United States presidential election in Rhode Island, 2016 (Ferguson Scenario)



The 2016 United States presidential election in Rhode Island took place on November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all 50 states and D.C. Voters chose four representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice-President.

Rhode Island voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic nominee, incumbent President Henry T. Ferguson of Texas, over the Republican nominee, Senator William H. Pryor, Jr. of Alabama. Ferguson ran with Vice-President Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, while Pryor's running mate was Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Ferguson carried Rhode Island in a landslide, taking 80.87% of the vote to Pryor's 19.13%, a Democratic victory margin of 61.74%. This made Rhode Island Henry Ferguson's strongest state in the nation: even in the midst of a massive nationwide Democratic landslide, Rhode Island weighed in as 39 percent more Democratic than the national average during the 2016 election.

The staunch conservative Pryor was widely seen in the Northeastern United States as a right-wing extremist; he had voted against the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2016, and the Ferguson campaign portrayed him as a warmonger who would carpet-bomb the Middle East. While Ferguson had won 63.63 percent in Rhode Island in 2012 mostly by mobilizing the traditional Democratic coalition, for 2016, this coalition was joined by mass defections of moderate Yankee Republicans who had voted for Romney but could not support the extremist Pryor. Ferguson's landslide was so large, he won a record 375,353 votes, a record that still hasn't been beat. Consequently, the incumbent Ferguson was able to take more than eighty percent of the vote in liberal Rhode Island.

Ferguson swept all five counties in Rhode Island with over seventy percent of the vote. In Providence County, the most populated county, home to the state's capital and largest city Providence, Ferguson took 83.5% of the vote. This was the strongest showing ever for a Democratic presidential candidate in Providence.

Ferguson's 80.87 percent remains the highest vote share percentage any presidential candidate of either party has ever received in Rhode Island, and his 61.74 percent victory margin remains the largest by which any candidate of either party has ever won the state.