So, Donald Trump would have won 1.4 million more popular votes than Hillary Clinton if it weren’t for California’s legions of Democratic voters flocking to Hillary. No, I’m not saying these votes don’t count. They do, but for all the wrong reasons. We all knew California was going to go blue, and that the former first lady would get its 55 electoral votes. That was a foregone conclusion. The point is she won the state, got the votes, but didn’t win because she didn’t think that the Rust Belt or white working class voters mattered. You can’t win just by winning the West Coast, the cities, or a combination of the two, plus the liberal Northeast. That’s the beauty of the Electoral College. Trump won the South, the Plain States, most of the Rocky Mountain States, and the Rust Belt. The point is Clinton got more popular votes, yes. But it was all in the wrong places.
But since liberals can’t shut up about Hillary getting roughly three million more popular votes than Donald Trump in that irrelevant aspect of the presidential election, the reason was simple: California. Alas, why the Electoral College is necessary—it prevents coastal liberal elites from dominating national politics. California represents the political disposition of the country? Not by a long shot. But you know this already.
Just because California liberals hate Trump and ran up the score for Clinton in the popular vote doesn’t mean she won. It just means a lot of Californians voted for Clinton over Trump. Trump won 30 states that earned him 304 votes in the Electoral College.
Now, let’s stop with the removing of states for a bit (yes, I know if Texas were removed, Trump would lose). What about the third party votes? Michael Moore said that if you add up Clinton’s vote totals with that of third party candidates, 54 percent of the country didn’t vote for Trump.
The majority doesn’t like Trump, right? Nope. First of all, these people still didn’t vote for Clinton. Second, and most importantly, it’s highly flawed to just combine vote totals of those who didn’t vote for either candidate and make such a blanket statement to make Trump look bad. Yes, some might have gone to Clinton if these candidates vanished from the ether. But some would have certainly gone for Trump. In Gary Johnson’s case, 75 percent of his voters would have cast their ballot for Trump. Tom Ross, the former chairman of the Delaware GOP spoke with Johnson’s running mate—former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld—and delved into some of the Johnson-Weld campaign's internal polling, which also found that Johnson supporters had "zero appetite" to back Clinton in this scenario [emphasis mine]:
Recommended
In our conversation, Governor Weld brought up a fascinating point, a point that has been largely overlooked in the reams of post election analysis. Governor Weld said that Johnson-Weld internal polling showed that 75 percent of their voters would have voted for Donald Trump had they not been in the race. The Libertarian ticket received nearly 4.5 million total votes in the election. It makes logical sense that three fourths of these voters, drawn to a ticket of former, successful two-term Republican Governors, would be more attracted to limited government advocates promising change from the last eight years. In addition, they saw absolutely no appetite amongst their limited government voters to support the Clinton-Kaine ticket.In short, if the Johnson-Weld ticket had not run, Donald Trump would have won the popular vote.
To be exact, the Johnson/Weld ticket received 4,489,233 votes. Seventy five percent of that would be roughly 3,366,924. Add that to Trump’s 62,985,106 votes and you get 66,352,030 to Clinton’s 65,853,625.
Again, Trump won the Electoral College, which is the only contest that matters on Election Day. But if a liberal wants to rehash the tired and irrelevant talking point that Clinton won more popular votes, just remind that person if the libertarians didn’t run, Trump would have won the popular vote. See how they react. You might want to wear a helmet and pads and possibly bring a fire extinguisher. The Left is really into setting things on fire when they throw a tantrum.
This post had been updated to clarify that Johnson voters wouldn't have backed Clinton if the former New Mexico governor were taken out of the equation.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member