Support NeoGAF

[Black Mamba]

If you say the 5:1 is very easy to believe, I don't see how your post has nothing to do with the 5:1 ratio.

It's easy to believe because of the arguments I laid out. But it's a red herring, anyway.

Iowa's turnout was about the same, it has traditionally extremely high turnout at over 70%, and votes are still being counted so the 1% decreased turnout may mean nothing when all votes are in. The large swing cannot be explained except if you accept that a large number of voters switched.

Yes, it can. I already explained how. Less minority vote, more 3rd party vote, more unlikely voters explains it all away.

If the voters switched away from Obama to a third party, that still means there are issues with attracting such voters to the Democratic party.

Okay, sure, but the topic is about the notion that Obama voters voted Trump. I see no evidence. I see evidence they voted third party, however.

Multiple Ohio exit polls have indicated that Trump won amongst union voters, amongst voters that were against trade deals, and amongst voters that had economy as their top issue--these demographics went for Obama in prior exit polls. A majority of Ohioans in exit polls also viewed Obama positively. Despite Ohio turnout being down, even in rural areas I believe, Trump received more votes than Romney.

1. Exit polls are wrong. They were wrong 4 years ago, too. If the exit polls from 4 years ago were correct, then Romney's numbers should have been better. Same for Hillary this go around.

People rely on exits too much when pollsters know they're not that reliable. You talk about a shift in union voters without knowing if the exits 4 years ago overstated Obama's support there and understated Hillary's this year.

2. We don't know if this shift happened from lower turnout, new voters, or vote switching. You have provided no evidence of the cause of the shift.

Again, the point is that the margins are small that even under your 5:1 ratio, an extra 500,000 new voters means 100,000 former Obama voters not voting for Clinton, and the 100,000 is enough to win the election.

But this happens every election. Obviously, my argument isn't going to be that no voter has switched. The question is how much relative to past elections. 4 years ago some people switched from Obama to Romney, too.

If the vote switching is completely ordinary, there's no point in focusing on it at all.

Crab believes that a huge swath of working class white people switched from Obama to Romney. There is no evidence of this.

My argument is that a bunch of WWC Obama voters stayed home or voted 3rd party while and a lot of unlikely WWC voters showed up because they're racist and love Trump. We know for a fact the latter happened in Florida. I'm think the hard data out there so far supports my argument (rural turnout, demo) overall.

Yes, it's not good if these people didn't vote for Clinton. But that's not the argument I'm contesting, I'm contesting the idea that there was massive vote switching.

If you go beyond county results and look at polling precincts, extremely rural and ex-urban turnout was way up in these areas. This does not represent vote switching, it represents new unlikely voters turning out. Again, this is based on hard data, not shoddy exit polling. Non-urban cities saw depressed turnout and rural areas increased. This doesn't correlate with massive vote switching, it correlates with a shift in who is voting.

The exit polling needs to stop being used, here, because even in the rust belt, they're wrong. Hillary should have won quite easily, actually, if they're true. The error is quite massive, in fact. So they're mostly useless.

 

[numble]

If you go beyond county results and look at polling precincts, extremely rural and ex-urban turnout was way up in these areas. This does not represent vote switching, it represents new unlikely voters turning out. Again, this is based on hard data, not shoddy exit polling. Non-urban cities saw depressed turnout and rural areas increased. This doesn't correlate with massive vote switching, it correlates with a shift in who is voting.

I don't believe this is true with Ohio and Iowa.

Again, you have not presented the data besides stating it as fact (similar to stating it is a 5:1 ratio of new voters to vote switchers). If it is 50000 new voters and 10,000 Obama switchers--that wins Michigan outright.

Let's look at counties in Ohio that flipped from Obama to Trump:

Ashtabula
2012 total votes cast for President: 43,063, Obama 55%
2016 total votes: 39,866, Trump 57% - Occam's razor does not point to a surge in turnout, but rather that voters flipped

Erie
2012 total votes: 38,262, Obama 55%
2016 total votes: 36,790, Trump 52% - Occam's razor does not point to a surge in turnout, but rather that voters flipped

Lorain
2012 total votes: 138,516, Obama 55%
2016 total votes: 136,969, Trump 48% Clinton 47% - Occam's razor does not point to a surge in turnout, but rather that voters flipped

Montgomery
2012 total votes: 254,266, Obama 51%
2016 total votes: 250,273, Trump 48%

Ottawa
2012 total votes: 21,936, Obama 51%
2016 total votes: 21,778 Trump 57%

Portage
2012 total votes: 74,029, Obama 51%
2016 total votes: 74,068, Trump 53% - there were 39 more votes than 2012

And on and on...

Besides the counties that flipped, you also have many red counties where Trump won by larger margins even though turnout was similar to 2012.

I have not looked at the data for Iowa, but I would not be surprised if it is similar.

