Here is how the States and DC aligned in 2012.
![[Image: fivethirtyeight-1108-2012ev-blog480.png]](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/11/08/us/politics/fivethirtyeight-1108-2012ev/fivethirtyeight-1108-2012ev-blog480.png)
...Does it bother anyone that the President's median loss was about 19% (average the two Dakotas) and that his median win was just over 12% (average Washington and Oregon)? This country showed extreme division in 2012 -- probably worse than in 2008. He lost states about even worse on the average nationwide for an electoral blowout like Reagan vs. Mondale in 1984 but won with a median margin close to that for Eisenhower in 1952.
I'm not so concerned about the difference of the margins (President Obama won more of them, and except for Tennessee he did not lose those so badly) as I am by their size.
Unless such has valid excuses (it is race, it was the smear campaign of the Right, President Obama won a campaign necessary for winning but not good for building trust) we are still deep in the woods with packs of hungry feral dogs.
Donald Trump would absolutely crush Hillary Clinton in West Virginia. So what is wrong (or more charitably, uncharacteristic for America) about West Virginia? It does not have a heritage of slavery or Jim Crow.
West Virginia, despite its bucolic image, was very much a land of mining and heavy industry. That meant unions heavily active in politics.
West Virginia has problems.
http://www.measureofamerica.org/docs/MOA...-FINAL.pdf
Do you want to live well and prosper? (Pardon the Star Trek reference) West Virginia is not the place to be. (Mixed reference to The Beverly Hillbillies and The Real McCoys. Jed Clampett and Amos McCoy are hick patriarchs who have moved from Tennessee and West Virginia, respectively, to California).
You may have seen this in Is Connecticut the Best State to Live?
T H E M E A S U R E O F A M E R I C A 2013 –2014
16
Well-Being Comparisons:
U.S. States
This section presents American Human Development Index scores for
U.S. states and the different racial and ethnic groups within them.
The top-ranking state on the Index is Connecticut. Although Connecticut
residents saw a $1,500 decline in earnings since the last Index, the state
still edged out Massachusetts and New Jersey to retain its number one
spot due to uniformly good outcomes in all three Index areas. Fourth-
place District of Columbia—included in the state-level Index following the
practice of the U.S. Census Bureau—finished strong due to its first-place
ranking in both education and earnings and despite a poor showing in
health. The District has the forty-third lowest life expectancy of all fifty
states, just above Tennessee
Top
ranking states:
1. Connecticut
2. Massachusetts
3. New Jersey
4. District of Columbia
5. Maryland
Bottom
ranking states:
47. Alabama
48. Kentucky
49. West Virginia
50. Arkansas
51. Mississippi
(analysis mine; stats from the source cited).
West Virginia has done badly in formal education, having one of the highest percentages of people without high school diplomas. It doesn't send many kids to college who end up getting a college degree. A graduate degree? West Virginia has little to attract one. (New Mexico has a high percentage of people with less than a college degree, probably largely elderly Mexican-Americans, but it does have a healthy number of people with graduate degree. UC Berkeley set up the Los Alamos Laboratory during WWII for the Manhattan Project). New Mexico isn't that bad.
West Virginia is fairly good at incomes for states near the bottom in Human Development Index (HDI), but such reflects the declining activities of mining and heavy industry. The state failed to invest adequately in public education If one can't get a job in mining or heavy industry, there just isn't much opportunity.
People are more likely to vote Democratic if they are non-white, non-Christian, urban, and well educated. West Virginia is very white, very Christian, rural, and poorly educated. Poor people other than whites tend even more liberal than middle-class people of their ethnic group, but poor white people do not fit that trend. Thus West Virginia has most of the demographics that now favor the Republican Party.
Contrast Virginia, which is 11th in HDI. It has proportionally far fewer people with less than high-school diplomas than West Virginia. One is about twice as likely to have a bachelor's degree if one lives in Virginia than in West Virginia. and more than twice as likely to have a graduate degree. Virginia has an above-average percentage of blacks. The reputations of Pat Robinson and the late Jerry Falwell notwithstanding, Virginia isn't especially fundamentalist-Christian. Virginia has no giant cities, but it does have significant large cities. While Democrats have been hemorrhaging votes in West Virginia they are gaining voters in Virginia. The two states are going opposite way in politics.
