulled from four years ago.

That's when RCP started including Johnson and Stein in their four-way polling.

But jumping to 6/16/16 (whoa), you start to see that narrative really solidify.

When these two other candidates are entered into the polling, Hillary's lead goes from 5.5 to 4.7 - not a big drop. But her total percent of the vote, which was 44.1 in a two-person race, now drops to 40%.

She loses four-points.

Trump loses a similar amount (dropping from 38.6 to 35). The two third party candidates then combine for 5.3 and 3.3 respectively.

Still, and this is the crucial point, even when you add those two third party candidates, there were 16.4% undecided voters.

That's staggering!

On election day, that number improved but it was still pretty high.

Hillary's average on election day was 45.5. Trump's was 42.2. Johnson's was 4.7 and Stein's was 1.9. At that point, you still had 5.7% of voters who were undecided. In 2012, on election day, that average number was just 3.1%. It doesn't sound significant but we're talking nearly a three-point difference at the national level.

That's significant.

But there's also another significant thing here: Hillary could never break through with those voters who spent all of 2016 undecided.

And neither did Trump.

So, who did?

The third party candidates.

The Never Trumpers and the far-lefters just never could hop on the Hillary train - at least at the level she needed.

It was evident in June, 2016, with how many voters remained undecided. And it was evident on election day where her average lead (45.5%), was still not close to a majority and only 5% better than in early June, despite there being fewer undecided voters.

So, how is it in 2020?

Biden's current lead is 49.8%. That's higher than any lead, in the average of polls, Hillary had from June, 2016 to election day.

More importantly, there's only 8.5% undecided (or supporting a third party).

That's still a high number, but it should be expected to be that high at this point. It'll likely narrow, just as it did in 2016, but it's 16.2 points lower than around this point in June, 2016 when you factor in just Hillary & Trump voters.

It's also more comparable to 2012, where 9.4% of the vote remained undecided/third party at this point in that campaign (6/13/12).

The point to all this?

Never Trumpers and a chunk of the liberal voters opted to vote third party on election day. Again, I am not going to get into why. I think are various reasons from the Comey Letter to sexism to plain hubris. But that's a different debate.

Still, we saw, from those June polls in 2016, that there was a sizable vote margin that didn't want to vote for either of the major candidates. The Never Trumpers, we had hoped, would ultimately swallow their pride and vote Hillary. Some did. Most didn't.

In Pennsylvania, Gary Johnson won 2.38% of the vote in 2016. That's not significant, right? But it is. That's well over the margin of Trump's victory. But we forget Johnson also ran in 2012. He was essentially irrelevant as a candidate. In Pennsylvania, in that election, he only won .8% of the vote. He did 1.58% better in 2016. That isn't a huge jump but it's just big enough.

To be sure, there's a Libertarian and Green candidate in 2020. But there's turmoil in the Greens right now over some stuff that went down with Jessie Ventura - and, despite everything, the Green candidate today (most likely) is going to be Howie Hawkins. Hawkins has 40,300 followers on twitter. But Jill Stein, 279,000.

The Libertarian candidate is Jo Jorgensen. Jo Jorgensen has fewer followers than Howie Hawkins. Only 37,600. Gary Johnson? He has 296,000 followers.

In 2016, there were better third party alternatives than today.

Beyond that, Biden seems to be doing better than Hillary at coalescing the base.

This is not 2016. Don't get overconfident by any means but understand that this election favors Biden far more than it favored Hillary at this point. He also seems to be doing better with the Never Trumpers.

That alone should be the difference.

Keep fighting like we're down 10 but just remember this: Trump hasn't figured it out. He figured nothing out in 2016. He didn't win because his message became instantly more popular than the shit they were throwing in 2012. His message did no better, on the whole, than Romney's, who lost.

At the end of the day, he didn't expand the base. It just retracted on our end.

[BComplex]

1. Plus, the russians actually were able to HACK voting machines in Florida, and likely other

states. When you add in the hacking, numbers aren't really going to tell the story.

Until the USA starts taking our elections AND THE COMPUTERS THAT COUNT VOTES more seriously, we're going to keep having real serious issues with power in this country. Until power really is in the hands of the majority, we're not going to be moving in a good direction.