Candidate |
Party |
Electoral Votes |
Popular Votes |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
✓ |
Donald J. Trump |
Republican |
304 |
62,980,160 |
|
Hillary R. Clinton |
Democratic |
227 |
65,845,063 |
||
Gary Johnson |
Libertarian |
0 |
4,488,931 |
||
Jill Stein |
Green |
0 |
1,457,050 |
||
Evan McMullin |
Independent |
0 |
728,830 |
The United States presidential election of 2016 was the 58th quadrennial American presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. The Republican ticket of businessman Donald Trump and Indiana Governor Mike Pence defeated the Democratic ticket of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senator from Virginia Tim Kaine.
While Clinton received about 2.9 million more votes nationwide, a margin of 2.1% of the total cast, Trump won a victory in the Electoral College, winning 30 states with 306 pledged electors out of 538, and overturned the perennial swing states of Florida, Iowa and Ohio, as well as the "blue wall" of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which had been Democratic strongholds in presidential elections since the 1990s. Leading up to the election, a Trump victory was projected unlikely by most media forecasts.
2016 Election Facts
Issues of the Day: Health care costs, Economic inequality, Terrorism, Foreign policy (Russia, Iran, Syria, Brexit), Gun control, Treatment of minorities, Immigration policy, Shifting media landscape
One of only 5 elections (1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, 2016) where the popular vote winner was defeated
Hillary Clinton first female presidential nominee of a major political party
Clinton won Maine but Trump earned an electoral vote by winning the popular vote in the 2nd Congressional District. This marked the first time that Maine has split its electoral vote since it moved away from the winner-take-all method in 1972.
Independent Evan McMullin received 21.5% of the vote in Utah; best '3rd party' performance in any single state since Ross Perot in 1992
Libertarian Gary Johnson received over 3% of the nationwide vote; best 3rd party performance nationwide since Ross Perot in 1996
There were seven faithless presidential electors. Aside from 1872 - death of Horace Greeley - it is the greatest number since electors began casting one vote each for president and vice president (12th Amendment, 1804). Three additional faithless votes, one each in Colorado, Maine and Minnesota, were disallowed.
Clinton won Washington; however three electors cast votes for Colin Powell, one for Faith Spotted Eagle
Trump won Texas; however one elector cast a vote for Ron Paul, another for John Kasich
Clinton won Hawaii; however one elector cast a vote for Bernie Sanders
(2016 1)
Overall, whites with a four-year college degree or more education made up 30% of all validated voters. Among these voters, far more (55%) said they voted for Clinton than for Trump (38%). Among the much larger group of white voters who had not completed college (44% of all voters), Trump won by more than two-to-one (64% to 28%).
There also were large differences in voter preferences by gender, age and marital status. Women were 13 percentage points more likely than men to have voted for Clinton (54% among women, 41% among men). The gender gap was particularly large among validated voters younger than 50. In this group, 63% of women said they voted for Clinton, compared with just 43% of men. Among voters ages 50 and older, the gender gap in support for Clinton was much narrower (48% vs. 40%).
About half (52%) of validated voters were married; among them, Trump had a 55% to 39% majority. Among unmarried voters, Clinton led by a similar margin (58% to 34%).
Just 13% of validated voters in 2016 were younger than 30. Voters in this age group reported voting for Clinton over Trump by a margin of 58% to 28%, with 14% supporting one of the third-party candidates. Among voters ages 30 to 49, 51% supported Clinton and 40% favored Trump. Trump had an advantage among 50- to 64-year-old voters (51% to 45%) and those 65 and older (53% to 44%).
Voter choice and party affiliation were nearly synonymous. Republican validated voters reported choosing Trump by a margin of 92% to 4%, while Democrats supported Clinton by 94% to 5%. The roughly one-third (34%) of the electorate who identified as independent or with another party divided their votes about evenly (43% Trump, 42% Clinton).
