We here at Rancho LawDog are seeing a whole bunch of fluster in the air regarding Secretary Clinton “winning the popular vote.”
Leaving aside for the nonce the uncomfortable fact that there is no such thing as a popular vote for the Office of President of the United States (yet another sin that the Mainstream Media will have to answer for) near as I can tell — if we had been foolish enough to do so — had there been a Popular Vote the winner would have been “None of the Above”.
According to data from the United States Election Project, there are just over 231,000,000 (231 million) eligible voters in the United States at the time of this cycle’s General Election.
Secretary Clinton got (so far) ~ 66,000,000 (66 million +/-) of those eligible voters.
Mr Trump got (so far) ~ 63,000,000 (63 million +/-) of those eligible voters.
Let us add 66 million to 63 million — if my math skills are up to scratch — about 129,000,000 (129 million) votes.
231,000,000 (total eligible voters) minus 129,000,000 (eligible voters participating) — leaves 102,000,000 (102 million) eligible voters who sat at home, muttering into their beers on Election Day.
In other words, it sure looks like the Presidential picks were so dismal this year that 45% of the electorate couldn’t get enthused enough to cast a vote.
To quote Herself: “So, she got about half of the half that showed up?”
It actually cyphers out to Secretary Clinton getting 48% of the 55% that showed up, but close enough.
Hillary Clinton didn’t win the popular vote.
“Bugger This For A Lark” and “None Of The Above” won the popular vote with a total of 102 million to Secretary Clinton’s 66 million — almost half again as many votes.
LawDog
postscript:
A cheeky young bugger has pointed out that it could be said that “Noah Ward” was actually the winner of the popular vote.
Sigh.
LawDog
The best analogy I've heard so far to use against those complaining about how "Hillary actually won" is this.
The World Series is the best of 7 games. There have been many times that the winner of this best of 7 did not get more runs over the course of the entire series. So are we going to change the outcome of all of those too?
Noah Ward?!?!?! The prolific author that nearly swept the Hugos last year? He was running for president as well? Good lord! Is there nothing that man can't do?
Nice job deliberately missing the point. What "Hillary Clinton won the popular vote" means is that she had the most total votes out of any one candidate. That is what it has always meant. Period, end of discussion.
eligible voters who sat at home, muttering into their beers on Election Day.
…Or were made unable to vote because of the restrictive voter ID laws that have been put into place over the last several decades.
C'mon, dude. You are smarter than this.
"…Or were made unable to vote because of the restrictive voter ID laws that have been put into place over the last several decades."
I know, right? Darn those people to heck for daring to suggest you have to prove you are who you claim you are, to vote! Why, next they'll be wanting us to have an ID to:
Drive a car
Open a bank account
Buy booze
Buy tobacco
Buy lottery tickets
Rent an apartment
Rent a hotel room
Get a credit card
Enter an R-rated movie
Get a job
Get any utility including heat, water, garbage, sewer, cable, internet…
and who knows what else? It's absolute fascism, I tell ya!!
(Good grief, if these people were any more stupid, they'd qualify as plant life.)
It's a vote of the states, weighted by population but slighly adjusted to make the power of each state match its relative power in Congress.
I guess the Congress must be totally undemocratic as well as, currently, un-Democratic.
And if it falls to the House, each state gets an equal vote, regardless of size. Yet they're pushing for this? How undemocratic of them.
I prefer to note that the Hildabeast got 48% of those that voted and 52% said "Hell No". To me she did not win the popular vote, she lost it by 4%. The Donald got over 90% of the Hell No vote! All is well until he steps on his…
Yep, Noah Ward in a landslide… 🙂
I'd be curious to see how the numbers run if you were somehow able to remove the illegal votes from the totals – the deceased, the non-citizens, the flat-out non-existent, people who discovered that they'd already voted absentee despite not having filled out any absentee voter ballot . . .
LittleRed1
"Bugger this for a lark" is my new favorite phrase, and is soon to find its way into many conversations where it is, perhaps, inappropriate.
As for the "restrictive ID laws", they're only restrictive if you aren't legally allowed to vote in the first place. The folks who are supposedly too poor to get ID are the same folks who get various government aid, for which they have to have, you guessed it, ID.
It's also interesting that everyone who thinks that manay minority voters can't get ID doesn't notice that the reasons they give for that lack of ID are all pretty condesending. To assume that most minority would-be voters are too stupid or poor ID is in itself pretty racist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odB1wWPqSlE
The responses of the folks in Harlem to the idea that a) minorities have trouble getting IDs and b) voter ID laws are racist aren't the answers that folks against voter ID laws want.
An alternative is "Bugger that for a game of soldiers" meaning "I ain't doing it!". >};o)
Phil B
At the risk of sounding like the cynical, angry white guy clinging to my Christianity and guns: I suggest when counting all the 'eligible voters' one removes all those dead or registered under false pretenses.
Hillary Clinton,lawyer, First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State, after a lifetime in politics, spent over a BILLION dollars to win useless illegal votes in an election process she never understood. We SO dodged a bullet here…
Just Plain Archie Por que?
Celeste — Which restrictive laws?
It's also important to note that, thanks to its…unusual primary system, many places in California – where Clinton had her best night and in fact delivered all of her lead in the popular vote – had no Republican other than Trump on the ballot. Furthermore, California is such a highly gerrymandered state very few races are actually competitive, so the motivation for Republicans to bother to vote is abnormally low. Of course, removing one side's best performing state should be expected to radically change things, but if you remove Trump's best state – Texas – you end up with Trump winning by around 600,000 votes. In other words, a statistical tie.
It should be noted that:
1) In 1992 Bill Clinton "won" the Presidency with 43% of the votes cast, meaning that the majority of the voting public did not want him as President.
2) Similarly, in 1996, Clinton "won" the Presidency with 49.2% of the votes cast. Again meaning that the majority of the voting public did not want him as president.
Regardless, he won the majority of the Electoral College votes in both races, which is how the system was designed to function.