My Wise Cousin Steve

 

Donochio

I haven’t mentioned my wise cousin Steve in a while. Actually I’ve been busy with other stuff and haven’t had time to write a blog post, but he sent me a series of e-mails that I just have to share. 

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but Steve is an Excel expert. He puts everything on Excel: pictures, documents. He puts his grandchildren’s pictures on Excel, with comments. He recently put all my blog posts on Excel, all 300 or so, with filters to search them for topics. He also did our family genealogy on Excel, complete with links

to documents and pictures, and filters that enable you to search them by clan, and 50 or so other parameters. For my blog post spread sheet, he had to read all my blogs and the filter them according to history war, philosophy, Indian tribes, family, interviews, etc, etc, a tremendous amount of work. Steve taught me to put my pictures on Excel, as well as my You Tube posts. It’s really useful. 

The other thing that my wise cousin Steve is exert in is politics. Putting this together with his love of spread sheets makes him a valuable resource. A local politician once hired him to chart voter characteristics in each county. 

Last week we were talking about Trump’s boasting that in 2016 he won over Clinton in the biggest Electoral College victory (304 votes) since Ronald Reagan, and beat Harris in a landslide. Since then he has sent me spread sheets listing the popular and electoral college votes in all the presidential elections since 1975, along with the margins in each race. Then, he sent a summary of his findings as follows:

 

The second worksheet ranks popular vote margin

1972 - Nixon over McGovern – 23.2%

1964 - Johnson over Goldwater – 22.5%

1984 - Reagan over Mondale – 18.2%

1956 - Eisenhower over Stevenson – 15.4%

1952 - Eisenhower over Stevenson – 10.9%

No other post WWII popular vote margin was over 10%

The closest was 1960 Kennedy over Nixon 0.1%

2 winners had fewer popular votes than the looser

2000 - Bush over Gore -0.5%

2016 – Trump over Clinton -2.1%

 

The third worksheet ranks electoral vote margin

1984 – Reagan over Mondale – 512 ev

1972 – Nixon over McGovern – 503 ev

1980 – Reagan over Carter – 440 ev

1964 – Johnson over Goldwater – 434 ev

1956 - Eisenhower over Stevenson – 384 ev

1952 - Eisenhower over Stevenson – 353 ev

1988 – Bush over Dukakis – 315 ev

No other post WWII electoral vote margin was over 300 ev

The closest was 2000 – Bush over Gore 5 ev

 

2016 Trump over Clinton (304 ev to 227 ev)

Trump’s claim "I had the biggest Electoral College victory (304 votes) since Ronald Reagan"

Since Ronald Reagan in 1984

1988 – Bush over Dukakis – 426 ev for Bush

1992 – Clinton over Bush – 370 ev for Clinton

1996 – Clinton over Dole – 379 ev for Clinton

2008 – Obama over McCain – 365 ev for Obama

2012 – Obama over Romney – 332 ev for Obama

 

2024 Trump over Harris (49.8% to 48.3%)

Trump’s claim “I won the election in a landslide”

Since WWII

6 Winners received a lower percentage of the popular vote than Trump in 2024

13 Winners received a higher percentage of the popular vote then Trump in 2024

 

In the meantime I read an article reporting that some surveys are now conducted by AI instead of actually questioning real people! He responded as follows: 

Lots of polls are biased.  An online poll on Fox will have different results than one on Mother Jones.  Differences in methodology – the way questions are asked, the group of people polled, the bias of the poll taker, statistics – are variables that are difficult to overcome.  I don’t trust any poll when I don’t agree with the outcome. 

Steve’s currently working on a spreadsheet listing attempts to gerrymander by state.