The Briefing: The ‘United States of Apathy’ elected Trump
The trouble is that "Nobody" is, well, nobody, the default candidate of the 94.2 million Americans who could have voted in the 2016 election but didn't.
About 60 percent of eligible voters nationwide voted that November, but 40 percent didn't bother.
And data released in recent months shows that those 40 percent had an overwhelming effect on the election.
In fact, by sitting at home, they didn't just outnumber those who voted for Republican
Those nonvoters, by not showing up, elected Trump.
More on that later, but let's start with the map above.
Trump won the red counties on the map and Clinton won the blue ones. But in counties colored black, the number of people who didn't vote exceeded the number who voted for Trump and the number who voted for Clinton. In effect, in the black-shaded counties, the major-party candidates finished second and third to "Nobody."
In
But just look at the rest of the country. Look at how many of the nation's counties are colored black. You'll see that in much of the country, other than a swath of red in the Republican Midwest and a few blue dots in Democratic metropolitan areas, apathy won.
And when votes and nonvoters are tallied on a state-by-state basis, which is how how the electoral college decides who's president, the conclusion is clear.
" 'Nobody' won in a landslide," Kearney noted in a brief phone interview earlier this summer.
Kearney calls his map, which he posted on Reddit, "
Looking at the share of eligible voters who didn't vote, one fact stands out.
"A lot of people were not motivated, either because of laziness or dissatisfaction," Kearney said.
Little did those people know that by sitting home, they may well have thrown the election to the Republican.
Proof of that can be found in the
The results would likely break
"
So would it have made a difference if a decent share of those nonvoting
Almost certainly, for one reason.
"Among members of the panel who were categorized as nonvoters, 37 percent expressed a preference for
Remember that three states --
But let's say that the 37 percent of those nonvoters in those states who liked Clinton had actually voted for her, and that the 30 percent of nonvoters who liked Trump had voted for him.
The result? Trump would not have won those states. Clinton would have won all three by a grand total of about 444,000 votes, picking up their 46 electoral votes and thereby winning the electoral college 278-260.
What's more, if 37 percent of
And Trump's 306-232
Remember that anytime you hear someone say that their vote doesn't count -- because it does, even if they don't vote.
And you might want to remind them that the last day to register to vote in the November election in
Happening today
Today marks the end of the Briefing as a daily feature. I started this blog back in February sort of as an experiment -- and it's become far more time-consuming than I ever imagined. With an election coming up, and with one of the members of
Good reads
The
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