# It's official: Hillary lost MI, PA, WI by less than the Jill Stein vote in those states

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Created:** [December 13, 2016, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628 "2016-12-13T18:26:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2016, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/21 "2016-12-13T21:35:00Z")

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And if we had made it illegal to vote for 3rd party candidates maybe the 4 times as many people who voted for Johnson and not Stein would have all voted for Trump. Or maybe they would have been split and cancelled out the Stein voters. Johnson got around 150,000 votes in PA. 105,000 or so in WI, etc. You can’t cherry pick the Stein vote and say that’s the reason why. What about the Johnson voters? Or the Harambe voters?

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**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2016, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/22 "2016-12-13T22:06:58Z")

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> [@BobLibDem](#):
>
> Yeah, those protest votes for Stein made the difference.

I doubt that. If they hadn’t voted for Stein they would have not voted or written in “The Bernster”

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**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2016, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/23 "2016-12-13T22:26:27Z")

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Just for the record, Clinton got 1,382,210 votes in Wisconsin. In 2012, Obama got 1,620,985.

Clinton got 2,825,767 in Pennsylvania. In 2012 Obama got 2,990,274.

Clinton got 2,268,839 votes in Michigan. In 2012 Obama got 2,564,569.

Clinton got 653,669 votes in Iowa. In 2012 Obama got 822,544.

If Clinton had held, _just held_, Obama’s vote in those four states, she would have 284 electoral votes and we wouldn’t have all these threads.

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**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2016, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/24 "2016-12-13T22:45:44Z")

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> [@RTFirefly](#):
>
> Well sure, Hillary should have focused on those 132,000 votes out of 136,700,000, because it should have been obvious the whole time that they’d have made the difference.

No, the point is that Hillary is not owed anyone’s votes and if she didn’t get the number she needed, that is _her_ fault, not the voter’s for honestly expressing who they want to be president.

And I’m not sure if you noticed, but the “Stein voters handed the election to Trump” talk started around February. Hillary, and all her supporters, knew who they were going to blame before the election even started.

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**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2016, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/25 "2016-12-13T23:07:41Z")

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> [@RTFirefly](#):
>
> Too lazy to dig it up now, but the exit polls did identify white evangelical/born-agains, who went for Trump by an 81-16 margin, IIRC.
> 
> If white evangelicals/born-agains were 25% of this year’s electorate, then the ones who voted for Trump were about 20.25% of the electorate. Considering that 46% of the voters voted for Trump, that means that about 44% of Trump voters were white evangelicals. He couldn’t have done it without them.

Thanks for the clarification

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**Author:** ![Yersenia\_Pestis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e495f1/32.png) [@Yersenia\_Pestis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yersenia_Pestis)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2016, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/26 "2016-12-13T23:11:31Z")

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This doesn’t really matter - the 2016 voters decided to literally vote for someone who will do nothing to help their health, economy, planet. This is classic shooting yourself in the foot situation- my advice is to vote in 2yrs, hunker down for the shitstorm and video the again in 4.

As much as I would like to think things like Russian hacking played a role here, I think it’s very minor - this was about brainwashed white people voting for whom their propaganda wanted them to vote for, they are about to get fucked so let them - hopefully they will wake up in the next election

Ugh, heck even some dopers (very sad) fell for the con - how pathetic

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**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2016, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/27 "2016-12-13T23:52:20Z")

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Don’t the Greens get a certain amount of the vote every election? That’s sort of the background noise that you should assume is there and that you need to make sure you can clear.

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**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/28 "2016-12-14T00:01:56Z")

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> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> Don’t the Greens get a certain amount of the vote every election? That’s sort of the background noise that you should assume is there and that you need to make sure you can clear.

She got more than twice as many votes this time.

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**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/29 "2016-12-14T00:06:31Z")

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> [@Loach](#):
>
> She got more than twice as many votes this time.

Which is a fairly predictable result of running two wildly-unpopular major-party candidates.

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**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/30 "2016-12-14T01:01:58Z")

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> [@Loach](#):
>
> She got more than twice as many votes this time.

Note to self as a Democratic Presidential Candidate: _Be sure you take into account that the Greens will get 2x their normal vote, just to be safe. This is to be expected._

And, yes, the GOP candidate has to do something similar wrt 3rd party candidates who might get votes they’d normally get in a simple, two-party race.

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**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/31 "2016-12-14T01:53:09Z")

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> [@DrCube](#):
>
> No, the point is that Hillary is not owed anyone’s votes and if she didn’t get the number she needed, that is _her_ fault, not the voter’s for honestly expressing who they want to be president.

If my choices at a restaurant are a day-old chicken salad sandwich or a shit sandwich; there will surely be some people who hold out for lobster Thermador with fair trade quinoa. And when those holdouts get a shit sandwich instead of their wildest desires, one has good reason to question what the hell they were thinking.

Only in this scenario, these holdouts were unfortunately ordering for the whole room. Yum.

