U.S. Election: It's Gonna Be a Huge Thread, It's Gonna Be the Best Thread!

[lokisnow]

33 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

^^^ That's interesting, the idea of Texas growing itself into a purple/blue state in coming years. A lot of people would draw the conclusion that by that point (w/out Texas) the R's would be completely out of cards for any future Gen. Election chances to win the Presidency. I doubt it will end up going that easy for the Dems to gain complete dominance though. There's also a chance that just as the Dems "new big tent swells", a sizeable portion of fed up souls may spill right out the left exit of said "big new tent". Most especially if this future Democratic party moves more and more towards a centrist, moderate, center/right blob of goo that future lefties could look at and decide "this is not what I want to support" ( the candidates perpetually running to the center, hawkish for. policy candidates, built to win but unwilling to be liberal enough to be a transformative leader). At such a point people will turn on the status quo, abandon the establishment and demand candidates outside a new Democratic party that is too far to the right for millions of people. We are close to this already, it wont surprize me if the trend increases towards full revolt by the time we see a purple/blue Texas.

They will have gained a blue Texas while losing a Green California.

Well the forces working against a Purple texas are two fold

1) There's a big incentive for future voters (and politicians) from this baby boom to become republican because all the power in texas is in republican power, thus you have to be pretty ideologically committed to "waste" your vote/career on being a democrat in Texas. This means that future Latino voters in Texas are less likely to break Democrat in the same lopsided percentages you find in heavily Latino states like California. It is a simple rational decision, access to outcomes you want goes only through democrats in california, so voters break democrat in response. In Texas it will be the same, just benefitting republicans. Still the insistent racism of the republican party will probably moderate this effect. They won't suffer lopsided losses in these future demographics, but they won't earn lopsided gains either.

2) If Texas does break purple then you have the herding/sorting effect (sort of like the above mentioned gender threat bias) that more non-hispanics will vote against the party they perceive as being overly favorable to hispanics. So if future voting Texas Hispanics decide to break 60/30 in favor of democrats you will have the result of pushing currently voting texas non-hispanic democrats to become more republican. In politics you don't just get to keep all your votes, allies that feel slighted or "otherized" by changing demographics will abandon you in some proportion to the gains you make within new demographics.

So the counterpoint is that Texas, as a single party state, has good incentives for Hispanics to register republican, and if Hispanics don't break republican, hispanics breaking democrat increases the white vote share for republicans.

[Kalbear]

Oh hey, you know how people think Clinton is a criminal? One of the major people that called Clinton a criminal...was arrested and charged with felony fraud.

Quote

Simmons was part of Accuracy In Media’s (AIM) “Citizens’ Commission,” which was part of the media’s successful push to get the U.S. government to formally investigate the Benghazi attack. While serving in that capacity, he appeared on Fox and falsely told viewers that the Obama administration had decided “to not rescue our former CIA operatives and our military” in Libya.

 

[Mexal]

30 minutes ago, Trebla said:

Let's meet John Miller, spokesman for Donald Trump back in 1991, who will tells you how awesome Trump is and how all the ladies want him.

.

But gee, Mr. Miller's voice sounds AWFULLY familiar.

Read about this earlier today. It's absolutely hilarious listening to it. He's such a work of art.

[DanteGabriel]

5 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Read about this earlier today. It's absolutely hilarious listening to it. He's such a work of art.

You know Trump always hires the best people. Sometimes that has to include himself.

Speaking of hiring the best people, has anyone mentioned his psychotically racist former Butler?

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Party of Family Values. Everytime I hear/read that stuff, those are the first words that come to my mind. I know, it's a bit petty to laugh at the misfortune of the GOP with their nominee. But they totally deserve that aging New York Orangutan burning their house to the ground. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

^^^ That's interesting, the idea of Texas growing itself into a purple/blue state in coming years. A lot of people would draw the conclusion that by that point (w/out Texas) the R's would be completely out of cards for any future Gen. Election chances to win the Presidency. I doubt it will end up going that easy for the Dems to gain complete dominance though. There's also a chance that just as the Dems "new big tent swells", a sizeable portion of fed up souls may spill right out the left exit of said "big new tent". Most especially if this future Democratic party moves more and more towards a centrist, moderate, center/right blob of goo that future lefties could look at and decide "this is not what I want to support" ( the candidates perpetually running to the center, hawkish for. policy candidates, built to win but unwilling to be liberal enough to be a transformative leader). At such a point people will turn on the status quo, abandon the establishment and demand candidates outside a new Democratic party that is too far to the right for millions of people. We are close to this already, it wont surprize me if the trend increases towards full revolt by the time we see a purple/blue Texas.

