The 2016 US Election (Part IV)

[The Romulan Republic]

Perhaps, though that makes the obviously feminine donkey a bit of a coincidence.

But then again, maybe its not a coincidence- its been widely expected that Clinton would run again... pretty much since she lost in 2008, as I recall. And pretty much no one would have anticipated the challenge Bernie offered back in January of 2015, either.

Likewise, depicting Republicans as thuggish jesters has been apt (if not to the present degree) at least since 2008.

[Flagg]

Perhaps, though that makes the obviously feminine donkey a bit of a coincidence.

But then again, maybe its not a coincidence- its been widely expected that Clinton would run again... pretty much since she lost in 2008, as I recall. And pretty much no one would have anticipated the challenge Bernie offered back in January of 2015, either.

Likewise, depicting Republicans as thuggish jesters has been apt (if not to the present degree) at least since 2008.

I'd go at least back to 2000 when Rethuglicans were bussed to the location where Miami-Dade County ballots were being recounted by hand and rioted so violently the counting was stopped for the safety of the election officials.

No charges, of course. Though if they were all blacks wearing hoodies instead of buttoned up shirts tucked into khakis they'd have been mowed down.

[The Romulan Republic]

Let's not engage in inflammatory exaggeration: I very much doubt that the police would have gunned down a whole crowd of rioters, even if they were black. Why? Because protests and even riots happen all the time without the police simply massacring the whole crowd. Heck, some of the recent responses to police shootings of black people got pretty violent without a crowd being massacred. Its one thing for a prejudiced, paranoid, or trigger-happy officer to murder a single person, while their colleagues keep it hushed up. Massacres are on a whole different scale. Even leaving any moral qualms aside, I doubt most departments want images of the officers committing a massacre on international television.

Yes, I'm sure you can point to individual examples of massacres by law enforcement, but to treat such a thing as anything like a foregone conclusion is completely ridiculous. We're not quite at that level of murderous despotism yet. Though that will probably change if the Orange Fascist becomes President.

[K. A. Pital]

No, Terrence has other ones about Clinton and Trump
http://thisishistorictimes.com

[Q99]

Given the situation with Trump, I am pretty sure that even a weak candidate, but without such scandalous instances that automatically ruin the campaign in the eyes of the electorate, could prove a severe obstacle for Clinton. Actually, on second thought, even Cruz could've been a much stronger contestant than Trump. And given Clinton's performance against a monstrosity like Trump... well, let me say I am deeply unconvinced that the voters would have chosen her.

But this is only the opinion of a side observer.

Her performance against Trump? Wherein she's often hitting double-digit advantage in polls and Texas is in play? Has the biggest debate-win margins and bounces in decades? Looking to tie in to a reclaiming of the Senate?

Hillary's kinda rolling him, she could do much worse and still win. If you're simply thinking her performance isn't good due to the fact he's in the race at all, well, welcome to the polarization of American politics.

[Civil War Man]

At least the depiction of the Trumpublicans as a thuggish, baseball bat-wielding jester is a fairly close fit, but putting the Hillary Clinton donkey in stereotypical womens' kitchenware? Really?

I wouldn't read too much into it. It's a reference to the Punch and Judy puppet show.


In other news, that I'm putting here because of the reasons given, the Ecuadorian government recently cut off Julian Assange's personal access to the internet, and confirmed that it's because they did not appreciate him using their London embassy's internet connection to try to influence the US election.

Ecuador’s government on Tuesday acknowledged cutting off Internet access for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the London embassy where he resides over his group’s ongoing release of emails hacked from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The foreign ministry said in a statement obtained by Politico that though it affirmed its decision to grant Assange asylum at the embassy in 2012, it cannot condone WikiLeaks’ intentional efforts to interfere in the United States’ presidential election.

“Ecuador has exercised its sovereign right to temporarily restrict access to some of its private communications network within its Embassy in the United Kingdom,” the statement reads. “This temporary restriction does not prevent the WikiLeaks organization from carrying out its journalistic activities.”

