U.S. Election - Because we know better than you do

[Commodore]

here is the unweighted topline results of our NH exit poll, released before any votes were counted

Actual results

Sanders 60.4%

Clinton  38.0%

Trump: 35.3%

Kasich: 15.8%

Cruz: 11.7%

Bush: 11.0%

Rubio: 10.6%

We knew we probably undersampled independents in the GOP primary but decided not to weight the results, which accounts for Cruz being high and Kasich/Bush a little lower, but overall we got very damn close. 

Looking into doing this again for SC but it's a much larger state. 

[OnionAhaiReborn]

50 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I feel like you need to do more than just point out that the removal of Gaddafi and Hussein had unintended consequences.  Bernie was generally very short on specifics of what his foreign policy actually is, rather than just what it isn't (hawkish).  He stated in last week's debate that he wants to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia to the negotiating table.  What exactly are those two going to agree to negotiate?  Why would Iran use the US as a broker, when the US has been backing SA vs Iran for decades?  Even if they did agree to some sort of official talks, the chance of it actually succeeding is very low, and the chance of it blowing up in our face is really high.  So, given that, why would that be a good policy?  What is Sanders hoping to achieve other than a general "wouldn't it be nice?"  This entire plan sounds half baked.

The United States is currently at the negotiating table with Russia, trying to get Assad and his opposition to agree to a resolution of the conflict there. That's trying to bring a lot of bitter enemies together. This is not, of course, written off as "wouldn't it be nice," but is regarded as an absolutely essential effort. I fail to see how trying to get Saudi Arabia and Iran to be less antagonistic toward one another, particularly when they have a common enemy in ISIS, is somehow beyond the pale and bound to blow up in our face. How? Their feelings will be hurt that we asked? In what way would this intensify their antagonistic relationship? It's absurd. 

Sanders pointing out that the removal of Gaddafi and Hussein, which he opposed, had unintended consequences is a point in itself (and I urge you to read his Iraq War speech where he did in fact predict thoe consequences). Those are very specific policies that he opposed. US foreign policy has been dominated for decades by interventionism, and Sanders is saying that's a failure in large part- and he has the historical knowledge to make that case. Simply saying what he wouldn't do is a huge, refreshing, important shift.

 

Quote

That might be true that it's not in step with dems, but Sanders voted in favor of the Libya action, voted to fund Iraq and voted in favor of drone strikes. He also voted for kosovo and Afghanistan. The notion that he won't be interventionist is not supported by his record.

 

The Libya vote was a nonbinding resolution that called on Gadaffi to step down, supported a democratic transition in Libya, and urged the UN security council to protect civilians. The Obama administration (and allies) went beyond merely protecting civilians after saying that's all they would do, and proceeded to use air power to overthrow Gaddafi. Sanders did not support the overthrow of Gadaffi by US and other foreign military powers- he spoke against our involvement.

Sanders voted on some occasions to fund the Iraq War when he supported key provisions. He opposed it many other times. This is a sideshow issue, anyway. Funding troops after invasion and occupation is obviously not the same as supporting the intervention in the first place, which he very clearly did not.

He also spoke against airstrikes against Assad in 2013.

I'm not sure what drone vote you're talking about, all I've seen is him say he would be very, very selective in using them.

Kosovo and Afghanistan he did support. Kosovo is before my time and I don't know if I agree with him or not. He got Afghanistan wrong in my view, but he also, rightly, opposed Obama's surge.

So, no, his record is not to be categorically opposed to every intervention, but he still has a strong anti-interventionist record.

[Weeping Sore]

Clinton came off well in the debate last night. She has done her best to co-opt the Sandersian gestalt while polishing her veneer of competence and mostly staying pleasant, confident, and even-keeled. Bravo. She's listening and has adjusted well.

Sanders had a cold, so his energy was a little uneven at the start, but he hit his stride midway through. Seeing a 74-year-old looking peaked inevitably summons up thoughts of his mortality, which isn't a good thing for him. He mostly made good choices about when to let things slide and when to counter, taking multiple opportunities to connect every subject to his central argument.

I think it was a narrow win for Clinton as I found myself, a Sanders supporter, in grudging admiration for her skills.

[Commodore]

I had the opposite impression, felt like Clinton was trying to piggyback off of everything Sanders said. 

And imagine any other candidate being under FBI investigation and not getting asked about it in a debate. 

PBS gonna PBS

[Tywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Her numbers are virtually identical with Sanders in those polls listed, and rubios numbers were before NH and before the debate.

