Numbers Game

You Could Fit All the Voters Who Cost Clinton the Election in a Mid-Size Football Stadium

More cold comfort for Hillary supporters.
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By David McNew/Getty Images.

While nearly 138 million Americans voted in the presidential election, the stunning electoral victory of Donald Trump came down to upsets in just a handful of states that Hillary Clinton was expected to win. It has been cold comfort for Democrats that Clinton won the popular vote—at the last count, she was up by about 2.5 million votes, and climbing, as ballots continue to be counted. Even more distressing is the tiny margin by which Clinton lost Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—three states that were supposed to be her firewall in the Rust Belt, but that ultimately tipped the electoral college map decisively in Trump’s favor.

Trump’s margin of victory in those three states? Just 79,316 votes.

This latest number comes from Decision Desk’s final tally of Pennsylvania’s votes, where Trump won 2,961,875 votes to Clinton’s 2,915,440, a difference of 46,435 votes. Add that to the official results out of Wisconsin, where Clinton lost by 22,177 votes, and Michigan, which she lost by 10,704 votes, and there you have it: 0.057 percent of total voters cost Clinton the presidency.

It is not entirely unusual for the electoral college to be lost by such a slim margin. In 2000, Al Gore lost Florida (and therefore the election) by 1,754 votes, triggering a painfully drawn out recount drama that only ended with a Supreme Court ruling. And in 2004, John Kerry lost to George W. Bush by losing Ohio by a little over 118,000 votes. But it is worth considering just how few voters ultimately set the country on its current, arguably terrifying course. The 79,316 people who voted for Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—all states that Democrats carried since 1992—is less than the entire student body of Penn State (97,494 students), or only slightly more than the number of people who attended Desert Trip, the Baby Boomer-friendly music festival colloquially known as “Oldchella.” If you put all these voters in the Rose Bowl, there would be slightly over 13,000 seats left over. There are more people living in Nampa, Idaho, a city you have never heard of.

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To put things in even more painful perspective, Green Party candidate Jill Stein won about 130,000 votes in those three states. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson won about 422,000.

But perhaps the most painful data point for Clinton is this: the Democratic nominee for president never made a single campaign stop during the general election, and largely neglected Pennsylvania and Michigan, too, while Trump canvassed all three states relentlessly. His furious, last-minute blitz throughout the Rust Belt to win white, working-class voters, combined with the lack of resources Clinton invested, essentially handed their combined 46 electoral votes to Trump. Instead, Clinton spent the last few weeks of her campaign expending resources in places like Arizona and Texas—states which went for Trump by huge margins.