U.S. Elections 2016 - Polls in mirror appear closer than they are

[SerPaladin]

58 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Some people simply need smarter people than themselves to decide government policy on their behalf. I don't know what that system will look like, but hell, currently you could swing half a million votes by having Kim Kardashian appear on stage with a candidate. (I exaggerate, but not by much.)

 

You're analyzing it as if there is one large person whose opinion shifts a few percentage points over a month. 80-85 percent of voters are done. Complete. Half of them like Trump (or hate Hillary), and half of them love Hillary (or find Trump deplorable). So there's your 43-41 or 42-42 or 44-41 virtual tie that is bubbling along.

Then you've got the 7-8% that are supporting Gary Johnson in polls, and the 2-3% supporting Stein. So, for the next fifty days, the debates and the ads and the celebrity endorsements and the gotcha questions are focused on 5-8% of the voting public.

Then when you realize that the voting public doesn't matter, it gets super bleak. Not only is it that the only voters worth caring about are the 5-8% true undecideds, it really only matters in about 5 states and a portion of Maine. If you vote in New York or California, or in Texas or Georgia, no one involved in these campaigns really cares about your vote anymore.

So 5% of the voters of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada. They matter. Not you. Not anymore. They are your "franchise", though I'd debate whether or not they are qualified.

[Larry of the Lawn]

6 minutes ago, SerPaladin said:

You're analyzing it as if there is one large person whose opinion shifts a few percentage points over a month. 80-85 percent of voters are done. Complete. Half of them like Trump (or hate Hillary), and half of them love Hillary (or find Trump deplorable). So there's your 43-41 or 42-42 or 44-41 virtual tie that is bubbling along.

Then you've got the 7-8% that are supporting Gary Johnson in polls, and the 2-3% supporting Stein. So, for the next fifty days, the debates and the ads and the celebrity endorsements and the gotcha questions are focused on 5-8% of the voting public.

Then when you realize that the voting public doesn't matter, it gets super bleak. Not only is it that the only voters worth caring about are the 5-8% true undecideds, it really only matters in about 5 states and a portion of Maine. If you vote in New York or California, or in Texas or Georgia, no one involved in these campaigns really cares about your vote anymore.

So 5% of the voters of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada. They matter. Not you. Not anymore. They are your "franchise", though I'd debate whether or not they are qualified.

I don't think that's really true.  I think what matters more is getting people out to the polls, even though that 85 percent is already decided and not going to change their preferred candidate/party, they might stay home out of apathy, disillusionment, rabies, bourgeois ennui, syphillis, or what have you.  Gotta get out the vote.

[TrackerNeil]

1 hour ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Now, don't get me wrong, I prefer Trump to Hillary, and hope we wins, even if he is far from my favourite type of candidate. But the fickle nature of the voting public is just ridiculous. How can these masses be trusted to elect the leader of a nation?

A guy voting for Donald Trump should not complain about the trustworthiness of the voting public.

[SerPaladin]

26 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I don't think that's really true.  I think what matters more is getting people out to the polls, even though that 85 percent is already decided and not going to change their preferred candidate/party, they might stay home out of apathy, disillusionment, rabies, bourgeois ennui, syphillis, or what have you.  Gotta get out the vote.

I'm slightly amused that we are ascribing rabies, ennui and syphilis to GOTV challenges. I'm not entirely sure who you are supporting but they sound like they've had a lot of fun.

I've done the GOTV thing, and I've run the GOTV thing for a few elections back in my "I care" days. Many Trump supporters are not the folks we had on our books to get a call if they hadn't shown up to vote by 6:00 pm. In my little 5400 voter town, we had 35% R, 25% D and the remainder undeclared. The enthusiastic Trumpies are our Tea Party types and the undeclared. Regular Republicans are getting killed for not being "enthusiastic".

The Trumpies already have fervor, and will be lined up at five minutes before the polls open. Clinton has a ground game, but a healthy bit of that ennui. And rabies, apparently. GOTV will only matter in the toss up and slightly leaning states anyway.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

How long do you folks think it would take the Democratic Party to nominate another woman if Clinton loses to Trump?

[Swordfish]

21 hours ago, Notone said:

I thought Clinton had a problem appealing to milennials throughout the entire cycle. During the primaries they were more into Sanders than Clinton, and she was seemingly unable to fix that.

My interpretation of what's happening is this, Clinton hoped millenials will automatically fall in line, Trump will continue to autodestruct and bring down the GOP. So she picked Tim Kaine as running mate to run a low profile campaign and collect never Trump votes from the GOP. In hindsight Warren might have been the better pick. Simply ignoring the disgruntled never Trump GOP votes, and to toss a bone to the millenial voters. 

