Clinton’s Dishonesty Cost Her the Midwest—and the Election
Clinton ignored people who live outside trendy urban areas, and also played fast-and-loose with the truth.
By Michael Barone — November 18, 2016
Hillary Clinton lost the election in the Midwest. Donald Trump won 50 midwestern electoral votes that went to Barack Obama in 2012 — Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio — plus 20 more in Pennsylvania, where the two-thirds of voters beyond metro Philadelphia are midwestern in culture and concerns. Trump could have lost Florida and still won.
In the popular vote, Clinton came close to equaling Obama’s 2012 percentages in the South and not-yet-fully-counted West, and her 4 percent drop in the Northeast cost her no electoral votes. But in the Midwest and Pennsylvania, the Democratic presidential percentage dropped from 54 percent in 2008 and 51 percent in 2012 to 45 percent in 2016.
Those drops came mostly outside the Midwest’s big cities, though black turnout sagged notably in Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee. University towns turned in their typical lopsided majorities — e.g., 68–26 percent in metro Madison, Wis.
But in Midwestern outstates — counties outside metro areas with a million-plus people — the shift away from Clinton looked like the shifts of white Southerners away from Democrats in decades past.
Iowa, the largest state with no metro area of a million-plus people, was typical: 54 percent Democratic in 2008, 52 percent in 2012, and 41 percent in 2016. The drop was similar in Wisconsin outside Milwaukee and Madison (54 to 50 to 41 percent), Michigan outside Detroit and Grand Rapids (55 to 52 to 41 percent), Ohio outside Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati (48 to 47 to 35 percent) and Pennsylvania outside Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (48 to 44 to 36 percent).
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http://www.nationalreview.com/node/442302/print
