Change in margin of victory in 2016 from 2012, by state

The following map and table show the change in the margin of victory in the 2016 presidential election relative to 2012, by state, with positive (negative) figures indicating an improvement (deterioration) in the margin for Republicans. That is, the colors do not indicate who won the state in 2016, but show how much better (worse) Trump did in 2016 relative to how Romney did in 2012:

State	Margin▲
North Dakota	17
West Virginia	16
Iowa	16
Rhode Island	12
Maine	12
South Dakota	12
Ohio	12
Indiana	10
Hawaii	10
Michigan	9
Missouri	9
Wisconsin	8
Kentucky	8
Mississippi	8
Delaware	8
Montana	8
Vermont	8
Wyoming	7
Minnesota	7
Tennessee	6
Pennsylvania	6
New Hampshire	6
Alabama	5
New York	5
Nebraska	4
New Jersey	4
Connecticut	4
Arkansas	4
Nevada	4
South Carolina	3
Oklahoma	2
Florida	2
Colorado	2
North Carolina	2
Louisiana	2
New Mexico	2
Oregon	1
Alaska	1
Maryland	1
Idaho	1
Illinois	0
Virginia	(1)
Kansas	(1)
Washington	(1)
Georgia	(1)
Massachusetts	(3)
District of Columbia	(5)
California	(6)
Arizona	(6)
Texas	(7)
Utah	(30)

Notice the similarities between the map above and this one, which shows Trump's electoral performance relative to pre-election polling. The states where Trump and Hillary beat polling
expectations tend to be the same places they beat their parties' 2012 candidates. The polls tended to assume that 2016 would look like 2012, but it didn't.

In other words, the primary failing of polling organizations--beyond their systematic oversampling of Democrats--was their refusal to grasp the political realignment that characterized the 2016 presidential election.

The oft-commented upon east-west divide--or more precisely, northeast-southwest divide--is salient. Trump's biggest relative gains came in the upper Midwest.

In the South the changes from 2012 were quite modest in the general election. The upper Midwest and even the Northeast shifted more dramatically.

However, the South is the area of the country where race and partisanship are most strongly correlated. The interesting dynamic here took place in the primaries, where not only did Trump dominate, but where his domination came as the biggest shock to the political and punditry classes.

The South, with an assist from Yankeedom, gave Trump the nomination; the Upper Midwest gave him the presidency.

On one hand, the Texas outcome is a worrisome one in an election that was otherwise almost universally good for Republicans. Trump's margin of victory was narrower in Texas than it was in Iowa, a blueish-purple state.

On the other hand, while I've previously warned that when Texas flips blue the GOP will be utterly finished, that admonition may be evidence for why my nom de guerre is fitting. Assuming no faithless electors, if Trump had lost Texas in November, Hillary would've only won by the narrowest Electoral College margin of victory possible, 270-268.

For those outside the US, a few notes on some of the seeming outliers:

- Utah -- Romney's heavily Mormon home state; additionally, the basket that failed spoiler Evan McMullin (also Mormon) put all of his eggs.

- Massachusetts -- Romney was governor from 2003 to 2006.

- Hawaii -- Obama spent most of his childhood here. While he's allegedly from Kansas, Hawaii and Illinois are his 'home states'.

- Iowa -- While Jeff Sessions was my VP favorite by a mile, one of the silver linings I saw in the Pence pick was that it would virtually guarantee Trump the state of Iowa. Pence was governor of Indiana but he is the archetypal Iowan Republican.

Diversity is strength! ... It's also tax cheating

Excerpting TWCS, Heartiste talks about quantifying the costs of Diversity!, the structure of which is characterized by an iceberg effect with the most conspicuous costs representing a small fraction of the total while the most go unnoticed by all but the few who deliberately look for them.

While TWCS defeated the kraken, I'll throw my slippers at the beast's carcass. In the nineties the GSS asked respondents how they felt about cheating on income taxes. The following table shows the percentages who answered either it wasn't wrong or it was only "a bit" wrong among whites (n =  1,534), blacks (n = 304), and Hispanics (n = 123) (the question was only asked twice and consequently sample sizes were too small for Asians):

The ethnic group most morally repulsed by tax cheating*? Surprise, surprise, it's those of English or Welsh ancestry (n = 298), with just 9.9% judging it to be either not wrong or a bit wrong.

* Among groups with at least 35 responses

GSS variables used: RACE(1,2), ETHNIC(1-16,18-29,31-97)(17,22,38), TAXCHEAT(1-2,3-4)

Immigration decreases trust

Among many other things, a modern economy requires a high-trust society. As social trust continues to decline across the West, so will the the standard-of-living and quality-of-life the West enjoys.

The immigration trends over the last fifty years are accelerating this process. Immigrants to the US are less trusting of others than natives are. The following graph shows the percentages of people, by whether they are native- or foreign-born, who say that "generally speaking most people can be trusted". For contemporary relevance all responses are from 2000 onward (n = 11,221):

All immigrants are not created equally, of course. The percentages of the foreign-born who say most people can be trusted, by place of origin*:

Ice People are more trusting than Sun People are. America's Magic Dirt doesn't change that.

Parenthetically, trust is neither universally adaptive nor universally maladaptive. There are cultural and biological differences across different populations. In WEIRDO countries, being a highly trusting person is generally beneficial because most people are trustworthy.

However in much of the rest of the world, where corruption is rampant and transparency rare, to trust other people is to be a sucker who gets taken advantage of.

As the US and other western countries increasingly fill up with Sun People, trusting other people will steadily move from being adaptive in those countries to being maladaptive in them.

This outcome is evitable. Avoiding it is simple. Simple, but not easy.

* Sample sizes for Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America are 297, 246, 60, and 502, respectively.

GSS variables used: TRUST(1-2), BORN, YEAR(2000-2014), ETHNIC(1)(17,38)(5,16,20,31,40)(2-4,6-15,18,19,24-27,32-36,41)

Ann Donnelly, America Last

Fantasizes about filthy romps
with swashbuckling Saracens

A black robe from Brooklyn, on behalf of the ACLU, thwarts the electoral mandate given to the president by the American people in favor of Iraqi immigrants to whom the US constitution does not apply.

America First meets ethnomasochistic leap-frogging loyalties, certainly not for the last time.

While the dumb ones are calling him Hitler, those with a little more on the ball see him as another Andrew Jackson. How I'd love to see Trump agree and amplify by giving them the Jackson treatment vis-a-vis John Marshall with regards to Georgia and the Cherokee!

That's not going to happen (yet), but the bully pulpit shouldn't be used for the purposes of reconciliation, it should be used to grind our enemies into pulp.

Obama, divider in chief

When Obama was sworn in as the 44th president, 46% of the population thought the country was more politically divided than ever before to 45% who did not think so. During Obama's eight years, perceived political division steadily increased all the way to the extent that when Trump was sworn in as the 45th president last week, 86% of the population thought the country was more politically divided than ever before to just 12% who did not think so.

Trump didn't cause this divisiveness, he's a consequence of it. And he might just be the manifestation of what will reverse it. More likely, though, is the political dissolution of the country in our lifetimes.