Trump might have increased his total votes but he's going to finish with the same percentage as '16.

[Drunken Irishman]

He won 46% of the popular vote in 2016 and he's on pace to win 46% of the popular vote in 2020.

In raw numbers, absolutely he won more votes. In percentage of votes cast, though? He didn't expand his base one inch.

[roamer65]

1. 45.9 in 2016.

[Drunken Irishman]

2. Yes. Rounded to 46%.

[roamer65]

3. I am wondering if Joe can make it past 80M votes.

Would think there are another 1.8M votes in NY and CA.

CNN shows NY as only 75 pct reported.

[Drunken Irishman]

4. I think he does.

Exciting to watch, tho!

[roamer65]

5. We are already at 150M turnout.

I’d love to see 160M.

[StevieM]

13. My rough estimates are telling me there are probably 1.75M votes left in NY.

6.75M votes have been counted. An additional 1.75M would bring that total up to 8.5M. In 2016 there were 7.7M votes. 800,000 more votes would be an increase of 10.39%. That sounds about right.

So maybe they have counted about 80 percent of the ballots.

As for California, I am not sure what the situation is there.

[andym]

6. Trump already has received over 72 million votes, 10 million more than last time so far

That suggests he did expand his base, it's just that Joe Biden expanded Hillary's voters more (by over 12 million voters). NO doubt that some of Trump's prior voters voted for Joe this time, so it is likely that Trump expanded the number of people who support him. He grew his cult but lost some of his voters as well. We'll have to see how many Trump voters in 2016 voted for Biden when the final polling is done.

The increases were in favor of Joe Biden, but really the two groups of voters canceled each other out. There was a mini-red wave that canceled out the mini-blue wave of 2018, ultimately costing Democrats seats in the House and many of the toss-up Senate races because Trump brought conservative voters out of the woodwork.

Overall, it seems that 46-47% of the people of this country really like trump, no matter what the conventional polls were saying, there are uncooperative Trump voters out there who like him but are not accounted for in polls. Fortunately, 51-52% liked Biden more!

[Drunken Irishman]

7. He didn't expand his base in terms of overall support of the voting electorate, though.

I don't care how many people voted for him. That argument is irrelevant to me because voting was up all over. In terms of a percentage of those who voted, absolutely he did not expand his base.

That's like saying Hillary expanded on Obama's base in 2016 because she won more overall votes than he did in 2012. No one would seriously say that, though.

[andym]

8. Hillary didn't expand on Obama's base, because your statement is incorrect

She only received 65,853,514 votes (Wikipedia). Obama won 65,915,795 in 2012 (more than Hillary), and there were more voters (and people) alive in the USA in 2016 than in 2012. How could she expand his base with less votes?

Moreover, she did not hold the same numbers equally throughout the entire country. For example, she did better in California than Obama (by a percentage point and ~900,000 votes), but worse elsewhere like Wisconsin where Obama received 2.56 million votes in 2012, while Hillary received 2.26M.

[Drunken Irishman]

9. You pretty much just proved my point, though.

I misread her popular vote total (had 'em flipped) but in the end, they were almost a mirror image of each other. Based on the total popular vote (not percentage), she literally held the Obama's support and still lost the election and didn't hit 50+% like Obama did four years earlier. That is a fact and really proves my point that if you base things on raw numbers, Hillary equaled Obama's total. But of course, no one would say that, right? Even in your post, you try to explain why, for a bevy of reasons, she did not hold Obama's support and this is being done because my point is right

At the end of the day, Donald Trump did not expand his base in terms of the overall percentage of the popular vote. Whether he received more votes than he did in 2016 is irrelevant, as you so perfectly put it in comparison to 2012 and 2016: there were more voters than the last election.

So, that is a fact. An undeniable, undebatable fact.

[Drunken Irishman]

10. Also: here's an example: Kerry in 2004 compared to Gore in 2000.

Kerry won 8 million more votes than Gore did in 2000 and yet lost the popular vote, which Gore won. By raw numbers, you could say he expanded Gore's base from four years earlier, but no one would actually believe that because Kerry actually did .12 points worse than Gore in the popular vote.

