Trump won with low minority vote

Donald Trump won the US presidency with less support from black and Hispanic voters than any president in at least 40 years, and his performance among Asian-Americans was the worst of any winning presidential candidate since tracking of that demographic began in 1992, a Reuters review of polling data shows.

Trump was elected with 8 percent of the black vote, 28 percent of the Hispanic vote and 27 percent of the AsianAmerican vote, according to the Reuters/Ipsos Election Day poll.

The number of AsianAmerican voters in the last decade increased to 3.9 million voters in 2012 from more than 2 million in 2000, according to the Center for American Progress and Asian and Pacific Islander Data. The Chinese-American community, with a population of 4 million, accounts for nearly a quarter of the Asian-American population in the US, according to a Pew Research report in 2013.

Among black voters, Trump’s showing was comparable to the 9 percent captured by George W. Bush in 2000 and Ronald Reagan in 1984. But Bush and Reagan both did far better with Hispanic voters, capturing 35 percent and 34 percent, respectively, according to exit polling data compiled by the non-partisan Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

Meanwhile, two weeks after Election Day votes in many states are still being counted, and the tally shows that Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote, with Michigan’s 16 electoral votes still up for grab, continues to grow. Clinton’s lead of more than 2 million votes, according to the Cook Political Report, continues to increase, largely due to an influx of absentee and provisional ballots still being counted in California.

As of Wednesday, she has about 64.2 million votes to Trump’s 62.2 million; her margin in California alone is more than 3.7 million. Trump has 290 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232, with Michigan outstanding. Even if Clinton wins there she still would trail, 290-248.

Trump told New York Times reporters Tuesday he would “rather do the popular vote” and was “never a fan of the Electoral College until now”.

The racial polarization behind Trump’s victory has helped set the stage for tensions that have surfaced repeatedly since the election, in white supremacist victory celebrations, in anti-Trump protests and civil rights rallies, and in hundreds of racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic hate crimes documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks extremist movements. The SPLC reports there were 701 incidents of “hateful harassment and intimidation” between the day following the Nov 8 election and Nov 16, with a spike in such incidents in the immediate wake of the vote.