But at the least, one might think, West Virginians should benefit greatly from 'white privilege'. After all, blacks, American Indians, and Latinos on the whole fare worse than do whites. If there is such a thing as white privilege, it seems to have passed West Virginia by. HDI for white people in West Virginia is a paltry 3.99... but for American Indians in California it is 4.43; for blacks in Maryland it is 4.99; for Latinos in Virginia it is 5.20. Statistically one is better off being black in Maryland, an American Indian in California, or Latino in Virginia.
West Virginia was long dominated by Democrats in politics. In Presidential politics it gave a majority to Bill Clinton in 1996 -- and that could be the last time for West Virginia to vote for a Democratic nominee for President for a very long time. To be sure, even a state that has demographics that might otherwise favor the other Party (Nebraska and Utah are well-educated and good in most social measures, but contrary to that reality they are very Republican-leaning), a Party that presides over political failure can fall very fast. Northern states that don't do so great (Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio) can put blame on both Parties, so there is little likelihood of one of the Parties getting all the blame. In West Virginia, Democrats held a far larger share of political power far longer as the state's economy faltered and the state under-invested in education, public health, and even roads. Such created opportunities for Republicans to make a swift takeover in political life.
Of course, so did the weakening of the once-powerful labor unions, especially the United Mine Workers. At the same time as the unions lost influence, a coal baron like the damnable Don Blankenship (convicted of crimes related to the safety of mines that had an inordinate number of fatal and crippling accidents) could wax powerful in political life.
...If you will note from the chart above, West Virginia was the fifth-worst state for Barack Obama in 2012. If America were like West Virginia, where President Obama just got a 28% approval rating (recent nationwide approval ratings of him are typically just under 50%, which is very good for a President in his final year of office in a second term), then President Obama would have been living under fear of a military coup.
Here is a probabilistic tool for guessing the chance of someone winning or losing the Presidency based on patterns of 2000-2012. It is especially good when
(1) the states are polarized,
(2) the electoral behavior of states is well known, and
(3) there aren't that many close states.
It is irrelevant in a runaway.
Iowa and Nevada, for which I have no recent polls, both put Hillary Clinton at 263 -- which means that any one of Colorado, Florida, Ohio, or Virginia makes her the 45th President. Together? 269. Figuring that each gives her about a 50% chance of winning the state, and Donald Trump has only about a 6.2% chance of becoming President. Those four states are distant enough that campaigning heavily in all four of them will be time-consuming for travel. The states are different enough that nobody can craft a pitch that wins them all unless it causes states that Democrats rarely lose to go toward Trump. In probability, such is called 'independent events', like coin tosses or rolls of dice. I think that either Iowa or Nevada will quickly go off the table quickly, in which case
So what if the choices aren't 50-50? For Trumps chance of winning take the chance of Hillary Clinton the state in question and subtract the product of those values from 1. That is Trump's chance. Probability for the state going for Clinton is P[sub]C[/sub] for Colorado, P[sub]F[/sub] for Florida, P[sub]O[/sub] for Ohio, and P[sub]V[/sub] for Virginia.
P[sub]C[/sub]P[sub]F[/sub]P[sub]O[/sub]P[sub]V[/sub] is Donald Trump's chance of winning based upon his chance of winning in each state. Even an 80% chance of winning each state gives him only about a 41% chance of winning the Presidency.
What happens if one state practically goes into the Trump camp (90% chance of winning) and another becomes a high-likelihood Clinton win (10% chance of winning) while the other two remain 50-50 propositions?
We get .90 x .10 x .50 x .50, or
P[sub]C[/sub]P[sub]F[/sub]P[sub]O[/sub]P[sub]V[/sub]= 0.0225
That's 2.25%. Now that is a long-shot.
But what of such states as Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, or North Carolina? She's not winning those unless she is winning Colorado, Florida, Ohio, or Virginia, respectively. The Trump campaign has all but lost if it has an appreciable chance of losing Arizona -- or for that matter, Kansas.
