US General Election 2016

{{{Its looking like all Hail President Trump! }}}

He has no plausible path to 270.

And the FBI announcing that they have found something that might result in new evidence that might change their earlier conclusion that Clinton did nothing criminal is not exactly a game-changing bombshell.

jeez. the FBI stink.

Eldorion wrote:He has no plausible path to 270.

I'm not sure I agree. If the polls were to change just a point or two in Florida and North Carolina it would look like a serious horse race again wouldn't it? Throw in Nevada and it would start looking like a toss-up. Unlikely but definitely not impossible.

Edit: Just checked 538's odds. They're currently giving Donald a 21% chance of winning. That's better than 1 in 5, so definitely plausible to them.

And the polls can always be wrong. I don't think embarrassment has been a factor in poll reporting before, but it's something to fear when looking for an accurate assessment of swing votes this time.

David H wrote:I'm not sure I agree. If the polls were to change just a point or two in Florida and North Carolina it would look like a serious horse race again wouldn't it? Throw in Nevada and it would start looking like a toss-up. Unlikely but definitely not impossible.

Even if Trump wins Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada (despite two of those states going for Obama twice) and Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Georgia, Arizona, and Utah (the last three generally being very red states but that are up for grabs in this election), he would still lose. He only gets to 270 if he wins all of the above and also manages to flip either Pennsylvania, Virginia, or Colorado, which is almost certainly not going to happen. He'll win some of them, sure; Indiana, despite going for Obama in 2008, isn't much of a swing state in this election. But his margin for error is too small, and his poor ground game (practically non-existent would be more accurate) counts against him as well.

EDIT: there are admittedly other possibilities for Trump to get to 270 if he flips reliably Democratic states like Michigan or New Hampshire, but I find that even less likely than the scenario described above. Though it's worth noting that, despite much of the media being intent on portraying it as a swing state, Pennsylvania has also been very reliably Democratic in recent elections (it last went Republican in 1988). And Virginia, thanks to the population boom in NOVA and resultant demographic changes, is in the process of becoming a solidly blue state.

Edit: Just checked 538's odds. They're currently giving Donald a 21% chance of winning. That's better than 1 in 5, so definitely plausible to them.

FiveThirtyEight's predictions have been highly erratic this year, in part by design. The Now-cast, which is the one that puts Trump's odds at 21%, is designed to overreact to variation in the polls its based on. Two weeks ago it gave Trump an 11% chance at victory. The habits of American voters are not nearly so volatile in reality. There are reasons why individual polls sometimes disagree with each other significantly but the point of aggregating them is to iron out those idiosyncrasies. Other models, such as Sam Wang's (who has a similar or better track record than Silver in recent elections), are much less erratic as well as more bullish on Hillary.

halfwise wrote:And the polls can always be wrong.  I don't think embarrassment has been a factor in poll reporting before, but it's something to fear when looking for an accurate assessment of swing votes this time.

I mean, there's a chance, but at the end of the day it's a very slim one. Presidential elections are pretty well understood and experienced pollsters and statisticians have a really good track record at them. (Far better than in, say, UK elections, even when it's the same people making predictions, because those haven't been studied as extensively.) Given the margins Clinton has consistently enjoyed in most polls, a Trump victory would require a collective failure unseen since the advent of modern Presidential election polling methods (ie, the industry's collective re-evaluation and overhaul after the Truman/Dewey election of 1948).

Eldorion wrote:

Even if Trump wins Florida, North Carolina, and Nevada (despite two of those states going for Obama twice)....

I think it's fair to point out though that many voters considered Obama an "outsider" while I think everybody considers Clinton an "insider" (part of the reason Obama got the nomination over Hillary). In this election Donald will presumably be picking up a significant percentage of the "outsider" protest votes.

Also, just a reminder that many pollsters have predicted Trump's flame-out over the course of this election,{{{ you too Eldo.}}} yet Trump seems to not be cooperating. It's probably safest to be hedging bets on this one.

And all the while no one points out how anyone could seriously contemplate someone like Trump for presidency being a complete baffling mystery.......

it would be kind of grotesque irony if Hillary loses because of a weiner.

Mrs Figg wrote:jeez. the FBI stink.

I agree with Eldo. No path to 270.

Bluebottle wrote:And all the while no one points out how anyone could seriously contemplate someone like Trump for presidency being a complete baffling mystery.......  

You have to understand that Washington has being seriously deadlocked for a decade or so, so much that people think of the system as broken. The appeal of Trump is as someone who will bust things wide open. Well...that's the appeal to the more reasonable supporters: the rest actually support everything he says.

Separating out the true believers from the logjam busters is not something I've seen any poll seriously attempt (must have been, but I haven't seen it) so I'm estimating their numbers at about 30% of the electorate. This is a large number, and it's mainly people upset at the poor economy they've been affected by and looking for things to blame. Trump is an expert at finding things to blame. And he'll blame absolutely everyone except his supporters.

There's also a group that aren't so concerned with the logjam so much as what they perceive as corruption/apathy in an unattentive government (subtle difference). They see Trump as uncorruptable due to his money, someone who will run the government more like a sleek business.

So that's the rundown of why people are willing to look past his OBVIOUS personal failings.

