Election Post Mortem

In Hebrew, numbers are represented by letters. This has the amusing coincidence of having numbers sometimes form words. The number 45 would be written Mem-Hey (מה). This letter set also spells out the word "What." I can't think of a better descriptor of this election than that.

I had a thought that Mr. Trump would have a chance but I must admit that I was a bit surprised by the overall result. I had a feeling that he would win the trifecta of Ohio, North Carolina and Florida as the raw numbers and empirical evidence did not mesh with the polling data. I was also pretty sure he would take Utah, Iowa and the second district of Maine. This got him to 260 on my map.

My thought was that the mostly likely scenario was that he would manage to snag the combo of Colorado and New Hampshire. Actually, just Colorado would probably have been enough as that would have given him 269 and the House would go along. But Colorado went fairly quickly to Mrs. Clinton and Nevada followed suit, confirming my skepticism there. They are still counting but at the moment, it appears that Mrs. Clinton will win New Hampshire as well, although at a spread of 1,500 votes, there will likely be a recount.

So, for my scenario, Mrs. Clinton had pulled it off and was in route to a narrow victory. I thought there might be an outside chance at Michigan given the way it had been pushed. I also thought Pennsylvania was an outside shot, although I was expecting Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to push it into Mrs. Clinton's column. I did not expect Wisconsin at all. Despite it being very close in both Bush elections, I legitimately thought it would stay Democrat. Instead, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania push Mr. Trump over the top and Michigan is looking like gravy on top, giving Mr. Trump a likely 306-232 victory.

So what is the source of this victory. I think it comes down to two major factors: a large turnout of Republican voters and a depressed turnout among African-American and young voters. We won't know until all the votes are counted but it appears that Mr. Trump is going to finish behind Mr. Obama's vote totals of nearly 66,000,000. He may even finish behind Mr. Romney's totals but again, we need to see what the final tally is. But after four years of growth, a minimal increase in the Republican turnout doesn't say much but an over 5,000,000 vote drop in the Democrat tally does.

Some of this is from young voters who were either not energized by Mrs. Clinton or still seriously angry over not getting Mr. Sanders. But I think it more significant that African-Americans didn't turnout. Mrs. Clinton is likely to lose Michigan because African-Americans in the southern part of the state (especially Detroit) did not turn out. She lost Pennsylvania because voters in the Philly suburbs did not turn out for her. I haven't taken a close look but I assume Wisconsin's fall was due more to the youth vote failure rather than the African-American but I won't hang my hat on that.

I definitely believe that the shortcomings in these two constituencies led to the loss of Florida and North Carolina. Possibly Ohio too although given where the shortfalls were, I'm more inclined to put that on blue collars turning to Mr. Trump than a failure of turnout.

So what comes next? Obviously Mr. Trump will become President next year and will govern for the next four. Given his age, questions abound as to whether he will keep to only one term or if he will seek reelection. But that's a long way off and the Democrats actually have a bigger problem. Who is next in line?

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders will almost certainly be too old to be considered viable candidates in 2020 and both have the taint of failure now. So far as I know, there are no significant rising stars in either the governorships or the Senate. This was hinted at in the somewhat limited selection for Mrs. Clinton when she decided on her Vice Presidential pick. I would suspect that Mr. Kaine would be considered the frontrunner as of now but I can't imagine a lot of people being super excited about him. I'm sure whispers will begin to swirl around some one, probably out of the south or southwest, but that person is hidden to me for now.

Anyway, elections are over now and we can all concentrate on more important things, like trying to figure any way to avoid a Patriots-Cowboys Super Bowl.