# The real reason why Hillary lost **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 2, 2018, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164 "2018-07-02T15:57:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2018, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/123 "2018-07-06T16:39:59Z")
And there is a good solution to the EC: Expand the House of Representatives. Getting rid of the EC would be almost impossible, expanding the number of Representatives would be far easier. And, it wouldn’t require a new building since the House does allow electronic voting. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2018, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/124 "2018-07-06T16:46:40Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > Getting rid of the EC would be almost impossible It can be circumvented more easily than you might think, though. [We’re over halfway there.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact) ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2018, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/125 "2018-07-06T17:48:41Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > It can be circumvented more easily than you might think, though. [We’re over halfway there.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact) The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a joke. First of all, it’s all blue states as of now. Second, even if a state had signed it, you’d better believe they’d ratfuck in a heartbeat if possible. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2018, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/126 "2018-07-06T22:02:15Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Memory fails. When was that, when the Dems won the Electoral, but lost the popular, and crowed about their “victory”? Hell, I had right-wing friends insisting that Clinton didn’t really win in 1992 because Perot’s candidacy prevented him from getting a majority of the popular vote, which they’d curiously forgotten about by 2000 and 2016. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2018, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/127 "2018-07-06T22:48:35Z")
Hey! They are not entitled to liberal hypocrisy! ---
**Author:** ![AWB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bb73d2/32.png) [@AWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AWB)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2018, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/128 "2018-07-07T06:25:33Z")
> [@Sigene](#): > > Hey, don’t give me shit about this, I already said I was talking out of my ass. Then please try to enunciate. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2018, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/129 "2018-07-07T20:37:29Z")
I recall a statistic on Election Night, or shortly thereafter, that showed that 82% of voters who felt it was important for America to have urgent change went for Trump. That was crushing for Hillary. You couldn’t find a more stale, status-quo candidate than Hillary. In any other election she would have probably done fine, but not 2016 - it was a uniquely unsuitable election for her. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2018, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/130 "2018-07-07T21:19:21Z")
Those ‘urgent change’ voters are typical Trump racists. The urgent change they wanted was a change from Presidenting while black or Presidenting while female. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2018, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/131 "2018-07-07T22:08:48Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > Those ‘urgent change’ voters are typical Trump racists. The urgent change they wanted was a change from Presidenting while black or Presidenting while female. This sounds like the typical liberal everyone-I-don’t-like-is-racist argument, but just in case it’s not, do you have a source that enumerates the overlap between ‘urgent change’ voters and racists? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2018, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/132 "2018-07-07T23:20:57Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > Those ‘urgent change’ voters are typical Trump racists. The urgent change they wanted was a change from Presidenting while black or Presidenting while female. A piece of supporting evidence: > Nate Silver: “Strongest correlate I’ve found for Trump support is Google searches for the n-word. Others have reported this too: [http://nyti.ms/1IFI3AE](https://t.co/1k01sFhNMY)” Not a strong correlate, but the strongest. According to Nate Silver. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2018, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/133 "2018-07-08T01:24:59Z")
