Is Trump Legitimate?

Democrats have been arguing that Trump did not legitimately win. They argue 1. Electoral College win isn’t legitimate, 2. Russians cheated Hillary, 3. Comey did it.  But I think we should be able to devise some somewhat scientific tests and have the number tell us. 

 

First a few results.  Trump got 62.98M votes, Hillary got 65.84M, Others 7.80M.  136.63M cast.  Even though Hillary won, she won by 2% less margin in popular vote than Obama.  And this was a heavy turnout.  The population grew (320.1M from 312.1M in 2012) by 2.5% but turnout grew by 8.0%.  Only MS, IA,OH, and WI had slightly fewer voters than in 2012.

            Dem margins were down in 12 of 13 swing states.  Their margin was up in AZ but down in CO, FL, IA, ME, MN, MI, NV, NH, NC, OH, PA, and WI.  The shifts in IA and ME were 15.4% and 12.3% to the R-Pres., Trump.

            R’s were -3 in the House and -2 in Senate but picked up 6 state legislature houses where they now lead 69-30.

            So let’s take the first argument, that the Electoral College screwed Hillary.  Here, Trump won 30 states compared to her 20.  That’s +6 states more than Romney got (24, compared to 26 by Obama).  Clearly Hill lost the electoral vote and the flyover states.  Both Madison and Hamilton were clear in the Federalist Papers that they designed a constitution so that just a corner of the country couldn’t lord it over the rest.  They wanted majority of not just votes, but wide areas of representation.  Hence the electoral college compromise.  It was also thought, in those days, that electors were state leaders who would, with a clear head and with much study, vote for the right man for Pres.  We have a republic, not a democracy.  To seat Hillary would surely go against this reasoning.

            Second Dems say the Russians hacked them and spread false stories, thus causing polls to soar for Trump at the last minute.  Here’s the math problems.  We had record turnout amid record disapprovals of both candidates.  Maybe people were casting votes "against".  So then why didn't 3rd party guys get big votes? Thus, this must have been a lesser effect.  Polls all had Hillary +7 to +10 the week, even days, before the election. For an October Surprse to create this much change would be historically unprecedented.  [For a similar experiment, look at George H.W.Bush who went from perhaps -1% to -2% the last week when Leonard Walsh brought forth the Iran-Contra charges which supposedly implicated Bush.]  Nor did 2016 polls discover a big turnout, which clearly happened nationwide. Why did they miss it?  Answer: Apparently people weren’t telling pollsters(any pollster!) the real story. Hence it was a large unknown turnout of R-votes that scuttled Hillary.  Doubt this?  Then look at state results.  R Congressmen and Senators were returned to seats. (Senate R’s defended 25 out of 33 seats!)  R’s gained state legislatures. Had this been a last minute poll shift for Trump, it wouldn’t have shown up in all these other offices. Another measure of the fact that voters were telling pollsters to leave them alone were the exit polls which also showed Hill ahead by+5.  But that wasn’t the actual vote! Trump voters weren't answering polls, but registering their vote.

 Certainly the Russians hacked but were they effective in drawing down her votes?  At  the same time as Wikileaks-Russia the FBI was releasing files, more damaging than Wikileaks.  So were the allegations of O’Keefe who caused several Democrat personel to be fired. The hacking seems to have been just an auxillary story.  And as yet, we don’t hear any Dems saying this or that allegation was false. Were all thes stories true? The lack of protest of specifics would say so.  But does that implicate Comey’s investigation?

ND a tiny poulation state with a big Intel presence went more negative for Hillary than Obama. But another small but heavily Intel-dominated state, UT, swing was muddied by a third party candidate. Mixed result. But again the misfire of polls shows that any October surprise was minimal in effect.  It was the voters coming out of the woodwork to vote Trump that killed her campaign.  Surprising big vote, nationwide, big loss of Obama margins, rest of races bearing results out.

You can’t argue with Math.