Thursday, November 10, 2016

Trump Beats Hillary 46 to 48%

There's a lot to say about the election of Donald J. Trump, but maybe less is more. Today I'll constrain myself to a comment on the process, in which a man who got fewer of the votes was selected president--the second time in the last five contests. It's not only at the Presidential level. In the Senate, Dems have won 53% of the votes over the past three elections (since Senators are elected for a six-year cycle, that captures the elections of all current Senators, minus deaths etc), while winning exactly the same number of seats. I haven't seen numbers for the House, but in 2014, they won 57% of the seats but just 53% of the votes. And of course in 2012, House Republicans won a majority of seats but a minority of votes.

The Republican Party now controls both chambers of Congress and the White House despite being a minority party. When Donald Trump said the elections were rigged, he wasn't wrong. They were rigged back in the 18th century, however, to give slave-owning white Southern men disproportionate influence in government. The rigging has been with us a long time.

Update. As of December 2, Hillary is leading by 2,547,490 votes, or 1.9 percentage points. Title updated to reflect this evolution.

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