Mark Petracca’s Post Election Talk to the UCI Forum
Prof. Mark Petracca of the UC Irvine Dept. of Political Science and Associate Dean of the School of Social Sciences gave the UCI Forum on the day after the election, Nov. 9, 2016. His talk was titled “Revolution or Evolution: Assessing the 2016 Elections”. (As is usual for me, I only captured part of the content of the talk. All of the mistakes are my own.)
Prof. Petracca gave us a pre-election talk at the forum on October 6 called “When Will It Be Over”. Here is the link to my report on that talk:
As Petracca told his students, this was not a normal election. He expected Clinton to win. Amazingly, Orange County, CA, our home, voted for Clinton, 49% to 44%. He praised the Trump, Clinton, and Obama speeches that were given today, about coming together.
To Democrats, the results were incredulous, and many of them felt hurt. His attitude for Democrats to the new, all Republican government, was “It’s not our problem, it’s not our fault”.
He said it was going to be Trump’s Ego versus Article II of the constitution (which establishes the Administration, and limits its powers to the Advice and Consent of the Congress, as well as the right to impeach the President).
Why? What? How? Did this happen. It’s hard to win a third term, which Clinton’s campaign was following. The context was not favorable to the Democrats. A slow recovery, unemployment, 2/3 of the public thought that the country was moving in the wrong direction. The Democrats did not visit Wisconsin. Clinton got 88% of the Democrats vote, less than Obama at 93%. For Hispanics, Clinton only got 65%, compared to Obama, who got 71%. Young people did not turn out. Clinton didn’t get a big gender gap.
Appalachia, geographically from Alabama to New York, has problems, which is also a cultural problem, and Democrats have lost this region. Democrats have to study about the “flyover part of the country”, since it is not going away.
People are suffering, and they are anti-establishment.
Poll results showing Clinton’s projected success led Democrats to stay at home.
Prof. Allen Lichtman, using his “13 Keys to the White House” seems to be the only one who predicted a Trump win. He has predicted 30 years of Presidential elections, since 1984. (They are sort of hard to read into our situation, like tea leaves.)
The turnout was 7% higher than before, so these voters were unlikely to have been surveyed.
Clinton won the popular vote (just barely, by 200,000 out of 120 million, or a margin of 1/600 voters, currently.)
He cited many factors from the CNN Exit Polls
(There are also the NY Times Exit Polls, which have existed from 1980 to the present, but missing 2012 in the same format.
Here is the link to the NY Times Exit Polls: )
Both candidates got about 90% of their party’s votes. Independents were 31% of the electorate, and Trump got 48% to Clinton’s 43%. Democrats used to win independents.
Trump got 53% of married voters. Trump led the $50,000-$100,000 income category, by 50% to 46%, which is 33% of the voters. He also won the higher incomes, which is again 33%. Clinton won the under $50,000, but that is only 36% of the vote.
The votes based on Education got turned around from before. Trump won high-school or less, and part of college. Clinton won college and post graduate education.
Trump won rural and suburbs, while Clinton won urban voters.
Nobody thought that Trump could win Minnesota, Wisconsin or Michigan. They were called Clinton’s Blue Wall.
60% of voters decided before September. Of those, Clinton won 52% to 45%. In the after Sept. 1 vote, Trump won. The FBI Comey email incident had an effect on the remaining 40% of voters. Two weeks ago Clinton was ahead. The new FBI investigation scared Democrats.
The approach for Democrats should be to mourn, and then organize.
Trump had a gunless civil war. He tapped into the wealth of pain and anxiety. We have to figure out how to address that hurt.
He again said, let the Republicans have everything that they wanted. In four years the nation will judge if they had a good approach.
Clinton had a great get out the vote. Trump still out maneuvered her. How?
This was the first election in which both candidates were unpopular. Voters were more interested in change.
In answer to a question, he said that Biden could have won, but not Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren. Hillary was the next Democrat in line to run. He has great respect for her. Democrats can now bring in new talent.
Clinton’s comment about some Trump supporters being a basket of deplorables was a mistake – it is not good to insult people.
Petracca had about 30 minutes to answer questions.
To the question as what do Trump voters think that they are going to get, he replied that Trump has no policies. He has the latitude to go back to his own ideas.
What did women think they were going to get from Trump? Answer, Change.
Asked about foreign affairs, he told us of the Sarah Palin for Secretary of State joke. We are not going to lose allies, and not take apart NATO.
Petracca believes in the power of institutions to constrain actions, and points out that Congress doesn’t agree with Trump.
For the Supreme Court, the Democrats still have the power to filibuster inappropriate justices.
This is a good time for Democrats to go fishing, play chess, or read more books.
Democrats should have paid more attention to Wisconsin, where Republican Governor Scott Walker survived a recall.
Petracca believes that the electoral college is good to have for stability.
Asked about political parties, he pointed out that the country’s founders did not like political factions.
For the electoral college, Perot got Maine and Nebraska to split their electors. If California split its vote, we would not have a very big hammer to get some influence.
It doesn’t look like third parties decided the election, but that is a subject for future studies.
Prof. Petracca got a standing ovation for giving us these talks for decades.
