What a bad ground game looks like.

[hellofromreddit]

NYT made a pair of maps: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/16/us/politics/the-two-americas-of-2016.html

AlexE made gradient versions: http://www.vividmaps.com/2016/12/trumpland-and-clinton-archipelago.html

The thing that really matters from those maps is that fact that areas favoring Trump are physically connected, but areas favoring Clinton aren't. (incidentally, this extreme concentration of votes in populous metropolitan areas is why we have the big popular vote margin for Clinton, but no EC win) Campaigns rely heavily on "building out" by canvasing, word of mouth, signs, and stickers from existing areas of support to new areas. When people see or hear about the candidate then they feel enough of a connection to actually look into it. OTOH, if you hear about some candidate popular somewhere else, and don't see it in-person, and possibly already vaguely dislike that candidate for whatever reason, it's pretty easy to just assume that those other people are simply a bunch of idiots. All those "I don't see any bumper stickers," and "No enthusiasm," stories did actually matter. Even the rally size stories mattered. All of it was a reflection of the problem. It has a lot to do with the "momentum" stuff the campaign told us didn't matter. It did, but acknowledging that meant admitting their poor ground game, which would add momentum in the wrong direction.

Aside from the coasts, parts of the Southwest, and parts of the Southeast, Clinton didn't achieve much build out.

Probably a side-effect of equivocating people who almost agree with us to people who hate us. Clinton herself got way too close to doing that with her "basket of deplorables comment," but aside from that she stayed away. However, her surrogates, campaign staff, and plenty of other democrats hammered that message home loudly every day, severely undermining her.

Need to fix that next time.

I can't find similar maps for party votes in general, but I'd be pretty surprised if they were substantially different. It would go a long way towards explaining why we weren't able to root out the worst congress in living memory.

[shraby]

1. The gerrymandering probably went a long way to give us this result.

[MichMan]

4. I don't think that is the case here

According to the link, the maps are generated by counties not congressional districts. County land borders are not gerrymandered

[Yonnie3]

5. How so?

Gerrymandering greatly affects the House. I don't see how it affects the election of the president. Can you explain?

[KittyWampus]

12. it helps determine who counts the votes, who suppresses the votes, who gets to vote

who is challenged.

[Yonnie3]

16. I see.

Thanks.

I've not seen scientific estimates of how much this affects the vote. Most of what I've read about gerrymandering doesn't say much about the non-house races. My meaning was more along the lines of how MUCH it affect the presidential race. Of course I didn't say that.

[KittyWampus]

21. If Republican legislatures vote to require photo id and then close DMV's in minority neighborhoods-

that puts a huge handicap on minority voters.

[Botany]

2. Please she got more votes then any other candidate in history except for Obama in 2008

And Trump only won the E.C. because he cheated, cross check, russian hacking,
Comey and some of the FBI, fake news, unceasing and unneeded hearings into
nothing as per HRC, and a shit ass media (we heard all about HRC's emails but
almost nothing about Trump U. targeting widows of the Iraq war and stealing
their money).

For God's sake + 80,000 votes were taken away in Detroit alone.

[KPN]

6. Bangs forehead against wall ... sighs.

But nevermind that this election should have been a slam dunk landslide including the electoral college votes.

Why are people here so frigging defensive about analyzing what went wrong that we, the Democratic Party, were responsible for as opposed to looking for others to blame?

[pbmus]

9. Unless the Polls are hacked...

[KPN]

23. Oh yeah, that's why WE didn't win this election over the least liked, least favorable

candidate ever in the history of the nation! Give me a break. We/Hillary lost by 80,000 votes in three States, but won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes -- and you think we lost only because we were hacked!!!! Get real. Stop defending failure!

[EL34x4]

10. We can't have an honest post mortem here.

Lest we violate forum rules against "right wing talking points" and/or "bashing Democratic public figures."

As such, we have to find other reasons to explain our loss; Russians, Comey, election fraud, space aliens, whatever. Hillary ran a perfect campaign because she won the popular vote!

No introspection required.

[Ace Rothstein]

20. I get so many jury requests on posts discussing why Clinton lost.

I always mark them as clearly not breaking the forum rules and that the alerter did it to disrupt.

[KPN]

24. Good for you! Right on!

[BeyondGeography]

28. Yup

and yup.

[Yupster]

11. I'll give it a try then

Hillary lost because she narrowly lost Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. That was her blue wall.

If you compare maps of those three states from 2012 to 2016 you'll see there are many counties who voted for Obama and Trump.

There's your autopsy. Let's find out why thousands of voters in those Midwest counties would vote for Obama and then Trump.

My guess is it's because Trump was so focused talking jobs, jobs, jobs. That must have been relevant to them.

Hillary talked about how bad Trump was. That didn't seem as relevant to them.

Was it racism that caused people to vote twice for Obama and then for Trump. That seems nonsensical on its face.

