U.S. Elections: We're All Qualified To Post Here

[The Marquis de Leech]

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The New York Times has yet another great article on the election - this on Sanders' early missteps in the campaign costing him dearly. Can't copy/paste from NYT, but basically the early strategy was to sweep Iowa/NH/NV and get the early momentum (and kill Clinton early), then fight along the way - and fight hard, negative, and dirty. But Sanders was reluctant to go too negative too early and wasn't running a campaign early where he thought he could actually win - and because of that, by the time came around to going hard on Clinton's weaknesses and getting more campaigning and ground teams done, he had pretty much already lost. 

That's simply a reflection of what Bernie was trying to achieve. He doesn't want to wreck Hillary, and never did. His campaign was simply to get her talking about leftist issues. The irony is that by the time he realised he might actually be in with a shot, it was too late.

Hillary for her part has learnt from her 2008 mistakes. She's played the proportional system very well. 

[sologdin]

are there actually voters who swayed by negative campaign ads?  it all appears so transparently manipulative and unwarranted.

[Horza]

Yes. It's not a huge effect, but it's bigger than the other direction.

[IheartIheartTesla]

19 hours ago, Fez said:

Could be extremely low rates of charitable donations. There's nothing wrong with that, but it might be embarrassing. 

The Clinton's donated 11.4% of their income to charity in 2013 and 10.8% to charity in 2014. Roughly half of that was to their own foundation, which some people seem to think shouldn't count, but its still money they can no longer spend on themselves.

Last I heard, Cruz and Kasich haven't released the parts of their tax returns that would show charitable donations; likely because they have extremely low rates of giving. It is known that Cruz's rate was 0.9% in 2010. And Cruz talks a big game about giving a tithe; he almost certainly doesn't.

Trump has given $102 million in charitable donations over the past five years, no idea what percentage of his income that is. Also, its almost entirely been in-kind donations rather than cash donations, stuff like free rounds of golf that charities can auction off, so it probably hasn't cost him anything.

It could be, but he (Sanders) donated all his royalties from his book to charity, and that came out to around $25000 in 2011-2012. That's about 5-10% of his current net worth, so I don't foresee it being a big issue.

Tax returns don't (or need not) show how much you have in credit card debt, which is probably a bit more embarrassing for him. But all this sort of information should already be there in the financial disclosures candidates are supposed to file (not tax returns) after declaring their candidacy.

[The Marquis de Leech]

45 minutes ago, sologdin said:

are there actually voters who swayed by negative campaign ads?  it all appears so transparently manipulative and unwarranted.

Presidents Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, and Michael Dukakis say hello. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 hours ago, Shryke said:

Not at all. I know plenty who would like to see those speeches. They just argue she won't release them because there's no upside to her. And just like you in this situation, they think there will be nothing actually wrong in them if released (though potentially things that will be used as attacked).

You've given no argument for why he shouldn't release them so far, just attempts at deflection.

Transparency?

I mean, she is being investigated by the FBI on two fronts, so if there is nothing to hide why not release them in good faith, even if it could potentially hurt her politically? 

[IheartIheartTesla]

One of the things I am trying to figure out is the discrepancy between different polls. Some of the latest polls have a rough tie between Clinton/Sanders nationally. Sanders has received 42% of the votes cast so far. The state polls in three big states (PA/NY/CA) have Clinton up 10-15 points. So the puzzle to me is where the missing Sanders voters are.

There should be no way the numbers add up so the race is a dead heat nationally. The national polls are probably using the wrong demographic models so as to underreport Clinton's lead nationally, by about 5-6 points. That's one of the few ways we would end up with a 58-42 split, making a 16 point spread in the three states seem reasonable.

[BloodRider]

I can't say it enough, but national polls mean nothing right now.

[Kalbear]

Quote

One of the things I am trying to figure out is the discrepancy between different polls. Some of the latest polls have a rough tie between Clinton/Sanders nationally. Sanders has received 42% of the votes cast so far. The state polls in three big states (PA/NY/CA) have Clinton up 10-15 points. So the puzzle to me is where the missing Sanders voters are.

