Facts Matter: Four Responses to 'Hillary Won the Popular Vote'
11/30/2016 10:30:00 AM - Guy Benson
I've offered variations of these arguments on Twitter, and right here on the Tipsheet, ever since the day after the election -- but in light of many liberas' obsessive, breathless, ongoing updates to the popular vote tally on social media, it seems as though a one-stop shop may prove handy for awhile longer. If Trump opponents insist on clinging to this irrelevant piece of electoral trivia, Trump supporters (or anyone weary of the 'but the popular vote' caterwauling) should be equipped with some facts:
(1) Donald Trump won the only popular votes that actually count under our constitutional system. The goal of any presidential ticket is to win a majority of the electoral college, a fact that everybody knew and agreed upon entering the campaign. Achieving this goal requires winning the popular vote in enough statewide elections (plus DC) to obtain 270 electoral votes. Trump did so in 30 states -- or, framed another way, 60 percent of all states. He also carried a Congressional District in Maine, one of only two states that apportions electoral votes in that manner (the other being Nebraska, which Trump swept). Trump won everywhere from conservative states in the Mountain West to the blue collar rust belt -- including several states that no GOP nominee had won in decades -- to diverse swing and non-swing states like Florida and Texas. He not only won a majority of the electoral college, he did so with dozens of electoral votes to spare, accumulating 306 in total. Both the Trump and Clinton campaigns set out to capture at least 270 electoral votes, which requires a specific plan with special emphasis on a swath of eclectic battleground states. For better or worse, the other states were largely ignored because that's what the strategy calls for. If the national popular vote had been a relevant metric in determining the presidency, Trump and Clinton would have designed their plans of attack totally differently. They didn't because it isn't. Mrs. Clinton's relatively narrow popular vote plurality (well short of a majority, mind you) therefore signifies nothing of real value. The popular vote obsessives are reduced to incanting a tautology: If things were different, the result would be different. What an inane, empty insight. And it's not even accurate. If things were different, the result might have been different. We have no way of knowing.
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http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2016/11/30/but-hillary-won-the-popular-vote-five-responses-n2252368