WikiLeaks announced on Twitter on Tuesday that Assange’s Internet access was cut off over the weekend after the group published transcripts of Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs, claiming that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry personally made the request of Ecuador’s President, Rafael Correa.

Ecuador’s foreign ministry notes in its statement that the country “does not yield to pressure from other states,” while U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby told the Associated Press that no such conversation occurred.

The group has continued to leak documents since Assange’s access was cut, most recently releasing more emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Read the Ecuadorian government's full statement below via Politico's Eric Geller:
link to Twitter post with Ecuadorian government's statement

[The Romulan Republic]

Good to see that Ecuador finally had enough of Assange's bullshit.

And yes, I get that the cartoon is referencing Punch and Judy, but their are other analogies the artist could have used, and they chose to use that one. So their must have been some intent behind it.

Or they didn't think through all the "unfortunate implications".

Given the situation with Trump, I am pretty sure that even a weak candidate, but without such scandalous instances that automatically ruin the campaign in the eyes of the electorate, could prove a severe obstacle for Clinton. Actually, on second thought, even Cruz could've been a much stronger contestant than Trump. And given Clinton's performance against a monstrosity like Trump... well, let me say I am deeply unconvinced that the voters would have chosen her.

But this is only the opinion of a side observer.

Her performance against Trump? Wherein she's often hitting double-digit advantage in polls and Texas is in play? Has the biggest debate-win margins and bounces in decades? Looking to tie in to a reclaiming of the Senate?

Hillary's kinda rolling him, she could do much worse and still win. If you're simply thinking her performance isn't good due to the fact he's in the race at all, well, welcome to the polarization of American politics.

One wonders what the effect of tonight's debate will be.

I can't imagine Trump winning, but the last one didn't shift things that much, and it really should have. Most likely Trump losing badly at this point is expected, not noteworthy, and most of the people who are going to switch sides already have.

Still, it might give us that little push to put one or two more states in play. One can only hope.

[Flagg]

Let's not engage in inflammatory exaggeration: I very much doubt that the police would have gunned down a whole crowd of rioters, even if they were black. Why? Because protests and even riots happen all the time without the police simply massacring the whole crowd. Heck, some of the recent responses to police shootings of black people got pretty violent without a crowd being massacred. Its one thing for a prejudiced, paranoid, or trigger-happy officer to murder a single person, while their colleagues keep it hushed up. Massacres are on a whole different scale. Even leaving any moral qualms aside, I doubt most departments want images of the officers committing a massacre on international television.

Yes, I'm sure you can point to individual examples of massacres by law enforcement, but to treat such a thing as anything like a foregone conclusion is completely ridiculous. We're not quite at that level of murderous despotism yet. Though that will probably change if the Orange Fascist becomes President.

I see obvious sarcastic hyperbole still escapes you. Until this point I have treated you like a 12 year old. I shall no longer do so as you have gone past annoying into the quantum realm of making my ass itch. Fuck off.

[The Romulan Republic]

If you spend your time trolling, flaming, and feuding with twelve year olds, you're even more pathetic than I thought.

And considering the times that I've been subject to hostile criticism for using hyperbole, your excuse nets very little sympathy from me.

Anyway, does this mean you'll ignore me now? Pretty please?

Anyway, an interesting article from fivethirtyeight:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/el ... s-problem/

Another day, another traditionally Republican state that Donald Trump could shockingly manage to lose. Yesterday, I wrote about Utah, where Trump’s weakness with Mormon voters could throw the state to Hillary Clinton or to independent candidate Evan McMullin. Today, we turn to Texas, where two new polls show a tight race: A University of Houston poll has Trump up just 3 percentage points there, while SurveyMonkey puts Trump’s lead at 2 points.

Trump will probably win Texas. Earlier polls had shown a close-ish race there, but with a Trump lead in the high single digits. And as a hedge against the polls, our forecast still assigns a little bit of weight to our regression-based analysis, which is based on demographics and voting history. Thus, our model still has Trump ahead by 5 or 6 percentage points in Texas, and puts Clinton’s chances of an upset at 17 percent.1
But to put that in perspective, Texas is closer than Pennsylvania right now (where Clinton leads by 7 to 8 points). And Clinton is more likely to win Texas than Trump is to win the election, at least according to the polls-only model, which puts Trump’s overall chances at 12 percent.