So Donna Brazile just went down in flames. For those of you who don't know, she replaced Kathy (?) Wasserman-Schulz as chair of the democratic party, who was booted out for leaked emails showing how they had actively worked to sideline Bernie Sanders.

Now Brazile has been dumped from CNN for leaking one of the debate questions to Clinton, as shown via hacked email.

The Clintons always came with a body count. Let's hope it doesn't continue.

but correct me if I am wrong this email thing is more about hillarys little helpers than Hillary herself, she hasn't done anything illegal, silly maybe, but not illegal.??

Bluebottle wrote:And all the while no one points out how anyone could seriously contemplate someone like Trump for presidency being a complete baffling mystery.......  

If you don't understand it by now, you never will. And, no, the answer isn't "poor, stupid, racist, white people."

have you ever seen the Wizard of Oz? the last bit where they meet the wizard, that's the Disney version of the Trump-phenomena. The real version involves a hot place and a guy with a big fork in a red swirly cape..

bungobaggins wrote:

Bluebottle wrote:And all the while no one points out how anyone could seriously contemplate someone like Trump for presidency being a complete baffling mystery.......  

If you don't understand it by now, you never will. And, no, the answer isn't "poor, stupid, racist, white people."

Well, you are right about one thing, I will never understand anyone voting for Trump

Bluebottle wrote:
Well, you are right about one thing, I will never understand anyone voting for Trump

I hate to say it, but you sound just a closed-minded on the subject as many of the Trump supporters are about Hillary. (And I'm not saying both of you don't have your reasons... ) Personally I'm voting 3rd party, but I think it's important to listen to both sides. After all, each represents the opinions of over 50 million people, and we are supposed to be a democracy in which all voices are represented, right?

Mrs Figg wrote:but correct me if I am wrong this email thing is more about hillarys little helpers than Hillary herself, she hasn't done anything illegal, silly maybe, but not illegal.??

The email thing is really the smallest thing to stick to Hillary, but as it's recent and happened while she was operating in an official capacity, it's what her opponents are running with.

There's quite a bit of seaminess with the Clinton Foundation, but it's harder to prove and make stick. There's scads of stuff about how she disdains her underlings, and to me that's far more damning than any of the rest of it. She seems to be really an awful person who can at least say the right things though she doesn't fool many people when it comes to her core character, hence she's not getting the votes you'd expect based on her qualifications and what comes out of her mouth.

But nobody can doubt that she's smart and she knows how things operate. I'm banking on the idea that she will try to keep up the image and do more good than harm. Except for the risky assumption that he'll be able to break things up politically, I don't see much of the same for Trump. History tells us that economies don't do well during rapid change. I'm voting for slow change, which is why I didn't support Bernie much as I liked his view of how things should be...not that he'd be allowed to do it anyway.

I'm forecasting a very definite win for Clinton, based on the weather!

http://view.s6.exacttarget.com/?qs=bb03e47cc7c189fb962c7048500a1a6a72840e5943917e69a79d0570086deb8b00b71a9876e2531a4add7df70404412ac3c134e88cf7578b0bcdcead2c55e1c9

The coastal states are typically democratic, middle states republican.

halfwise wrote:

Mrs Figg wrote:but correct me if I am wrong this email thing is more about hillarys little helpers than Hillary herself, she hasn't done anything illegal, silly maybe, but not illegal.??

The email thing is really the smallest thing to stick to Hillary, but as it's recent and happened while she was operating in an official capacity, it's what her opponents are running with.

There's quite a bit of seaminess with the Clinton Foundation, but it's harder to prove and make stick.    There's scads of stuff about how she disdains her underlings, and to me that's far more damning than any of the rest of it.  She seems to be really an awful person who can at least say the right things though she doesn't fool many people when it comes to her core character, hence she's not getting the votes you'd expect based on her qualifications and what comes out of her mouth.

But nobody can doubt that she's smart and she knows how things operate.  I'm banking on the idea that she will try to keep up the image and do more good than harm.  Except for the risky assumption that he'll be able to break things up politically, I don't see much of the same for Trump.  History tells us that economies don't do well during rapid change.  I'm voting for slow change, which is why I didn't support Bernie much as I liked his view of how things should be...not that he'd be allowed to do it anyway.

yep that's the view of Hillary I had too. She isn't nice but she is competent and clever. I think she has a decent moral core but does dodgy things, I guess that's how to survive in politics, specially for a woman she must be as hard as nails, and she needs to be, I admire her balls. The thing that scares me about Trump is his sociopathic tendencies, his childish vendettas, although I understand he represents the breaking of the stale status quo, he just isn't going to deliver on that, just mayhem, and maybe 3WW, or maybe not because he seems pretty cozy with Putin, perhaps the irony would be that Hillary, being anti-Putin sends us into another Cold War.

{{{ABC poll has Trump up nationally by a point! }}}

I have a horrible feeling he is going to win.

[quote="Pettytyrant101"]{{{ABC poll has Trump up nationally by a point! }}}[/quote

National polls are worthless. We don't determine the president by the national popular vote. I don't trust state polls either. No one knows what will happen next week.

David H wrote: and we are supposed to be a democracy in which all voices are represented, right?

That's a good one, Dave.

Call me a dreamer I guess....