 

[numble]

My argument is that a bunch of WWC Obama voters stayed home or voted 3rd party while and a lot of unlikely WWC voters showed up because they're racist and love Trump. We know for a fact the latter happened in Florida. I'm think the hard data out there so far supports my argument (rural turnout, demo) overall.

Yes, it's not good if these people didn't vote for Clinton. But that's not the argument I'm contesting, I'm contesting the idea that there was massive vote switching.

If you go beyond county results and look at polling precincts, extremely rural and ex-urban turnout was way up in these areas. This does not represent vote switching, it represents new unlikely voters turning out. Again, this is based on hard data, not shoddy exit polling. Non-urban cities saw depressed turnout and rural areas increased. This doesn't correlate with massive vote switching, it correlates with a shift in who is voting.

The exit polling needs to stop being used, here, because even in the rust belt, they're wrong. Hillary should have won quite easily, actually, if they're true. The error is quite massive, in fact. So they're mostly useless.

This Washington Post article also says there was massive vote switching from a Democratic Party chair in Mahoning County, Ohio:

More than a quarter of the people who voted in the March Republican primary in Mahoning County were previously registered as Democrats. In fact, Betras had to kick 18 members off his own Democratic central committee for crossing over to back Trump.

Glenn Holmes is the Democratic mayor of nearby McDonald Village. He just got elected to an open state House seat with 60 percent of the vote, even as Trump carried the district. Holmes, who is African American, said it was more than just trade. Many Democrats in his district voted for Trump because they believed that Clinton wanted to confiscate their guns, supported late-term abortion and would not stop un-vetted Syrian refugees from pouring into the country. “I was able to speak more specifically to the fears and calm the fears” than Clinton could in the context of a national race, the 58-year-old explained in an interview. “Did Trump deal in misogyny and fear mongering? Sure he did. There was fear. He saw it and captured it. He won. It worked. Democrats didn’t address the fears. They dismissed them and thought people would see right through it. But that just sent the message that they didn’t care.”

Cathy Hogue, 64, helps maintain the presses at a brick factory outside Youngstown. She’s been a member of the United Steelworkers for 39 years. Many of her coworkers have only ever voted Democratic, but she said they backed Trump this time because of his position on trade. “I don’t know,” she said when asked if they’ll ever vote Democratic again. “If it’s better, then it’s better. If it’s not, then they’ll come back.”

-- Larry Gestwicki, 72, served in the Navy during Vietnam and then spent 30 years working on the assembly line at the Lordstown GM factory outside of town. He guesses that three-quarters of the current employees at the plant, where they make the Chevy Cruze, voted for Trump. “If it weren’t for the bailout, they’d all be out of jobs! It’s mind boggling,” he said. “Maybe Hillary just didn’t talk about it enough.”

He volunteered for the Clinton campaign almost every day for six months. He knocked on thousands of doors. “A lot of people told me, ‘I just want a change.’ I’d say, ‘He’s not going to bring your job back.’ But a lot of Democrats, lifelong Democrats, would reply, ‘I just want change so much,’” Getswicki recalled. Many other registered Democrats who he talked with at their doors told him they were undecided. He now believes they were lying to his face and planned to support Trump all along but just didn’t have the nerve to say so.

The stats on Mahoning County:
Total votes cast in 2012: 117,629 - Obama 63% (74,346), Romney 35% (41,712)
Total votes cast in 2016: 112,990 - Clinton 50% (56,188), Trump 47% (52,808), Johnson 2% (2,559)

I mean, Occam's razor, right? Can you really believe that 18,000+ votes disappeared (over 24% of the vote) due to decreased turnout and a rise in rural vote, or a switch to Johnson (he only had 2,559 votes)? Occam's razor says that many people switched from Obama to Trump.

 

[LakeEarth]

But a lot of Democrats, lifelong Democrats, would reply, ‘I just want change so much,’” Getswicki recalled.

This quote pisses me off so much. In 2016, 97% of the House and 90% of the Senate went to the incumbent. Where was the change there? Why didn't they they change their vote for the representatives that closer relate to them?

Shitty analogy time: It's like not liking a multiplatform videogame, and in reaction, trading your PS4 for an Wii U and then buying the same multiplatform videogame. You know it's going to be inferior, but you just wanted change so bad...

 

[numble]

This quote pisses me off so much. In 2016, 97% of the House and 90% of the Senate went to the incumbent. Where was the change there? Why didn't they they change their vote for the representatives that closer relate to them?

Shitty analogy time: It's like not liking a multiplatform videogame, and in reaction, trading your PS4 for an Wii U and then buying the same multiplatform videogame. You know it's going to be inferior, but you just wanted change so bad...

To be fair, the incumbent Republican Senator got less than 50% of the votes in Mahoning County (but the incumbent Democratic Representative got over 73% of the votes in Mahoning County).

I don't think it is hypocritical to want a different executive while supporting an incumbent legislative representative, by the way. A more appropriate analogy is wanting a change in the boss of Sony Computer Entertainment, while not wanting any changes with Sony game developers and studios.