The thing is though, the DNC KNEW she doesn't appeal to a lot of people (which is putting it pretty kindly, to be honest)  This was crystal clear after 2008.

And they still served her up anyway.

It's like they have been so focused on getting her in the white house at all costs, that they've completely lost touch with what it takes to really win.

Fortunately, Trump is gonna bail them out on this one, but if they don't learn anything from this it's gonna be a long, dark teatime of the soul for reasonable democratic voting blocks.

[S John]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

How long do you folks think it would take the Democratic Party to nominate another woman if Clinton loses to Trump?

IMO, any of Clinton's woes have less to do with the fact that she is a woman than they do with the fact that she is Hillary Clinton.  If she loses, I know there will be much gnashing of teeth about sexism, but I think that would be missing a good bit of the point about why she is not a great candidate and therefore lost to a horrible one.  

Surely, there have been plenty of sexist and unfair things said about her, but both parties play the team sport game and I think that has much more to do with it than her gender.  Personally, I feel that America is plenty ready for a female president.  Roughly 50% are ready at any given time, depending on which letter follows the candidates name.  

[Swordfish]

1 hour ago, Harakiri said:

Stein being the piece of shit she is and also showing just how fucking ignorant she is as well. More reasons to hate her.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/jill-stein-insists-trump-is-less-dangerous-than-clinton-and-attacks-bernie-sanders-as-a-dc-insider/

Seems like a paternalistic sexist point of view to me.  Lot's of other people are saying similar things, why are you singling her out, if not for reasons of sexism?

[Shryke]

9 hours ago, James Arryn said:

In terms of Trump, I generally mean effect...ie, his version of American exceptionalism might trend towards more isolationism, which would be more benign, though founded on insanity. I agree that his faith in brinkmanship is frightening, but it's not what I'd call idealogical. More behavioural if you get me, which is why I talked about the frightening prospect of his domestic positions....which are IMO more ideological...bleeding over into foreign if the situation presents itself. 

To try and clarify, I think I know how Clinton will approach a foreign policy issue; more hawkish than Obama, pretty standard neo-con with a greater stress on forming real coalitions than say W, but more reactive than Obama or her husband...say Bush Sr. as a kind of bar. That is a position I generally oppose along known paths...I don't think there's much she'd do that I'd find pleasing or surprising, I believe her version of exceptionalism is projective and ideologically exportative, and almost as bad, her version is one most Americans can/will get behind in the moment. So, it's a problem for me, supporting her, because I kinda know what to expect and it's what I oppose. 

Whereas with Trump, I don't think he gives a shit about exporting ideology except how it might reflect on his persona/brand. I don't think he has any pretence to global cop, either as a cosmetic on exploitative self-interest or even as sloganist. I think he thinks he's Machievelian, and as such is fine with naked self-interest, but while that's bad, and even less in line with my ideology, I also think it might make him less automatically responsive to situations. He might think he comes off wise and unpredictable by not intervening in a situation Clinton would be on autopilot. He has great potential to just generate situations, though, or overreact if he does react, but he's less woolly sweater running through a cactus field (as I think Clinton will be, ie it's virtually inevitable that there will be foreign interventions in her term) and more careless smoker in a munitions factory, ie greater potential for nothing, but offset by extreme potential for absolute midnight. 

I feel I have un-clarified enough for the moment.

You are off your goddamn rocker. Trump is thin-skinned, reactive, prone to lashing out, consumed by his own ego and overly concerned and fiercely protective of status. This is a recipe for starting a war over a personal slight.

Look at the shit he's said on foreign policy. He supports leaving US allies to fend for themselves, striking back at countries that demean him and using force to do whatever he wants.y  He's the kind of person who would simultaneously diminish american power and standing and also probably get alot of people killed. This is the guy who thinks the US should have just stolen Iraq's oil. He doesn't lack for ideology, his ideology is simply not a standard one you see in US foreign policy s-ince it's entirely based on exploitation and personal image. He's not isolationist, he's just only concerned with what he (and I guess the US too sometimes) can get out of any situation.

Clinton is just Obama except more likely to intervene for what she sees as humanitarian reasons. If you wanna classify Obama as a neo-con too I guess that fits, but that's not how the term is used generally. But whether you like that or not it's not anywhere close to as dangerous as Trump.

[Shryke]

9 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

The thing is though, the DNC KNEW she doesn't appeal to a lot of people (which is putting it pretty kindly, to be honest)  This was crystal clear after 2008.

