[wbsss4412]

Even with the benefit of hindsight, I don’t know how one can look back and say trump wasn’t an underdog going into the election.

What exactly were they supposed to do? Ignore polls that show him behind and divine somehow that he was actually going to win based off of nothing?

[Jonovono]

Anyone paying attention was pretty certain Trump was going to win that. All you had to do was look at Trumps subreddit vs Hilarys. Look at Trumps rally turnouts. The energy behind Trump was insane and it seemed pretty clear something was going on in the media to make it sound like only a "minority" of people supported him. That's why I bet around $1000 with some coworkers he would win that were certain he was going to get destroyed.

Note: This isn't me saying I support or don't support Trump.

[elikoga]

A minority did vote for trump though

[meatsauce]

President Trump won the popular vote in 30 of 50 states.

[ZeroGravitas]

And 0 out of 1 countries.

Here's a map showing where all the votes were cast:

https://engaging-data.com/county-electoral-map-land-vs-popul...

[timapplesauce]

The Electoral College exists because popular vote would lead to just a handful of our largest cities holding all of the political power. Switching to popular vote would lead to presidents completely ignoring or worse enacting policies that harm smaller cities, suburbs, and rural Americans.

[cjohnson318]

A handful of the largest cities, where most of the people in America live. We already have a Senate where Wyoming with ~500k people has as many votes as California, with ~38M people. How much are we going to stack the deck against the average, likely more centrist voter, that lives in a metro area? Maybe we could finally pass common sense gun control legislation that a majority of Americans support.

[md2020]

Another way of saying this is we have tyranny of the minority. A handful of small states hold the majority of the political power and get to make decisions that affect the majority of people. I don’t know why you think this is better than a majority of people holding the majority of power.

[wbsss4412]

This is oft repeated, but it does hold up to even minor scrutiny.

1. More Americans live in suburbs than in urban areas, so they actually represent a larger share of the popular vote.

2. The electoral does not actually bias small states that significantly. California’s share of the popular vote was 11.0% in 2020, while it cast 10.2% of EVs.

3. The electoral college primarily biases large, tipping point states. Biden won California by a 63-34 landslide, while trump won Florida 51-48. In both cases, each candidate gets 100% of the electoral votes rather than a proportional amount.

4. Finally, the electoral college biases low turnout states vs high turnout ones, as EC votes are based on population and senators not actual votes themselves. In 2016 for example, Texas cast fewer votes than Florida, even though it is the second biggest state by population, and it got to cast 7 move EC votes.

As an aside, it’s always telling that when this debate comes up, people will always say that “California and New York will decide the election”, referencing the largest and fourth largest states, while leaving out Texas and Florida, the second and third largest…

[meatsauce]

Do baseball teams win the world series based on how many fly balls they catch in a given year?

Does NASCAR bestow awards based on how much fuel you used?

Does Wimbledon award prize money for how fast you smack a tennis ball?

Using an irrelevant metric to claim a make-believe victory is simply childish and emotional.

Presidential candidates win elections based on the electoral college votes, themselves decided by the popular vote outcome in each state. In 2016, Trump won more states, thusly more EC votes. Therefore he became president and Hillary was sent back to the over-priced lecture circuit.

Any other metric you use to decide who won is simply self-delusion.

[rgifford]

9 of those 30 states have more cows than people [1].

When your state is a single dude standing in a field filled with cows, getting the popular vote doesn't say much.

1. https://beef2live.com/story-cattle-inventory-vs-human-popula...

[timapplesauce]

How much of our food supply comes from New York City and Los Angeles?

Your comment implies that the needs of these states is somehow less important in the governance of our nation.

[rgifford]

The needs of these states are less important. They have fewer people, less productive capacity, less economic output, etc. They are lesser by every metric imaginable. In our nation's bread basket folks love to hold up agricultural achievement. Ironically California dominates that too [1].

Getting rid of the electoral college system in favor of popular vote isn't enough. A couple states drive the productive, agricultural, intellectual and economic engines of our country. In a meritocracy, these states would dictate federal policy. Instead they're subject to the capricious whims of deadbeats. Another way to put it: who really needs who?

Some players are MJ or Kobe or Lebron, some sit on the bench. That's life.

1. https://www.ers.usda.gov/faqs

[wbsss4412]

> The energy behind Trump was insane and it seemed pretty clear something was going on in the media to make it sound like only a "minority" of people supported him.