National polls can be of registered dems, of people in general, of basically anyone. At this early stage the national polls tend to be basically hot garbage. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Also, the methodology varies widely between pollsters. They can be landline only, cell and landline, by mail, on the internet, etc.

[Kalbear]

The transcript of the Daily News talk with Clinton was released. The differences are really, really striking. It's really interesting to see Clinton get hard questions (specifically how upstate NY's economy declined while the rest of the US improved and that being on her) and use that as a way to acknowledge the question, state what she is doing about it and wants to do, and make it her talking point. Sanders doesn't do this kind of thing nearly as effortlessly for better or worse. 

The other impressive thing is the sheer amount of data she has just bam, right there. She can state things like having 71 straight months of job growth (she was wrong, but off by all of two months) or namedrop some random dude in Buffalo. She can state easily anything specific about her plan - specific numbers, how these things aren't different, etc. She demonstrates deep and wide knowledge. I know it's something of a politician's trick, but it's quite impressive how prepared she appears to be. 

Like this quote:

Quote

So I think we can do that, and particularly if we can get the mechanism for the National Infrastructure Bank. Because if all we do is rely on Congress, then we are going to be at their mercy every five to seven to eight years. Whereas if we say, yeah, Congress still has the primary role... It passed finally $275 billion program, but we want to have an ongoing, revolving fund. We need to look at how we can once again use municipal bonding authority. How can we use more state bonding authority? We used for a little period of time, and I like the idea of federal bonds that can be used for infrastructure, as long as you have a revenue stream. Look, I'm excited about this stuff. I'm kind of a wonky person. I'm excited by it.

Seriously, this is what she gets excited about, and this is why I like her. She is absolutely fascinated and interested in all these details and how they work. She wants to know and she wants to argue about it. She lives in the political world and thinks entirely in its terms - and that is a definite weakness for her - but it also means that she has all these thoughts about the various weird things that politics has. 

She would have been the best min-max munchkin D&Der ever.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Actually, you guys are being a bit too dismissive of the national polls. The last three of them have converged to roughly a dead heat and the one before that had Clinton +6. So even though they may have not the best methodology (something I already pointed out), their convergence can (may) allow us to use that data to extrapolate something about the race. I think its a fair assumption that since they sample democrats or democrat-leaners, it should be possible to get out the results in closed/semi-open primaries by reweighing the numbers with registered democrats/ strong democrats/any weight you want to choose.

In that case, it does make more sense for Clinton to go higher in PA, CA and NY than the national polls indicate. That's all I wanted to figure out.

[Fez]

45 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

One of the things I am trying to figure out is the discrepancy between different polls. Some of the latest polls have a rough tie between Clinton/Sanders nationally. Sanders has received 42% of the votes cast so far. The state polls in three big states (PA/NY/CA) have Clinton up 10-15 points. So the puzzle to me is where the missing Sanders voters are.

There should be no way the numbers add up so the race is a dead heat nationally. The national polls are probably using the wrong demographic models so as to underreport Clinton's lead nationally, by about 5-6 points. That's one of the few ways we would end up with a 58-42 split, making a 16 point spread in the three states seem reasonable.

The national polls are usually of registered Democrats and Democratically-leaning independents. But the upcoming big states are closed primaries, only registered Democrats can vote in them. Pollsters know that, so they only include registered Democrats in their state polls of them. Its entirely possible that a poll of New York that included independents would find Sanders tied or even up. But it doesn't matter, because those independents can't vote in the primary. However, a national poll would include those New York independents.

That's one possibility. Another is that the national polls are just garbage. In 2012, a lot of national polls showed a tied race or even Romney ahead, but Obama kept leading in all the swing state polls. People kept wondering, does this mean Romney is doing better than expected in blue states or are the red states going to be even bigger blowouts? Nope. Those national polls were just wrong.

[Shryke]

5 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

What a silly thing to say, since he is going to release them soon anyways. Most of my comments have been about how there would be nothing interesting in them, since the amounts were so small compared to others.

At any rate I am done with your style of debating where everything is antagonistic with more heat than light, so please don't respond to this comment. I wont be reading it anyways.

You were arguing he didn't need to because nothing in them would be interesting. I pointed out you don't know till you see them. You made a non sequitur about Clinton's speeches because .... why again? What purpose did it serve other then some lame attempt at deflection?

