Lies, damned lies, and statistics…and the 2016 US Presidential elections

Mark Twain popularised the term “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” but in these elections the stats do shed some light on the outcome:
presidential_election_2000-2016
Notwithstanding the overwhelmingly critical stance against him by mainstream media (for the most part justified), Donald Trump’s victory and the subsequent view that this victory was, for the most part, ascribable to a rise in racism, misogyny and other negatives attributes are not substantiated by the statistics, be they election voting stats or exit polls. Given recent events, one may object to the use of opinion polls given their inability to predict Trump’s victory for example, but exit polls are a bit more reliable, and if anything polls have tended to underestimate Trump’s popularity, as they do in general with right wing candidates. So, with some precautions, we can evince some interesting considerations from this data.

As we can see in the graphs above and below, there is no significant polarization or variance in the data that would reveal Trump’s particularity.
For example: Trump got 2% more of the black vote than what Romney managed to get in 2012.
us_presendential_stats_by_genderracedemographics
This is not ignore that the “basket of deplorables”, as H. Clinton called them, didn’t have an impact on this election, they undoubtedly did, but they have always been there, as they are in every democracy to a degree. There were more of them this time, probably, but they had a bigger impact because of a major abandonment of progressive/left-wing voters. Trump wasn’t an irresistible candidate, the worst in recent years (GW Bush, all is forgiven), opposed by many leading Republicans, Trump even managed to get less votes than what Romney did in 2012.

After the defeat H. Clinton put the blame mainly on Comey for reopening the FBI investigation into her private email server, just a few days before the election, and this might in part be true, although a few days later, when Comey closed the case, she had a positive bump in her opinion poll stats. Another consideration is that this was a problem that would always going to linger, the FBI conclusion didn’t resolve the unethical nature of some of the email content. But this was not as significant as many have stated, the real problem was her negative “establishment” image, inherent well before this investigation, and the difficulties she encountered overcoming Bernie Sanders in the primaries are indicative of this.
2016_elections_stats_05
The above graph shows that there was a significant increment of the “Others”, in particularly of the Green Party headed by Jill Stein whose base share common ground with an ideal Democratic party, they got almost 800,000 more votes than in 2012:

Here’s one that slipped away:
2016-11-05_194147

Susan Sarandon – The DNC Is ‘ Completely Corrupt ’ – 11/3/16

I like Sarandon, so here’s another clip: ‘I don’t vote with my vagina’: Susan Sarandon on not backing Hillary Clinton – BBC Newsnight

When you add those who voted for alternative candidates and the abandonment of traditional Democratic party base, this becomes the foremost candidate a the cause of her electoral defeat. Notwithstanding having over 20 million more eligible voters available in these elections than they did in 2008 with Obama, the Democratic party got 9 million less votes.

Below we can see how a shift of few voters in some key states would have made a big difference:
2016_elections_four_close_races
Even if Hillary Clinton had won this election, serious question would have been asked about her candidacy (the loss of both chambers of congress in primis).
All of this makes me wonder; could any other Democratic party candidate have beaten Donald Trump or could any other Republican party candidate have beaten Hillary Clinton?
Methinks so.

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