Presidential election, 2016

[pbrower2a]

(10-11-2016, 03:05 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Um folks, the only way 2016 would be significant is if Trump won.  If Hillary wins, it will just be supporting evidence for a critical election (analogous to 1968) in 2008.  In the 1968 the dominant party was the Democratic party (having controlled the presidency 78% of the time since 1932; the Senate 89%, and the House 89% for an average value of 83%) yet a Republican was elected who had pioneered a strategy to welcome disaffected Democratic cultural conservatives into the GOP, which had traditionally been the culturally progressive party. Although Nixon in many ways ruled as a moderate and even a liberal on occasion, his electoral innovations helped pave the way for future conservative dominance--as the Democratic coalition began to fray. I believe that had there been no Watergate, Reagan would have been elected president in 1976 and overseen the implementation of the Nixon Revolution.  Instead he had to start the revolution and it was left to a Democrat, Bill Clinton, to implement the Reagan Revolution.

The Presidential election will really change things if Donald Trump should be elected while the Republicans hold both Houses of Congress. Gridlock would become lockstep barring a schism within the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton as President and the Republicans holding one or both Houses of Congress would imply either the political gridlock that the American political system had between 2011 and 2015 or the lockstep that the system has known since 2015. Political gridlock in the most dangerous phase of a Crisis practically ensures an inadequate response to the menace of a time, whether an economic downturn or an apocalyptic war. Utter defeat in a war in which about half of America sees an international rival as a demonic enemy and the other sees the rival as a potential liberator. Just think of France in 1940; many of the French saw Hitler as a liberator from cultural trends and religious minorities that they despised.

This is a Crisis Era. We need be reminded that we are headed toward a cliff -- fast -- and we can still change direction or hit the brakes.

Quote:Forty years after 1968 the dominant party was the Republican (having controlled the presidency 70%, the Senate 43%, and the House 30% of the time for an average value of 53%), yet a Democrat was elected.  If Clinton wins and the Senate goes Democratic it will begin a 10 year era in which the Dems will have held the presidency for 100% of the time, the Senate 80% of the time, and the House 20%, for an average value of 75% (this is better than the 53% value they had over 1991-2000.)

The Republicans have their vision for a new America -- an economic order in which multitudes suffer for the rapacious, powerful Few and are expected to show consent lest they be damned to hunger and homelessness. It's the inequality of the Gilded Age without the means of self-reliance or the open frontier for the masses, and with a nasty government. America might get a brain drain.

Quote:In other words, if Clinton wins she is just a continuation of a process begun under Obama, not the start of anything of herself.  And I think this suits her.  By all accounts she is a workhorse.  If you think of Clinton as Sisyphus in Camus's Myth of Sisyphus, the presidency will be her rock.

The President is no all-powerful dictator. Congress matters just as much, as we have seen for the (almost) so that there can last six years. Ideally the judiciary doesn't mean that much in people's lives, but just imagine what happens if Donald Trump gets to nominate Supreme Court justices who accept a corporatist view of American life -- that economic power must be represented in the name of prosperity be prosperity. Maybe employers would get the right to control the votes of their employees. But such would result from an abusive Executive branch.

Well, it looks as if Hillary Clinton is now up high single digits or just above 10% a month before the election. A Trump collapse seems underway. Early voting is heavy, and that usually bodes ill for Republicans. So now how go the Senate and the House?

[Eric the Green]

If only women voted:



If only men voted:



From my point of view, it's interesting that Hillary Clinton has Venus rising and Donald Trump has Mars rising. The battle of the sexes!

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-12-2016, 03:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: If only women voted:



If only men voted:

These maps aren't making me particularly proud to be male just now.  Here's to the suffragettes!

On the up side, 538 chose 14 battleground states that would pretty much decide the election.  The rest are so helplessly red or blue as to be taken for granted by one side or another.  Up until recently, all but Arizona and Georgia were leaning towards Hillary.  Arizona just flipped, leaving Georgia alone.

[pbrower2a]

This may be the critical polling of 2016, the polling delineating the utter collapse of the Trump campaign over one weekend. In one state, Donald Trump went from being one point ahead (inconclusive about who leads) to 19% behind. There's an unusual amount of material here, but it looks telling. The numerical difference between Thursday and Sunday (Saturday and Sunday polling were lumped together) shows how things looked in Wisconsin before the disclosure of some horrible behavior of Donald Trump, what happened in polling on the day of the disclosure began, and how Donald Trump fared after this disclosure hit the media.

