Avalanche

My video, Avalanche, is presented below. I think it's the most important project I've ever worked on. I hope you'll share it widely.


Click here for an alternate version with descriptive audio for the visually impaired.

If you’ve watched the video and still aren’t convinced that this is all about turnout, consider this:

  • Of the fourteen states with the highest turnout rate four years ago, 10 went for Clinton and 4 went for Trump.
  • Of the fourteen states with the lowest turnout rate, 10 went for Trump and 4 went for Clinton.
Included in that first group: Florida, Michigan, and Wisconsin — three states that figure in the video — states that went for Trump by razor thin margins. That leaves Iowa as the only state in that group of top fourteen voter participation rates that actually went solidly for Trump.

As you steel yourself to vote even if you’ve never voted before and even if you fear that your state is too “deep red” for your vote to make a difference, consider this:

There is not a single state in the union that could not have been flipped the other way four years ago by the eligible voters who opted out. NOT A SINGLE ONE! Not California, not Alabama, not Kentucky, not Massachusetts. Texas’s margin was surprisingly slim. (Washington, DC went so overwhelmingly for Clinton that there were not enough unclaimed votes to make a difference. But, of course, Washington, DC isn't a state.)

Additional interesting stats

The 2,868,691 votes that put Trump in second place in the popular vote are more than the total number of presidential votes cast in:
  • Maine, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Delaware combined.
  • Arkansas, Nevada, and Montana combined.
  • Iowa and Mississippi combined.
  • Nebraska, New Mexico, Idaho, and Rhode Island combined.
  • Connecticut and Kansas combined.
  • Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming combined.
  • Montana, Hawaii, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, DC, and Wyoming combined.
  • Any of the following states: Missouri, Maryland, Colorado, Indiana, Arizona, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Oregon, or Kentucky.

There were only 16 states which, individually, saw more than 2,868,691 presidential votes cast.

The 2,868,691 votes that put Trump in second place in the popular vote are more than the total populations of:
  • Idaho and Rhode Island combined.
  • Hawaii and Maine combined.
  • Nebraska and South Dakota combined.
  • West Virginia and Delaware combined.
  • New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Alaska combined.
  • New Mexico and North Dakota combined.
  • Delaware, DC, Vermont, and Wyoming combined.
  • Rhode Island, Montana, and North Dakota combined.
Trump would still have lost the popular vote even if he had doubled his vote total in:
  • Iowa, Oregon, Mississippi, Utah, and DC.
  • Indiana, Arizona, and DC.
  • Minnesota, Louisiana, and New Hampshire.
  • New Jersey, South Carolina, and Vermont.
  • Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, and DC.
  • Tennessee, Kentucky, and Hawaii.
  • Wisconsin, Washington, and South Dakota.
  • Georgia, Connecticut, and Vermont.
  • North Carolina and Nebraska.
  • Illinois, Mississippi, and DC.
  • Missouri, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.
  • Massachusetts, Maryland, Mississippi, and Hawaii.
  • Michigan, West Virginia, and Vermont.
  • Alabama, Colorado, and New Hampshire.
He only did better than the margin in four individual states. (By contrast, Clinton beat the margin in six individual states.)

None of this means that the rigging of the system can't be beaten. It means that Trump supporters are distinctly in the minority but you NEED to VOTE to defeat him. Do not leave this decision entirely up to others.

The video involves lots of information. I’ve tried to present it in a way that will make sense to any reasonably intelligent adult or teenager who cares about democracy.

If you’ve watched the video and are interested in where my numbers come from, you may be interested in knowing that I’ve used a spreadsheet to do some calculations and lots of analysis. The raw numbers at the heart of it all come from multiple sources. Those sources are listed below.

In case you want to see my spreadsheet (to verify that I haven’t fudged the numbers or so that you can check my math) here’s where to find a copy:

my spreadsheet

I’d recommend downloading it and opening it in Microsoft Excel. Opening it in your browser may not provide the best experience and may not give you access to all of the data. The spreadsheet has multiple tabs and it may not all be labelled very well. Sorry. I built it for my purposes, not yours. If you’re familiar with Excel, you should be able to figure out what you're looking at pretty quickly. I’ve tried to color the most important cells to make it easy to find what’s most important. I hope that’s helpful.

Now for raw number sources:

Update 9/1/02020:

Having been made aware that the length of the video may not mesh with some folks’ attention spans, I’m currently working on a series of still images to convey the same information in a less dynamic way. Here are the first four:





Update 9/2/02020:

Here are the next two still images:




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