As in Utah, demographics play a role in Trump’s struggles in Texas. The state’s white population is well-educated, and includes some workers who have moved from other parts of the country to take advantage of the state’s burgeoning economy. (College-educated whites have turned away from Trump.) Texas also used to have its share of Republican-leaning Latinos — George W. Bush won almost half of the Latino vote there in 2004 — another group that Trump has turned off. Meanwhile, only 43 percent of Texas’ population consists of non-Hispanic whites, down from 52 percent in 2000. However, because 11 percent of Texas’ population consists of non-citizens — many of them recent immigrants from Mexico — its electorate is whiter than its population overall.

But Texas isn’t some sort of outlier. Instead, it typifies the national trend. Compared with Mitt Romney, Trump is underperforming more in red states than in purple states or blue states. And Trump’s vote has fallen off more in the South than in other parts of the country.

In 2012, President Obama lost the South (as defined by the Census Bureau) by 7 percentage points. This year — according to our polls-only projections as of mid-afternoon on Tuesday — Clinton is losing the South to Trump by only 1 point. So the South has swung toward Democrats by a net of 6 points, turning Virginia from a tipping-point state into one that Clinton is all but certain to win, flipping North Carolina (probably) from red back to blue, and making states such as Texas and Georgia competitive at times. Clinton has also made significant gains relative to Obama in the West, where she’s outperforming him by 4 to 5 percentage points. But her numbers are only a point or two better than Obama’s in the Midwest — and are worse in some Midwestern states such as Iowa. And she’s actually underperforming Obama, slightly, in the Northeast.

2012 RESULT 2016 PROJECTION CHANGE
Census Bureau region Northeast Obama _+18.9 Clinton _+16.9 R_+2.0
South Romney __+7.1 Trump __+1.2 D_+5.9
Midwest Obama __+3.1 Clinton __+4.4 D_+1.3
West Obama _+10.7 Clinton _+15.1 D_+4.4
Type of state in 2012 Blue Obama _+22.0 Clinton _+21.5 R_+0.5
Swing Obama __+4.1 Clinton __+6.0 D_+1.9
Red Romney _+16.9 Trump __+8.5 D_+8.4
Southern states and red states show biggest swing toward Clinton
Swing states include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. Red states include every state redder than North Carolina in 2012; blue states include every state bluer than Michigan. Results in each group of states are weighted based on 2016 turnout projections, which reflect population growth since 2012.

Meanwhile, most of Clinton’s gains relative to Obama have come in red states. Obama won the 12 states that were generally defined as swing states in 2012 — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin — by an aggregate of 4 percentage points (weighted based on their turnout). Clinton is leading in these states by 6 points. That’s a comfortable-enough margin, but her gains have been smaller in swing states than in the popular vote overall. (Clinton is winning the popular vote by about 7 points in our forecast, while Obama’s margin over Romney was slightly less than 4 points.) That’s because of Clinton’s disproportionate gains — or maybe we should say Trump’s disproportionate losses — in red states.2 Trump is winning red states by only 8 or 9 percentage points, while Romney won them by 17 points, yielding opportunities for Clinton to catch him in states ranging from Texas to Alaska.

There’s just one somewhat negative aspect of this for Clinton, one which we’ve pointed out before. The gains in red states could yield an inefficient distribution of the popular vote for her, in terms of its impact on the Electoral College. Texas and Utah alone are responsible for shifting the national popular vote by a net of about 1 percentage point toward Clinton, relative to Obama’s performance in 2012. So while the upside for Clinton is potentially turning some very red states blue if she maintains her current position in the polls, there could be a penalty if the race tightens again and Clinton loses a lot of states by a narrow margin.

[Q99]

One wonders what the effect of tonight's debate will be.

I can't imagine Trump winning, but the last one didn't shift things that much, and it really should have. Most likely Trump losing badly at this point is expected, not noteworthy, and most of the people who are going to switch sides already have.

