Good point and data..

The polls showed all along that Hillary fared better in a head-to-head match against Trump than when Gary Johnson was included. (Jill Stein was a factor also, but she received far fewer votes than Johnson and most of her supporters despised Hillary and would never have voted for her.)

Hillary's campaign was well aware that Gary Johnson was cutting into her vote totals. While the Republicans essentially ignored Johnson, the Dems spent millions of dollars on ads saying "Don't vote third party."

It's entirely possible that Gary Johnson's campaign has changed the course of U.S. and world history in a major way.

I wonder why Jill Stein isn't demanding a NH recount?

But are Johnson's numbers because he was a better speech maker, or because Hillary wasn't palatable to the Democrat voter? I am also sure that while not at an equal level to the Democrats much of Johnson's votes also came from Trump being equally unpalatable to Republican voters. I really wish we could break the two party mold we have settled into in this country and offer different options to the people of this country. As it is now, we are offer two candidates who are essentially both sides of the same coin in that they are both taking us to the same destination, just at different speeds. And that destination is not the one the Founders imagined when they put the foundation for this country into place. They wanted a government that protected the individual's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, while involving itself extremely minimally in their lives. However, we evolved a class of people who believe that the nanny state is preferable to this model and they have infected the political system on both sides. They have decided in their own wisdom that they know what is better for the country and have attempted to make the system fair for everyone by inflating the extent to which the federal government has extended its tendrils into everyone's lives. So each party is in an arms race to see who can 'fix' the government better and in the process they are feeding it and making it larger. It can be compared to Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors. At first when it was tiny it seemed innocuous and harmless to feed it, but eventually it grows and gets out of control (not the happy ending they ended up doing in the 1986 remake, but its original ending where it has multiplied and is running loose destroying the world). And everytime they pass legislation to try to (re)balance the playing field, they just create more problems that need fixing in an ever increasing spiral of death for what should be the freest country in the world. Instead they forge the next link in the chain that enslaves the people to the government that was supposed to be the slave to those people.

(Whoa, went off on a major tangent there)

I wouldn't break out the champagne yet, maybe a beer to celebrate the fact it isn't the Beast.

I know we are living in the twitter age of messaging in under 140 characters, but the Clintons and Democrats are not Voldemort in the Harry Potter's series. They don't appear when you mention their names. ;-P

Actually, if you take out California, Hillary did not win the popular vote.

I do find it a bit difficult to believe she got 2.5 million votes more than Trump, especially when it took weeks and weeks to find that out. In the past dozen elections, the electoral college pretty much mirrors the popular vote, except for a very few times in our election history.

Be careful here, the "lies" are not limited to the Dumbocraps, remember Nixon? Party politics are not good vs evil, even though it seems we have drifted that way, it may be evil vs more evil.

Remember, he is a writer and makes a living off this, so maybe he just realized someone wanted something unique for once, after they spent 3 weeks with the "we was robbed" gang.......

evolve to Libertarian seems more likely. Voted for Johnson, so that is a pretty good clue.

Unfortunately, the R's as lost as the D's on many of these issues. They are almost as clueless as the rank and file D's.....

This is the sad fact, there is really little difference between the two parties. Both are for the most part controlled by the oligarchs of the world......

We got Trump, and now its up to him to do what he said and at least slow down the march to socialism. He seems to be doing just that with his appointments so far. I do hope he doesnt hire Romney as SOS. That guy is a disloyal snake, as is Paul Ryan- two peas in a pod.

Gotta laugh at that:
“Hillary Clinton can make Richard Nixon look like Mahatma Gandhi.”

Voting for 3rd parties is not a waste - it is the most obvious thing a voter can do to show that the Demicans do not represent them and that change is necessary.
3rd party voting affects Demicans campaigning, messaging, spending, policies, etc.
Voting Demican is frequently likely a waste if you want any reduced government - most of the time it just affirms the status quo: continued lost of liberty and property, but perhaps a a slightly different rate.

Your reasoning is why we have two entrenched parties and voting for a third party candidate is considered "wasting their vote". As long as the Democrats and Republicans can rig the system to favor themselves, a third party will never get a chance to succeed. I did think this past election was one that had a chance due to the dislike for the two major party candidates, but then the two major third party candidates weren't much better in that they really didn't offer a better alternative to either Clinton or Trump. If either party could have put forth a truly Presidential candidate (someone who offered more policy-wise, and not just fringe issues), I believe they could have upset the election. As it was though, we had a tree-hugger with political aspirations and a guy who was clueless when it came to anything outside the borders of this country whose main ambition was to legalize pot in every state. (I know I am strawmaning these candidates, but that was the impression I got from them).

Do not limit yourself to just the Dumbocraps. It would be a mistake to sell the Republicrats short on this, they have practiced the same strategy, it is politics as usual. The Internet has made it harder, but also easier to sabotage the other guy, look at the " he harassed" me crap they rolled out in August/September, which did not work as planned, look at how a fake news story can be bought off as truth, look at how fast any story, tweet or picture can go "viral". Those who think they can control the beast do not understand exponential math.....The Internet has introduced a completely different dynamic, one that the HRC gang did not understand.

Perhaps - but there really is little motivation to vote
for a Republican in a HUGELY heavy Democratic state like California - where in the all or nothing elector vote leaves little motivation for many to vote for the minority candidate.
I do not recall seeing a single Trump ad in CA, which makes perfect sense given the zero chance. If popular vote actually counted at national level then the campaigns (and voting) would have been significantly different.