Could be one of those “Meet other n-words in your area!” things. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2018, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/134 "2018-07-08T01:52:58Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > This sounds like the typical liberal everyone-I-don’t-like-is-racist argument, but just in case it’s not, do you have a source that enumerates the overlap between ‘urgent change’ voters and racists? What “urgent change” was necessary in 2016? As I recall, things were okay. I can see “we can do better,” or “I’d rather have a nice tax cut,” but “urgent change” implies a crises. We didn’t have a crisis in 2016 (until election night). ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2018, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/135 "2018-07-08T04:31:01Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > What “urgent change” was necessary in 2016? As I recall, things were okay. I can see “we can do better,” or “I’d rather have a nice tax cut,” but “urgent change” implies a crises. We didn’t have a crisis in 2016 (until election night). Change from ‘being sick and tired of being sick and tired’ or ‘fed up with being fed up.’ They were tired of "Washington as usual’ and wanted something drastically different. The analogy someone used was, if someone invites you to watch a boring but OK movie that you’ve seen a dozen times already, or to see a “it’s so bad, it’s good” movie made on a shoestring budget, like Sharknado, which would you choose? ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2018, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/136 "2018-07-08T06:08:35Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > What “urgent change” was necessary in 2016? As I recall, things were okay. I can see “we can do better,” or “I’d rather have a nice tax cut,” but “urgent change” implies a crises. We didn’t have a crisis in 2016 (until election night). I didn’t claim there was. I was just questioning the claim that “Those ‘urgent change’ voters are typical Trump racists.” ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2018, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/137 "2018-07-08T06:31:01Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > A piece of supporting evidence: > > [x.com](https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/703975062500732932?s=19) > > Nate Silver: > > “Strongest correlate I’ve found for Trump support is Google searches for the n-word. Others have reported this too: [http://nyti.ms/1IFI3AE](https://t.co/1k01sFhNMY)” > > Not a strong correlate, but the strongest. According to Nate Silver. Nate Silver didn’t, at least in that tweet, provide any evidence to support his claim, and even if he did, it’s nothing like “supporting evidence” of the claim in doubt: “Those ‘urgent change’ voters are typical Trump racists.” It’s an aside, irrelevant to the question at hand. The NYT article said nothing about “urgent change” voters, but does note “That Mr. Trump’s support is strong in similar areas does not prove that most or even many of his supporters are motivated by racial animus.” For all we know it might be the Democrats in those places making Google searches for racial slurs. And you’ll pardon me if I take everything Nate Silver has to say about Trump with a heaping helping of salt after he wrote “[How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump/)” This Tweet seems to be around the same time period he later admitted he wasn’t using a statistical model for. AFAICT, this might be one of the very acting-like-a-pundit mistakes he was referring to in his mea culpa. ---
**Author:** ![survinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@survinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/survinga)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2018, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/138 "2018-07-08T11:34:24Z")
> [@C3](#): > > I don’t know. I’m in NC, in one of the bluest parts of the state, but (and I know this is just anecdotal) the people I know who are liberals were terrified that Trump would win. We didn’t need CNN to tell us that our neighborhoods were filling up with Trump signs and that the people we work with were attending the rallies. So I think in the states where it mattered (swing states like mine), we could see what was happening on the ground. Most of the people I know were pretty dismissive of the idea that Clinton was a definite. Yes, I’m in a red state (GA). And I got no sense of what was happening, because it was just like any other election, where bumper stickers were largely pro-Trump, except in some parts of Atlanta. At the end of the day, there were something like 70K votes in the upper-Midwest that decided the election. It sounds to me like Hillary couldn’t get her voters to turn out in the way they turned out for Obama previously. Did she not campaign hard enough? Did the polls make some people lazy, assuming that she would win, and deciding not to actually vote? Did the FBI-email thing at the end of October hurt her? Did her tag as the establishment by both Trump and Sanders hurt her? A little of all the above probably. ---
**Author:** ![postpic200](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/54ee81/32.png) [@postpic200](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/postpic200)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2018, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/139 "2018-07-08T15:05:10Z")
> [@Sigene](#): > > So, sure, this has been beaten to death. and > Sure, I’m talking out of my ass… > > But the real reason why Hillary lost was because there are no major news outlets in Joplin Missouri. > > no really…well, not specifically Joplin, but any number of American towns outside of east and west coasts. > > She lost, because not enough people voted for her in key states. > But I’m convinced more people wanted her to win, even in those states she lost…but they didn’t vote for her…they didn’t vote at all. > Why didn’t they vote? because, the news they kept hearing since 2012 was that she was going to be the ‘defacto’ winner, and certainly because of the ridiculousness of Trump portrayed on media, it was a foregone conclusion…SO, there is no need for the individual to vote for Hilary because everyone