Nate Silver:
By one measure, Wisconsin was the most important state in the nation in November. According to FiveThirtyEight’s tipping-point calculation, it was the state that put Donald Trump over the top to 270 electoral votes and the White House. (Or at least arguably it did: Pennsylvania has a competing tipping-point claim.1) So here’s an interesting question: How many times did Hillary Clinton visit Wisconsin during the general election? The answer: Zip, zilch, nada. She didn’t set foot in the Badger State after losing the Democratic primary there to Sen. Bernie Sanders in April.2
So, case closed, right? Clinton had an incompetent Electoral College strategy and maybe even blew the election because of it? Well, yes and no. She probably should have campaigned in a broader range of states. In particular, she should have spent more time in states, such as Wisconsin, where she was narrowly leading in polls but that had the potential to flip to Trump if the election tightened, as it did during the final 10 days of the campaign.
This very probably didn’t cost Clinton the election, however — and the importance of Electoral College tactics is probably overstated in general. I’m going to save that discussion for the next article in this series, but in the meantime … I come in praise of Trump’s Electoral College approach and in criticism of Clinton’s. Indeed, Trump was pretty close to having an optimal Electoral College strategy as judged by our tipping-point calculation. Clinton made a couple of mistakes, meanwhile. So did campaign reporters, who usually lauded Clinton’s strategy while maligning Trump’s, making essentially the same errors that the Clinton campaign did.
Which states did the candidates consider to be most important? Perhaps the best gauge is simply where Clinton and Trump spent their time. Clinton’s campaign (less so Trump’s) had enormous resources to spend on television advertising, enough that she probably encountered diminishing returns among swing-state voters who had seen as many of her commercials as they could stand. Candidate visits, however, are the ultimate scarce resource. No matter how much money or how many staffers you have, you’ll only have one Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
Here, then, is how the candidates distributed their time from Sept. 1 through the day before the election, based on the share of their public events that occurred in each state. (Note that Trump overall was a considerably more active campaigner than Clinton, holding 105 events to her 70 during this period.) For comparison, I’ve listed how likely each state was to be the tipping-point state, based on how it ranked on average from Sept. 1 to Nov. 7, according to our polls-only model.
One thing to notice is that Clinton and Trump’s strategies are not all that different. Clinton has been criticized for not spending enough time in Michigan, for instance, but on a percentage basis, she spent only slightly less time there than Trump did.
Still, Trump’s strategy was closer to the one we would have recommended. There were two major errors, from our standpoint, in Clinton’s approach.
Error no. 1: Clinton focused too much on close states rather than tipping-point states. On average from Sept. 1 through Nov. 7, the closest states3 in our polls-only model were Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina, Iowa and Florida.4And yet Clinton spent more time in these states than she should have. A combined 54 percent of Clinton’s events (and 47 percent of Trump’s) were held in these states, whereas there was only a 39 percent chance that one of them would be the tipping-point state.
How can it have been a mistake for Clinton to focus on these states when they were so close? In a nutshell, they weren’t “must win” states for her. On average during this period, Clinton was projected to win roughly 310 electoral votes. A slightly Republican-leaning state such as Ohio might easily have given Clinton her 300th or 320th electoral vote in the event of a clear win nationally. But others, like Pennsylvania, were more likely to provide the decisive 270th electoral vote, and that’s what the tipping-point calculation measures.
A good rule of thumb is that tipping-point states are those polling closest to the national average. Before FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress, for instance, Clinton’s lead in Michigan had been roughly 6 percentage points. She was up by about the same amount in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But she was leading nationally by about 6 points, also. Therefore, states like Michigan were actually good ones for Trump and Clinton to campaign in, on the prospect that they’d become competitive if the race tightened, as it did — better than states like Ohio or Iowa, which were closer at that moment but further from the tipping point.
It’s also the case that the best defense is sometimes a good offense. Florida and North Carolina might not have been must-win states for Clinton, but they potentially were must-wins for Trump. So it wasn’t a bad idea for her to be spending some time in them. In general, however, the correct strategy5for a candidate with an overall Electoral College lead can be surprisingly conservative, involving spending time and money in states that seem fairly safe but that could slip in the event of a shift in the race or systematic polling error. In Clinton’s case, that would have included more time in states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Colorado.
Error no. 2: Clinton was overconfident and campaigned in too narrow a range of states. Clinton played a considerably narrower map than Trump did. In addition to Wisconsin, she also skipped Virginia, Minnesota and New Mexico during the closing stages of the campaign; Trump visited all of those states. And she spent much less time than he did in Colorado.
I see Maxine Waters is calling for Trumps impeachment Oh what ground may i ask Mrs Waters? You have no reason or authority to impeach Trump since he hasnt dont anything to warent impeachment ecept to uphold the same U.S. Constitution you liberal demacrats are always violating and frankly Obama did more to warent his own impeachment but you and your fellow demacrooks just laid back and did nothing and furthermore You and your fellow demacrooks need to leave americ and never return
Sure he did. Here are the figures showing Trump’s margin of victory in three critical states, along with the number of voters who were rightly or wrongly purged from the registration rolls in each state as a result of the republican’s multi-state Interstate Crosscheck program:
Crosscheck in action:
Trump victory margin in Michigan: 13,107
Michigan Crosscheck purge list: 449,922
Trump victory margin in Arizona: 85,257
Arizona Crosscheck purge list: 270,824
Trump victory margin in North Carolina: 177,008
North Carolina Crosscheck purge list: 589,393
Those three states alone were sufficient to change the outcome of the electoral college vote. In all, 27 states were part of the Interstate Crosscheck program—nearly all republican. People of color were purged at a much higher rate than white voters. Purging was done in some states based entirely on name matches, disregarding differing middle initials, and sometimes ignoring dates of birth and SSNs entirely. Consider how common some first and last name combinations are among minority populations.
