Sometimes a picture (or a data table) does say more than a thousand words. Regardless of how you feel at the outcome, have a dispassionate look at this graph:
Data for 2000-2012 are from the FEC, preliminary data from 2016 from Wikipedia — the latter are subject to some change but not enough to matter at the resolution of this graph. Now focus on the stretch 2008-2016 to identify some trends:
- the GOP vote is remarkably constant over the last 3 elections
- the D vote is trending downward from the historic 2008 mark, with a sharper drop this election.
- the overall third-party vote is trending upward and increased notably this election
- overall voter participation is dropping
- From 2008 to 2016, the D party lost 8.6 million votes, while the GOP posted a small increase of 0.3 million (probably a bit more when we’ll have final numbers).
- The Libertarians, on the other hand, are now big enough that in a “French” system with a runoff election, they’d have found themselves kingmaker. (I know, this is a hypothetical, as people’s “tactical voting” behavior would be quite different in such a system.) Regardless of how one feels about the party or its candidate, that is no mean achievement.
Some more commentary to follow later.
Spin, strangeness, and charm 
The numbers aren’t final yet. I know several states are still counting, mine hasn’t even finished processing all the ballots yet. I think it was almost half a million to go as of yesterday?
Sure, and that may affect the small difference between Trump and Clinton, but the graph will stay the same at this resolution, and the trends re playing out on a factor 10-20 larger scale (e.g, the big D vote drop). I will try to update the moment I have never numbers.
If WA still is counting, there could be nine other states that are still counting, too…..
[…] him in battleground states. (Thus, his popular vote totals are close to Romney’s, see my previous post.) Trump’s overall campaign budget was something like a third of Clinton’s, but […]