It wasn’t a blowout election – in fact, the popular vote went the other way. But if the left wants to think that things were better in 2012, they’d better think again.

Because all things being equal, Donald Trump would have beaten Barack Obama in 2012.

National Review ran the math and here’s how it breaks down:

Hillary Clinton lost the election with six million fewer popular votes than Barack Obama in 2012. One could easily conclude she simply lost because she didn’t get out her base. But the truth is more complicated than that.

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The website runs down the math – and we’ll repeat some here – but the result is fascinating: Donald Trump is such a force that not even Barack Obama would have been able to stop.

Here are some state-by-state results they came up with and what happened in 2016 versus 2012:

FLORIDA — 29 EVs — 98 percent reporting Obama 2012: 4,235,270 Clinton 2016: 4,485,745 Romney 2012: 4,162,081 Trump 2016: 4,605,515 RELATED: BOOM: The Reality Check Crybaby Liberals DESPERATELY Need Conclusion: Trump beats Obama by some 370,000 votes and wins Florida. (Note: Clinton herself won 250,000 more votes in Florida than Obama did in 2012.) PENNSYLVANIA — 20 EVs — 97 percent reporting Obama 2012: 2,907,448 Clinton 2016: 2,844,705 Romney 2012: 2,619,583 Trump 2016: 2,912,941 Conclusion: Trump squeezes past Obama by a margin of some 5,000 votes and wins Pennsylvania. (Note: Clinton runs about 60,000 votes behind Obama, but would’ve had more than enough to defeat Romney in 2012.) OHIO — 18 EVs – 94 percent reporting Obama 2012: 2,697,260 Clinton 2016: 2,317,001 Romney 2012: 2,593,779 Trump 2016: 2,771,984

Conclusion: Trump edges Obama by roughly 75,000 votes and wins Ohio. (Note: Clinton’s worst battleground state showing was Ohio, winning 380,000 [!] fewer votes than Obama.)

Stop right there and crunch the numbers: Florida (29) + Pennsylvania (20) + Ohio (18) = 67 EVs. Romney finished with 206 EVs. By protecting all of those, and then taking 67 from Obama, Trump would hit 273 and win the presidency. The question: Did Trump 2016 defeat Obama 2012 in all of the states Romney won? Yes. Here’s a look at the competitive ones: NORTH CAROLINA (98 percent reporting): Trump 2,339,603 … Obama 2,178,388 ARIZONA (73 percent reporting): Trump 947,284 … Obama 930,669 GEORGIA (93 percent reporting): Trump 2,068,623 … Obama 1,761,761 UTAH (78 percent reporting): Trump 360,634 … Obama 229,463

So in a hypothetical matchup, Trump would have carried every single state Romney did against Obama. It doesn’t matter how MUCH Obama would beat Trumpby in one state or another; the electoral college isn’t determined that way.

It would have produced a razor-thin margin of victory for Trump: 273 votes to Obama’s 265.

Again, this is an apples-to-oranges exercise. It’s impossible to know how the Obama campaign might have targeted certain voters in a contest against Trump, or whether Trump would have the same success in the three big battleground states against a more formidable opponent. But that’s not the point here; the point is that it’s not entirely fair to blame Clinton for depressing Democratic turnout when she ran even with him in five of the country’s most competitive states and ahead of him in a sixth, Florida, the single biggest swing state — and still lost the electoral college.