[bettyellen]

19. She talked a ton about jobs, voters liked her better on jobs and economics according to post

Election polls- trump voters liked him much better on immigration and terrorism. In other words- getting rid of brown people like he promised. The media is loathe to say it, but they haven't been very honest with us all year.
Let's not spread bullshit ourselves too!

[hellofromreddit]

27. Then we need to talk about why that message failed to reach voters.

I made an attempt, but it was censored by our jury abusers.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512653823

[bettyellen]

29. The media key saying she didn't talk about jobs- they lied about her, made the

Emails an issue when there was nothing there and reported DJT lies and bigotry as if they were true and normal. They passed along his lies without comment for most of the year. Worse, they are still doing it!

CNN and MSNBC both did this, his criticism of them is a head fake because they each have 2-3 pundits out of dosens who will criticize Trump.

[hellofromreddit]

31. I certainly didn't hear her complaints about the media when they were ignoring Sanders.

The media never have his campaign a fair shake, which benefited her enormously in the primary. If Hillary wanted fairness out of the media, she should have been hammering them early in the campaign, not just now, after the "surprise" loss.

Besides that, no amount of complaining about the evil media will change the facts on the ground: support was soft to nonexistant outside of isolated parts of the US and the party simply didn't acknowledge it.

[bettyellen]

32. Because they would have laughed them off- she often complained they would not give time to issues

And tried to give her website addy after being given 4/5 seconds to talk policy. The media loved Bernie and he got a higher percentage of positive coverage than anyone. In particular they loved it when he slammed other Dems. HRC did well when they gave her the time but most of the time they chose to spend on her by far was email bullshit and other people slamming her policies.

[hellofromreddit]

35. I don't see what repeating debunked nonsense will accomplish.

Sanders was not loved by the media, he was ignored. Yeah, the five seconds per week coverage he got wasn't negative, but invisibility kills campaigns. And when it came to counting delegates in the primary, the media lumped in supers with pledged without explaining the difference, making Sanders look like a hopeless lost cause. That helped Clinton, and she never opposed any of that obvious bias.

Bernie certainly did criticize democrats, but not for being democrats. He criticized specific actions (or inaction), and he didn't let anybody off the hook, even if they just happened to be democrats. So your comment is a distortion.

[KPN]

25. Yup!

[hellofromreddit]

17. I suppose that matters if the plan is to excuse our way back into power.

However, I strongly suspect we'll have to actually do the hard work of overcoming all of that, and a fundamental part will be connecting to voters before they vote instead of lampooning them for their disobedience afterward.

[KPN]

26. This!

[JHB]

3. Has anyone undertaken to make similar maps of patterns from past elections?

[hellofromreddit]

13. I looked around a little, but I couldn't find any

[Turbineguy]

7. The biggest thing we have going for us

is that the Republicans control everything. And they are incapable of governing.

[Yupster]

8. It must have been fun naming the place names on the map

Old Glacier Gulf and the Maricopa Sea.

The maps do make the point pretty starkly though.

[kentuck]

14. The big mistake...

...is to place more value on the Presidency than on the Congress and the House of the people. The power of the people was intentionally placed in our Congress, not the Presidency. It was more of an afterthought.

[Willie Pep]

18. That is true.

I sometimes think that we put too much emphasis on the presidency. After the Republicans lost in 2008 they put a huge effort into winning state legislatures and governorships and Congress. I actually think state races may even be the most important because they control House district maps. The Republicans knew this and have now gerrymandered the House big time.

[HeartachesNhangovers]

22. Definitely true. The president is the head of 1 of

3 branches of the federal bureaucracy and that's all they are.

[vi5]

30. Oh god, I can't possibly like this post enough...

This is and was our biggest mistake. Instead of focusing just on the presidency over everything else for 4 years, we need to worry about every race, in every single place. Dog Catcher in Kenosha, State Senator in North Carolina, Governer of Arizona, up through the house seat in District 3 of New Hampshire, up to the Senate Seat in Michigan.

I was one of the first to complain about how much power we gave the blue dogs and the DLC candidates, but the fact is that I know now that having them in our fold is the price we have to pay for controlling more elements and bodies of our government. I still think that we also need our progressive leaders to stand up to them and not cede too much control, but the 50 state strategy is the 50 state strategy and we need a DNC that understands this and puts every penny, every resource available into that strategy every single election, every single year.

[sagesnow]

15. Inaccurate Picture

because much of that Trumpland is Cornfields, empty prairy, desert, oilfields, and those entities do not vote. A more accurate picture would show dots of small towns on the prairie dominating the mega cities thanks to the Electoral College. Think I read somewhere that a vote in Wyoming counts 4 times more than a vote in California or Texas.

[realmirage]

33. I like this quote

Probably a side-effect of equivocating people who almost agree with us to people who hate us. Clinton herself got way too close to doing that with her "basket of deplorables comment,"

This needs to change if we ever want to win again

[HoneyBadger]

34. There is a difference between preaching to the choir

And to the unconverted. She lost the narrative on that one. It happens. But the real problem was that the choir absolutely loved it and would not let it go away. It think that hurt her more than the original comment.