But it's not a fair comparison in raw total because more people voted in 2004 than 2000. Overall, Kerry lost ground compared to Gore despite receiving eight-million more votes.

Gore also received 3 million more votes than Bill Clinton did in 1996 and lost the electoral college, which Clinton dominated.

Again, though, no one would pretend Gore somehow expanded on Clinton's base in that election.

[andym]

11. Of course it's a fact that the percentage is the similar, but it is simplistic

I will repeat using percentages hides the fact that Trump had more supporters-- meaning he expanded his base. Some of this was converting inactive/new voters, but that matters. You don't seem to understand that someone could increase their overall support in numbers, but as long as the other side also does the percentage stays the same. One might say that's fine because Trump's relative strength is the same, so he didn't really expand his base and who cares-- that is your real argument I think.

However, the reason the large increase in numbers is important is that these larger Trump numbers coupled with his cult-like influence over supporters mean he has grown his cult-- each member having the potential to convert others and exert negative influence over Joe Biden's agenda. The increased numbers are a big red danger sign that your argument ignores. I think it's obvious that Trump also expanded a group of people who oppose him and that cost him the election as much as anything else. Whether this expanded group of people will oppose the cultists going forward with equal fervency is the question.

[Drunken Irishman]

12. It's all relative.

I posted another reply but I think it's apt to post here: John Kerry received 8 million more votes in 2004 than Al Gore in 2000 and yet did worse overall in the electoral college and popular vote. It would be lunacy to suggest Kerry expanded anything between 2000 and 2004. He did not. There was no expansion. In the electoral college, Kerry only flipped one state Gore had lost in 2000 (barely, BTW) and that was New Hampshire. He lost New Mexico, which Gore won, as well as Iowa. Kerry performed better than Gore in the raw vote total but again, it's relative to the overall popular vote margins and he did not, in fact, grow any level of support, despite winning eight-million more votes.

In 2000, Gore received 3.6 million more votes than Clinton did in 1996. By the definition of your logic, Gore expanded on Clinton's base and that isn't the case. We know Gore underperformed Clinton relative to the dynamics of that race. Gore did about a percentage point worse than Clinton in the popular vote, but in terms of margins, he did about nine-points worse. He also failed to carry 12 states that Clinton carried in 1996.

The point is, it's logical to expect Trump's numbers to go up as more people vote. We saw that between 1996 and 2000, where more people voted in 2000 than 1996 and again four years after in 2004. So, Trump's 'growing his support' is a direct result of a larger pool to pull support from. That doesn't mean he grew his support, though. It just means he had more voters to pull from.

Trump did not expand his base relative to what counts the most - the percentage of those who voted. He also lost ground in the margins, and, more importantly, in the electoral college, where he won 306 EV in 2016 and only 232 in 2020.

[andym]

16. I would argue that Kerry did expand his voters

With the caveat that there were 10 million more eligible voters in 2004 (and 13M more registered) than 2000 to be divided almost equally between Kerry and Bush, I would state Kerry's 8 million more voters indicated he expanded his voters, just not as much as Bush expanded his (~12 million more). So Kerry expanded his voters by say 8M including new voters, but Bush expanded his by almost 12M. Of course one should correct these numbers for either eligible voters (or less so registered voters), but there was an increase over the increase in the pool of total voters. This increase represents turnout and turnout reflects enthusiasm either for or against.

Your point about 1996; Clinton had Perot (8M votes) in 1996 to contend with regarding his numbers, so they can't be compared, although I think an argument can be made that Gore was far more popular in 2000 than given credit for, but the popularity was not uniform across the country. It's true, that the localization of increased vs decreased votes (and yes percentages) do tell us something about the expansion or contraction of meaningful support in US.