In 2008 and 2012 Barack Obama's staff did a superb job of playing the numbers game to shred the chances in turn of John McCain and Mitt Romney. I expect much the same with the team of Hillary Clinton, whom I expect to not cast off a successful strategy.
...Does it bother anyone that the President's median loss was about 19% (average the two Dakotas) and that his median win was just over 12% (average Washington and Oregon)? This country showed extreme division in 2012 -- probably worse than in 2008. He lost states about even worse on the average nationwide for an electoral blowout like Reagan vs. Mondale in 1984 but won with a median margin close to that for Eisenhower in 1952.
I'm not so concerned about the difference of the margins (President Obama won more of them, and except for Tennessee he did not lose those so badly) as I am by their size.
Unless such has valid excuses (it is race, it was the smear campaign of the Right, President Obama won a campaign necessary for winning but not good for building trust) we are still deep in the woods with packs of hungry feral dogs.
Donald Trump would absolutely crush Hillary Clinton in West Virginia. So what is wrong (or more charitably, uncharacteristic for America) about West Virginia? It does not have a heritage of slavery or Jim Crow.
West Virginia, despite its bucolic image, was very much a land of mining and heavy industry. That meant unions heavily active in politics.
West Virginia has problems.
http://www.measureofamerica.org/docs/MOA...-FINAL.pdf
Do you want to live well and prosper? (Pardon the Star Trek reference) West Virginia is not the place to be. (Mixed reference to The Beverly Hillbillies and The Real McCoys. Jed Clampett and Amos McCoy are hick patriarchs who have moved from Tennessee and West Virginia, respectively, to California).
You may have seen this in Is Connecticut the Best State to Live?
T H E M E A S U R E O F A M E R I C A 2013 –2014
16
Well-Being Comparisons:
U.S. States
This section presents American Human Development Index scores for
U.S. states and the different racial and ethnic groups within them.
The top-ranking state on the Index is Connecticut. Although Connecticut
residents saw a $1,500 decline in earnings since the last Index, the state
still edged out Massachusetts and New Jersey to retain its number one
spot due to uniformly good outcomes in all three Index areas. Fourth-
place District of Columbia—included in the state-level Index following the
practice of the U.S. Census Bureau—finished strong due to its first-place
ranking in both education and earnings and despite a poor showing in
health. The District has the forty-third lowest life expectancy of all fifty
states, just above Tennessee
Top
ranking states:
1. Connecticut
2. Massachusetts
3. New Jersey
4. District of Columbia
5. Maryland
Bottom
ranking states:
47. Alabama
48. Kentucky
49. West Virginia
50. Arkansas
51. Mississippi
(analysis mine; stats from the source cited).
West Virginia has done badly in formal education, having one of the highest percentages of people without high school diplomas. It doesn't send many kids to college who end up getting a college degree. A graduate degree? West Virginia has little to attract one. (New Mexico has a high percentage of people with less than a college degree, probably largely elderly Mexican-Americans, but it does have a healthy number of people with graduate degree. UC Berkeley set up the Los Alamos Laboratory during WWII for the Manhattan Project). New Mexico isn't that bad.
West Virginia is fairly good at incomes for states near the bottom in Human Development Index (HDI), but such reflects the declining activities of mining and heavy industry. The state failed to invest adequately in public education If one can't get a job in mining or heavy industry, there just isn't much opportunity.
People are more likely to vote Democratic if they are non-white, non-Christian, urban, and well educated. West Virginia is very white, very Christian, rural, and poorly educated. Poor people other than whites tend even more liberal than middle-class people of their ethnic group, but poor white people do not fit that trend. Thus West Virginia has most of the demographics that now favor the Republican Party.
Contrast Virginia, which is 11th in HDI. It has proportionally far fewer people with less than high-school diplomas than West Virginia. One is about twice as likely to have a bachelor's degree if one lives in Virginia than in West Virginia. and more than twice as likely to have a graduate degree. Virginia has an above-average percentage of blacks. The reputations of Pat Robinson and the late Jerry Falwell notwithstanding, Virginia isn't especially fundamentalist-Christian. Virginia has no giant cities, but it does have significant large cities. While Democrats have been hemorrhaging votes in West Virginia they are gaining voters in Virginia. The two states are going opposite way in politics.