else will be anyway…so the individual stayed home. I personally, know of several people who didn’t vote because they didn’t need to. > > But…if the media had set themselves up in Joplin Missouri, they would have seen and heard of the discontent and been less complacent. It would have been more obvious that there really was a close battle brewing and Hillary, really did have a chance of losing. > > Erego: Dear mainstream media…set up shop in Joplin Missouri so you have a better understanding of your consumers. > Hey, don’t give me shit about this, I already said I was talking out of my ass. She lost because she was a terrible candidate, and forgot about the Midwest. Yes the media was saying she was going to win, and that might have turn prevented some voters from turning out, but you’re forgetting that same coverage may have prevented Trump supporters from voting also, why vote if Hillary is going to win anyway. Hillary didn’t step up to the plate, no really, she went almost 3 months without a press conference, her changing views on a number of issues (which in it self isn’t a problem provide you explain why you change your mind), which, to a number of people, seemed like she was saying whatever she though would get her the most votes. Also that whole “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.” remark, followed by Clinton expressed regret for saying “half,” without say if it was more or less. She tossed millions of voters under the bus, and gave Trump a gift. And don’t forget the Democrat party, once seen as the working man’s party, is seen by many as the party for the SJW’s and the rich elite, who come across as saying “We know best so shut up and do as we say, we know what best for you.” Did the media miss the mark, sure, when I drove to visit my mom in another state, Trump signs outnumber Hillary signs 3 to 1 while the polls were saying Hillary was ahead in those states. You would think if Hillary really had that much support there would have been more signs. Of course in some states the Democrat party was CHARGING people for signs while the Republicans were giving them away. While signs might not seem like the best way to go, if your neighbors all have signs supporting something, that put pressure on you to support it also. It also had the added benefit in this case as showing what appears to be Hillary supporters stealing, destroying those signs. Casing a bad light on all Hillary supporters, “see they don’t believe in free speech”, etc. I put her loss down to a terrible disconnected candidate, a party that didn’t understand what the working man’s opinion was, and a media that had already crowned her president. Really there was no one factor. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/140 "2018-07-08T15:40:46Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > …For all we know it might be the Democrats in those places making Google searches for racial slurs… Well, that’s certainly possible! Can’t prove it isn’t possible! Just like its possible that those tiki-torch totin’ turds aren’t Trump supporters. Maybe not, for all we know! Some of them might just be local kerosene enthusiasts. We can’t be _sure_! Or maybe Googling to update that list of things _they_ can say but _we_ can’t because we’re white… Good catch, **Hurr**! ---
**Author:** ![JB99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@JB99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JB99)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2018, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/141 "2018-07-09T02:00:13Z")
Multiple studies confirm racial resentment was strongly correlated with Trump voters, even more so than economic anxiety. Moreover, the FACT that Trump is himself racist is indisputable. (He was literally the public voice of the Birther movement.) Even if a Trump voter was not “racist” themselves, they saw Trump’s racism and decided they did not care. Any claim to the contrary is simply ignorance or willful deceit. And BTW, the claim that liberals call racism as synonymous with ‘disagreement,’ is itself an ad hominem attack and a lie. It is just another one of the Republican tactics to discredit criticism without actually acknowledging it. Trump is racist, his politics are racist, and there is tremendous evidence that his supporters are racist too: [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/04/18/1718155115](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/04/18/1718155115) [http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/explaining-support-for-trump-in-the-white-working-class-race-vs-economics/](http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/explaining-support-for-trump-in-the-white-working-class-race-vs-economics/) > **[Analysis | Why 41 percent of white millennials voted for Trump](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/12/15/racial-resentment-is-why-41-percent-of-white-millennials-voted-for-trump-in-2016/?sw_bypass=true&utm_term=.ce8eede228a4)** > > It wasn't economic loss. It was racial grievances. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2018, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164/142 "2018-07-09T10:42:53Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I didn’t claim there was. I was just questioning the claim that “Those ‘urgent change’ voters are typical Trump racists.” Not everyone who voted for him is a racist, but everyone who is a racist voted for him. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-real-reason-why-hillary-lost/817164.md?page=8)