And they still served her up anyway.a

It's like they have been so focused on getting her in the white house at all costs, that they've completely lost touch with what it takes to really win.

Fortunately, Trump is gonna bail them out on this one, but if they don't learn anything from this it's gonna be a long, dark teatime of the soul for reasonable democratic voting blocks.

Yeah man, she clearly doesn't appeal to the many many people who voted for her in the primaries. And she certainly didn't have high approval ratings before she decided to run for office.

[Altherion]

5 minutes ago, S John said:

Personally, I feel that America is plenty ready for a female president.  Roughly 50% are ready at any given time, depending on which letter follows the candidates name.  

Correct. Either party could nominate one at any time if the right person comes along. Women have been fully integrated into the elite and there is no shortage of current and former governors, Congresswomen, cabinet members and/or businesswomen who would be acceptable candidates.

Polls update: at the time of this post, RealClearPolitics has Clinton up by only +0.9 in a head-to-head race with Trump and +0.7 in a 4-way race with Trump, Johnson and Stein. FiveThirtyEight has the polls-only probabilities of winning at 40.5% for Trump and 59.5% for Clinton (those aren't poll averages, they're odds). These are Trump's best numbers since the brief interval between conventions at the end of July.

It's hard to predict which way the polls will move. So far, the last few days have been dominated not by the election, but the terrorist attacks in New Jersey, New York and Minnesota. Trump called them as such to begin with and got chewed out for jumping to conclusions without evidence by the Clinton campaign and the media, but it turns out that he was right so it's not likely to hurt him.

[Boris the Blade]

2 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

A guy voting for Donald Trump should not complain about the trustworthiness of the voting public.

So so true.

1 hour ago, S John said:

IMO, any of Clinton's woes have less to do with the fact that she is a woman than they do with the fact that she is Hillary Clinton.  If she loses, I know there will be much gnashing of teeth about sexism, but I think that would be missing a good bit of the point about why she is not a great candidate and therefore lost to a horrible one.  

Surely, there have been plenty of sexist and unfair things said about her, but both parties play the team sport game and I think that has much more to do with it than her gender.  Personally, I feel that America is plenty ready for a female president.  Roughly 50% are ready at any given time, depending on which letter follows the candidates name.  

You're naive if you think sexism doesn't play a part in it. Her policies are pretty solid. Doesn't help that some on the left fell for the right wings 25 year smear campaign (which also had a lot of sexism / misogyny rooted in it). So yea, if she loses sexism will play a part on top of American gullibility and ignorance as well as bigotry.

[mormont]

1 hour ago, SerPaladin said:

The Trumpies already have fervor, and will be lined up at five minutes before the polls open.

Some of them will. I doubt it will be anywhere near all of those currently declaring support for Trump in the polls.

One of the biggest problems with a candidate who appeals to disengaged voters is that they're disengaged. They don't vote, and there's a reason for that, even if it's just that they're not in the habit. People who didn't vote in the past are less likely to vote this time: that's a fact. Even if they're enthusiastic for their candidate, they aren't as likely to vote as someone who's never missed an election. Some will be lining up when the polls open: just as many will be meaning to get around to it when the polls close. 

56 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Women have been fully integrated into the elite

Said no serious social commentator, ever.

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 minutes ago, mormont said:

 

Said no serious social commentator, ever.

Might want to check your facts councillor, in the US women make up half of the available elected offices at local, state, and federal levels, as well as holding half of corporate executive positions.  Oh wait, fully integrated?  Not even fucking close.

[DanteGabriel]

I'm sure Altherion (heh, autocorrect suggested "Slytherin") means that women are integrated into the families of elites -- as wives or childcare employees -- so really, that's integrated enough, yeah?

[Seli]

4 hours ago, SerPaladin said:

....

I'm in New Jersey, so my Gary Johnson vote continues to be a safe one. But fellow libertarians in Virginia are (anecdotally) starting to consider holding their nose and voting for Trump, and they are more "true believers" in libertarian-ism than I've ever been. Should not make a difference in VA, but if Gary voters peel off for Trump, even just a third, the math gets challenging in a few states.

I'd assume most of the libertarians were GOP voters to start with, since the economical end result of both parties policies seems to be the same. Which also makes it weird they'd have to hold their noses, it would seem that the granting of even more power and even less accountability to the economical elite would be the same in both results.

[SerPaladin]

31 minutes ago, mormont said:

Some of them will. I doubt it will be anywhere near all of those currently declaring support for Trump in the polls.