Crotch-grabs may not fit the legal definition of rape, but they are at the least sexual battery. Assault is the attempt or threat of a deliberate or reckless, harmful or offensive contact without even if by an object not attached to the would-be assaulter . Battery is the reckless or deliberate, harmful or offensive contact. No ethnic, religious, or class culture supports what Donald Trump admitted to doing a few years ago.

...................

Wisconsin, Marquette Law School. This is one of the most interesting polls, as it shows how a news story can wipe out a campaign or show the collapse of that campaign, even day to day. This can show how a campaign so fails due to the turpitude of the nominee, as if in a scandal of bribery or embezzlement.

Nobody expected to show this, but someone saw this happening and chose to give a four-day chronicle in the form of polls. What this very good pollster did was brilliant; it leaves someone like me the material for analysis. Maybe the data was so strange that it required its own analysis.

I am guessing that the route for going from one side to another, between Candidate A to Candidate B, goes as follows:

Candidate A >> undecided >> Candidate B

Live Stream: https://law-media.marquette.edu/Mediasit...9adcb0381d.

Data:

Clinton 44 (41 last time)
Trump 37 (38)
Johnson 9 (11)
Stein 3 (2)

Party ID (w/leaners): D-47, R-44

878 LV, 10/6-10/9: Half last Thu, half Fri-Sun, all before Sun debate

DAY BY DAY BREAKDOWN (much larger MOE):

THU: Trump 41, Clinton 40 (T+1)
FRI: Clinton 44, Trump 38 (C+6)
SAT+SUN: Clinton 49, Trump 30 (C+19)

SENATE: Feingold 46, Johnson 44
.......................

Among evangelical likely voters in WI:

Thursday: Trump 64%, Clinton 24%
Friday: Trump 55%, Clinton 32%
Sat+Sun: Trump 47%, Clinton 31%

Among white LVs without college degrees in WI:

Thu: Trump 48%, Clinton 33%
Fri: Trump 41%, Clinton 38%
Sat+Sun: Clinton 42%, Trump 35%


....My analysis.

Fact #1: Wisconsin was close all summer until the disclosure of the crotch-grabbing.
Fact #2: The exposure of the story had swift effect, probably because it involved something with S-E-X-U-A-L overtones.
Fact #3: Although it might not have had much of an effect on people predisposed to vote Democratic it hit others.
Fact #4: Donald Trump still leads among Christian evangelicals, but his likely vote among them has gone from 64% to 47%.
Fact #5: I have seen scandals erupt, and I have never seen them undone. Primary campaigns collapse. Nominees find their chances of winning drop off completely.
Fact #6: Voters have shown themselves particularly willing to abandon a nominee over sex, bribery, or embezzlement. They may return to the cause that they recently supported -- but only in a different politician who did nothing to betray trust. Someone offering hat Donald trump offered throughout most of 2016 will be challenging for the Presidency as early as 2020. Liberals beware: this person will likely have more control of his libido.

I see no recovery for Donald Trump, who cannot undo the damage from the exposure of his sordid sex life. Having to choose between the Saturday-Sunday polling and the polling for either Thursday or Friday or some composite thereof, I go with Saturday/Sunday. The political equivalent of a train-wreck cannot be undone in a month. The 19% lead looks like the reality for now. I'm going with that. Newer data is better, and Marquette Law School is a very good pollster. The 'inconsistency' cannot represent different samples or a change in polling techniques; it reflects that Wisconsin voters turned sharply against Donald Trump very fast in Wisconsin for something that he cannot dodge, undo, or trivialize.

A vehicle collision can turn a $100K car into a piece of scrap metal in seconds. Putting it back together requires the wrecked object to be reprocessed through a forge capable of melting the metal from a Mercedes-Benz into metal that might become a Dodge Neon.

Just look at the collapse in support among 'evangelical' voters. Donald Trump has betrayed them, and I see little chance of him winning the once-high levels of support among that he had on Thursday.

But the level of support for Hillary Clinton still falls just short of 50%.



Wisconsin with Clinton up 19 is consistent with Clinton up 10 in Ohio in another poll.

Wisconsin went 62-37 in 1964; it has rarely been a Democratic run away. Obama did win it by 16% in 2008, which is about in this range.



Hillary Clinton (D) vs. Donald Trump ®:





Tie -- white

60% or more -- saturation 8
55-59.9% -- saturation 7
50-54.9% -- saturation 6
45-49.9%, lead 8% or more -- saturation 4
45-49.9%, lead 4-7.9% -- saturation 3
45-49.9%, lead 1-3.9% -- saturation 2

Hillary Clinton (D) 338
Donald Trump ® 138
(in white) ties -- 36

gray - no polling after the first Presidential debate unless I have no cause to expect that an adequate change could have happened in the likely vote of the state.

