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*FACTS: VOTE TOTALS AND VOTER TURNOUT* *Total number of votes cast: 126,709,939 million* Clinton: 60,555,017 -- 47.79% of votes cast Trump: 60,088,797 -- 47.42% of votes cast Johnson: 4,131,788 -- 3.26% of votes cast Stein: 1,236,811 -- 0.97% of votes cast Others: 690,526 -- 0.54% of votes cast Parsing it; Nearly half of eligible voters (231,556,622 people eligible vote) did not vote in the 2016 presidential election, according to data of early turnout rates compiled by the United States Election Project <http://www.electproject.org/2016g> and crunched by Josh Nelson <https://twitter.com/SSS_joshnelson>. The full results may not be available until two weeks. The data found that of the U.S. population: · *45.35% (or 105 million eligible voters) didn't vote * · *26.15% of all eligible voters voted for Hillary Clinton * · *25.95% of all eligible voters voted for Donald Trump * It wasn't the lowest turnout in history, however. About 49 percent of eligible voters did not participate in the 1996 election, in which Democratic candidate Bill Clinton beat Republican candidate Bob Dole. For the *swing states*, tallied by Jason Andrews <https://twitter.com/elgato7664/status/796406096751689729>: · 36.5% didn't vote · 29.9% voted for Clinton · 30.9% voted for Trump · 1.9% voted Johnson Again, the abstention vote was the largest voting bloc: 105 million eligible voters stayed home on Election Day. Trump was elected with 25.5% of the eligible voters. Not only did he not win the popular vote, he garnered the votes of just one-fourth of the eligible voters. * * * * * * * * * * *Obama’s Vanished Coalition (by Jack Rasmus)* Trump’s election can be traced to the shift in key groups of voters who had supported Obama in 2008 and who gave Obama his ‘one more chance’ to do something in 2012, and who were deeply disappointed when he failed to do so since 2012. At the forefront of these groups was the white non-college educated working class, especially those concentrated in the great lakes industrial states in that geographic ‘arc’ from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin. This group not only turned from Democrats but turned to Trump—as they had in 1980 as the so-called ‘Reagan Democrats’—in response to another economic crisis of the 1970s during which they were also abandoned by the Democratic Party. Clinton 2016 thus lost key swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, and Michigan that helped put Obama ‘over the top’ a second time in those states. Another important voter group that delivered for Obama in 2012 and did not for Clinton in 2016 in similar percentages were Latinos. They voted by a margin of 44% for Obama 2012, but only 36% for Clinton. Apparently, Trump insults of Latinos were less important than Obama deportation policies in recent years. Women voters were supposed to vote overwhelmingly for Clinton, but white women aged 45 and over did not. And 75 million ‘millennials, 34 and under, were driven away by Clinton and the Democratic Party’s treatment of the Sanders campaign during the primaries and by offering no solution to the hopeless scenario of insecure, low pay service jobs in exchange for record student debt. In short, white non-college educated workers abandoned the Democrats, while other groups simply ‘stayed home’ and did not vote in the numbers they previously had in 2012. One final statistic worth considering: Over 95 percent of jobs created during the “recovery” have gone to college-educated workers, while those with a high school diploma or less are being left behind. A report published by Georgetown University reveals that those with at least some college education have captured 11.5 million of the 11.6 million jobs created during the recovery – again, mostly jobs without benefits, unions, job security. * * * * * * * * * * *ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTE* Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. In any democracy respecting the fundamental democratic principle of “one-person, one-vote, Clinton should have been elected president. This was not to be. For the second time in 16 years, a Democratic Party candidate won the popular vote (in 2000 it was Al Gore) but lost the election. While Trump lost the national popular vote by more than 400,000 votes (absolute final tally is not yet in), he won the Electoral Collge by a wide margin: 58%, or 308 delegates, for Trump vs. 42%, for 230 delegates, for Clinton. Why this disparity? Why this blatantly anti-democratic setup that denies One Person, One Vote? The Electoral College is an 18th Century holdover written into the Constitution “to prevent mob rule” – which is the term that the “founding fathers” used to justify the Electoral College. The college was written into the Constitution of 1787. The Electoral College provides a winner-takes-all formula for the selection of delegates – meaning that all the delegates in the state go to the candidate who wins a majority of the popular vote in that state. This disenfranchises all voters who voted for the candidates who did not win. It gives undue influence to smaller states, where voters in mainly rural areas with more conservative voters have a proportionately higher ratio of electoral college delegates. It also disenfranchises third parties, who have little chance of winning a majority in the state but who might be able to cast significant numbers of votes. It is a system that is undemocratic through and through. * * * * * ** A word about the abstentionists and others prevented from voting* Most Democratic Party pollsters had projected a Hillary Clinton victory based on a projected voter turnout of 136 million. Early polls had suggested that this would be the expected turnout. But the total voter turnout was far less than expected; 126 million votes cast -- or roughly 10 million votes short of most projections. In 2008, the total number of votes cast was 131 million; in 2012 the total number was 129 million. The number of registered voters in 2008 was almost 50 million votes lower; in 2012 it was roughly 27 million votes lower. What accounts for the lower-than-expected voter turnout? Some liberal newspapers and online blogs such as Politico, attribute this to the voter anger at both the Republican and Democratic candidates. Many people just voted with their feet and stayed home. They also point out that the Black vote was lower than expected because of the distrust in Hillary Clinton but also because in some states, such as North Carolina, the Republican officials imposed new restrictive voting laws targeting African American voters specifically. These laws restricted access to early voting. And let's not forget the "felony disenfranchisement" in countless states -- that is, the New Jim Crow laws that ban prisoners and ex-felons from voting. The total is 3.9 million people who could otherwise vote. This is 13% of the adult Black male population. Democratic Party lashes out at abstentionists and third party voters: Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, gained great notoriety when – to protest the continued police killings of Black youth – he refused to stand during the pre-game rendition of the national anthem. He took a knee instead. Kaepernick’s protest went further. In an interview prior to the election, he explained that he had no plans to vote. Speaking about the third debate between Clinton and Trump, he stated: “I watched a little bit of it. To me it was embarrassing to watch that these two are our candidates. At this point, the election is a choice between the lesser of two evils. But in the end it’s still evil.” Kaepernick was raked over the coals by the sports media, the Democratic Party, and the political establishment. They accused Kaepernick of poisoning the minds of Black youth against the political system. The Democrats also went out of their way to discourage people from voting for third parties, arguing that a vote for a third party was a vote for Trump. Now the refrain that was used to denounce Ralph Nader is being used to denounce Jill Stein of the Green Party. She is accused of denying the vote to Clinton in two swing states, which also happens not to be true. It’s called blaming everyone but yourself. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
