Back in March, here, I listed the 50 states in order of Trump friendliness as measured by his margin of victory (or defeat) in the 2016 election. Clocking in at #1 was Wyoming, which Trump won by about 46%. At the other end was either the District of Columbia, where Trump lost by 89%, or, if you want to limit it to states, Hawaii, where he lost by 32%.
I was looking over the list today with an eye on how an impeachment trial in the Senate might turn out. We are often told that "impeachment is a political process," one of those cant expressions of political journalism that means, I think, that the outcome has little to do with the merits of the case and everything to do with the political calculations of the voting members. Of course, the merits of the case might have an impact on public opinion, which in turn could affect political calculations, but it's important to remember that the jury is made of senators who represent states. The polls I've seen relating to impeachment are all national polls. About 1-in-9 Americans live in California, but it has just two senators, same as Wyoming, which has one resident for every 66 Californians. It looks like there will be an impeachment trial, and when the senators from those two states have rendered judgment, it's almost certain that there will be 2 votes for conviction and 2 for acquittal: a winning ratio for the defendant, since a two-thirds supermajority is required for conviction.
Looking over that list I compiled, it's striking how many states Trump won by very wide margins, despite having lost the national vote by almost 3 million. For example, his twentieth best state was South Carolina. His margin in the Palmetto State was 14.2%. Of the 40 senators representing South Carolina and the 19 states Trump won by an even wider margin, 37 are Republicans—the 3 Democratic exceptions, in case you're wondering, are Jon Tester in Montana, Doug Jones in Alabama, and Joe Manchin in West Virginia. The magic number for acquittal in a Senate trial is 34 (since a 66-34 vote for conviction would fall one short of the needed two-thirds supermajority).
The 20 Trumpiest states have 20% of the country's population, 40% of the Senate seats, and 3 more Republican senators than the minimum number of "not guilty"s needed to avoid conviction. Perhaps the good news is that, assuming no principled votes are cast, which seems safe, Pence's chance of assuming the presidency within the next few months owes less to the impeachment process than it does to the incidence of myocardial infarction in overfed American septuagenarians.
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