Sometimes pure logic leads to better results than the actual ideology. What is out of the box thinking and how does it relate to Donald Trump’s victory?

Note: The quote above is an internet meme - Not a real comment.

Out of the box thinking

In 2001 a 60-kilo Japanese youngster called Takeru Kobayashi eats a world record in his first hot dog contest. The unbelievable result doublest the previous world record in the competitive sport.

In 2002 baseball team Oakland Athletics beats the winning record of the league even though their budget is at the bottom of the comparison among the 30 teams.

These tales stories have been told in the book Think like a freak and Moneyball. These exceptional accomplishments have one common variable. In both cases they fully redesigned the thinking process to solve their problems. This is called ‘out of the box thinking’.

In other words you could describe out of the box thinking as ‘breaking the patterns’, ‘doing things in a new way’, ‘being creative’ or ‘being innovative’.

There’s a problem to be solved. Nothing else matters.

In businesses you often see lack of out of the box thinking. Why to use working hours to build a nice website if it doesn’t serve profit making? But business man Donald Trump obviously is capable to out of the box thinking and percentage calculations.

Trump’s victory - Election mathematics or beginner’s luck?

Let’s apply out of the box thinking to USA presidental election 2016.

You first thought might be that in order to become the president of USA you would need applicable political studies, correct behaviour and relations to White house.

Wrong. You make it to the president by getting 271 electoral votes.

The electoral votes are only thing that matter. Not opinions in other countries or gallup results. That's why Trump won the 2016 election.
The electoral votes are only thing that matter. Not opinions in other countries or gallup results. That's why Trump won the 2016 election.

In US presidental election the candidate that gets most of the popular votes in a state gets all electoral votes in that state. Trump won the electoral votes 56% to 44% against Hillary Clinton*. The result was clear.

Trump never tried to be friends with everyone. Not at all. He threatened. And mocked. As a result Clinton got 47,7 % of the popular votes while Trump actually got slighly less: 47,5 %. Others got crumbs*. Remember, now we are talking about those 125 million individual votes, not electoral votes. You like it or not, the electoral votes are what counts.

I don’t express my opinion whether Mr. Trump is good choice for the president but I’m pretty sure that behind the scenes there was some carefully calculated election mathematics.

A great lesson to out of the box thinking.

*Counting the votes in progress but Trump victory confirmed.