Think about this. Trump won 3084 out of 3141 counties

[sc281]

And barely won.


57 counties?

First thought: That's fucking scary that 57 counties almost control the entire country.

Second thought: What if this is what Obama meant by his "57 states" comment in the 2008 election?



Discussion thread

https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5dkulo/trump_won_3084_of_3141_us_counties/

[line-em-up]

Which illustrates why we absolutely need to keep the electoral college.

[LANTIRN]

Which illustrates why we absolutely need to keep the electoral college.

Would you be making that argument if your candidate lost the election while winning the popular vote?

[juiceweezl]

Would you be making that argument if your candidate lost the election while winning the popular vote?

I would, because it's the system we have in place for that very reason. Win or lose, the system functioned the way it's supposed to function.

[The King]

Going simply to a popular vote would also raise the possibility of having to have a runoff election, in situations where no candidate receives greater than 50% of the popular vote. I know this situation occurred twice with Bill Clinton in the 1990's.

I for one would vote to keep the Electoral College in place, if for no other reason than the esteemed U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California are leading the current push to abolish it.

[sc281]

Would you be making that argument if your candidate lost the election while winning the popular vote?

If it was by winning only 57 out of 3141 counties?

Fuck. Yes.

Cities should not, under any circumstances, have undue and overwhelming influence over country. Their views and needs are COMPLETELY different.

Country provides the food and other things necessary for a City to function, as the City cannot for itself. Country should only provide with its consent. That consent, in our system, is that country has a weighted say in the matters of state. The vehicle for that is the electoral college.

Cities being able to Essentially dictate through a majority vote will destroy that equilibrium, such as it is.


That is how wars start.
That is how Empire is born, and ultimately destroys itself.

If you look at History, specifically at Rome, you can understand why this matters.

Having the city center, Rome, be in total control and the Allies not is the direct cause of the Social War, where the allies seceded and tried to fight Rome.

It is like having whatever Austin votes for as the Officials of Texas, and damn whatever the almost entire rest of the state wants.

[line-em-up]

Would you be making that argument if your candidate lost the election while winning the popular vote?

Yep, because I don't believe that you should change the constitution to help your party win. I think the electoral college was a good idea. The whole country's direction shouldn't be determined by a few cities. FWIW, I have been on the other side of the battle back in 2000, when I voted against Bush. Gore got the popular vote, but Bush still won. Yet, I still believed we shouldn't do away with the electoral college.

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/map/historic.html#2000

[46Tbird]

Would you be making that argument if your candidate lost the election while winning the popular vote?

You bet your fucking ass I would.

But that's because I understand history, and I understand why the EC was put in place.

Please remember that all these tantrum throwers only despise it, because it stopped them from getting their way. If Hillary had won the EC and Trump won the popular vote, do you think they would be harassing EC voters to change their vote? FUCK NO.

The EC functioned EXACTLY AS INTENDED. It is supposed to eliminate mob rule and give a voice to every American. Without it, we would have our country completely run however NY and LA wanted it to be run.

[bubbaearl]

but trump said mean things ! do over !

[sc281]

but trump said mean things ! do over !

I'm persuaded.

SOMEONE GET ME A FUCKING SAFETY PIN!!

[juiceweezl]

Hell, if they want to change the system, then I propose you should get a vote for every bullet and firearm you own. Firearms count as 5 votes and bullets count as 1 vote. I'm pretty sure the "country" could hold their own against the city that way.

[Sgt Beavis]

One of the main purposes of the Electoral College is to prevent a tyranny of the majority. Look at Illinois as an example. The majority of the people there live in the Chicago area. That entire metro area is far to the left while the rest of the state is almost exclusively conservative. However those conservatives have ZERO voice in how things are run in Illinois. The Chicago majority can vote themselves pretty much anything they want. Of course big Chicago politicos are pretty corrupted and that has spilled over into the state level on a regular basis. I don't think there is another state more unbalanced than that one.

[Jimbo]

Donald Trump Won 7.5 Million Popular Vote Landslide in Heartland - Breitbart

Donald Trump won an overwhelming 7.5 million popular vote victory in 3,084 of the country’s 3,141 counties or county equivalents in America’s heartland.
Fifty-five point seven million out of the 109.3 million Americans who cast their ballots in those counties voted for Trump, while only 48.1 million voted for Hillary Clinton, according to the latest county by county election results reported at Politico. The remaining 5.4 million voted for other candidates.

