Media 2016; “Trump Won By only 80k Votes” Silent That Biden Won By 43,809 Votes

 

After Trump’s 2016 election the shell-shocked media and Democratic Party operative’s main meme from day one was that “Russian collusion” had stolen the election from Hillary Clinton. Not far behind this long running propaganda exercise was that not only had Trump lost the popular vote by millions but that he had squeezed out the narrowest of wins in the Electoral College. The latter concept completed a trifecta. 

Not only was Trump, at best, a stooge of Putin and at worst a complicit traitor, but he was rejected by the voters and only was installed, by a tiny minority of votes, due to the quirks in an outmoded and arcane electoral system.

At The Washington Post’s  ‘The Fix’ Philip Bump’s post-election survey of the result advised that effectively Trump was elected by less than 1% of the voters.

“Donald Trump will be president thanks to 80,000 people in three states. The most important states were Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won those states by 0.2,0.7 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively-and by 10,704,46,765, and 22,177 votes. If Clinton had done one point better in each state she’d have won the electoral vote too. Or put it another way: But for 79,646 votes cast  in those three states she’d be the next president.”

That theme was parroted again not only by the Washington Post (whose “The Fix” got the election preposterously wrong) but by numerous other media. What Bump et al failed to advise was that but for about 1.5% of Evan McMullin’s quixotic run in Minnesota, a tiny 0.3 further swing to Trump in New Hampshire and Harry Reid’s Nevada machine win for Clinton by 27k Trump would have received 326 electoral votes nearing landslide proportions.

The corollary to the “Trump’s narrow win” was “ it was about the size of the number of people attending  a big NFL game” (a theme that goes back to how the media reported John Kerry’s loss in Ohio, and thus the presidency, against President G.W. Bush in 2004.) 

Oddly the same media who were at such pains to point out that the shift of a tiny number of voters in three states would have given Hillary the presidency have not examined what would have happened in the 2020 election if even fewer voters had shifted to Trump in just three states.

 Former vice-president Biden won the Electoral College, which is all that matters election wise, by 306 electoral votes to President Trump’s 232 electoral votes a winning margin of 74.Thus, if Trump had received 37 electoral votes more and Biden37 fewer then the result would have been a 269/269 tie. At that point the election would have been decided by the House with  each state delegation, of which the Republicans have a majority, having one vote and in all probability assigning the office to Trump.

Would such an election outcome have been possible? It could well have been not only possible, but Biden’s election was achieved by the narrowest of popular vote margins.

Arizona (11 electoral votes) 10,457, Georgia (16 electoral votes) 12,670 and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) 20,682. Thus, a total of 43,809 voters across three states out of the 157,997,573 total voters decided the election

Biden's wins in those states on a percentage basis were Arizona by 0.3 percent, Georgia 0.2 percent and Wisconsin 0.7% a lower  aggregate level than Trump’s 2016 three state win. 

These facts and that Biden’s win was by 23,000 fewer people than attend an average NFL game has thus far escaped the entire media’s and, oddly, GOP operatives and sundry pundits attention but it may make an appearance after the Biden “honeymoon period’ ends and the regular mid-term election disaster looms for the sitting president’s party in 2022.