Registered Voters Who Stayed Home Probably Cost Clinton The Election

[portlander23]

Registered Voters Who Stayed Home Probably Cost Clinton The Election
Harry Enten
FiveThirtyEight

Registered voters who didn’t vote on Election Day in November were more Democratic-leaning than the registered voters who turned out, according to a post-election poll from SurveyMonkey, shared with FiveThirtyEight. In fact, Donald Trump probably would have lost to Hillary Clinton had Republican- and Democratic-leaning registered voters cast ballots at equal rates.

Given how closely party identification tracks with vote choice, the disparity in turnout probably cost Clinton the election. SurveyMonkey did not ask non-voters whom they would have voted for, but we do know that more than 90 percent of self-identified Democrats who cast a ballot voted for Clinton and more than 90 percent of Republicans voted for Trump. Moreover, voters who didn’t identify with or lean towards either party were slightly more likely to prefer Clinton to Trump. That means that had the non-voters cast a ballot in accordance with their party identification, Clinton’s advantage over Trump nationally would have expanded by about 2 to 3 percentage points. That almost certainly would have been enough to flip enough states for her to win the Electoral College.

The biggest reason given by non-voters for staying home was that they didn’t like the candidates. Clinton and Trump both had favorable ratings in the low 30s among registered voters who didn’t cast a ballot — both had ratings in the low 40s among those who did vote. That’s a pretty sizable difference. So why was Clinton hurt more by non-voters? Trump was able to win, in large part, because voters who disliked both candidates favored him in big numbers, according to the exit polls. Clinton, apparently, couldn’t get those who disliked both candidates — and who may have been more favorably disposed to her candidacy — to turn out and vote.

More harmful for Clinton was which young voters stayed home: minorities. Among white voters, voters 18-29 years old made up 30 percent of voters who did not participate in the November election. Among young Hispanic voters, that climbs to 43 percent. Among young black voters, it was an even higher 46 percent. That generally matches the findings of the voter data released in some Southern states showing that young black voters were especially likely to stay home in this election. Younger black voters were far more likely to support Bernie Sanders in the primary, suggesting that there simply was not the enthusiasm for Clinton’s candidacy as there was for Obama’s in 2012. Clinton’s favorable rating, for instance, was about 10 percentage points lower among the youngest black voters compared to the oldest black voters in the SurveyMonkey poll.

[suston96]

1. Stay at homes .......?

Maybe so but I believe the control by the GOP of most of the voting districts in the country helped a lot.

Remember, getting out the vote is important but controlling the counters is the trick.

[lamp_shade]

2. Yup. I know 4 or 5 passionate Sanders supporters who stayed home.

Surely there were thousands more.

[Blue_Tires]

12. Please slap them all in the face with a dead trout for me...

[lamp_shade]

22. They're all family... all very young adults... probably not even registered to vote.

And they all live in other states; othewise, I'd whoop them all upside the head.

[sharp_stick]

3. Election losses in this country are often

the direct fault of the people not interested in getting out. I enjoy pointing it out to them when they start whining about the outcome. Most of them aren't bright enough to connect the dots.

[riversedge]

4. Comey cast more doubt and many people just gave up and stayed home.

[brush]

5. Nah! Not buying it.

Younger white voters, okay, but younger black voters favored Sanders over Clinton and therefore didn't vote?

Un-uh.

Sounds like a misreading of the black community and another attempt to blame AAs for the election loss.

The first being that AAs didn't turn out as strongly for Clinton as they did for Obama. That was so stupid it was as if no brain was even used by those pushing that argument. She got 90 some percent of the black vote, which is very, very strong, but of course she nor anyone else was going to get a bigger percentage in the AA community than the first black candidate ever.

Get real, folks.

Ninety some percent of older black voters turned out for Clinton and we're to assumed they had no influence over their sons, daughters, nephews and nieces?

Again, not buying it. I think 538 is wrong again. We saw the crowds in all those Sanders rallies. There were hardly any AA faces in those crowds.

[Jim Lane]

20. The 538 analysis is based on actual polling data.

If you're "not buying it" based on your gut feelings or anecdotal observations of rallies, and if you regard those sources as more reliable than exit polls, then that's where you and I disagree.

You should also note that the section of the 538 article that you refer to isn't talking about black voters. It's talking about young black voters. The passage states:

More harmful for Clinton was which young voters stayed home: minorities. Among white voters, voters 18-29 years old made up 30 percent of voters who did not participate in the November election. Among young Hispanic voters, that climbs to 43 percent. Among young black voters, it was an even higher 46 percent.

