"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Some Numbers

Amidst all the hoopla, hype, doomsaying, and head-shaking going on over The Hairpiece's showing in the primaries, I got to wondering that this actually says about the depth of his support in the general election, so I did a little digging.

Let's start with the total votes cast in the 2012 election, per the FEC: 129,085,410.

That's a starting point. (As an aside, the table on page 11 of the document at the link is worth a look -- who knew there were that many people running for president from that many parties?)

So, next question, how many people have voted for Donald Trump so far? According to Wikipedia, 11,677,035 out of a total of 28,046,678 to date. Not included are California, New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico, and South Dakota, which have their primaries on June 7. Considering that Trump is the last candidate standing, and that voters tend not to care -- it all depends on who's still on the ballot -- I don't know how to project a final figure. Just to provide a figure, let's add about 7 million to Trump's total.

I'm figuring, the contemporary Republican party being as lock-step as it is, that most Republicans will vote for Trump. Say, 80%? Based on 2012 results, let's say roughly 50 million. (Can he be more unpopular than Romney? Anybody's guess -- the teabaggers love him.)

Now, on the Democratic side, we have a couple of big variables: the pouting BernieBots, and the right-wing smear campaign against Clinton (which Trump will participate in, full throttle). But, Clinton so far has garnered 13,192,713 votes, versus 10,158,889 for Sanders.

Again, it's hard to figure how many Sanders supporters are going to hold their noses and vote for Clinton. I'll say 50%. As near as I can work out in my head, that gives her maybe 85% of the Democratic vote, or 56 million.

So far, this is showing a low turnout for November, which I don't expect to be the case, but this is what I'm looking at now.

This is just a mental exercise, worth as much as any other projection at this point, but I don't see Trump winning in November.

As a sidebar, I've grown more and more disenchanted with Sanders as the campaign has rolled on. This is just one reason. I tend to not trust ideologues in public office, and Sanders is looking more and more like an ideologue. And, as I noted to my father when he started bitching about all the candidates being the same, Clinton, at least, knows what she's doing.


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