Cherry picking election results yields apples and oranges comparison

Wednesday, March 15, 2017 -- N.C. Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger questioned Gov. Roy Cooper's mandate, but may have opened other questions, too.

Posted 4:25 p.m. Mar 15, 2017 — Updated 4:26 p.m. Mar 15, 2017

“Across the state Republican legislators received hundreds of thousands more votes than their Democratic opponents,” declared Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, in his response to Gov. Roy Cooper’s State of the State. “Yet, Roy Cooper, who squeaked into office by a mere 10,000 votes has treated his election as a mandate …”

Well, it might be a fact that in all the 2016 state Senate elections, Republicans received about 624,800 more votes than Democrats. But, many of those races were uncontested – so there was no chance for a Democrat to get any votes in 11 Senate contests or a Republican to get a single vote in four Senate races.

To look at state Senate races in another way, in races where there was a choice of candidates, Democrats received around 61,500 more votes than Republicans.

All this leads to another question – Does Berger feel that President Donald Trump has any less a mandate because he received 2.87 million fewer votes nationwide than Hillary Clinton?

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