This isn't blaming AAs generally, since it would follow from these data that older black voters who didn't vote would be a lower percentage of those who stayed home.

As for support for Sanders, it's true that Clinton beat him among blacks as a whole. The argument made by 538, however, is in the context of younger voters. It's based on exit poll data showing that Sanders, who generally beat Clinton among younger voters, even beat her among younger black voters:

But an analysis of 25 states that held primaries and where exit polls were conducted by NBC News showed that one of Sanders' challenges is that younger blacks are not voting in large numbers. Sanders, according to the exit polls in these states, received 52 percent of the votes of African-Americans under 30, compared to 47 percent for Clinton.

(from "Huge Split Between Older and Younger Blacks in the Democratic Primary" (emphasis added))

That's a plausible basis for suggesting one factor in the actual outcome: Younger black voters were less likely to be inspired by Clinton's candidacy and were therefore less likely to vote.

[brush]

21. How do you exit poll non-voters?

And why is there no mention of concerted repug vote suppression instead of strong suggestions that young AAs were too lazy to go out and vote to keep a known racist out of the White House?

[Jim Lane]

24. You're confusing two different concepts

The exit polls from 25 primaries indicated that Sanders beat Clinton among black voters younger than 30. Maybe the polls were wrong, or maybe there was a markedly different trend in the unpolled primaries, but this information is certainly relevant to the question of how young black voters regarded Clinton.

You go on to find a "strong suggestion" of laziness and no mention of other factors such as voter suppression. First, there is no suggestion of laziness. You're bringing that up only to try to lump the 538 analysis in with racist views of blacks as inherently lazy and shiftless.

Second, what you contend wasn't mentioned was, in fact, mentioned:

There are, of course, a lot of reasons people don’t vote. In addition to not liking their choices, some people don’t have the time to vote (they can’t get off work, for example). Others are dissuaded or prevented from voting by barriers like voter identification laws.

This particular piece focused on the information available from the post-election Survey Monkey poll. The poll asked non-voters about their party affiliation or identification. The 538 piece used that fact as a proxy for how the nonvoters would have voted. It didn't pretend to be a comprehensive analysis of all the factors affecting the election. Discussing one aspect of the election doesn't equate to dismissing all the others.

[uponit7771]

6. ++++ NO !!!! ++++ Clinton got nearly as many votes as 2012 Obama !!!

[karynnj]

18. True, but the population of registered voters increases each year as well

I suspect that the analysis should also look at the higher number of voters for Trump than for Romney.

I think this may be somewhat similar to 2004, where especially in the swing states, Kerry got more votes in every area than their goals. He got slightly more than 8,000,000 more votes than Gore, who had won the popular vote in 2000. He lost because Bush pulled out an additional almost 11,000,000 than he did in 2000.

Similar to 2004, when many ugly anti gay referendums were placed on the ballots of many states, including several swing states, there were many usually non voting evangelicals in rural areas who were motivated to come to the polls. In 2016, Trump LED the hate that brought out people not motivated to vote for Romney.

[Paladin]

7. Thanks for nothing, stay-at-homes. (nt)

[kcr]

8. Ok. So why do those of us who are angry at Bernie for attacking her get shit for that?

It's clear he cost us and cost us dearly. He was clearly a significant factor.

[vi5]

10. Because it makes the assumption....

..that those people would have voted for her if Bernie hadn't been in the race, and/or that the stuff Bernie said was anything they had not heard or thought themselves before the primary. And there is no evidence to back that up other than pointing to a few general polls prior to the primary that said Clinton was "admired", with zero evidence that those numbers included any of the people who sat out this election.

I knew very few Bernie or Bust voters but the ones I did were never under any circumstances going to vote for Hillary Clinton, even if they had never heard the name Bernie Sanders.

[karynnj]

19. Nothing in this says that they would have been motivated to vote for HRC had there been no primary

fight at all. There were also people who Sanders motivated in the primaries who had not been motivated to vote at all -- who did follow his call and that of many of his voters to vote for HRC. How many - I do not know. I do know that buses left places in Vermont to help HRC in NH in the general election. Clearly many were Sanders supporters speaking to people who voted for Sanders in the primary. NH was close -- yet, it would be presumptuous to say the visits of Sanders himself and the canvassing assist from VT won that very close state.

[brush]

23. Agreed. Never again let a non-Dem with no allegiance to the party run as a Dem

Last edited Tue Jan 10, 2017, 02:41 PM - Edit history (1)

Other Democrats know better than to attack the party, and they know when to concede instead of continuing the attacks when they've lost.

