US Elections: Apocalypse Now

[Kalbear]

4 hours ago, Mr Fixit said:

I'd say that all the hysteria about racists and sexists electing Trump into office is missing the point. While that vote certainly did contribute (as it does in any election; US is after all a very heterogenous country), the main force that propelled him into office is in my opinion two-fold: (1) the anti-establishment vote of the disillusioned working class, as the catastrophic breach of the Democratic Blue Wall shows, and (2) very low Dem voter turnout (6-7 million less than in 2012). The numbers show that the Dem focus on big business and big cities coupled with an inherently uncharismatic candidate with a lot of baggage signifying ultimate status quo didn't sit right with the voters.

Eh. The latter is far more important. I mean, the actual vote totals for Republicans between 2008 and 2016 are essentially identical. For Republicans as long as they run, they get 50million votes. Period. And there weren't that many defections. 

But Democrats stayed home. Because they didn't have someone charismatic enough to entice them to deal with their differences and their ideological purity. Republicans don't care about that, apparently - they just vote the same way. Democrats have to be wooed. 

[mormont]

Here's the thing about Trump vs Bush. Trump was just elected with the enthusiastic support of a party that now seems to regard Bush as something of a lily-livered moderate. It's not just worried liberals but Trump supporters and for that matter, Bush himself who see Trump as more extreme than Bush was.

Add to that the fact that Trump is without doubt the least prepared and most out of his depth successful Presidential candidate ever, and I think the idea that somehow this won't be as bad as Bush's presidency is looking positively Pollyanna-ish.

As for Trump's grumbling on Twitter about the protests, if he thought the campaign was bad he's about to find out how much scrutiny you get as an actual President. I don't think he'll enjoy it one bit.

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Commodore said:

perhaps demography is destiny (skeptical of that), but in the near term, Dems need to win back white working class voters that went from Obama to Trump in Ohio/PA/Mich/Wisc

Wisconsin was lost by 27k votes total.

Pennsylvania 70k. 

Michigan 12k.

Let's not talk about it like this was some absurdly big jump. Again, the numbers are pretty clear - Republicans had virtually the same voter turnout from 2008 to 2012 to 2016. (I haven't looked back at 2000 and 2004, but I wouldn't be surprised). What changed was Democratic turnout. 

Similarly, I've seen reports that 18-25 year olds had a 16% turnout rate. 

For those who want to say that Clinton was a bad candidate and someone else would have won, these numbers are undeniably good examples, but it also points out that the Democratic strategy wasn't particularly horrible and one does not have to change the universe to appease white rural voters quite so much. 

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Mr Fixit said:

Eh... He got voted in because people (and Republican elites too!) at least partly thought of him as anti-establishment. That was a big part of his appeal. And word of caution: if you focus too much on him and not on what enabled his rise to power (aka broken DC politics) you'll find yourself in a situation where you're gonna be happy and relieved to find Ted Cruz or his ilk the Republican nominee sometime down the line. It's misdirection, man, I mean it.

Trump appears to have gotten voted in because he had a R by his name, and he got the same number of votes that  Romney and McCain did with an R next to their name. 

And in 2024, if Cruz or Jeb or Palin run, chances are pretty good they'll also get that number of votes.

Look at the numbers, not the results. The numbers don't say that Trump had an incredible victory; they say that voters overwhelmingly stayed home, didn't like either candidate, but Republicans were more loyal. And this was also the first year that the voting rights act was stricken down, meaning that it's quite likely lower number of votes in certain places was due to voter suppression strategies working. 

Trump made it through the primary based on anti-establishment appeal. Trump won the election because he was a Republican running for election. And Republicans will apparently vote for the most unqualified, reprehensible thing on the planet regardless of policy or ideology because they have an R next to their name. Democrats are apparently pickier and need more wooing. 

Quote

Here's the thing about Trump vs Bush. Trump was just elected with the enthusiastic support of a party that now seems to regard Bush as something of a lily-livered moderate. It's not just worried liberals but Trump supporters and for that matter, Bush himself who see Trump as more extreme than Bush was.

Enthusiastic support of a party is a bit much. Very few other Republicans were campaigning for Trump. Very few even actively and openly said his name. They were willing to go along with him, but there was little enthusiasm in the party. Compare this to the Democratic side, where basically every single Democratic party member openly and happily said nice  things about Clinton. 

The extremism doesn't matter in the least to Republicans. 