They will have gained a blue Texas while losing a Green California.

Except that:

- The Democratic Party as it currently stands has been trending left for some time (and indeed lacks the right-wing Southern anchor that it had up until the 1990s).

- Third Parties are inherently doomed by the US electoral system. If you consider the Democrats too far to the right, the correct solution is to get involved and drag it left. 

[Altherion]

11 hours ago, mormont said:

I think this comes back to a point that has come up before and I am sure will come up again and again, which is: what's an 'independent' voter, anyway?

If an 'independent' voter professes his intention to vote for Trump in the general election while voting for Sanders in the Dem primary, are they an unregistered but otherwise in all but name Republican voter crossing over to cause mischief? Or are they an independent voter, attracted by unconventional outsider candidates? Are they an independent because they're in the middle of the two parties, or do they just not bother with party affiliation, or are their personal politics more complicated than that?

Yes, this is an interesting question. The fact that 39% of Sanders voters will vote for Trump does not necessarily mean that they are Republicans. Barring something truly extraordinary, Trump has already won while Sanders has already lost. It could simply be that these people are voting for the most anti-establishment candidate. The 9% of Clinton voters who say that they will vote for Trump are more confusing.

[The Marquis de Leech]

54 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Well the forces working against a Purple texas are two fold

1) There's a big incentive for future voters (and politicians) from this baby boom to become republican because all the power in texas is in republican power, thus you have to be pretty ideologically committed to "waste" your vote/career on being a democrat in Texas. This means that future Latino voters in Texas are less likely to break Democrat in the same lopsided percentages you find in heavily Latino states like California. It is a simple rational decision, access to outcomes you want goes only through democrats in california, so voters break democrat in response. In Texas it will be the same, just benefitting republicans. Still the insistent racism of the republican party will probably moderate this effect. They won't suffer lopsided losses in these future demographics, but they won't earn lopsided gains either.

2) If Texas does break purple then you have the herding/sorting effect (sort of like the above mentioned gender threat bias) that more non-hispanics will vote against the party they perceive as being overly favorable to hispanics. So if future voting Texas Hispanics decide to break 60/30 in favor of democrats you will have the result of pushing currently voting texas non-hispanic democrats to become more republican. In politics you don't just get to keep all your votes, allies that feel slighted or "otherized" by changing demographics will abandon you in some proportion to the gains you make within new demographics.

So the counterpoint is that Texas, as a single party state, has good incentives for Hispanics to register republican, and if Hispanics don't break republican, hispanics breaking democrat increases the white vote share for republicans.

The obvious answer to (1) is that this only applies among those for whom "power" is the only consideration. If you are equally at home in either the Democratic or Republican Parties, fine, but in the polarised modern era, I'd suggest that isn't a large portion of voters - people gravitate to the party that espouses the policies they actually want.

(2) There is no evidence of this. Blacks started voting Democratic in 1936, but white Southerners didn't stop until several decades later, and other minorities like Jews have always voted Democratic. In the case of those white Southerners, it wasn't because of a herding effect, but rather out and out racism. Today, I'd suggest you're seeing higher white vote for Republicans less because of herding, and more because the infrastructure that kept whites in the Democratic Party (e.g. unions) is fading into memory.

[mormont]

Quote

The 9% of Clinton voters who say that they will vote for Trump are more confusing.

Not especially. They're likely people who loathe Sanders for one reason or another.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

17 minutes ago, mormont said:

Not especially. They're likely people who loathe Sanders for one reason or another.

The true PUMAs will have their day!!!!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Did this get mentioned at all this week?:

Clinton revives support for health care 'public option'

 

[Swordfish]

9 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Rather than Republicans interfering with the other party, they're people who are registered Democrats (or independents), but who vote Republican at the nationwide level. It's a sort of twenty-first century version of the Dixiecrats.

Or to put it another way, this isn't Trump supporters figuring that since their guy is guaranteed, they'll cause some chaos among the Democrats. This is people who think Obama is evil, and who think Clinton is too close to him, so vote for Sanders in the primary (as a way of venting), followed by voting Trump in November.    

yeah, that's how i read it too.

West Virginians are an odd bunch.

