As readers of this blog know, I have noted for weeks that if Donald Trump’s “What the hell do you have to lose” message resonated with even a small percentage of Black voters, it could change the results of entire states.
With that in mind, let’s talk about Michigan and Florida.
In Michigan, slightly over 5 million votes were cast. Black people are 14% of the state’s population. Assuming they vote in the same proportion as their incidence in the population, that would mean about 700,000 of those votes were cast by Black people.
National exit polling showed that Hillary Clinton got 5% less of the Black vote than Barack Obama did in 2012, and Donald Trump 2% more than Mitt Romney (no, I don’t know where the other 3% went).
This means that Hillary Clinton got 35,000 fewer Black votes than Barack Obama and Donald Trump got 14,000 more – a turnaround of 49,000 votes.
Donald Trump won Michigan by about 12,000 votes. If the 2012 percentages held in 2016, he would have lost by 37,000 votes.
See my point?