[liquid diamond]

43. I hope the DNC implements this policy

immediately. The fringe left be damned. They can start their own fucking party if they are so damn miserable in ours. Sanders the independent helped create this fucking disaster.

[brush]

44. Yes!

[kenfrequed]

47. Yeah... that's a great solution

If we didn't win we should definitely shift to the right AND shrink the party.

Those two things will definitely help us win.


The only thing you have convinced me that needs to be shrunk is this silly and divisive Postmortem Forum.

[liquid diamond]

49. You and your types

are not going to hijack our party. You are a minority. We had a primary and kicked your asses. Deal with that. Again, if you don't like it, start your own party. Your type can easily be replaced by those who didn't vote this election.

[kenfrequed]

63. "My types"?

Where is this magical middle that is going to accommodate your moving to the right and cutting the left of the party out?

The Republican party has moved to fascism and they have bled very little support. Do you honestly imagine that there are some special super-moderates out there that sat out this election because fascism didn't scare them and centrism didn't excite them? Where do you imagine they are going to come from?

I actually showed up to pull the lever for your flawed candidate because that is what you do when your candidate doesn't win the primary. Most of us that showed up for caucuses and primaries did that. This hate you have for the left is not going to win you anything.

"Hijack the party" indeed. The House, the Senate, most statehouses and governors, and the supreme court all held by Republicans? You should be inviting a Hijacking about now. Our only hope, and note that I said 'our,' is a very populist progressive agenda that will reinvigorate the working class and you are not going to get that with platitudinous incrementalism, flag-waiving militarism, or paeans to the to greatness of entrepreneurial-ism. That time is past and the 90's have been over for quite some time. What is needed is a new New Deal.

We need bold progressiveness. We need to embrace that energy.

[LiberalLovinLug]

77. Well said!

[HassleCat]

76. Perfect example of our losing strategy.

"We don't need you. Voters are fungible. Go away."

[hueymahl]

72. Your concern is noted

Welcome to DU, Hillary.

[HRC2020]

57. Agreed

BS was the #1 reason for Hillary losss. His dishonest attacks on Hillary brought us the Trump disaster. His BernieBro took it a notch up. They were very passionate at #NeverHillary and were successful in painting Hillary as the most corrupt and vile politician using social media. They used dishonest or false memes like Hillary was profiting from the prison industry, Haiti. Everything good about HRC they turned into bad.

[ucrdem]

9. CNNventional wisdom that's been kicked to the curb daily for two months. nt

[earthside]

11. It is Politics 101

The Clinton candidacy was simply uninspiring to a lot of voters in the states where it counted.
And the Clinton campaign did not effectively counter this trend ... as evidenced by the lack of Clinton GOTV in Wisconsin.

Blame Sanders; blame racism; blame Comey; blame the Russians -- one of these days just step-up to the plate and acknowledge the failures of the Clinton campaign in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

That is all.

[Ohioblue22]

15. who the fuck has to be inspired to vote . keeping trump out of the white house wasnt inspiring

enough? well you got the government you deserved good luck

[Iggo]

29. Being registered to vote and subsequently voting should be inspiring enough.

Participating in the peaceful overthrow of the government should be inspiring enough.

These people don't know how good they have it.

[Ohioblue22]

30. they take it for granted

[yardwork]

50. Only a narcissist has to be "inspired to vote" - especially with Trump as the alternative.

I have no patience with such weak minded foolishness.

[HRC2020]

59. BernieBro eom

BernieBros painted Hillary as the architect of TPP. I believe that is the reason for the rust belt failure. I have had some Berniebros claim that Hillary wanted to export their job but they succeeded in exporting hers. I wish we could force BS out of everything democratic! Nader repeat!!!

[ellie]

13. Well, I hope they

like the country they helped create. I have no compassion for their troubles.

[otohara]

14. Peer Pressure Is A Powerful Tool

Sanders and his celebrity nasty-ass surrogates hammered his "tweedle-dee tweedle-dum" message that both parties are the same. I saw all the hateful Hillary memes and fake stories about Hillary...passed around with glee by so called progressive Millennials

They were encouraged to vote 3rd party or not at all and so they did.
Now they are silent as well with the alt-left media types who encouraged the message.

[liquid diamond]

45. Those assholes will get theirs.

They threw away their future out of spite by helping trump win the presidency. They can have fun living under oppressive Supreme Court rulings over the coming DECADES. Stupid motherfuckers.