Still, it might give us that little push to put one or two more states in play. One can only hope.

The first one caused a big shift, the second one didn't... but note the trend line from the first is continuing and there hasn't been a shift back. So it likely played a role in reinforcing the narrative and making it harder to staunch the bleeding.

It's hard to pile on a shift after a big one just happened, later similar events often just cement the prior bumps.

[The Romulan Republic]

One slightly concerning thing about fivethirtyeight's polling models:

While they show Clinton around 7 points ahead of Trump... they also show her substantially under 50% of the total. Their still seems to be an unusually high number in the third party column.

It would be unfortunate for Clinton to get under 50% of the popular vote, as while she doesn't require it to win the electoral college and the election, it would give the Republicans more cover, more grounds to say that she doesn't have a mandate, she doesn't have the support of the American people, etc., to justify their obstructionism.

[Simon_Jester]

The Republicans are going to claim that anyway and do their best to be completely obstructionist no matter what happens.

Dwelling on how "if we don't do this and that and jump through this hoop, the Republicans will use it as fuel for their obstructionism!" is counterproductive. The simple fact is, we live in a time where the Republican Party has become hopelessly dysfunctional in terms of trying to govern anything at the federal level. The national-level party has responded to this by trying to make sure no one else makes them look like idiots by successfully governing at the federal level.

That will not change until the Republicans lose enough federal-level positions due to the sheer crazystupid of their primary process and congressional policies that they are physically unable to do so anymore. This will take time. If you don't like it, I'm sorry; I don't like it either. But "sending a message" or achieving some arbitrary numerical goal that is NOT directly related to achieving a Democratic majority in both chambers of Congress isn't going to make any difference.
_____

Note that there are plenty of functional Republicans at the state level, who are at least able to run a meaningful government on some level even if they don't govern it the way you or I would like. The problem is the disconnect between state and federal politics.

[The Romulan Republic]

Oh please. I have no illusions that the average Republican politician will give two shits weather Clinton's win is 51% or 49% as far as their obstructionism is concerned.

But their is still, believe it or not, such a thing as an undecided/moderate voter. To those people, we want the message to be clear that the Republicans are obstructing Clinton despite her having a popular mandate.

And we want Clinton's win, the Democrats' win, to look as strong as possible, to send a message that the public has repudiated Trump and the Republicans.

[Civil War Man]

And yes, I get that the cartoon is referencing Punch and Judy, but their are other analogies the artist could have used, and they chose to use that one. So their must have been some intent behind it.

Or they didn't think through all the "unfortunate implications".

Probably the latter. The cartoonist's thought process was probably "I want to depict the parties as puppets to moneyed interests. I should therefore depict them as literal puppets. The only puppet shows more than 3 people can name if you put a gun to their heads are Punch and Judy, the Muppets, and the Land of Make-Believe from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. The Muppets and Mr. Rogers are too well-liked, though, so I will depict them as Punch and Judy."

I can't imagine Trump winning, but the last one didn't shift things that much, and it really should have. Most likely Trump losing badly at this point is expected, not noteworthy, and most of the people who are going to switch sides already have.

Pretty much. At this point, the only people Trump still has left are the ones who are ready and willing to go down with the ship (or have some means of profiting off of it).

Also, one thing 538 mentioned not too long ago is that Clinton is hitting diminishing returns regarding their forecast, where any further gains by Clinton are not going to have any significant impact on her chances of winning the election. Any further gains are also not all that likely to impact the electoral vote margin, because there are very few states left that are close enough to be swung from red to blue, as opposed to going from red to a lighter shade of red.

[Lagmonster]

Honestly? I want Clinton to win, but I'm not sure I want her to have a convincing, overwhelming win. On the one hand, I want a clear message that Americans don't vote for racist cheez-its. On the other hand, I don't want Clinton given an unobstructed opportunity to run roughshod either.

Right now a lot of people seem focussed on keeping Trump out without asking a lot of questions about what things could look like two years down the road.