It's not a silly thing to say that there may be something interesting in there.

[IheartIheartTesla]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

That's one possibility. Another is that the national polls are just garbage. In 2012, a lot of national polls showed a tied race or even Romney ahead, but Obama kept leading in all the swing state polls. People kept wondering, does this mean Romney is doing better than expected in blue states or are the red states going to be even bigger blowouts? Nope. Those national polls were just wrong.

I agree with most of what you said, see my post above. The national polls in 2012 were off by 2 percentage points. State polls for presidential elections have been doing better since 1996 as per 538.

However, I haven't see a similar analysis of bias in national versus state done for primaries. The differences appear to be a bit more stark (even accounting for democrats rather than democrat leaners, although I could be wrong about this), which is surprising and a bit counterintuitive to me since I see the state polls only have 400 respondents usually, making for larger errors.

[lokisnow]

5 hours ago, sologdin said:

are there actually voters who swayed by negative campaign ads?  it all appears so transparently manipulative and unwarranted.

it's not persuasive it's about being dispiriting. so you say mean things about your opponent not to perusade your opponents supporters to support you but to make the opponent's supporters feel bad about supporting your opponent and decide then to stay home.

Every opponent voter thus dispirited is a +1 vote for you. if your negative add, does persuade someone to flip, that is a +2 vote for you. If a negative ad causes an ordinarily non-voting opponent voter to become angry and enthused and determined to vote against you, that is a -1 vote for you. If your negative ad backfires and persuades your voter to flip, that is a -2 vote for you.

[IheartIheartTesla]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Seriously, this is what she gets excited about, and this is why I like her. She is absolutely fascinated and interested in all these details and how they work. She wants to know and she wants to argue about it. She lives in the political world and thinks entirely in its terms - and that is a definite weakness for her - but it also means that she has all these thoughts about the various weird things that politics has. 

She would have been the best min-max munchkin D&Der ever.

She is definitely impressive in those regards, and while not my ideal candidate, I would have no qualms voting for her in the general (with a few caveats of course, especially when it comes to the role of her husband and more caution abroad).

[Shryke]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Transparency?

I mean, she is being investigated by the FBI on two fronts, so if there is nothing to hide why not release them in good faith, even if it could potentially hurt her politically? 

Why are you bringing up the FBI investigations that have nothing to do with anything even remotely related to her speeches? That's a rather dishonest attempt to frame this subject.

She won't release exactly because they will be used against her. There's no benefit for her to do so. Just giving her opposition ammunition. And from anything we've heard about them from people who attended the speeches, there's nothing bad in there. Or nothing of any substance at all really.

But there is a difference between "nothing to hide" and "nothing that can be used against you". The same way, I don't know, the fact that Sanders and his wife enjoyed swinging would be both utterly irrelevant and at the same time politically damaging for him so he would just never want it coming out. Alot of shit that doesn't actually matter can be used against you in a political campaign.

From what we've heard (at least as far as anything I've seen on the subject) they were basically what you'd expect from a paid motivational speaker: pep talks.  But that doesn't mean she wants "Clinton says Wall Street bankers are hard workers" plastered across CNN while Wolf Blitzer discusses whether that means she hates ordinary americans in his usual vapid way.

I would be nice to see them but it's not gonna happen because no one can make her and there's nothing but downsides to doing so for her. She'll just continue the strategy of ignoring Sanders on the subject and going "I will if you will" to the GOP throughout the general.

[SkynJay]

5 hours ago, sologdin said:

are there actually voters who swayed by negative campaign ads?  it all appears so transparently manipulative and unwarranted.

I have assumed they are less about swaying a voter and more about firing up a potential vote who already feels negitive.  Trying to keep enthusiasm at peak levels for max turnout.

[Maithanet]

6 minutes ago, SkynJay said:

I have assumed they are less about swaying a voter and more about firing up a potential vote who already feels negitive.  Trying to keep enthusiasm at peak levels for max turnout.

In Poly Sci, the understanding was that negative ads are usually targeted to get low information voters to stay home.  Generally if you want to motivate people to do something, you need a positive reason to do it.  If you want to motivate people to do nothing, then go negative.