The short answer is yes and no. The monster vote showed up for Donald Trump, in specific regions.
However, the cocktail class republicans stayed home or voted for someone else in other regions.
When we originally (February ’16) forecast the possibility of a 73M general election vote for Donald Trump, we held the following caveat:
[…] The question is, how many Republicans will stay home (anyone but Trump) and how many Democrats will stay home (anyone but Clinton)?
While some Republicans may refuse to vote for Trump it’s doubtful they will vote for Hillary. However, inversely, a fair amount of Democrats who refuse to vote for Clinton will likely cross over and vote for Trump. (link)
While there is some data still outstanding, it appears there was a stronger than anticipated coalition of traditional republicans (GOPe strain) that did not vote, or perhaps voted for Clinton or a different candidate. This depressed the top-line national vote total.
Fortunately, non traditional republican voters turned out significant enough quantities to offset the GOPe losses.
The Monster Vote evidence can be found inside the areas where Donald Trump flipped states (Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa) from blue to red.
Remarkably, the reality is Donald Trump’s vote total in FL, PA and OH was statistically enough to have defeated Barack Obama in 2012 if Trump had been the candidate instead of Mitt Romney.
Florida:
- Obama 2012: 4,235,270
- Romney 2012: 4,162,081
♦ Trump 2016: 4,605,515 / Clinton 4,475,875
Pennsylvania:
- Obama 2012: 2,907,448
- Romney 2012: 2,619,583
♦ Trump 2016: 2,912,941 / Clinton 2,844,705
Ohio:
- Obama 2012: 2,697,260
- Romney 2012: 2,593,779
♦ Trump 2016: 2,771,984 / Clinton 2,317,001
The full national popular vote data is still being assembled as absentee ballots are being counted. So far Trump has 59.7M votes, and Clinton 59.9M votes (link).
There’s a statistical gap of 13 million Trump votes from our initial projection which was based on voter intensity, registration growth, and cross party base-building through the primary season. In the three flipped state examples above you can see how much stronger the Trump coalition was when compared to the 2012 Romney vote.
However, the top line national result doesn’t keep pace with the flipped state intensity. That means some of the already red states voted less for Trump than in 2012. The implication is less support inside some of the more traditional GOP states.
It will take a little longer to put all the data points together, but one high level conclusion is clear. If the same 2012 GOP voter had voted Trump in 2016, AND the flipped state voter intensity was added to it, the result would have been substantially higher than the current outcome.
So far it appears the missing 2016 voting bloc was the cocktail class (Never Trump) strain of the GOPe. Together with the Romney, Bush, Mcain, Ryan progressive GOPe types.
