The author repeatedly mentions that he knows he's comparing apples to oranges but never adjusts his figures for population growth over the period.
As of this morning, Trump is underperforming Romney by 1.9 million votes, but the country has grown by 9 million since 2012.
The Trump performance figure in 2016 presupposes having so much more to work with from the increased population growth but still comes up short of Romney who had so much less to work with because of a smaller population.
Trump toyed with the idea of competing in 2012 but wisely left Romney to do that and fail, knowing instinctively that the shiny, happy and clean novelty incumbent was going to be very hard to beat.
Obama was beatable in 2012, had fewer than 500,000 votes in four states east of the Mississippi gone a different way, but Romney possessed insufficient charisma compared to Obama, too few boots on the ground to make up for that, and the formidable problem of Obama's incumbency.
And on top of all that, Romney was a lousy candidate. His wife had to reassure us that "Mitt doesn't change positions".
As with all fortunes from Chinese cookies, always add "in bed" for maximum amusement.