But at the least, one might think, West Virginians should benefit greatly from 'white privilege'. After all, blacks, American Indians, and Latinos on the whole fare worse than do whites. If there is such a thing as white privilege, it seems to have passed West Virginia by. HDI for white people in West Virginia is a paltry 3.99... but for American Indians in California it is 4.43; for blacks in Maryland it is 4.99; for Latinos in Virginia it is 5.20. Statistically one is better off being black in Maryland, an American Indian in California, or Latino in Virginia.
West Virginia was long dominated by Democrats in politics. In Presidential politics it gave a majority to Bill Clinton in 1996 -- and that could be the last time for West Virginia to vote for a Democratic nominee for President for a very long time. To be sure, even a state that has demographics that might otherwise favor the other Party (Nebraska and Utah are well-educated and good in most social measures, but contrary to that reality they are very Republican-leaning), a Party that presides over political failure can fall very fast. Northern states that don't do so great (Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio) can put blame on both Parties, so there is little likelihood of one of the Parties getting all the blame. In West Virginia, Democrats held a far larger share of political power far longer as the state's economy faltered and the state under-invested in education, public health, and even roads. Such created opportunities for Republicans to make a swift takeover in political life.
Of course, so did the weakening of the once-powerful labor unions, especially the United Mine Workers. At the same time as the unions lost influence, a coal baron like the damnable Don Blankenship (convicted of crimes related to the safety of mines that had an inordinate number of fatal and crippling accidents) could wax powerful in political life.
...If you will note from the chart above, West Virginia was the fifth-worst state for Barack Obama in 2012. If America were like West Virginia, where President Obama just got a 28% approval rating (recent nationwide approval ratings of him are typically just under 50%, which is very good for a President in his final year of office in a second term), then President Obama would have been living under fear of a military coup.
Here is a probabilistic tool for guessing the chance of someone winning or losing the Presidency based on patterns of 2000-2012. It is especially good when
(1) the states are polarized,
(2) the electoral behavior of states is well known, and
(3) there aren't that many close states.
It is irrelevant in a runaway.
Iowa and Nevada, for which I have no recent polls, both put Hillary Clinton at 263 -- which means that any one of Colorado, Florida, Ohio, or Virginia makes her the 45th President. Together? 269. Figuring that each gives her about a 50% chance of winning the state, and Donald Trump has only about a 6.2% chance of becoming President. Those four states are distant enough that campaigning heavily in all four of them will be time-consuming for travel. The states are different enough that nobody can craft a pitch that wins them all unless it causes states that Democrats rarely lose to go toward Trump. In probability, such is called 'independent events', like coin tosses or rolls of dice. I think that either Iowa or Nevada will quickly go off the table quickly, in which case
So what if the choices aren't 50-50? For Trumps chance of winning take the chance of Hillary Clinton the state in question and subtract the product of those values from 1. That is Trump's chance. Probability for the state going for Clinton is P[sub]C[/sub] for Colorado, P[sub]F[/sub] for Florida, P[sub]O[/sub] for Ohio, and P[sub]V[/sub] for Virginia.
P[sub]C[/sub]P[sub]F[/sub]P[sub]O[/sub]P[sub]V[/sub] is Donald Trump's chance of winning based upon his chance of winning in each state. Even an 80% chance of winning each state gives him only about a 41% chance of winning the Presidency.
What happens if one state practically goes into the Trump camp (90% chance of winning) and another becomes a high-likelihood Clinton win (10% chance of winning) while the other two remain 50-50 propositions?
We get .90 x .10 x .50 x .50, or
P[sub]C[/sub]P[sub]F[/sub]P[sub]O[/sub]P[sub]V[/sub]= 0.0225
That's 2.25%. Now that is a long-shot.
But what of such states as Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, or North Carolina? She's not winning those unless she is winning Colorado, Florida, Ohio, or Virginia, respectively. The Trump campaign has all but lost if it has an appreciable chance of losing Arizona -- or for that matter, Kansas.
In 2008 and 2012 Barack Obama's staff did a superb job of playing the numbers game to shred the chances in turn of John McCain and Mitt Romney. I expect much the same with the team of Hillary Clinton, whom I expect to not cast off a successful strategy.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.