[ucrdem]

16. This really isn't true, and blaming it on "minorities" makes it worse.

First of all, voters cast ballots in record numbers in 2016, both before and on election day:

PBS: more than 58% of eligible voters went to the polls during the 2016 election
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/voter-turnout-2016-elections/

WAPO: More votes were cast in 2016 than in 2012
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/15/more-votes-were-cast-in-2016-than-in-2012-but-that-doesnt-mean-turnout-was-great/

Secondly, claiming that minorities, "young black voters" specifically, were "harmful for Clinton" is pernicious and amounts to blaming Cheato's triumph on lazy black people:

More harmful for Clinton was which young voters stayed home: minorities. Among white voters, voters 18-29 years old made up 30 percent of voters who did not participate in the November election. Among young Hispanic voters, that climbs to 43 percent. Among young black voters, it was an even higher 46 percent.

Does this writer not realize that the GOP has been doing everything in its evil power, legal and otherwise, to disenfranchise POC, and furthermore that in swing states like PA and MI it's impossible to determine whether votes that were cast were ever counted?

[kenfrequed]

48. You are using two different numbers.

The percentage of eligible voters is different than the number of eligible voters.

In 2012 the percentage of eligible voters that showed up was 62% (compared with the 58% that showed up in 2016 that you cite)

As far as the "more votes were cast in 2016 than 2012" That can be accounted for by population growth in the area of eligible voters.

[JCanete]

17. Clinton and the DNC did not help themselves, but they still should have been able to beat Trump, and

if we had a Fourth Estate, they would have. But since we don't, in my opinion their biggest failing was to not take on the corporate media along with corporate interests, because trying to be the neutral arbitrator between corporations and people at the bottom is really not that inspiring(not enough to create a serious groundswell of support), and because the corporations might be willing to make those concessions if it comes to it, but since they own the messaging, it rarely ever comes to it.

[jalan48]

25. Clinton just didn't inspire the young voters as seen by these numbers.

Maybe we can try a new approach next time.

[SFnomad]

34. The young voters that BS "inspired" couldn't be bothered to come out and vote for BS

Which is why BS lost the Primary.

Young voters are consistently the segment of voters that vote the least. And clearly, it doesn't matter if they're inspired or not.

[jalan48]

35. Let's face it-Hillary as inspirational wasn't happening.

Bill has it, Obama has it, Bernie has it and a number of others as well. She's a self professed policy wonk which just doesn't play well on the campaign trail.

[SFnomad]

38. And that isn't why she lost. If that's all it took, BS would have won the primary

and BS had his ass kicked by nearly 4 million votes. So clearly, inspiration isn't everything.

[jalan48]

39. Given how late he started and with no money-it's anybody's guess.

Had he started in 2012 or earlier like she did-I think he wins.

[SFnomad]

42. FFS, you people sure do have one excuse after another #smh

BS had talked about running for President for nearly a year and a half before he official announced in April 2015 ... which means he had either talked about or was running for over 2 years before Iowa. How many other bad excuses do you have?

Maybe you should also ask yourself why, after being a member of either the House or Senate for over 25 years, that BS's fellow Congresspersons didn't support him. When the first votes were cast in Iowa in Feb 2016, Clinton had accumulated almost 200 pledges of support from Representatives and Senators ... BS had 3.

[Cha]

51. Hillary Inspired Millions of Young Women.. I know a lot of BS fans

who voted for stein.

Hope they're happy.. they helped get a climate change denier in the WH.

[JTFrog]

58. Yeah, maybe next time we'll put country above ego? Just a reminder;

Hillary won the Primaries and the GE.

Fuck Russia.

[jalan48]

60. I guess you need to tell that to the people who didn't vote or are we still blaming the voters?

At some point we need to look in the mirror and ask why so many voters stayed home.

[JTFrog]

61. Because we had a spoiler drumming up division. Not really that hard to pinpoint. nt

[jalan48]

64. Take a look at the candidate's favorability ratings.

Then ask yourself why she was the Party choice knowing she had such high negatives. Trump was the most disliked candidate in history, it shouldn't have been close.

[JTFrog]

65. It wasn't close. She won by 3 million votes.

But keep on pushing those false narratives.

Russia. Comey. GOP. Focus please.

You guys keep saying that Bernie would have won. He couldn't even get close to Clinton. Were his voters too disillusioned by his constant negative rethoric? Why didn't they show up to win the primaries for him?

[jalan48]

66. If she won by 3 million votes why isn't she the President then?

Hopefully we can look in the mirror at some point and address our mistakes. Constantly blaming others will just lead to the same results next time.

[JTFrog]

67. Russia. Comey. GOP. Duh. nt

[jalan48]

68. Russia, Comey and the GOP made voters stay home? Wow! It's hopeless then.

[JTFrog]

69. Fake news and hacking from Russia. Division from the spoiler. Comey and his fake announcement.

Keep on trying to distract from what really happened.