…
Virtually all validated voters with consistently liberal values voted for Clinton over Trump (95% to 2%), while nearly all those with consistently conservative values went for Trump (98% to less than 1% for Clinton). Those who held conservative views on most political values (“mostly conservative”) favored Trump by 87% to 7%, while Clinton received the support of somewhat fewer among those who were “mostly liberal” (78%-13%). Among the nearly one-third of voters whose ideological profile was mixed, the vote was divided (48% Trump, 42% Clinton).
As in previous elections, voters in 2016 were sharply divided along religious lines. Protestants constituted about half of the electorate and reported voting for Trump over Clinton by a 56% to 39% margin. Catholics were more evenly divided; 52% reported voting for Trump, while 44% said they backed Clinton. Conversely, a solid majority of the religiously unaffiliated – atheists, agnostics and those who said their religion was “nothing in particular” – said they voted for Clinton (65%) over Trump (24%).
Within the Protestant tradition, voters were divided by race and evangelicalism. White evangelical Protestants, who constituted one out of every five voters, consistently have been among the strongest supporters of Republican candidates and supported Trump by a 77% to 16% margin.
This is nearly identical to the 78% to 16% advantage that Mitt Romney held over Barack Obama among white evangelicals in Pew Research Center polling on the eve of the 2012 presidential election.
Among white mainline Protestants (15% of voters overall) 57% said they voted for Trump and 37% reported voting for Clinton. Clinton won overwhelmingly among black Protestants (96% vs. 3% for Trump).
White non-Hispanic Catholics supported Trump by a ratio of about two-to-one (64% to 31%), while Hispanic Catholics favored Clinton by an even larger 78% to 19% margin.
Among all voters, those who reported attending services at least weekly favored Trump by a margin of 58% to 36%; the margin was similar among those who said they attended once or twice a month (60% to 38%). Those who reported attending services a few times a year or seldom were divided; 51% supported Clinton and 42% supported Trump. Among the nearly one-quarter of voters (23%) who said they never attend religious services, Clinton led Trump by 61% to 3o%.
…
In 2016, a 61% majority of those who said they voted for Clinton were women, while Trump voters were more evenly divided between men and women. Whites constituted nearly nine-in-ten (88%) of Trump’s supporters, compared with a smaller majority (60%) who voted for Clinton. Clinton’s voters also were younger than Trump’s on average (48% were younger than 50, compared with 35% for Trump).
Among Clinton voters, 43% were college graduates, compared with 29% of Trump voters. And while non-college whites made up a majority of Trump’s voters (63%), they constituted only about a quarter of Clinton’s (26%).
About a third of Clinton voters (32%) lived in urban areas, versus just 12% among Trump voters. By contrast, 35% of Trump voters said they were from a rural area; among Clinton voters, 19% lived in a rural community.
The religious profile of the two candidates’ voters also differed considerably. About a third of Clinton voters (35%) were religiously unaffiliated, as were just 14% of Trump voters. White evangelical voters made up a much greater share of Trump’s voters (34%) than Clinton’s (7%). One-in-five Trump voters (20%) were white non-Hispanic Catholics, compared with just 9% of Clinton voters. And black Protestants were 14% of Clintons supporters, while almost no black Protestants in the survey reported voting for Trump (Examination 2-5).
The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety.
There are, inevitably, miseries to come: an increasingly reactionary Supreme Court; an emboldened right-wing Congress; a President whose disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency, has been repeatedly demonstrated. Trump is vulgarity unbounded, a knowledge-free national leader who will not only set markets tumbling but will strike fear into the hearts of the vulnerable, the weak, and, above all, the many varieties of Other whom he has so deeply insulted. The African-American Other. The Hispanic Other. The female Other. The Jewish and Muslim Other. The most hopeful way to look at this grievous event—and it’s a stretch—is that this election and the years to follow will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve.
All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering (Remnick 1, 2).
Works cited:
2016 Presidential Election.” 270 to Win. Web. https://www.270towin.com/2016_Election/
An Examination of the 2016 electorate, Based on Validated Voters.” The Pew Research Center, August 9, 2018. Web. https://www.people-press.org/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/
Remnick, David, “An American Tragedy.” The New Yorker, November 9, 2016. Web. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/an-american-tragedy-2
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