[The Romulan Republic]

I want Clinton to have a strong enough win that her win is unambiguous, and that the Republicans have no political cover whatsoever for obstructionism. It may not stop them making fools of themselves, but at least it will be obvious that that's what they're doing.

A strong Clinton win will also likely help down ballot races, and I want us to actually have a full Supreme Court again before the end of the decade.

[Elheru Aran]

Also, one thing 538 mentioned not too long ago is that Clinton is hitting diminishing returns regarding their forecast, where any further gains by Clinton are not going to have any significant impact on her chances of winning the election. Any further gains are also not all that likely to impact the electoral vote margin, because there are very few states left that are close enough to be swung from red to blue, as opposed to going from red to a lighter shade of red.

Basically, this close to the election, most of the 'decided' voters have come out; the rest are all people who are going to pick when they're standing in front of that touch-screen (or little table with a slip in their hand, whatever). We're not going to get much useful information other than minor shifts one way or another until Election Day.

And Lag? Let's face it, should Clinton get elected, she'll have a hard enough time getting anything done (provided the Democrats don't sweep Congress... which they *could* end up doing at this rate) that I honestly don't know that *that* much will change.

"No political cover for obstructionism"? Lol. You're funny. You really think that'll stop them?

[The Romulan Republic]

Also, one thing 538 mentioned not too long ago is that Clinton is hitting diminishing returns regarding their forecast, where any further gains by Clinton are not going to have any significant impact on her chances of winning the election. Any further gains are also not all that likely to impact the electoral vote margin, because there are very few states left that are close enough to be swung from red to blue, as opposed to going from red to a lighter shade of red.

Basically, this close to the election, most of the 'decided' voters have come out; the rest are all people who are going to pick when they're standing in front of that touch-screen (or little table with a slip in their hand, whatever). We're not going to get much useful information other than minor shifts one way or another until Election Day.

And Lag? Let's face it, should Clinton get elected, she'll have a hard enough time getting anything done (provided the Democrats don't sweep Congress... which they *could* end up doing at this rate) that I honestly don't know that *that* much will change.

"No political cover for obstructionism"? Lol. You're funny. You really think that'll stop them?

I have already addressed this, but apparently its more fun for assholes to ignore my posts so they can mock me based on the argument they made up for me.

No, I don't think it'll stop them, but it'll make it more obvious to whatever moderates/undecided voters are left in our country what it is that they're doing.

Perceptions matter, especially for a candidate/President who isn't particularly popular, like Clinton.

[Q99]

Honestly? I want Clinton to win, but I'm not sure I want her to have a convincing, overwhelming win. On the one hand, I want a clear message that Americans don't vote for racist cheez-its. On the other hand, I don't want Clinton given an unobstructed opportunity to run roughshod either.

Right now a lot of people seem focussed on keeping Trump out without asking a lot of questions about what things could look like two years down the road.

What, like greatly improved healthcare, taxes for the wealthy, aid for the poor, and similar?

Ironically enough, the stuff people worry about the government for rarely requires a huge win, while the good stuff currently does because that's what the Republicans obstruct.

Also there is precisely nothing that could prevent the Rs from trying to obstruct everything, and the closer it is the higher the odds of another Trump.

[Elfdart]

Putin fraud? What do you mean, Putin coming to the US to fake the election results or something?

And let's face it, Clinton is a bad candidate. Trump is an absolute nightmare though, and that's the only reason Clinton will win this regardless of her performance. Was it a more cunning and less idiotic Republican candidate, he'd wipe the floor with Clinton and win this.

The GOP is now more of a death cult than a political party, so the odds are slim to none they'll stop going Full Retard. Jim Gilmore would have been perfect for them: a right-winger from a swing state but he couldn't get the time of day. If nothing else, I doubt he or Kasich or Jeb Bush would have been caught on video talking about grabbing women by the pussy.

Conversely, if the Democrats had picked Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Sherrod Brown, they'd not only mop up the floor with the Trumpster Fire, they'd have a good shot at winning both the Senate and House.

