A person on reddit crunched some numbers and Brilliant Maps posted this interesting result as a take on last week's presidential vote.
Had "Did Not Vote" been a candidate, it would have won in a landslide of almost Reaganesque proportions with 490 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 32 and Donald Trump's 16. In only seven cases did the vote for one of the actual candidates running exceed the number of eligible voters who stayed home: Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.
None of the nation's largest electoral prizes would have gone to either candidate -- including New York, the declared home base of both of them. So if you're all wound up about the results, rather than blame the people who voted for the candidate you didn't like or some third-party doof (sheepishly raises hand), you might save some disapproving glances for the people who didn't even do that.
I wonder how a "none of the above" choice would affect voter turnout.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing that most of those who didn't go vote had other reasons but I confess I would have picked "None of the above" if I had had that as one of my choices. Especially if it was "None of the above and all the parties need to go back and get us better candidates."
Oh, I'm sure it would lead to chaos, but....there have been numerous elections where "none of the above" would have got my vote.
Not sure -- obviously the desire to choose "none of the above" would have been a strong factor in staying home. My own 3rd party vote was essentially saying that.
ReplyDeleteAnd certainly a comment on the results of the flawed primaries, but on the other hand I'd bet a significant number of the stay-at-homes did the same thing back during that portion of the circus as well.