Trump’s 7.5 million popular vote landslide in America’s heartland, a resounding 7 point victory in those 3,084 counties over Clinton, 51 percent to 44 percent, gave him a 306 to 232 Electoral College landslide. (On Monday night, the director of elections in the office of Michigan’s Secretary of State said that Trump had won the state’s 16 electoral college votes by a narrow margin of 13,107 votes.)

Hillary Clinton, in contrast, had an 8.2 million vote margin in a narrow band of 52 coastal counties and five “county equivalent” cities stretching from San Diego to Seattle on the West Coast and Northern Virginia to Boston on the East Coast. That narrow band included two major cities–Washington, D.C and Baltimore, Maryland–included in the five “county equivalent” cities, and three major cities–Philadelphia, New York, and Boston–which are included in the 52 counties.

Clinton received 70 percent of the 18.4 million votes cast in these 52 elite coastal counties. Donald Trump, in contrast, received only 25 percent of the vote in these counties. The remaining 5 percent went to other candidates.

In elite coastal county after elite coastal county, especially those in Washington, D.C. and its Virginia and Maryland suburbs where so many federal government workers and federal contractors live, Clinton won by margins ranging from four to one to two to one.

Votes cast in the 52 elite coastal counties where Clinton dominated accounted for only 14.4 percent of the estimated 127.7 million total votes cast in the country.

In contrast, the 3,084 counties in America’s heartland, where Trump dominated with a healthy 7 point margin, accounted for 85.6 percent of all votes cast.

Clinton’s 671,066 popular vote margin across the entire country, 61,047,027 votes to Donald Trump’s 60,375,961 votes (according to Politico’s election results website as of Tuesday morning) arose from this huge advantage wracked up in these elite coastal counties.

Clinton received 47.7 percent of the estimated 127.7 million votes cast nationwide, while Trump received 47.2 percent of those votes. Five percent went to other candidates.

Trump campaigned very little in the 23 elite coastal counties in the West Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington, and only vigorously campaigned in five Northern Virginia counties and Philadelphia on the East Coast.

It is worth noting that virtually all members of the mainstream media reside within this narrow band of elite coastal counties.

Clinton won the 161 electoral college votes in nine of these ten states, as well in the District of Columbia. Among these ten states, Trump won only Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral college votes.

But these nine states experienced the same kind of bimodal divide seen in the rest of the country.

In eight of these nine states (all but Massachusetts) Trump was tied or slightly ahead of Clinton in the popular vote in those counties outside the coastal elite.

Here is the full list of these 52 elite coastal counties:

(California: Alameda, Contra Costa, Humboldt, Los Angeles, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma, and Ventura; Oregon: Multnomah and Washington; Washington: King and Snohomish; Virginia: Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William (and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax, and Falls Church); Washington, D.C.; Maryland: Baltimore, Charles, Howard, Montgomery, and Prince George’s (and the city of Baltimore); Pennsylvania: Delaware and Philadelphia; New Jersey: Essex, Hudson, Mercer, Middlesex, Passaic, and Union; New York: Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, and Westchester; Connecticut: Fairfield, Hartford, and New Haven; and Massachusetts: Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk.)

https://www2.usgs.gov/faq/categories/9799/2971[/QUOTE]

There are 3,141 counties and county equivalents in the 50 States and the District of Columbia. They are categorized as follows:
3,007 entities named "County"
16 Boroughs in Alaska
11 Census Areas in Alaska (for areas not organized into Boroughs by the State)
64 Parishes in Louisiana
42 Independent Cities (1 in Maryland, 1 in Missouri, 1 in Nevada, and the remainder in Virginia)
1 District - the Federal District or District of Columbia.
This does not include Commonwealths and territories with what are generally county equivalents, which are as follows:
Puerto Rico - 78 Municipios
U.S. Virgin Islands - 2 Districts
Guam - 19 Election Districts
Northern Mariana Islands - 17 Districts
American Samoa - 5 Districts

[sc281]

Reid Hendrichs explains it pretty well.

[AnthonyS]

And most of us live in one of those 57 counties..