Only a minority of people did.

What’s wild about 2016 is that people seem to have bought into the narrative that because it was such an upset of the mainstream media’s expectations, that somehow that translated into an actual landslide.

Trump didn’t win the popular vote, and his actual margin in the decisive states was razor thin as well.

Did he have more passionate fans than Hilary? Clearly. But a passion vote counts the exact same amount as a “lesser of two evils” vote. See: 2020.

[rgifford]

Passion votes count the same, sure. But impassioned voters advocate for their candidates and get their friends to vote. Lesser of two evils voters don't really care like that.

It's the whole reason startups go for natural marketing. Users that naturally come upon and love your product will proselyte it more and better than anyone else.

[wbsss4412]

And yet the candidate with the more impassioned voters got significantly fewer votes in both 2016 and 2020.

[timapplesauce]

I would argue in 2020 Biden had more of the passion votes. It was passion AGAINST Trump of course, not FOR Biden.

The entire media apparatus with only a few notable exceptions worked tirelessly to undermine Trump at every opportunity and suppress negative stories about Biden. There was almost no media coverage of Biden’s obvious mental decline, lack of energy to campaign, low rally turnout, his son’s incriminating laptop, blatantly racist comments made by Biden both during his decades serving as a Senator and even during the campaign (such as the infamous “you ain’t black” comment on Charlamagne tha God’s show.

[wbsss4412]

For the record, I passionately voted against trump because of things that I watched him do, not because of media spin.

I and a lot of other people strongly disagreed with both his policies and his character, which were on plain display constantly and unfiltered on Twitter.

[wbsss4412]

I don’t deny the existence of a mainstream media bias against trump, but all of the things you listed weren’t really all that secret. I and everyone I know knew about those things and they weren’t exactly following things super close.

[Jonovono]

I'm Canadian so I was pretty removed. All i'm saying is I wasn't surprised that Trump won. I was expecting that based off of my experience.

[ZeroGravitas]

I wasn't surprised Trump won either, but then I followed 538's coverage closely which made clear that he wouldn't win the popular vote, but could well win the presidency.

[francisofascii]

So are you suggesting forecasters should factor in Reddit posts/votes and rally turnouts?

[Jonovono]

I don't care what they do.

[UncleMeat]

> All you had to do was look at Trumps subreddit vs Hilarys.

I have absolutely no idea how this could be good science.

Especially given the outcome of 2020.

[Jonovono]

Did I claim it was science? The people that used 'science' to predict the results... look at how that turned out.

[kadoban]

> Anyone paying attention was pretty certain Trump was going to win that. All you had to do was look at Trumps subreddit vs Hilarys. Look at Trumps rally turnouts.

How'd that work out in 2020?

[filoleg]

Pretty well, to be honest.

By 2020, no one was underestimating Trump anymore, and it was clear people cared enough to vote him out for real. The energy at his rallies was no longer there. His subreddit, where the massive following was making strong waves during 2016 elections, was gone. Hillary not running anymore helped as well.

And that's just the most obvious things.

[GameOfFrowns]

>How'd that work out in 2020?

In 2020, obviously senile and charisma-void, candidate Joe Biden surprisingly manifested ~81 (Edit: actually 8) million more votes than the 'second-coming of Christ' Barack Obama before him, while speaking to low double-digit audiences at his rally stops. Really makes you think.

Edit: in 2020 Biden received 81,284,000 votes , Trump 74,221,000 votes, while in 2008 Obama got 69,498,516 votes

Thanks to the user remarking on the error. It's the kind of mistake that happens when you rewrite a comment ten times.

[NearAP]

My apologies if I misunderstood your statement but I interpret it to mean that you're skeptical that Biden received a large number of votes compared to Obama.

If my interpretation is correct, then I think you're missing the big factor that conservatives and registered Republicans actively campaigned for Biden. They didn't just reject Trump, they explicitly said they were voting Biden, Campaigned for him, asked their fellow GOP members to vote Biden over Trump.

At the end of the day, you had Democrats + Independents + Conservatives voting Biden. That coalition didn't exist during Obama's time. In fact, the people who most likely voted for Romney were the people who were now voting for Biden

[wbsss4412]

Either you’re missing a comma, or you are wildly miscounting the number of votes Biden received.

[gizmo686]

If your analysis is correct, you would expect Trump to have gotten a desicive victory in the popular vote. Not only did that not happen, but he lost the popular vote by 2 points.