Why did Hillary lose the 2016 election? Misogyny? Jill Stein? Russia?

Or was it that voters in crucial swing states got weary of sending their children off to pointless wars?

A new study says the latter.



In this paper we empirically explore whether this divide—the casualty gap—contributed to Donald Trump’s surprise victory in November 2016. The data analysis presented in this working paper finds that indeed, in the 2016 election Trump was speaking to this forgotten part of America. Even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump. Our statistical model suggests that if three states key to Trump’s victory – Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin – had suffered even a modestly lower casualty rate, all three could have flipped from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House.

Let's forget for a moment that Trump was totally lying about his foreign policy, because no one knew that for sure until after January.

What this study indicates is one thing that we all knew already - that no one likes wars when a loved one gets maimed or killed in it.

However, the study goes deeper and looks at more than just the 2016 election. It looks at long-term trends.



“[M]ore than a quarter of counties had experienced a casualty rate more than 3.5 times greater, and 10% of counties had suffered casualty rates of more than 7 deaths per 100,000 residents. Voters in such communities increasingly abandoned Republican candidates in a series of elections in the 2000s.”

Thus at least part of the reason the Dems won in 2006 and 2008 was because the GOP condidates were war hawks.

On the flip-side, at least part of the reason the Dems lost in 2016 was because Hillary was a war hawk.



“The significant inroads that Trump made among constituencies exhausted by fifteen years of war – coupled with his razor thin electoral margin (which approached negative three million votes in the national popular tally) – should make Trump even more cautious in pursuing ground wars.