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"Clinton’s 2.3-million-popular-vote plurality over Trump depends on the votes in a single state: California. Clinton has more than a 4-million-vote plurality over Trump there. In the other 49 states plus the District of Columbia, Trump actually has a 1.7-million-popular-vote plurality over Clinton."

source

Is this true? Does Trump win the popular vote of the rest of the entire country were it not for the single state of California?

Sklivvz
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LCIII
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/49690/discussion-on-question-by-lciii-does-discarding-the-california-vote-numbers-make). – Oddthinking Dec 07 '16 at 00:52
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    Downvoting because it's a completely pointless question. California represents about 10% of the population of the US. – DJClayworth Dec 11 '16 at 22:08
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    How is this a pointless question? Because you don't like the answer? – Harrichael Jan 18 '17 at 21:20
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    @Harrichael It's a pointless question in the sense that it is very arbitrary - mostly this fact is being used to try and imply that the vote difference was negligable or unimportant, but discarding the whole of California is about as meaningful as saying "Trump would have won the popular vote if you take away all the Clinton voters". – Gareth Latty Jan 26 '17 at 17:55
  • So it is pointless for use in the argument that boils down to "California can be discarded because I don't like them", I agree. But that does not mean this fact cannot be used in other contexts. The fact itself is not exclusive to that bad argument, it could be coupled with other facts to be useful, or just be a curiosity. – Harrichael Jan 26 '17 at 17:59
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    Another analogy is "I would have won that game if you didn't have that player that scored 3 goals". It's technically true, but not useful in most situations. Of course, such a statement could be used to make a point about the geographics of voting habits more reasonably, but that's not the context I've seen it used in, at least. I agree this question doesn't impose that context, however, and downvoting it isn't reasonable - I can understand the knee jerk response after seeing it used in the bad context so much though. – Gareth Latty Jan 26 '17 at 18:03
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    Examples of other valid contexts: 1) Imagining US voter demographics if California seceded or 2) Imagining consequences if certain states such as California were shown to have elections prone to voter fraud, undocumented people voting, etc. – Harrichael Jan 26 '17 at 18:04
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    @Harrichael Sure, although again, 2 is currently a hot topic and while the point could be made, I think it would be misleading given the current complete lack of evidence for any kind of voter fraud on a non-trivial scale. As it wouldn't actually affect the result of the election, it would seem pointless to focus on California when talking about voter fraud unless there was proof it only happened there. If such a large-scale issue was found, the only sane course would be deep investigation everywhere. – Gareth Latty Jan 26 '17 at 18:07
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    The point is facts are argument agnostic. They are also partisan agnostic. For each of the 3 talked about arguments, the questioner could be easily trying to disprove the conclusion of the arguments by trying to disprove the assumption. All this is boiling down to is you have a funny feeling in your stomach because of the answer of the question. It doesn't matter if an an argument that could use this fact is a "hot topic", whatever that is supposed to mean. The questioner could be coming from any number of angles and the fact is the question is legitimate. – Harrichael Jan 26 '17 at 18:10
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    [It’s true that if California’s vote ... removed ... then Clinton would lose her popular vote lead, but the logic ... somewhat flawed. One could, ... remove the states of New York and Massachusetts from the vote count, docking Clinton roughly 2.6 million votes (and wiping out her popular vote win). Or one could similarly claim that Trump’s electoral vote victory “came entirely from Texas,” since if Clinton had taken the Lone Star state ..., she would also have won the overall election.](http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clintons-popular-vote-win-came-entirely-from-california/) – Martin Feb 11 '17 at 22:18
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    @Harrichael Someone saying that Trump would have won the popular election if California votes are taken out is like saying "Clinton only won the popular election because more people voted for her". Your theoretical contexts are valid, but the quote in the askers question has been used in a context of solidifying Trumps victory, when in fact it proves the *opposite* would be true if we were actually using the popular vote it tries to discount. – Zack May 04 '17 at 21:48
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    @Zack The question does not read like that, that is your bias into the question being asked. – Harrichael May 05 '17 at 06:12
  • @Harrichael I said nothing about the question being asked about the quote. I basically said the quote is often used to make it seem like Trump was a strong winner in the election, when he actually lost the popular vote by a significant margin. – Zack May 05 '17 at 18:56
  • The OP's question is different from the claim made in the article. The OP's question (Does Trump win the popular vote if California is omitted) is well-formed. The quote, however, claims that Clinton's win _"depends on the votes in a single state,"_ which is nonsense. It depends on all the votes in all the states. – Adam Sep 07 '17 at 17:46
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    Odds are for every presidential election if you remove California, the republican candidate would win, and if you removed Texas instead the democratic candidate would win. Thats why Midwestern states, with significant populations and a mix of cities and rural populations are the biggest targets for campaigning. – kingfrito_5005 Sep 07 '17 at 19:33

2 Answers2

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Yes, by a margin of 1,656,603 votes.

I'm using the first results that came up in Google. They certainly seem reliable (especially what I believe is the official site for that state), but if there are any objections, I can find others.

California's Secretary of State counted 8,543,280 votes for Clinton and 4,373,049 for Trump, a difference of 4,170,231 in favor of Clinton.

The source used by the Wikipedia page for the election, United States Presidential Election Results, gives figures for the nationwide vote close enough to that in the question: 65,149,785 votes for Clinton and 62,636,157 for Trump, a difference of 2,513,628 for Clinton.

Subtracting California's numbers from those nationwide for each candidate gives 56,606,505 votes for Clinton and 58,263,108 for Trump, a difference of 1,656,603 in favor of Trump.

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Reinstate Monica -- notmaynard
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation about the political implications of the answer has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/49689/discussion-on-answer-by-iamnotmaynard-does-discarding-the-california-vote-number). – Oddthinking Dec 07 '16 at 00:50
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Yes

The current national popular vote results are

  • Hillary Clinton 65,737,041
  • Donald Trump 62,896,704

A difference of 2,840,337 votes.

The current California popular vote results are

  • Hillary Clinton 8,753,788
  • Donald Trump 4,483,810

A difference of 4,269,978 votes.

If California's popular vote were removed Donald Trump would be ahead by 1,429,641 votes.

Source: http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/index.html

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    Your vote counts are slightly out of date. – ff524 Dec 01 '16 at 21:13
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    There is no such thing as a "nationwide popular vote", so there are no results of one. There is only a (mostly meaningless, due to variations between states) "nationwide total of statewide popular votes". – Ben Voigt Dec 12 '16 at 20:08
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    @BenVoigt I'm not sure what you mean. The popular vote certainly exists and the nation wide popular vote is just the popular vote of the entire nation, rather than of a state, city, district, age range, sex, religion, etc. I never claimed that the nation wide popular vote is something that the government specifically tracks or considers during an election. – JonK Dec 12 '16 at 20:20
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    @JonK: Eligibility requirements aren't uniform across the 50 separate states (for example, whether voting eligibility is restored to felons). You're adding together apples and oranges... which may be interesting to do, but it should also be explained that the total adds together votes that aren't comparable because they were cast under different rules – Ben Voigt Dec 12 '16 at 20:25
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    @BenVoigt As far as I know the term 'popular vote' only refers to votes by the electorate, people able to vote, and doesn't consider that all people had the same opportunity to be electorates. A quick definition search doesn't mention opportunity or uniformity of rules. – JonK Dec 12 '16 at 20:32