A new Kentucky poll shows Trump leading by only 3-4 points. Three separate Texas polls show Clinton trailing within the margin of error. Texas is being characterized as a swing state now by some orgs.

Hispanic women have been registering in droves down here all summer long. Thanks to Trump being an even bigger racist fucktard and misogynist than he was already known to be a couple of months ago, there's a good chance they'll show up and vote (fingers crossed!).

Awful as she is, I want Clinton to win and win big -to the point where she has coattails enough for the Democrats to take back both houses. If she only wins by a conventional margin, I suspect the Teabaggers in the House will spend the next four years blocking everything because Benghazi, Vince Foster and her husband's dick.

[Vendetta]

The GOP is now more of a death cult than a political party, so the odds are slim to none they'll stop going Full Retard. Jim Gilmore would have been perfect for them: a right-winger from a swing state but he couldn't get the time of day. If nothing else, I doubt he or Kasich or Jeb Bush would have been caught on video talking about grabbing women by the pussy.

Conversely, if the Democrats had picked Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Sherrod Brown, they'd not only mop up the floor with the Trumpster Fire, they'd have a good shot at winning both the Senate and House.

I'm not sure how much difference the name on the top ticket would make to winning the house because it's gerrymandered as fuck.

It would take a lot of money, time, and campaigning to make that dent whoever is going for the big job.

It's actually something of a decision the Clinton campaign needs to make, do they make sure they absolutely definitely win the firewall light blue states or go after the pink ones for the benefit of down ballot races.


The Republicans' ability to stonewall legislation will depend on how big their majority is and whether they can manage any kind of party cohesion after the inevitable "whose fault is Trump" circular firing squad.

[The Romulan Republic]

Don't forget the "Trump is great, its everyone else'e fault!" Republicans who will still be around, shitting everything up.

[Flagg]

If you spend your time trolling, flaming, and feuding with twelve year olds, you're even more pathetic than I thought.

And considering the times that I've been subject to hostile criticism for using hyperbole, your excuse nets very little sympathy from me.

Anyway, does this mean you'll ignore me now? Pretty please?

Anyway, an interesting article from fivethirtyeight:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/el ... s-problem/

Another day, another traditionally Republican state that Donald Trump could shockingly manage to lose. Yesterday, I wrote about Utah, where Trump’s weakness with Mormon voters could throw the state to Hillary Clinton or to independent candidate Evan McMullin. Today, we turn to Texas, where two new polls show a tight race: A University of Houston poll has Trump up just 3 percentage points there, while SurveyMonkey puts Trump’s lead at 2 points.

Trump will probably win Texas. Earlier polls had shown a close-ish race there, but with a Trump lead in the high single digits. And as a hedge against the polls, our forecast still assigns a little bit of weight to our regression-based analysis, which is based on demographics and voting history. Thus, our model still has Trump ahead by 5 or 6 percentage points in Texas, and puts Clinton’s chances of an upset at 17 percent.1
But to put that in perspective, Texas is closer than Pennsylvania right now (where Clinton leads by 7 to 8 points). And Clinton is more likely to win Texas than Trump is to win the election, at least according to the polls-only model, which puts Trump’s overall chances at 12 percent.

As in Utah, demographics play a role in Trump’s struggles in Texas. The state’s white population is well-educated, and includes some workers who have moved from other parts of the country to take advantage of the state’s burgeoning economy. (College-educated whites have turned away from Trump.) Texas also used to have its share of Republican-leaning Latinos — George W. Bush won almost half of the Latino vote there in 2004 — another group that Trump has turned off. Meanwhile, only 43 percent of Texas’ population consists of non-Hispanic whites, down from 52 percent in 2000. However, because 11 percent of Texas’ population consists of non-citizens — many of them recent immigrants from Mexico — its electorate is whiter than its population overall.

But Texas isn’t some sort of outlier. Instead, it typifies the national trend. Compared with Mitt Romney, Trump is underperforming more in red states than in purple states or blue states. And Trump’s vote has fallen off more in the South than in other parts of the country.

