Americans shouldn’t have a hard time understanding that a few votes can make a big difference. After all, George W. Bush was elected thanks to a reported 537-vote margin in Florida in 2000. (Later newspaper investigations also found Bush ahead but by varying numbers, depending on how they counted the votes). In this presidential cycle, we have seen time and again that a very small number of votes have made a big difference in the course of the race. Let’s look at some examples, and consider the counterfactuals:
Iowa. Donald Trump beat Marco Rubio out for second place by just 2,201 votes out of 186,932 votes cast. Imagine that Rubio had come out ahead of Trump, thrusting him into third place. Would a lot of air gone out of the Trump balloon? Maybe, though remember that Hillary Clinton came back from third place in Iowa in 2008 to win New Hampshire.
By the way, on the Democratic side this year Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders by just 0.20 percent in state convention delegate equivalents (the way Iowa Democrats score their contest). It’s entirely possible that more voters actually came out for Sanders; they may have packed the university counties (Johnson, Story) which he carried, but the way the Democratic system works there, not every caucus-goer counts equally. We don’t know — Iowa Democrats just told us that 171,000 people voted, but they don’t say how many voted which way. Would a Clinton loss in Iowa, followed (as was the case anyway) by a big Sanders victory in New Hampshire, have put her at a significantly greater disadvantage? Hard to say. But maybe others may have noticed that Clinton’s current popular vote lead is entirely due to her big margins in the 11 states of the Confederacy. Sanders has carried the North.
New Hampshire. After his debate brain freeze, Marco Rubio, who had seemed headed for second place, finished fifth, 1,270 votes behind Jeb Bush and 3,173 behind Ted Cruz, out of 285,923 votes cast. In second place, with 16 percent of the vote, was John Kasich, 14,861 votes ahead of Rubio. Would Rubio have finished second absent the brain freeze? Many reporters and poll experts think so; it’s at least plausible. In which case, Kasich would have probably faded quickly from the scene, as Jon Huntsman did after winning 17 percent and finishing third in the state in 2012, and as did Chris Christie, Rubio’s taunter in the debate, who had 8,982 fewer votes than Rubio. In which case Rubio might have emerged more clearly than he did in South Carolina and with much more enduring strength going into Super Tuesday as Donald Trump’s chief challenger. You can take the counterfactual from there; I’m sure Rubio has.
South Carolina and Nevada. Continue the Rubio counterfactual. In real life, he finished way behind Donald Trump in these two states, but just barely ahead of Ted Cruz, by 1,148 votes out of 740,881 in South Carolina and by 1,861 votes out of 75,216 cast in Nevada. Had Rubio finished second in New Hampshire, he might have finished a much stronger second in both states, to the disadvantage of Cruz. Now consider the counterfactual from Cruz’s point of view. If he had come in second in these two states rather than Rubio, he might have entered Super Tuesday more clearly as the strongest Trump challenger.
Super Tuesday. Many of the victories here were blowouts — Cruz’s in his home state of Texas, Trump’s in Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts and Tennessee. But there were also some close calls. In Arkansas, Cruz finished just 9,396 votes behind Trump out of 409,928 cast. In Virginia, Rubio finished just 29,001 votes behind Trump out of 1,025,389 votes cast. In both cases, partisans of each candidate had reason to believe that if the other had won just a few votes fewer in February contests, their man might have beaten Trump. Or, in the case of Virginia, it’s pretty clear that if Kasich had vanished as a factor (as in our New Hampshire counterfactual) Rubio would have won. In reality, Trump won seven of the 10 Super Tuesday contests. In the counterfactual, he might have won just five of ten — and perhaps lost a psychological edge.
Kentucky and Louisiana. On March 5 Cruz carried the Kansas and Maine caucuses, but lost the Kentucky caucus and Louisiana primary, by 9,990 votes of 229,667 cast in Kentucky and 10,869 votes of 301,169 cast in Lousiana. Just 21,000 votes properly located would have enabled Cruz to go four for four that day.
Missouri seems to have a penchant for close races. In 2008 primaries there John McCain beat Mike Huckabee by 8,411 votes out of 588,844 cast and Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton by 11,732 votes out of 825,030 cast. In the 2008 general election McCain beat Obama in Missouri by 3,903 votes out of 2,929,111 cast. If Missouri’s 11 electoral votes (then; it has 10 now) had made the difference between victory and defeat, the results would probably have been contested as furiously as Florida’s were in 2000.
On March 15 this year, Missouri did it again. As things currently stand, Trump has a lead over Cruz by 1,709 votes out of 936,067 cast and Clinton has a lead over Sanders by 1,519 votes out of 625,877 cast. Notice that in Missouri, as in most states that have voted so far this year, Republican turnout is way up over 2008 (up 58 percent) and Democratic turnout is way down as compared to 2008 (down 26 percent). And, in contrast to 2008, many more Missourians voted for Republicans than Democrats.
But that’s a big trend. Another big trend is that Donald Trump is benefiting from split opposition; however any recount goes, he got the lion’s share of delegates from Illinois and Missouri with well under 50 percent of the vote — which is why, as my latest Washington Examiner column argues, Republicans who want to stop Trump from getting the 1,237 majority of delegates need to vote for Ted Cruz.
That said, a few votes can make a very big difference in a process as complicated as our Republican and Democratic nominating processes. They’re the weakest part of our political system, as I’ve long argued, and maybe it’s not coincidental they’re the one part that is not referenced in the Constitution.
