Why did Trump win? Because Democrats stayed home - latimes

When all the ballots are counted — some 4.3 million remained in California as of Thursday night, according to the state’s secretary of state — Hillary Clinton will have won the popular vote by well over a million votes, en route to losing the electoral college and the White House.

The result put a spotlight on the country’s deep, almost 50/50 division.Democrats, many still in shock over a result that most people in either party did not expect, have been agonizing over how this happened.

They don’t need to look far from home for a big part of the answer.

In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory Tuesday night, a lot of attention, justifiably, centered on his ability to boost turnout in conservative, rural counties, especially in the upper Midwest.

The data analysis that Trump’s campaign did, an effort that was more extensive and sophisticated than many Democrats believed, showed the same thing. In the closing days of the campaign, the Republicans targeted the areas they needed most.

But there was no Trump surge overall. While he made big gains in those Midwestern counties and in other heavily white areas such as eastern Ohio, northeastern Pennsylvania and parts of central Florida, he lost ground elsewhere.

Clinton actually succeeded in one of her campaign’s key goals — eating into traditional Republican territory in big suburban counties.

Clinton also won Orange County, which since 1936 had never voted for a Democrat — the longest streak of one-party victories in California.-  Read More

Why did Trump win? Because Democrats stayed home

For the first time since Franklin D. Roosevelt, a majority in Orange County voted for a Democrat

'I will be president for all Americans' — transcript of Donald Trump's election night victory speech

For the fourth time in American history, the president-elect lost the popular vote. Credit the electoral college