Here is a right-wing "meme" about the 2016 election that has circulated on FB and other media:
Our Founders in their infinite wisdom created the Electoral College to ensure the STATES were fairly represented. Why should one or two densely populated areas speak for the whole of the nation?
The following list of statistics has been making the rounds on the Internet and it should finally put an end to the argument as to why the Electoral College makes sense.
There are 3,141 counties in the United States.
Trump won 3,084 of them.
Clinton won 57.
There are 62 counties in New York State.
Trump won 46 of them.
Clinton won 16.
In the 5 counties that encompass NYC, (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Richmond & Queens) Clinton received well over 2 million more votes than Trump. (Clinton only won 4 of these counties; Trump won Richmond)
There's a lot that's interesting about this, also a lot that's wrong with it, and I suppose the intersection of the two raises the question: why do so many people believe things that are such utter hogwash? Did the batteries for their bullshit detectors corrode and ruin them from the inside? Or do they maybe just believe things because it gives them pleasure to believe them?
The leading claims are transparently false. They are practically refuted internally, since, in one breath, the assertion is that Clinton won 57 counties in the whole country and, in the next, that she carried 16 counties in New York State. It would follow that in the other 49 states she won 41 counties, less than one per state. She carried 19 of those states. California is one of them. To believe this meme, your ignorance would have to encompass not only the actual election result but also basic geography, arithmetic, and logic.
An article at FactCheck.org notes that Clinton won 27 counties in Texas and 31 in Georgia, which makes 58. So in just those two red states she won more counties than the meme says she won in the whole country.
In an odd way, the meme's surface falsity tends to obscure what's really wrong with it, which is the blithe assumption that for some reason it matters who won more counties. I mean, if Clinton wins Brooklyn County in New York, and Trump wins Koochiching County in Minnesota, the "score" isn't in any meaningful way tied, right? For the score to be tied, the weight of a ballot would have to depend on where it is cast. It happens that, thanks to the Electoral College, the weight of a ballot does depend on where it's cast. That goes against all democratic principles. Trumpers, however, are eager to believe anything that tends to prop up that superannuated relic of the 18th-century that carried their hulking ignoramus across the finish line, and they aren't going to be deterred by the merits of the case. (The merits of the case are for the detested "elites.") I don't know how else to account for people believing such crazy stuff.
The map at the top shows, by county, the result of the 2016 presidential election--blue if Clinton won the county, red if Trump did. The cartogram below adjusts the hue of red or blue, depending upon the winner's percentage margin of victory, and adjusts the size of the county polygons according to their population.
Comments