[Eric the Green]

It's not quite true about scandals and sex scandals, since Bill Clinton recovered from the Jennifer Flowers affair and became the comeback kid in 1992, and recovered from the Lewinsky scandal enough so that the Republicans' pursuit of it cost them congressional seats in 1998.

Perhaps Bill Clinton's horoscope score of 19-2 plus Jupiter rising, which made him virtually invincible, accounted for his escape from scandals, when Gary Hart (10-17) was unable to, and Ted Kennedy (7-15) could never overcome the scandal of Chappaquiddick.

This year minor and unresolved scandals affected Ben Carson (horoscope score 6-6) and Chris Christie (16-22). Ronald Reagan (19-5) faced the Iran-Contra scandal, in which he was peripherally involved, and kept his office and reputation anyway. Nixon (17-6), of course, survived scandals until Watergate took him down during his Saturn Return. Hillary (12-9 plus Jupiter rising) faces minor scandals (which Republicans claim should put her in jail), which have not taken her down yet, but have weakened her against an even weaker and more-scandal prone opponent.

Sex scandals became the norm after Watergate and the Gary Hart affair. Before then, Kennedy and FDR remained immune despite their affairs.

[Eric the Green]

The keys are in! Lichtman's system predicts Trump! But he's hedging!









One thing I didn't know about Lichtman's system: it only takes 6 keys to go against the party in power to swing it to the other party; not a majority.

I'm not sure I agree that there was no major foreign policy breakthrough, when the Iran deal, the Cuban opening and the Paris climate accord were all big deals.

For the first time though, he is hedging his bets and saying Trump is such a bad candidate that he may not benefit from the archetypal situation that 6 keys against the party holding the White House means a challenger party victory.

He says that if Gary Johnson's numbers decline, the party in power may get back a key, and also might get another key back if the IS is rolled back from Mosul or driven out of Iraq by November 8th.

If he doesn't change his mind, and Hillary wins (as seems likely now considering the polls and Trump's present and past behavior), my system will beat his, since I have predicted Hillary winning since May, with no hedging needed. And of course, I hit 2012 on the nose, and went so far as to write that my New Moon before election method predicted Bush would win in 2004 and Obama in 2008, although my horoscope point system was not fully developed and applied yet.

https://pollyvote.com/en/components/inde...ite-house/

[pbrower2a]

A strong third-party nominee capable of cutting into the incumbent's votes (Perot in 1992 and 1996, Anderson in 1980), let alone winning some electoral votes (Thurmond in 1948 or Wallace in 1968) typically hurts the incumbent's Party badly. This time, the significant third-party nominee hurts the challenger's party and not the incumbent's party. 

Lichtman says that the usual keys indicate not that Donald Trump would be elected (he calls him a "serial fabricator", someone who has lived entirely for his gain and indulgence, and has kissed up to a nasty and powerful dictator), but instead that a generic Republican would win against Hillary Clinton.

[Eric the Green]

(10-16-2016, 09:38 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: A strong third-party nominee capable of cutting into the incumbent's votes (Perot in 1992 and 1996, Anderson in 1980), let alone winning some electoral votes (Thurmond in 1948 or Wallace in 1968) typically hurts the incumbent's Party badly. This time, the significant third-party nominee hurts the challenger's party and not the incumbent's party. 

Lichtman says that the usual keys indicate not that Donald Trump would be elected (he calls him a "serial fabricator", someone who has lived entirely for his gain and indulgence, and has kissed up to a nasty and powerful dictator), but instead that a generic Republican would win against Hillary Clinton.

Another wrinkle here is that there are only five keys against the party in power IF Johnson is not getting over 10 points in the polls now. He seems to be taking votes away from both parties about equally. But if Trump were not running as the challenger nominee, Johnson (an alternative to Trump) would be getting less poll numbers-- which might take away the 6th key, according to Lichtman's rules-- even if he might therefore be taking more from the incumbent party nominee than from the challenging Republican.

[pbrower2a]

We could be seeing the third-party support for Johnson having first pared from the usual voters for a generic Republican ... and then going to Hillary Clinton. In this the key has an ironic effect.

Maybe the third-party key should have read to the harm of the incumbent:

A significant third-party of independent candidate is clearly paring support away from the incumbent party.