One of the biggest problems with a candidate who appeals to disengaged voters is that they're disengaged. They don't vote, and there's a reason for that, even if it's just that they're not in the habit. People who didn't vote in the past are less likely to vote this time: that's a fact. Even if they're enthusiastic for their candidate, they aren't as likely to vote as someone who's never missed an election. Some will be lining up when the polls open: just as many will be meaning to get around to it when the polls close.

I think this is very deeply wrong, and I wonder if the D side is seriously believing it. If so, this may already be over.

I'm going to use my personal anecdote as a lens through which to see the Trump/establishment issue. I ran as an independent in my town nearly 10 years ago, because I was tired of the "pretty much democrats" that were the union republicans in power. I lost as an independent (barely), but the following year, all the disaffected republicans recruited me to help them build a new republican party. A couple doctrinaire Libertartians such as myself (think Ron Paul), a bunch of business types (think Chamber of Commerce), and the cultural conservatives that hate unions (Tea Party types) decided to knock out a typical New Jersey crew. I wrote copy, made sure everything was legal, other people pounded the pavement, and we primaried a republican majority out of office within 3 years, every single officeholder. The engine of that coup was disaffected, not disengaged. What was a town where Republicans and Democrats traded control of council every few years is now a lockdown republican town with one old school D business owner left on the D side of council that we don't bother running against because he votes with the Rs.

Note: I am officially out of politics since last fall. Actual libertarian and Trump-supporter types do not get along well, and I'm wayyyy outnumbered when it splits out that way.

The Trumpies are engaged. Romney and the Bushes and Bob Dole were not at all appealing to the people who are shouting themselves hoarse at Trump rallies. To use a religious analogy, these are the newly converted. They are eager to flex a muscle, prove their loyalty, show their power, make their voice loud. I will bet on a very high Trump turnout... these are not the wishy-washy lean-right voters. They are the "I don't want some nerd with a political science degree telling me how to vote" people.

[SerPaladin]

7 minutes ago, Seli said:

I'd assume most of the libertarians were GOP voters to start with, since the economical end result of both parties policies seems to be the same. Which also makes it weird they'd have to hold their noses, it would seem that the granting of even more power and even less accountability to the economical elite would be the same in both results.

Trump makes it all weird. I'm a "NeverCruz" guy. Libertarians that are pro legalization, and don't care about abortion or guns or god don't get along with the social conservative, evangelicals. I'd have happily voted for Hillary over Cruz, that guy is legitimately dangerous, both too smart and too churchy.

[Altherion]

3 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

What I find disturbing is how malleable the average voter's opinion is. The extent to which a rather simple and obvious change in delivery style, artificial change in message and superficial campaign revamp can swing large numbers of the voting public really is an indictment of the entire concept of democracy.

Trump is still Trump. Hillary was always Hillary. And yet suddenly we have Trump leading, where before he had no hope in hell. Now, don't get me wrong, I prefer Trump to Hillary, and hope we wins, even if he is far from my favourite type of candidate. But the fickle nature of the voting public is just ridiculous. How can these masses be trusted to elect the leader of a nation?

It boggles the mind. 

Why shouldn't it be malleable? Trump is still Trump and Clinton is still Clinton, but how many people really know what they truly intend? This is a race between a woman who will lie just about anything (from utter trivialities to matters of national security) if she thinks that she can get away with it and believes that it will give her an advantage and a man who lies even more often than that (i.e. even when it's clear that he can't get away with it), but occasionally says a truth that most politicians don't ever say. We don't know anything about what they really plan to do if elected. My best guess is that Clinton will continue Obama's policies, but probably with even more violent intervention in the Middle East. I have no idea about Trump -- his presidency would be a roll of the dice.

Of course, there are many people who are true believers in either one or the other (we have a bunch of them in this thread), but I cannot make an argument about them being more rational than the people who keep changing their minds.

[Seli]

8 minutes ago, SerPaladin said:

Trump makes it all weird. I'm a "NeverCruz" guy. Libertarians that are pro legalization, and don't care about abortion or guns or god don't get along with the social conservative, evangelicals. I'd have happily voted for Hillary over Cruz, that guy is legitimately dangerous, both too smart and too churchy.

But that doesn't make much sense. The president will still cooporate with their party, and the GOP to a large extent is that social conservative, evangelical, legislate the bedroom and morals, movement. Voting for Trump, or even voting for anyone but Clinton in a lot of states, isn't that different from voting for Cruz. Especially since Trump doesn't seem interested in actually doing any of the work of being president. And his vice-presidential candidate is as far as I understand one of those social conservatives that you don't trust in charge.