No, they're not Kal. I don't place much valune in general election match up polls at this stage of the election, but it's undeniable that Sanders has been polling better than Clinton in head to head match ups with Republican candidates.

And Rubio's poor performance helps both Clinton and Sanders, so IDK why you brought that up.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Bernie Sanders Is More Serious on Foreign Policy Than You Think

On CNN last week and on Meet the Press this week, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders cited me as someone who has given him foreign policy advice. I admit I was surprised to hear this—I have spoken to Senator Sanders only once since he declared his candidacy, in October. In the time since, this fact has been used by the media and his opponents to cast doubt on Sanders’ foreign policy credibility, to point out a supposed weak spot in a surging candidacy: Since I’m not on his campaign, and have met with him only once, how serious could Sanders—the socialist crusader battling the former secretary of state—really be? 

The answer is: serious. Since Sanders’ public mention of me, I have been asked repeatedly whether I think his foreign policy positions and experience are sound. I do. 

In my dealings with him, and in analyzing his record in Congress over the past 25 years, I have found that Sanders has taken balanced, realistic positions on many of the most critical foreign policy issues facing the country. In the mold of realists like Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush, Sanders voted against the invasion of Iraq in 2002, while wisely supporting the war against in Afghanistan in 2001 and the intervention in the Balkans in 1990s. And Sanders certainly isn’t a foreign policy lightweight: In fact, given his long tenure in the House and Senate, he has more foreign policy experience than Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama did when they were running for office the first time. 

What would a President Sanders’ foreign policy look like? Based on his record and my conversation with him, I believe it would be rooted in a number of key principles. First is restraint in using American force abroad. As he has stated, and as is demonstrated by his vote against the Iraq War and the first Gulf War, Sanders believes military action should be the last, not first, option and that, when taken, such action should be multilateral. I also believe, based on our conversation, that he would follow the Weinberger Doctrine (also known as the Powell Doctrine): When the United States uses military force abroad, our objectives should be clear, we should be prepared to use all the force necessary to achieve those objectives, and we should know when they have been achieved.

[lokisnow]

Check your priors guys, they may be false. We've heard the mantra that polls have no predictive value for at least seven months now, and one look at the republican field shows this particular prior is very wrong. Remember, all sweeping generalized statements about what we KNOW about presidential elections are all just made up assumptions based on patheticly few datum, supported by wishful thinking and selection bias when looking for patterns that make you feel better.

It feels great to say polls don't matter, it is so reassuring to pat oneself on the back in celebrating ignorance and blind embrace of a simple pattern. It is almost certainly wrong. And the cognitive place of throwing away all data because one KNOWS that data doesn't matter is a very similar cognitive place to throwing out all science data because one KNOWS God created things as they are now.

So yeah, just a friendly reminder to check your priors. You are probably blind and deceiving yourself.

[Ormond]

7 hours ago, mormont said:

I think that's probably true, but then it's probably true of Sanders too. It's probably true of almost all the candidates on both sides, in fact. It's that kind of election.

 

Oh, gee, that's not just for this particular election and even not just about politics! There's been psychological research for years showing that people usually overestimate the degree to which "people in general" -- and their personal friends -- agree with them on almost everything! Most humans are guilty of not being able to "put themselves into the other's shoes" well enough to realize that their preferences and perceptions may not extrapolate very far.

[Fez]

3 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Check your priors guys, they may be false. We've heard the mantra that polls have no predictive value for at least seven months now, and one look at the republican field shows this particular prior is very wrong. Remember, all sweeping generalized statements about what we KNOW about presidential elections are all just made up assumptions based on patheticly few datum, supported by wishful thinking and selection bias when looking for patterns that make you feel better.

It feels great to say polls don't matter, it is so reassuring to pat oneself on the back in celebrating ignorance and blind embrace of a simple pattern. It is almost certainly wrong. And the cognitive place of throwing away all data because one KNOWS that data doesn't matter is a very similar cognitive place to throwing out all science data because one KNOWS God created things as they are now.

So yeah, just a friendly reminder to check your priors. You are probably blind and deceiving yourself.

Uh, 9 months ago the Republican primary polls showed Bush with a commanding lead. So this far out, yeah, they don't matter.

[mormont]

9 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Oh, gee, that's not just for this particular election and even not just about politics! There's been psychological research for years showing that people usually overestimate the degree to which "people in general" -- and their personal friends -- agree with them on almost everything! Most humans are guilty of not being able to "put themselves into the other's shoes" well enough to realize that their preferences and perceptions may not extrapolate very far.

Oh yeah, very much. But I feel that in this election in particular, we have on both sides a set of candidates that genuinely don't have much 'crossover appeal'.