In 2012, President Obama lost the South (as defined by the Census Bureau) by 7 percentage points. This year — according to our polls-only projections as of mid-afternoon on Tuesday — Clinton is losing the South to Trump by only 1 point. So the South has swung toward Democrats by a net of 6 points, turning Virginia from a tipping-point state into one that Clinton is all but certain to win, flipping North Carolina (probably) from red back to blue, and making states such as Texas and Georgia competitive at times. Clinton has also made significant gains relative to Obama in the West, where she’s outperforming him by 4 to 5 percentage points. But her numbers are only a point or two better than Obama’s in the Midwest — and are worse in some Midwestern states such as Iowa. And she’s actually underperforming Obama, slightly, in the Northeast.

2012 RESULT 2016 PROJECTION CHANGE
Census Bureau region Northeast Obama _+18.9 Clinton _+16.9 R_+2.0
South Romney __+7.1 Trump __+1.2 D_+5.9
Midwest Obama __+3.1 Clinton __+4.4 D_+1.3
West Obama _+10.7 Clinton _+15.1 D_+4.4
Type of state in 2012 Blue Obama _+22.0 Clinton _+21.5 R_+0.5
Swing Obama __+4.1 Clinton __+6.0 D_+1.9
Red Romney _+16.9 Trump __+8.5 D_+8.4
Southern states and red states show biggest swing toward Clinton
Swing states include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. Red states include every state redder than North Carolina in 2012; blue states include every state bluer than Michigan. Results in each group of states are weighted based on 2016 turnout projections, which reflect population growth since 2012.

Meanwhile, most of Clinton’s gains relative to Obama have come in red states. Obama won the 12 states that were generally defined as swing states in 2012 — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin — by an aggregate of 4 percentage points (weighted based on their turnout). Clinton is leading in these states by 6 points. That’s a comfortable-enough margin, but her gains have been smaller in swing states than in the popular vote overall. (Clinton is winning the popular vote by about 7 points in our forecast, while Obama’s margin over Romney was slightly less than 4 points.) That’s because of Clinton’s disproportionate gains — or maybe we should say Trump’s disproportionate losses — in red states.2 Trump is winning red states by only 8 or 9 percentage points, while Romney won them by 17 points, yielding opportunities for Clinton to catch him in states ranging from Texas to Alaska.

There’s just one somewhat negative aspect of this for Clinton, one which we’ve pointed out before. The gains in red states could yield an inefficient distribution of the popular vote for her, in terms of its impact on the Electoral College. Texas and Utah alone are responsible for shifting the national popular vote by a net of about 1 percentage point toward Clinton, relative to Obama’s performance in 2012. So while the upside for Clinton is potentially turning some very red states blue if she maintains her current position in the polls, there could be a penalty if the race tightens again and Clinton loses a lot of states by a narrow margin.

Presenting facts and opinions counter to your bubble-world is "trolling" now? Seriously, grow a spine, a tiny bit of thick skin, and you won't be mocked by every other member of this thread. I mean if you really don't understand what hyperbole and sarcasm are, you're on the wrong BBS. Maybe some kind of teen chat would be more suitable.

[Flagg]

Honestly? I want Clinton to win, but I'm not sure I want her to have a convincing, overwhelming win. On the one hand, I want a clear message that Americans don't vote for racist cheez-its. On the other hand, I don't want Clinton given an unobstructed opportunity to run roughshod either.

Right now a lot of people seem focussed on keeping Trump out without asking a lot of questions about what things could look like two years down the road.

I despise Hillary Clinton as a person because I remember all of the vile shit spat forth in the 2008 Democratic Primary. That said, I want her to drop-kick Trump off the roof of Nakitomi plaza (that's hyperbole for the children in the audience) and watch him go splat. It will either result in Republicans dissolving like dogshit in the rain, or them putting forth sane candidates in the future.

[The Romulan Republic]

So now you've back to taking cheap shots at me in posts that don't even have anything to do with me? Yeah, you're totally the mature, reasonable one here.



Just how many of your posts have a positive substance to insult ratio?

But since I'm really not interested in derailing this thread by engaging in yet another one of your sad little pissing contests, that's the last I'll say on it.