Trumps retweets false claim about why he won Wisconsin

Donald Trump retweeted a false claim regarding why he won the state of Wisconsin in 2016. The claim was made by his Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, and repeated by an article published by madison.com.

With a strong candidate in @POTUS & @GOP revolutionary data program, Republicans carried WI for 1st time in 30 yearshttps://t.co/WUDvUZZ1n1

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) July 3, 2017

Priebus claims the GOP won in Wisconsin because of a "strong candidate" and because of "revolutionary data program" by the Republicans that allowed them to find more voters.

But the claim is false. Trump had actually fewer votes in Wisconsin than Mitt Romney in 2012.

Compared with 2012, the GOP had 2,682 fewer votes in 2016. Hillary Clinton, however, lost almost a quarter of a million votes (238,449) in Wisconsin compared to Barack Obama's votes in 2012. That loss in votes by Clinton allowed Trump to win even though he lost votes too compared to 2012.

The thing is, even with the massive vote loss by Clinton, the difference of votes between Trump and Clinton in Wisconsin was a mere 22,748 votes.

At the same time, Green Party candidate Jill Stein had a vote increase of 23,407 votes compared to 2012, while Libertarian Gary Johnson had an increase of 86,235 votes compared to four years earlier (Stein and Johnson, were presidential candidates for their parties in 2012 and 2016).

That means there are three reasons why Hillary Clinton lost in Wisconsin:

1. Because of the defectors who voted for Obama in 2012 but then voted for Jill Stein in 2016. Those votes alone made the difference between first and second place.

2. Because of liberal voters who voted for Gary Johnson (Johnson campaigned specifically to attracted Bernie Sanders voters).

3. Because of Democratic voters who did not even bother to vote. Added up, Stein's and Johnson's votes account for less than half of the overall amount of votes the Democrats lost.

But Priebus and Trump are trying to spin it to make it sound like Trump won because Trump and the GOP are great, when in fact the numbers show they aren't.

What's truly interesting about it is this: if the GOP really made the effort to get new votes, and they still got fewer votes than Mitt Romney, they're not going to be able to win in 2018 even with their self-proclaimed "revolutionary data program", as more liberal and progressive voters will not stay home this time around.

It doesn't mean, however, that the Democrats should be thinking about an inevitable victory. Data targeting can give the GOP a small but significant edge if the Democratic candidates are weak, and if they don't apply data targetting themselves.