I am a conspiracy theory nut. So let me propose a conspiracy theory to explain the shocking Trump victory. It is vote rigging, but not the way you were thinking. Before proceeding, let me say that this is merely for fun. Don’t take it too seriously.
Here is my theory. Donald Trump got the Russians to hack the voting machines so that about 3% of Clinton votes got registered in his favor. Possibly the percentage rigging was a bit higher in some pre-determined key states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida and Ohio.
Now the proof. Admittedly, it is all very sketchy, and all based on my mental data-science on CNN reporting.
All the polls showed Clinton ahead by about 4%. Historically, the national polls always underestimate the advantage of the leading candidate. For instance, in the last presidential election, Obama and Romney were neck and neck, and election put Obama ahead by about 2%. So you would have naively expected Clinton to have about 6% advantage over Trump, nationally. They, however, ended up with roughly the same number. A 2 to 3% rigging would do it.
The total number of votes is about 120 million. Clinton’s share went down by about six million compared to Obama’s. Admittedly, she was a flawed candidate, so she may have a 2 to 3% hit because of lack of enthusiasm. But the rest of it had to come from somewhere else, especially because she consistently led in national polls by more than 3%, taken by the most sophisticated pollsters on the planet.
Remember, Trump whipped up fears of vote rigging, which was a brilliant move – a grand master level chess move, in fact, if he was planning to rig it himself. What it did was to get his opponents, and the whole nation, vehemently to defend the ballot system. Obama actually said it was not even possible to rig the system because of its highly decentralized nature of the system. How can they now raise questions about vote rigging?
Remember also that Trump actually said at one point that the republic ballots were getting registered as democrat votes. This may have been a slip on his part, indicating how his own rigging was going to work. The fix was in!
Trump didn’t get any more votes than Romney, which doesn’t make any sense if what he did was to create a hitherto untapped constituency of blue collar Americans. If that were true, I would have expected a larger turnout on his column, wouldn’t you?
And if you look at the breakdown along racial lines, you see a percentage increase for Trump consistent with about 2 to 4% random votes being flipped in his favor. For instance, 8% black votes, 29% latino and asian votes, all a few percentage points higher than you expect, or when compared to the last election. Not high enough to raise an eyebrow, but enough to steal an election.
This effect is even more obvious when you look at the break down by education levels and how the fraction went up for Trump compared to Romney. All about 6 to ten points higher across the board, again indicating a 2 to 3% random flipping of votes, which will weigh twice as heavily on one candidates votes (because his share would be half of the total votes).
It should be possible to make a stronger case for vote-rigging looking at the vote numbers and the underlying demographics. It should even be possible to identify the states or counties where rigging did not take place. But since I have no deep interest in this matter and don’t even live in the US of A, let someone else do it. A word of caution though — through data science and statistics, it is possible to massage the number so agree with any kind of hypothesis and conspiracy. But personally, I cannot help but feel that there is something more to it than meets the eye. May be it just goes to show – that I am a conspiracy crackpot.