Exclusive: Putin-linked think tank drew up plan to sway 2016 U.S. election - document

[BmorePat87]

(04-20-2017, 09:40 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: Was it really impressive though? Hillary only won the popular vote because she destroyed Trump in California.

Why does California matter?

CalIfornia matters because it's the most populated state in the US. California was the only state to reach double digit votes in the millions, getting over a whopping 14 million votes. 

What this means is that a candidate can lose in 30 states (like Hillary did) and still win the popular vote if they obliterate their opponent(s) in California (like Hillary did, which isn't surprising considering how Democratic the state of California is)

Trump beat Hillary 30-20. He won thirty states and she won twenty. How does that make her "popular"? She's only more popular because she won by a landslide in California, the most populated state in the US. According to 30 other states, Trump was more popular.

I mean.... can we really say that's impressive? 

(04-20-2017, 11:53 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: It's not odd. What you just said is the kind of thinking that lost Hillary the election. All those "little states" matter, and should matter and do matter. It's the United States of America, not the United state of California. Hillary's landslide in California is neither impressive nor does it make her more popular in all the states where she wasn't the most popular.

Saying Hillary was "more popular" is a dishonest and misleading way for people to act like she was the most popular across the entirety of the United States. But she wasn't.

She got more votes than anyone ever who wasn't named Barack Obama. That's pretty impressive.


Also impressive is being able to win the electoral vote when 3,000,000 more Americans voted for the other person. 

More Americans voted for her. That makes her more popular. Dishonest and misleading is suggesting that whole states vote the same, that both candidates don't get votes from every state, and that a state with 1 out of every 548 Americans is the same as a state with 1 out of every 8 Americans. If you want to talk about the importance of the electoral college versus a national popular contest in our federal system, that's fine, but we're not discussing how we elect our president, just whether or not getting the most people to vote for you makes you the most popular.