[ThinkerX]

I am reluctant to take this poll at face value.  Perhaps the source is severely biased?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/poll-clinton-leads-trump-by-2-points-nationwide/ar-BBt0BNz?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=msnclassic

 

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 2 percentage points among voters nationwide, according to a poll released Friday.

The One America News Network and Gravis Marketing poll shows the Democratic front-runner with 48 percent support over 46 percent for the presumptive GOP nominee in a head-to-head general election matchup. Another 5 percent said they would vote for a different candidate.

[Shryke]

7 hours ago, Ormond said:

Just asked my colleague whose dissertation was in political psychology about this. She said she heard the NPR report this morning and that usually the effects of "priming" as this study used it are short-lived. It also wasn't clear to her if the study was saying this was just the case for male voters or voters of all genders. 

Yeah, this is what I remember from this sort of thing wrt Gender and Race (I've heard talk of studies on both issues).

The results are kinda disturbing but generally apparently short-lived.

[Shryke]

21 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

I am reluctant to take this poll at face value.  Perhaps the source is severely biased?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/poll-clinton-leads-trump-by-2-points-nationwide/ar-BBt0BNz?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=msnclassic

 

 

 

You should be reluctant to take it at face value. Gravis is shit at their job. If Gravis knew what they were doing, Romney would be President right now. Particularly shit in polls this far out as I remember too from last election cycle.

[Stan the Man Baratheon]

The rise of God Emperor continues!

[lokisnow]

1 hour ago, ThinkerX said:

I am reluctant to take this poll at face value.  Perhaps the source is severely biased?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/poll-clinton-leads-trump-by-2-points-nationwide/ar-BBt0BNz?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=msnclassic

 

 

 

There are two effects at work here, one is republicans are falling in line behind trump at completely typical rates, and his support is surging, narrowing the gap. And two is that this has not happened for democrats and sanders supporters are at the nadir of their feelings and apex of acrimony this further narrows the gap or in this case flips the lead.

when the democrat race has ended the numbers will stabilize. Trump will get a convention bounce over the summer and surge into the lead again. Clinton will get a smaller convention bounce and retake the lead, she'll extend her lead into September but the race will then steadily tighten to about a one or three point lead for Clinton. A flurry of reporting as Election Day nears will over select every poll that shows a proported lead change and we will all panic and overreact accordingly.

 

so don't worry, this poll is all part of the narrative, exactly according to plan.

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, ThinkerX said:

I am reluctant to take this poll at face value.  Perhaps the source is severely biased?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/poll-clinton-leads-trump-by-2-points-nationwide/ar-BBt0BNz?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=msnclassic

This poll is more generous to Trump than some others, but there is widespread agreement among the polls that the gap between Clinton and Trump has narrowed. If you look at the seven polls currently considered by RealClearPolitics (all done by distinct pollsters), Clinton's average lead for the period between April 17 and May 10 is now slightly less than 6% whereas before she led by double digits.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

9 hours ago, Altherion said:

Yes, this is an interesting question. The fact that 39% of Sanders voters will vote for Trump does not necessarily mean that they are Republicans. Barring something truly extraordinary, Trump has already won while Sanders has already lost. It could simply be that these people are voting for the most anti-establishment candidate. The 9% of Clinton voters who say that they will vote for Trump are more confusing.

Someone once said that every poll had a "lizard men factor" or percentage of people who are completely bullshitting their answers to troll or be funny or misunderstand the question ( does 1 mean trump and 2 mean Clinton, or the other way around). This is based on the number of Americans ( around 4% with another 5-10% unsure) who answer that they do believe lizard men are running the world.

basically, a good percentage of answers to every poll should be discarded.

[Shryke]

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

This poll is more generous to Trump than some others, but there is widespread agreement among the polls that the gap between Clinton and Trump has narrowed. If you look at the seven polls currently considered by RealClearPolitics (all done by distinct pollsters), Clinton's average lead for the period between April 17 and May 10 is now slightly less than 6% whereas before she led by double digits.

Widespread agreement doesn't mean shit if the data is bad. Gravis is a shit company for instance and is part of that widespread agreement. Another "Clinton's lead narrowing" poll I saw recently, I think it was outta Quinpac?, assumed an electorate whiter then 2012 to get it's results. I see Rasmussen in there and they are well known to lean heavily R in their results.

There is a degree to which you have to ask yourself if you are seeing a trend or just seeing shitty companies trying to copy one another's narrative.