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**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/32 "2016-12-14T03:37:52Z")

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> [@HurricaneDitka](#):
>
> Am I reading it wrong? Where did you find out that only 25% of voters are White evangelical or born-again Christians? (I’m not disputing it, the % sounds about right to me, I’m just genuinely curious where you got the number from)

It’s been answered previously…but just to give the cite, since I realize that my original NYTimes version did not break down the percentage of the electorate that fell into each category: [Exit Polls 2016](http://www.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls) (The 25% that I remembered was actually 26%.)

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**Author:** ![Flying\_Rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/858c86/32.png) [@Flying\_Rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flying_Rabbit)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/33 "2016-12-14T11:27:39Z")

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Trump did rallies in towns where the steel industry had died and promised them that he would bring back days when the American steel industry was thriving and coal mining jobs and make America great again. Hillary told them she would create jobs with new technology, and replace coal with clean energy innovation— Hillary did not say the things they wanted to hear.

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**Author:** ![Jane\_Smythe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f04885/32.png) [@Jane\_Smythe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jane_Smythe)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/34 "2016-12-14T12:06:56Z")

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> [@Flying\_Rabbit](#):
>
> Trump did rallies in towns where the steel industry had died and promised them that he would bring back days when the American steel industry was thriving and coal mining jobs and make America great again. Hillary told them she would create jobs with new technology, and replace coal with clean energy innovation— **Hillary did not say the things they wanted to hear**.

Exactly She told the truth. Trump cannot make good on that promise, not on most, if not all, of his promises.

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/35 "2016-12-14T12:18:49Z")

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> [@Evan\_Drake](#):
>
> Still, if only the Clintonistas could have winnowed out from voting _all_ those who planned not to vote for Clinton, including the Greens, Trumpsters and Sanderites, Hillary would have got her LANDSLIDE !

What we needed was for a competent centrist, e.g. Romney or Bloomberg, to run as an independent candidate. Many Trump voters were very reluctant and would have seized the chance to pull the lever for someone like that. Unfortunately, the two top 3rd partiers, Johnson and Stein, were just clowns.

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**Author:** ![doorhinge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/36 "2016-12-14T13:22:34Z")

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> [@RTFirefly](#):
>
> It’s official: Hillary lost MI, PA, WI by less than the Jill Stein vote in those states
> 
> I won’t go so far as to say that Jill Stein put Trump in the White House, because absent her and her party’s name on the ballot, who knows how many of her voters would have voted for Hillary, how many would have stayed home, or how many would have voted for someone else.
> 
> But still, JFTR, since the totals from those three key states [are now official](http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/tuesdays-campaign-round-121316):
> 
> PA: Hillary lost by 44,292 votes, Stein got 49,941 votes.
> 
> WI: Hillary lost by 22,177 votes, Stein got 31,006.
> 
> MI: Hillary lost by 10,704 votes, Stein got 51,463.

So it’s official. Jill Stein and the Green Party, cost Hillary and the DNC her last chance at being President of the U.S… I can actually say that I’ve never been prouder of her. 😉

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**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/37 "2016-12-14T13:46:07Z")

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How many voters went for Johnson? If there was not a Libertarian ticket available, would those voters have stayed home or voted for Clinton or voted for Trump? My guess is that the net would have been Trump and Clinton would have lost by even more.

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**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/38 "2016-12-14T14:27:14Z")

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> [@BobLibDem](#):
>
> Gun control wasn’t one of them, as there where ZERO people who didn’t vote for her but otherwise would have were it not for gun control.

Disagree. I saw plenty of people saying that they were voting against Hillary based solely on her perceived antipathy to the Second Amendment. I suspect our own \*\*Bone \*\*was among them, though he’s in California and it can’t have made much difference.

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**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/39 "2016-12-14T14:51:28Z")

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A [Washington Post article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/13/3-election-stats-liberals-love-that-dont-mean-as-much-as-they-seem/?utm_term=.828bc37cd30d) disputes that Stein cost Clinton the election noting that a majority of Stein voters told exit polls in Michigan that they would have stayed home rather than vote for Clinton or (the horror) they would have voted Trump.

> [@](#):
>
> Exit polls showed 60 percent of Stein backers said they would have stayed home if she weren’t on the ballot. Among the rest, Clinton led by about a 2-to-1 margin — 27-13, to be specific — but Trump took a fair amount of voters.

So the polling indicates that Clinton would not have picked up enough votes to win Michigan or Pennsylvania using the same percentage split. Of course perhaps the polls would have proven inaccurate. 😉

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**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2016, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-official-hillary-lost-mi-pa-wi-by-less-than-the-jill-stein-vote-in-those-states/774628/40 "2016-12-14T14:58:02Z")

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> [@Ravenman](#):
>
> If my choices at a restaurant are a day-old chicken salad sandwich or a shit sandwich; there will surely be some people who hold out for lobster Thermador with fair trade quinoa. And when those holdouts get a shit sandwich instead of their wildest desires, one has good reason to question what the hell they were thinking.
> 
> Only in this scenario, these holdouts were unfortunately ordering for the whole room. Yum.

But lobster is better than chicken salad and/or a shit sandwich. And it was clearly on the menu. You’re making my point for me. Maybe the problem is ordering for the whole room? That sounds like a dumb policy to me.

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