Not fooling anyone.

But hey, whatever helps you sleep at night.

[jalan48]

70. It's everyone else's fault is the message then. Got it.

[JTFrog]

71. Whatever helps you sleep at night. nt

[jalan48]

74. Victim-hood is a losing mindset. It will only lead to more losses.

We are never responsible for our own actions, it is always "the other" that creates our problems. Where will it end?

[JTFrog]

75. Yes, because ignoring all of the things that actually happened is a winning strategy.

You know who else got busted hacking during the election season?

Hint: It wasn't Hillary.

[guillaumeb]

26. Which begs the question of why that 41% did not vote.

How many were suppressed? I cannot find many Democratic politicians who are raising that issue.

[TonyPDX]

27. I stayed home that day.

It didn't make any difference, though, since we vote by mail and my ballot was dropped off a week earlier.

[Iggo]

28. Registered voters who stayed home are fucking morons.

Every single one of them.

[mcar]

31. They will have blood on their hands

How many will die from lack of health insurance and Trump's wars? These non-voters bear responsibility for this.

[andym]

32. "The biggest reason given by non-voters for staying home was that they didnt like the candidates."

From the article " Clinton and Trump both had favorable ratings in the low 30s among registered voters who didn’t cast a ballot"

That's what Comey, the GOP and Russian bad-mouthing through the media and social networks will do. Discourage voters from coming out. 2-3% nationally would have made it a strong victory for Hillary.

[Rex]

33. She had a 3 million vote lead over Trump.

As much as I would like to blame people that cannot defend themselves here, I suspect the Electoral College had something to do with her loss. However, if people would have showed up in numbers (like in 2008) it might have made an EC difference.

Dunno, I am still trying to figure out how 87k folks = 2.8 million folks. I've been told it has to do with representation, but I just cannot see it.

[NCTraveler]

36. They cost us dearly. Not Clinton.

They were fooled into thinking their was no difference. Many of them should be the people we target. It's just not that easy with the simpleton crowd.

Trump will proudly represent said dumbfucks.

[snowy owl]

37. Clear support for candidates was low so why didn't DNC get a candidate who could garner more?

Favorability ratings were out there for all to see. So why did DNC stick with one? Sanders showed that many base democrats were unhappy. Young people stayed home - no fault of Sanders. DNC got it's pick while citizenry Republicans got theirs.

[StevieM]

52. The voters of the Democratic Party picked Clinton, and by a wide margin at that.

If Bernie wanted to be the nominee he could have gone out and gotten more votes, especially among minorities.

[Hum]

40. But, But They at Least Preserved Their Ideological Purity

And I sincerely hope they enjoy the next 4 years. Or at least until the nuclear war. whichever comes first.

[EffieBlack]

41. Does this include voters who wanted/tried to vote but were prevented from doing so by suppression

laws across the country?

[LaydeeBug]

46. and RUSSIA?

These motherfuckers are trying to divide us again...

[FSogol]

53. Flagged for Review? You Better Believe it!

[JTFrog]

55. Like all things, way too late.

A year and a half of trolling DU with propaganda and division.

[jzodda]

54. Yep I sit next to a Sanders supporter

And to my left is a non voter. The Sanders supporter kept the anger at HRC. She said maybe Trump will destroy both parties. She stayed home. The other told me that Trump and HRC are the same and so why vote?

All the many hours of conversations I failed to convince them that Trump must be stopped.

[Orsino]

56. There's not really any single cause.

There are a bunch of factors the significance of which is unclear, but which people like to blame preferentially.

I get different people wanting to address and maybe solve their favorites, but we're not entitled to conclude that any one cost us the election.

[NCTraveler]

73. Reason 5,236 from the North West.

FFR

[LiberalLovinLug]

78. So whether you hate Sanders or love Sanders, its agreed he would have won.

And probably won the Senate at least as well.

Whether you are/were in the Hillary camp and think his "attacks" on Hillary together with his Bernie Bro army staying home cost her the election

or you believed in him from the start

Fact is he had even higher positives than both Clinton and Trump. So by this article's premise if those voters would have had a choice to vote for Sanders, they would have come out. And surely if Hillary had lost the primary all these pro-Clinton voters in here would have held their noses and voted for Bernie right? Especially after Hillary would have conceded and endorsed him. I mean that's all they scold about in here.

And I can see why young black voters would prefer Sanders. He is the one promising free college tuition, a $15 hr min. wage, along with justice reform. Why wouldn't they want a future like that?