Jim Crow Returns
@Greg:
Looks to me like the tip of the iceberg of democrat vote fraud. Michigan? They couldn’t even DO a recount because of the fraud in Detroit and Flint. Illinois-the most corrupt (worse the California) state in the union. Interesting how many governors and other elected officials “retire” to the pen! And if you think Republicans kept blacks from voting, maybe you need to take a real look at the democrat party, including even a democrat Senator that was a kleagle in the klan.
Just more garbage from greg…
greg struggles to make a substantive point much less convince anyone to agree with him.
greg is a boring troll who totes the party line regardless of the idiocy.
His responses are predictable.
In every instance where he is wrong(all instances), he abandons the topic never to attempt to argue the point.
That would be an ad hominem attack—a logical fallacy that you rely on regularly, when you haven’t got squat with which to rebut a factual argument.
Even after purging hundreds of thousands—or perhaps even more—entirely legitimate names from voter rolls while “tidying up” the records,even after the bullshit with Russian hackers, Wikipedia, endless investigations coming up empty, and bogus rumors strategically released by unidentified tools inside the FBI, Trump still lost the popular election by nearly 3 million votes, and won the electoral vote only by squeaking by in a handful of state elections. That sticks in his craw, so we’ve got to have our intelligence repeatedly insulted with the patently absurd claim that over 3 million fraudulent votes were cast by illegal aliens, or dead people, or whatever, for his opponent.
He should drop the claim. You should stop repeating this nonsense. Then you wouldn’t have people such as myself pointing out how totally ludicrous it is.
Of course, the entire point is probably to serve as distraction.
What is hillary doing today?
puxatawnyhill came out today and saw her shadow.
Eight more years with President Trump as President.
Hillary was too ill and didnt have the energy to campaign strongly, she also relied on the press to carry her water and they failed to put together an effective platform, “she Aint Trump” didnt work. The real fail was making her a victim at a debate, ooh he was stalking her on the stage, intimidating her. Her goofy feminist pals buried her, who wants a sick weak old woman that can be intimidated by a “reality show host”
The fly, the toiletseat collar pantsuit, then the polls OMG the polls, why even bother shes got this….
And yes the electoral, why worry about a handful of low numbers 10 measly votes for WI, but this is how the deficit works 10 here 12 there and suddenly you are under water.
If the woman that ran Trumps election was working for a Democrat the libs would be looking to put her face on a coin.
But they had ol cheater Debbie, and Podesta king of p@ssw0rds.
A Tarrant County jury on Thursday sentenced a Mexican woman to eight years in jail a day after convicting her of two counts of illegal voting by a non-citizen. She will also have to pay an $8,000 fine. During the trial, prosecutors showed that Rosa Maria Ortega — a 37-year-old Mexican national who public records show has lived in the Dallas area since she was 15 — falsely claimed U.S. citizenship on a voter registration form and voted five times between 2004 and 2014 …
@Greg: I can’t believe that you are actually snivelling about illegal and dead Dimocrats being purged from the voters list prior to the election. Just look at how many more illegal votes Hillary would have gotten than the millions of illegal votes that she still received anyhow.
@Greg:
Wow, so Trump had the legitimately registered Dimocrat voters removed from the voting list? I believe you pulled that fact straight out of your a$$. And I see you still think Trump ‘lost the popular election” Well, the last time I looked, Trump has the name POTUS behind his name so I hardly think he ‘lost’. The ‘popular’ voting was for president, and as such, I think the winner got 306 votes and the loser got 232. The election was not decided by some ‘other’ vote. Just electoral. Do you suppose Hillary would have thought she was the ‘winner’ had she received 306 electoral votes and Trump 232? I do. So it’s the Dims problem that they didn’t understand the rules of the game.
@July 4th American:
We know what she’s NOT doing. Serving as POTUS. Because she LOST the election.
an “ad homosexual‘ attack?
How’s that full repeal of Obamacare coming along? They’ve got their Congressional majority and they’ve got Mr. Rubber Stamp in the White House. They’ve really got that secret replacement plan they claimed they had, don’t they? They should. They’ve had 7 years to work on it. So, what’s the hold up?
@July 4th American:
but….but….uh, uh….butt there is no such thing as ‘illegal’ voters…. uh, uh…..but….
@Greg:
As of 5 hours ago, Trump has been in office 3 weeks. Rome wasn’t built in a day, it took the Dims 8 years to get it this screwed up, it’ll take a little longer to un ravel the mess. Besides, it’s Obozo’s fault. Remember it was Bush’s fault as long as Obozo was in office, now it’s his fault as long as Trump is in office.