11-28-2017, 07:30 AM
(11-28-2017, 02:27 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:(11-27-2017, 04:38 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(11-27-2017, 11:30 AM)David Horn Wrote:(11-26-2017, 03:51 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: That, and the fact that on average the four labeled points skew Republican by 4 points. That would have the Republicans losing the popular House vote by about 4 points, which given the Democrats' concentration in highly blue districts, would still have Republicans barely hanging on to the House.
Then there's the issue of taxation without adequate representation. Do you honestly think that the mostly BLUE urbanites will countenance greatly diminished representation while paying the lion's share of the nation's taxes? Both disparities have been growing in the last few decades. I'll wager that we aren't too far from the tipping point, where that issue will move to the center of the political stage.
Even with Warren's estimate, that would be a 6 point lead, not 4 point.
The line is not at a 45 degree angle. A 10.5 point margin on the poll corresponds to an 8 point margin in the actual voting, based on the line. Add a 4 point Republican skew, and you get an end result of 4 points.
The slope is about 1/2, which is the tangent. A program that gets the arc tangent as an angle gives about a 27-degree angle.
With a margin of -10 in the generic ballot, the average result is that the White House's Party ends up with a 10-member detriment in the House of Representatives because members in districts more aligned with the other party than R+5 (if the President is a Republican) or D+5 (if the President is a Democrat) generally lose, and those in districts about R+5 with a Republican President or D+5 with a Democratic President have about a 50-50 chance of losing. Open seats are particularly vulnerable.
Gerrymandering still helps Republicans, but perhaps not enough this time. In normal conditions (this is a Crisis Era, so much is abnormal) the politicians in an R+5 to D+5 district are usually moderates, but Republicans have nominated (and gotten elected) stark ideologues who are anything but moderate. Extremists tend to lose in "moderate" districts in wave elections.
This election portends a wave.
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.