"November Surprise" - Clinton wins Cobb by 6,800 votes in loss of Georgia (school, party)

[fourthwarden]

We really aught to transition into ranked voting system, and we need a neutral, 3rd party audit of our voting districts. This would eliminate the 2-party system, and allow for easy methods to assign representation based on the true views of the population. For example, a person might, at first, vote for Johnson, but then have their second choice for president be Trump or Hillary (or Stein). As soon as Johnson was eliminated from the race, that person's vote would be cast to their second choice, retaining their views and wants and a voting member.

I'm all for retaining representation for people even without them necessarily being a large portion of the population, but that's what the House and Senate are for. The President, as the LEADER of the country, aught to represent the MAJORITY of the country. Therefore, we aught to shift our system to a ranked-voting method, with majority choice for president.

Let the House and Senate disproportionately represent the rest of the country, if you still demand such a thing, but there are also better ways to mark a state's representatives to better match the political ideas within that state.

[Mutiny77]

Originally Posted by ccdscott

On topic, it's huge that she won Cobb, even if it was a Rubio stronghold. Many, many conservatives live up there and that shows me the HRC ground game worked to an extent where her message broke through. Hopefully this is a sign to come, and as Cobb keeps moving left, again, this bodes well for the Democrats in the New South. Counties like Cobb all over the South (outside of Charlotte, Nashville, Birmingham) are going to be moved to the left with all of the demographic changes and people simply getting fed up with suburban solutions for increasingly urban problems.

Had Hillary actually campaigned in Georgia (specifically the northern Atlanta 'burbs), Trump probably still would have won but the margin would have been significantly slimmer IMO.

[TheTravelinMan]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

No. I voted for Johnson. I vote for Johnson is a vote for Johnson. It does not count for Trump. How hard is that to comprehend?

When there are only two candidates with a chance of winning if you don't vote for one you voted for the other.

[jas75]

As a Cobb County resident, it's no surprise that Trump's performance fell far short here of previous Republican presidential candidates. The Cobb County of 2016 is very diverse demographically and has educational and income levels far above national averages.

The slogan of 'Make America Great Again' itself aligns better with the sentiment of stagnant, economically depressed areas which have little in common with of our section of the Atlanta suburbs. Had Republicans chosen a more typical nominee like Kasich or Rubio, they would have likely had no problem in Cobb and similar counties given Clinton's liabilities. Of course they may not have flipped states like PA and WI as Trump achieved - but if our president-elect's governance is consistent with his campaigning, affluent suburban areas may indeed realign towards the Democrats. And the next D nominee isn't plagued with the type of baggage that Clinton holds, I think Rs are going to need a lot more than their 2016 rural/rust belt coalition to win the presidency.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by TheTravelinMan

When there are only two candidates with a chance of winning if you don't vote for one you voted for the other.

Which is a absolute s**t system.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by TheTravelinMan

When there are only two candidates with a chance of winning if you don't vote for one you voted for the other.

Wrong. If my vote goes to neither, it does not count to either of them. It doesn't matter who has a chance of winning. What matters is who gets that vote. If neither candidate gets my vote, then that is a vote that they don't get.

[bogans]

Originally Posted by BR Valentine

Actually the Dems wouldn't have done so in the electoral college. One of the writers at National Review took Obama's 2012 vote totals and matched them state by state with Trump's 2016 numbers. Trump's vote works out to 273 - 265 elctoral victory while Trump would lose the popular vote in that scenario. The key to Trump's victory was significantly outperforming Romney among white voters in states such as PA, MI and WI. Those states all have such large white majorities among the electorate that if you do what Trump did in PA (209k more votes than Romney) you can outnumber (just barely) the vote in southeastern PA. Even with Obama's 2012 vote total Trump still wins PA. In fact Clinton did something Obama didn't, swept all four suburban Philly counties, and she still lost. I've spent a lot of time in PA this fall in areas that went decisively for Trump and in the Philly area as well. I kept wondering if it were possible to build up such a large advantage everywhere outside of SEPA that a candidate could win the state and it turns out the answer is yes.

Regarding turnout generally speaking it was depressed broadly because both candidates were so unappealing to so many people. In MI almost 111k ballots were cast with no selection for president. That number has to be unprecedented and that's in a state where the outcome was decided by less than 15k votes.

Regarding Trump in GA, he ever so slightly underperformed Romney statewide. Someone else in this thread mentioned Trump outperforming in the outer suburbs / exurbs. Trumps share of the vote was lower than Romney's in every county surrounding the core metro counties. The changes mostly seem to align with demographic changes. He ran a couple points behind Romeny in Coweta and Paulding which aren't experiencing rapid change, but Trump did about 8 or 9 points worse (Clinton was 7 points better than Obama 2012) in Forsyth.

Given demographic trends Goergia could turn purplish, but the Dems have got to start fielding stronger candidates in statewide elections if they have any hope of making that happen. It would help the Dems in GA if there was a thorough house cleaning among national party leadership as well.

Maybe I'm missing something:

Obama 2012
Penn - 2,990,274
Wisconsin - 1,620,985
Michigan - 2,564,569
New Hampshire - 369,561
Ohio - 2,827,710
Arizona - 1,025,232
Iowa - 822,544

Trump - 2016
Penn - 2,912,941
Wisconsin - 1,409,467
Michigan - 2,279,210
New Hampshire - 245,464
Ohio - 2,771,984
Arizona - 972,900
Iowa - 798,923

How can you say Trump would have won the electoral college over Obama in 2012? The only state Trump could have taken from Obama in 2012 was Florida. I checked every state Obama won in 2012 against Trump's totals. These are the swing states and midwest states above. Obama wins them all. Losing Florida's 29 he actually wins Arizona's 11. Obama 2012 beats Trump 2016 314 - 224 in electoral votes. He also gets 6M more total votes. Go back to 2008 and he had even more votes. Arjay is right. If Democrats mobilize their base like they did under Obama, they win easily.

[green_mariner]

If there are 4 candidates on the ballot, there are 4 people to vote for, regardless of their chances of winning. You are not directly voting for the President. Your vote goes to your representative. Your representative picks who to vote for based on who got the most votes. If you vote for a
candidate other than the one your representative picks, then your vote didn't contribute to your representative's decision.

[TheTravelinMan]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

Wrong. If my vote goes to neither, it does not count to either of them. It doesn't matter who has a chance of winning. What matters is who gets that vote. If neither candidate gets my vote, then that is a vote that they don't get.

Thats all very nice for high school civics class however here in the real world any vote that doesn't go into Clintons column is in effect a vote for Trump

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by TheTravelinMan

Thats all very nice for high school civics class however here in the real world any vote that doesn't go into Clintons column is in effect a vote for Trump

Wrong. If a vote does not go for either Clinton or Trump, then who does it go to? If Trump doesn't get my vote, then that is one less vote he gets. If Clinton doesn't get my vote, then that is one less that she gets. It's about total numbers. Besides, I don't make the final decision, the elector does. If I don't mark "Trump" on the ballot, then the elector can't make a decision based on my vote. He/she can only make a decision based on the number of votes a candidate got.