Of course, it's early yet and we're still at the stage where it benefits candidates to emphasise their distinct traits.

[Lightysnake88]

apparently Free Beacon shows a Nevada tie right now

[Weeping Sore]

@Commodore- I did use the term "co-opt" for what Hillary is doing, which usually has a negative connotation. Essentially I think she's a fraud, but she's doing a skillful job of re-framing.

[Altherion]

24 minutes ago, Lightysnake88 said:

apparently Free Beacon shows a Nevada tie right now

It's based on exactly one poll, but yes, Nevada seems to be tied. FiveThirtyEight has a history of the polls and until the end of 2015, Clinton had consistently held a double digit lead (and almost always one of 20% or more). I suspect there will be more polls soon, but it's interesting that such a substantial advantage appears to have evaporated.

[Kalbear]

Weren't the polls 9 months ago also touting deez nuts as the Republican nom?

[Fez]

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Weren't the polls 9 months ago also touting deez nuts as the Republican nom?

Never the polling leader, but with support from across Republican demographics and a high favorability rating even with Democrats suggested that Deez Nuts would've been a strong candidate for the VP slot.

[IheartIheartTesla]

1 hour ago, Lightysnake88 said:

apparently Free Beacon shows a Nevada tie right now

Probably why the Clinton campaign is 'managing expectations' about the results there and also making some questionable claims about the demographics of Nevada.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

26 minutes ago, Fez said:

Never the polling leader, but with support from across Republican demographics and a high favorability rating even with Democrats suggested that Deez Nuts would've been a strong candidate for the VP slot.

Turns out Deez Nuts was a bit saltier than anyone had a right to suspect.

[Swordfish]

20 hours ago, Altherion said:

Keep in mind that if it is Trump vs. Sanders, Bloomberg will quite likely run as well (based precisely on your thoughts about the Americans who won't vote for a socialist, but don't like boorishness). It would be a fairly amusing election with a choice between three radically different flavors of New Yorker.

In my dream scenario trump and sanders both lose the nominations, and trump funds a Trump/Sanders ticket.

The emperor already has no clothes.  He might as well start openly masturbating.

[Kalbear]

5 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

No, they're not Kal. I don't place much valune in general election match up polls at this stage of the election, but it's undeniable that Sanders has been polling better than Clinton in head to head match ups with Republican candidates.

And Rubio's poor performance helps both Clinton and Sanders, so IDK why you brought that up.

I brought it up because Rubio via RCP is the only republican that was beating either of them. Let's compare side by side.

Quinnipac: vs Trump, Clinton +5, Sanders +10. vs Cruz: Clinton tie, Cruz unlisted, vs. Rubio: Clinton -7, Sanders tied

PPP: vs Trump, Clinton +7, Sanders +6. vs Cruz: Clinton +2, Cruz unlisted. vs. Rubio: Clinton -2, Sanders -2

The problem is that a lot of the polls just don't exist right now for 'averages'. For instance, Fox News doesn't poll vs. Sanders at all, so shockingly when you do the aggregate Clinton ends up not looking as good. There's no comparison of Sanders to Cruz that I could find. Quinnipac and PPP were the only ones that had both  candidates consistently. The end result is that all the polls look very similar: both democrats are within a couple points of each other for the most part, and both democrats consistently are ahead of every candidate that isn't Rubio - and there are good reasons to think that Rubio's numbers will drop a bit. 

As stated it's still super early and not very useful, but the notion that Sanders has this major lead nationally is just not borne out by actual facts. 

[ThinkerX]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/democratic-groups-move-to-ramp-up-financial-firepower-for-clinton/ar-BBprSL1?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=msnclassic

 

Two powerful organizations within the Democratic establishment announced steps Friday that have the potential to provide substantial financial firepower to presidential contender Hillary Clinton by drawing on the support of wealthy donors and corporate interests.

While providing a likely boost to Clinton, both developments also give rival Bernie Sanders fresh fodder to highlight her relationship with Wall Street and other special interests at a time when the two candidates are locked in an intense nomination fight.

Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC supporting Clinton, unleashed a $5 million infusion of spending on her behalf, upending plans to hold its fire until the general election. The move calls attention to growing concern within the party’s leadership that her campaign may be in trouble, and it underscores how crucial several upcoming contests have become in Clinton’s battle with Sanders, a senator from Vermont.

In addition, the Democratic National Committee announced that it had rolled back restrictions introduced by presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 that banned donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees.

Both actions offer the potential for financial benefit for Clinton. But both also could backfire.