Of course, it's logical to think that a candidate's numbers go up the more people vote. The question is why are more people voting? It's pretty easy really. How many more eligible voters are there now than in 2016? Wikipedia has about 8.3 million. Divide that up between Trump and Biden according to their percentages and subtract it away if you must-- then Trump still has 6M more votes and Biden about 8M more votes than Hillary. Why? Greater turnout. And what does that mean: greater enthusiasm for and against. That translates into an expanded base for Trump and perhaps an expanded anti-base as well. Looking merely at percentages obscures the reality of the situation. The big question is how many of these voters come back to vote again similarly in two and four years in addition to what the new voters will do.

[Drunken Irishman]

17. You putting qualifiers on everything doesn't help your argument, IMO.

In fact, I think it supports mine: every election is relative. Trump did not expand his base support in every metric that counts. You can try to justify it by adding all these qualifiers about population and third party candidates and turnout but that doesn't change the facts.

Trump lost ground in every metric sans one and that one was inflated solely by the fact more people voted in 2020 than 2016.

So, my point stands.

Have a good night.

[andym]

18. He did not "lose ground in every metric sans one"

His percentage remains the same (actually higher at the moment), so he did not lose ground there and his vote totals increased. What changed for him was about 300,000 votes in a few critical swing states, which was decisive, but hardly the best indicator of the size of his base. In fact, I could just as well make the statement Trump only did worse in one metric: 5 states flipped in the electoral college. Republicans' strength at the district and county levels was high, thanks to Trump. See how gerrymandering is not going away as the GOP did well at the local level: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/democrats-2020-elections-state-legislatures/617047/

I agree that every election is relative and absolute, both percentages and absolute numbers must be used together to get at the truth, which I think I've shown (the qualifiers are needed to make the point about total votes more realistic, as the pool size is important). And that truth has a danger associated: trump's base of supporters has increased, despite the similar percentages. Hopefully, his supporters will become dejected and their numbers decrease in the future. We will see.

[Drunken Irishman]

19. No, he did.

He lost by a wider margin.
Lost more states than he did in 2016.
Lost more electoral votes than he did in 2016.

And he'll probably end with a smaller percentage of the vote than in 2016 as well.

So, my point stands. You can continue arguing that he somehow expanded his base, when the numbers just do not suggest this, but I am done. It's too late to debating a non-reality. Trump lost ground compared to 2016. Significantly so. And that's why he's a one-term president.

This is fact and not up for debate regardless of the multiple qualifiers and excuses you try to throw out.

[andym]

20. No matter how confident, you have not proved your point.

All three of your metrics: wider margin, more states/electoral votes do not impact whether he expanded his base.

The logic is simple, if his base expanded, but if the opposition also expanded by a similar amount the relative percentages would remain the same. That is not arguable, but it would not mean that everything is static, as you think. His base could have expanded in numbers. Now one can think that increased numbers associated with hs similar percentage are unimportant because the anti-Trump numbers also increased, but the increase is troubling as Trump's supporters are cultish. They may be more stable than the anti-Trump numbers, and even if Trump is finished with politics, which is by no means certain, they are a large group ready to be exploited. Of course, it could be argued that he just drew upon existing support that just decided to vote this year, but that is by no means clear.

I explicitly have calculated the percent of eligible voters each candidate achieved to see this since you want a relative indicator, the percent voter eligible population that I mentioned before.

Right now, Trump has added 3% to the portion of the VEP (voter eligible population) from 2016 from 27.24% to 30.42%, with a 4% gain expected. That value is historic: since 1980, only exceeded by Obama in 2008 and Reagan in 2004. That's a clear indicator of an expanded group of supporters.

The good news is that Biden will set a new record 34.52% of eligible voters (%VEP), never before achieved since 1980 when VEP data is available).

Data here:
https://imgur.com/TsYclSb

[unblock]

14. He never really tried. His whole thing was being purely Republican

It was always about getting Republican really enthusiastic about him because he explicitly didn't give a crap about anyone else.

That not a recipe for expanding one's base. It's a recipe for getting an election close enough to steal. Fortunately, they failed.

[Cha]

15. Good to know.