Talk:The 2016 Election Results

This page includes additional notes on the 2016 Election Results.

Presidential Vote by Demographic
Leach suffered the worst loss of any presidential candidate from either party by demographic. Rutherford was the first candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to win every racial demographic by double digits, and the first since John Glenn in 1984 to win both genders by double digits as well. 70 percent of the electorate was white in 2016; 30 percent was nonwhite. Rutherford won the white vote (55 percent), defeating Leach among this group by ten percentage points. This was the highest percentage that had been earned by any Democrat since Johnson in 1964. Although whites still weighed in as the most Republican group in the country, Rutherford's victory nevertheless proved a major factor in molding the election results. He won white women (55 percent) and white men (53 percent). Rutherford's victory cut across educational lines, as he won a commanding 58 percent of non-college educated whites and a narrower 52 percent majority among college-educated whites.

On a state-by-state basis, Rutherford won whites in 36 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Rutherford did best in the Northeast, where white voters in general had gravitated strongly to the Democratic Party over the course of the preceding four decades. Within the Northeast, Leach won less than 40 percent of the white vote in Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania, less than 30 percent in Massachusetts and Vermont, and less than 20 percent in Rhode Island. His best state was New Jersey, but even there, he obtained only 41 percent, losing whites to Rutherford by eighteen percentage points. In the Border States, Rutherford put up a commanding performance.