{"id":101,"date":"2016-11-28T16:46:06","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T16:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/?p=101"},"modified":"2017-01-27T18:17:27","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T18:17:27","slug":"is-it-plausible-that-non-citizen-votes-account-for-the-entire-margin-of-trumps-popular-vote-loss-to-clinton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/2016\/11\/28\/is-it-plausible-that-non-citizen-votes-account-for-the-entire-margin-of-trumps-popular-vote-loss-to-clinton\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it plausible that non-citizen votes account for the entire margin of Trump’s popular vote loss to Clinton?"},"content":{"rendered":"

January 24, 2017.<\/p>\n

Although Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed today that millions voted illegally in the November 2016 election, on November 28, 2016 I published the following statement indicating that our analysis does not support his claim. Since then, no new data, facts or analyses have emerged that require us to revisit or change the findings of the 2014 study to which Mr. Spicer refers. We stand by our findings.<\/p>\n

What we posted in on November 28, 2016:<\/p>\n

Donald Trump recently suggested that his deficit in the popular vote to Clinton might be due entirely to illegal votes cast, for instance by non-citizens. \u00a0Is this claim plausible? \u00a0The claim Trump is making is not supported by our data.<\/p>\n

Here I run some extrapolations based upon the estimates for other elections from my coauthored 2014 paper on non-citizen voting. \u00a0You can access that paper on the journal website here<\/a>\u00a0and Judicial Watch has also posted a PDF<\/a>. \u00a0The basic assumptions on which the extrapolation is based are that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted, and that of the non-citizens who voted, 81.8\u00a0percent voted for Clinton and 17.5\u00a0percent voted for Trump. \u00a0These were numbers from our study for the 2008 campaign. \u00a0Obviously to the extent that critics<\/a> of my study are correct the first number (percentage of non-citizens who voted) may be too high, and the second number (percentage who voted for Clinton) may be too low.<\/p>\n

The count of the popular vote is still in flux as many states have yet to certify official final tallies. \u00a0Here I used this unofficial tally<\/a> linked by Real Clear Politics. \u00a0As of this writing Trump is 2,235,663 votes behind Clinton in the popular vote.<\/p>\n

If the assumptions stated above concerning non-citizen turnout are correct, could non-citizen turnout account for Clinton’s popular vote margin? There is no way it could have. \u00a06.4 percent turnout among the roughly 20.3 million non-citizen adults in the US would add\u00a0only 834,318\u00a0votes to Clinton’s popular vote margin. \u00a0This is little more than a third\u00a0of the total margin.<\/p>\n

Is it plausible that non-citizen votes added to Clinton’s margin. \u00a0Yes. \u00a0Is it plausible that non-citizen votes account for the entire nation-wide popular vote margin held by Clinton? \u00a0Not at all.<\/p>\n

If the percentage of non-citizens voting for Clinton is held constant, roughly 18.5 percent of non-citizens would have had to vote for their votes to have made up the entire Clinton popular vote margin. \u00a0I don’t think that this rate is at all plausible. \u00a0 Even if we assume that 90 percent voted for Clinton and only 10 percent for Trump, a more than fourteen percent turnout would be necessary to account for Clinton’s popular vote margin. \u00a0This is much higher than the estimates we offered. \u00a0Again, it seems too high to be plausible.<\/p>\n

December 1st Update<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Like so much on this issue, this posting has taken on something of a life of its own, and I want to emphasize and clarify some points that seem to be generating confusion as echo chambers pick this up and re-post it.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u00a0This post is not intended to make a specific claim<\/strong> on my part concerning how many non-citizens voted in 2016. \u00a0It has a much narrower aim<\/strong>. \u00a0My goal was to show that an extrapolation from my coauthored work on the 2008 election to the 2016 election did not support the arguments some seemed to be making that the entire popular vote margin for Clinton was due to illegal votes by non-citizens.<\/strong> \u00a0In this post I do my own calculation of that extrapolation for the purpose of demonstrating that this extrapolation would not support that claim.<\/li>\n
  2. There are a number of reasons why one should be cautious about extrapolating from the 2008 CCES data to 2016.\n
      \n
    1. Many things can and have changed over the course of eight years. \u00a0For example, a number of states have made efforts to use matching of records to remove non-citizen registrants from voter rolls. \u00a0For example, on this blog I\u00a0have recently highlighted data from Virginia<\/a> and North Carolina<\/a>\u00a0concerning such matching efforts. \u00a0These non-citizens are no longer on voter rolls. \u00a0There are other states that have been even more aggressive about the issue of attempting to verify that registered voters are citizens. \u00a0Furthermore, although the evidence from our 2014 paper suggests that it is only partially effective, many states have moved to adopt tighter identification requirements.<\/li>\n
    2. \u00a0 The 2008 estimate is inherently uncertain. \u00a0It depends upon a number of assumptions including assumptions about the validity of the survey data. Our\u00a0critics<\/a>\u00a0have made a variety of arguments and I encourage readers to evaluate those arguments along with our responses<\/a> to them. \u00a0The underlying study on which the extrapolation is based has been the subject of some cogent criticisms, and this leads me to believe that the actual rate of non-citizen involvement is on the low end of our initial estimates rather than anywhere close to the high end.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
    3. In the absence of other data, arguably an extrapolation from the earlier (2008) numbers is the best one can do. \u00a0But one should recognize that this is an extrapolation fraught with a great deal of uncertainty.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      _________________________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

      All postings on this website represent the opinions, analyses, and interpretations of the author alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      January 24, 2017. Although Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed today that millions voted illegally in the November 2016 election, on November 28, 2016 I published the following statement indicating that our analysis does not support his claim. Since then, no… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fs.wp.odu.edu\/jrichman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}