In no way could I fault Mr. Lichtman for failing to imagine a Presidential nominee like Donald Trump. I would have never expected someone like him to go anywhere in Presidential politics.

This allows for a dissident wing of one of the major Parties taking a region (and usual electoral votes) of support from the incumbent party (as with the racist campaigns of Strom Thurmond in 1948 or George Wallace in 1968), preventing an incumbent from winning support that he might otherwise get while losing support elsewhere (John Anderson, 1980) or taking away support that the incumbent that makes the challenger to win with considerably less than 60% of the national popular vote (Ross Perot, 1992... but paradoxically aiding the incumbent in 1996).

This time I can hardly imagine many Obama-to-Trump voters. I can't imagine many people who voted for Barack Obama finding Barack Obama such a disappointment that he could make Donald Trump a welcome change. Maybe Obama to Kasich, Jeb Bush, or Romney instead of Obama to Clinton? Get your typewriter ready to write your alternative-history novel.  Romney-to-Clinton voters? I expect to see lots of those.

Following a Presidential election that was close to being close in electoral and popular votes, the more obvious question of who would win was how votes would make partisan switches. Thus, barring demographic change in the electorate largely from entrances and exits:

1. Bigger numbers of Romney-to-Clinton voters than Obama-to-Trump voters implies a Clinton victory.
2. An even split between the two implies a Clinton win.
3. A slightly-larger number of Obama-to-Trump voters than Romney-to-  Clinton voters makes things iffy.
4. A big shift of voters from Obama to Trump ensures that Donald Trump becomes President.

That's even simpler.

[Eric the Green]

five-thirty-eight aka Nate Silver has the map trending slightly more Democratic than I do in my video. AZ has a better than even shot of going blue according to him, and Alaska rather than Georgia would be the next state to flip. Most other sites are not as "optimistic" from my point of view as that. But Silver was the closest to being right among the poll analysis sites in 2012. Could he be right this time? He also has a Democratic Senate at over 60% chance right now, with Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania going blue by narrow margins, along with Indiana, Wisconsin and Illinois. NC and MO are still red.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016...e-forecast

Oooh, now Silver has NC flipping too, 50.2 chance to 49.8!

[Eric the Green]

John Oliver takes on the third party candidates

[Odin]

Donald Trump supporter threatens to assassinate Hillary Clinton if she wins

[Anthony '58]

Meanwhile, the right wing continues to dwell in a fantasy world:

http://truthfeed.com/election-analysis-t...ide/15234/

Even if Trump were to carry every state won by Bush against Kerry in 2004 (which he clearly won't do because he is not going to win Virginia), plus the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin and the "9/11 Belt" states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, that would give Trump 350 electoral votes to Hillary's 188, Hillary easily passing the halfway mark of 135 needed to stay out of a landslide defeat.

[pbrower2a]

Another angle -- probability of winning (before Debate #3)



Chance of winning (saturation)

pct sat
99%+ 9
95-98.9 7
90-95 5
75-90 4
65-75 3
50-65 2

Utah (my guess) 55% McMullen

blue -- Trump,
red -- Clinton
green -- independent

[Bob Butler 54]

I thought The Donald did a much better imitation of being a normal human being during the early third debate, then reverted to form.  I wasn't greatly impressed by either of them, but was inclined to say Hillary did somewhat better.  Then again, I appreciate her message more.

If The Donald was going to dig himself out of his hole, he had to hit a home run.  I don't think he did that.

[pbrower2a]

(10-20-2016, 12:29 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I thought The Donald did a much better imitation of being a normal human being during the early third debate, then reverted to form.  I wasn't greatly impressed by either of them, but was inclined to say Hillary did somewhat better.  Then again, I appreciate her message more.

If The Donald was going to dig himself out of his hole, he had to hit a home run.  I don't think he did that.

He grounded into an inning-ending double play that put an end to the rally.

[Eric the Green]

Trump actually gets some good lines; I don't know if he wrote them.





Hillary's were better, I think.

[Anthony '58]

Just add Hillary winning Minnesota as she surely will to this map, and that's a wrap:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/...e_map.html

[Eric the Green]

It's also very important for voters in Pennsylvania to vote for Katie McGinty, so that our Senate can approve Supreme Court nominees, repeal Citizens United's money-dominating politics scheme, and support voting rights; and so that the Senate (at least) does not become a full-time scandal-mongering machine for the next 4 years or more.

[pbrower2a]

Donald Trump is down to a less-than-4% chance of winning the election.