So today is Super Tuesday. A lot of people will vote. We’ll hear a lot about percentages. Trump won 60% or 25%. Clinton won 60% or 25% – you get the point.
Everyone has spent the past few weeks in a flurry about New Hampshire. How much Trump won. Oh dear God, the margin!.
He won 35%. A third. And yeah, that’s impressive in a pool of twenty-or-more candidates. But it was 100,000 people. Just to give you an idea, Clinton lost with 38%. And she had 95,000 people voting for her. In New Hampshire: 284,000 voters came out for the Republican primary and only 251,000 came out for the Democratic (both of these rounded to the nearest 1,000). So (A) this was record turnout for republicans (and being that 5 candidates had more than 30,000 votes each…. yeah!) and (B) a lot of people don’t bother with primaries (30% of the voting population participated)
Let’s put this into perspective. (I left out Iowa because the democrats didn’t count votes apparently. Just percentages… *rolls eyes*)
| Nevada numbers | Nevada % | NH numbers | NH % | SC Numbers | SC % | |
| Donald Trump | 34,531 | 45.9% | 100,406 | 35% | 239,851 | 32.5% |
| Ted Cruz | 16,079 | 21.4% | 33,189 | 12% | 164,790 | 22.3% |
| Marco Rubio | 17,940 | 23.9% | 30,032 | 11% | 165,881 | 22.5% |
| Hillary Clinton | 6,316 | 53% | 95,252 | 38% | 271,514 | 74% |
| Bernie Sanders | 5,678 | 47% | 151,584 | 60% | 95,977 | 26% |
Now, with all those numbers out there, there is some reason we obsess over these percentages. If these were the only people showing up to vote (and all 5 of these names were on the ballot!) this is how the electoral college (EC) would go:
| State: | Winning candidate | Number of Votes | # EC votes |
| New Hampshire | Bernie Sanders | 151,584 | 4 |
| South Carolina | Hillary Clinton | 271,514 | 9 |
| Iowa | Hillary Clinton | ~85,000? (49.9% of 171,517) | 6 |
| Nevada | Donald Trump | 34,531 | 6 |
And for the first time in my life I am going to say “Thank goodness for the electoral college” because:
| Candidate: | “Popular” vote |
| Trump | 420,215 |
| Clinton | 373,082 |
| Cruz | 265,724 |
| Sanders | 253,239 |
| Rubio | 257,018 |
So in conclusion – it’s important to go vote!
References:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/pages/interactives/elections-results-primaries-2016/%23/#d
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)
Dream by Day 