[DunderMifflin]

33 minutes ago, mormont said:

Here's the thing about Trump vs Bush. Trump was just elected with the enthusiastic support of a party that now seems to regard Bush as something of a lily-livered moderate. It's not just worried liberals but Trump supporters and for that matter, Bush himself who see Trump as more extreme than Bush was.

Add to that the fact that Trump is without doubt the least prepared and most out of his depth successful Presidential candidate ever, and I think the idea that somehow this won't be as bad as Bush's presidency is looking positively Pollyanna-ish.

As for Trump's grumbling on Twitter about the protests, if he thought the campaign was bad he's about to find out how much scrutiny you get as an actual President. I don't think he'll enjoy it one bit.

Best thing to come from this election IMO. He will have the eye of the world on him and his administration more than any president in my memory.

I hope they keep it up, January is a long way away.

 

I might have to join in if Christie and Guliani get in and start talking their regular bullshit.

[ThinkerX]

Said this a couple threads ago, I'll say it again.

 

In a sad sort of way, I feel vindicated.

 

I have a landline.  As a result I get calls from a great many pollsters.  Unlike many folks - apparently including most on this board - I will usually participate in such polls.  I noticed something about these polls - they very frequently did not have answers I could agree to.  More, much of the time, the questions themselves were badly framed, or intended to 'steer' the respondent.  In my view, this meant the polls were inaccurate, not reflecting the participants true views.

 

Another thing was the age issue.  I know very few people under the age of 30 who have landlines.  Several times, the pollster would ask me the basic demographic stuff (age, race) and then tell me they'd filled their numbers for that category.

 

So, I decided to try to get a truer picture.

 

I spent most of a year reading thousands - maybe tens of thousands of comments to various political articles.  Collectively, I noticed far more scorn than support for Hillary - there were very few enthusiast supporters of her in those comments.  For a time, Sanders had immense support.  But after the initial shakeout, it was Trumps fans that dominated those discussions.

 

This told me that Clinton was in deep trouble almost from the start. But, when I brought this little endeavor of mine up here, I was told my methodology was flawed and my conclusions bogus because the comments were 'not random.' 

More than once I pointed out here that Trump represented a major threat to Clinton and that the scandals associated with her hurt her badly. I was told that 'Trumps time had expired.'

 

Yet, what I read over the past year foreshadowed the election outcome very closely.

 

Therefor, I conclude that determining trends and truth via sifting of these comments is valid - probably more so than random polling.

 

 

 

[Martell Spy]

5 Foreign-Policy Flashpoints That Await Donald Trump
The world has reacted to Trump’s victory. Soon Trump will have to react to the world.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/11/trump-foreign-policy-issues/507134/

[Kalbear]

Quote

 

This told me that Clinton was in deep trouble almost from the start. But, when I brought this little endeavor of mine up here, I was told my methodology was flawed and my conclusions bogus because the comments were 'not random.'  Yet, what I read over the past year foreshadowed the election outcome very closely.

 

Therefor, I conclude that determining trends and truth via sifting of these comments is valid - probably more so than random polling.

 

Yes - let's go through all the various contradictory positions you've held over the last year and see which were right. Note that you could see literally the same thing about Trump too - why believe that for Clinton but not Trump? Why did it hold true for her but not him?

But that's probably a bit too complicated an analysis for you. 

I'm surprised you're not bringing up the other possibility that you seem to love - the conspiracy. Why were every poll - which had been incredibly accurate for the last 12 years and had if anything gotten better - so unable to predict this? Why were the polls - which largely had been entirely accurate in this year's primary - so inaccurate in predicting things like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, whose vote showed crazy different turnouts than expected? Why was there so much reporting of Russian cyberattack the night of the election? Why were there so many voting discrepancies between exit polling and results? 

[mormont]

However many times you bring it up, personally reviewing a bunch of internet comments still isn't a sound research method. Getting broadly the right result doesn't validate it. Sorry.

[The guy from the Vale]

@Kalbear

Eh... the polls were more accurate this year than in '12. The inaccuracy this time around just went in the opposite direction and flipped more states. But as for the popular vote margin, they were pretty accurate. It was just really really close.

[ThinkerX]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Yes - let's go through all the various contradictory positions you've held over the last year and see which were right. Note that you could see literally the same thing about Trump too - why believe that for Clinton but not Trump? Why did it hold true for her but not him?

But that's probably a bit too complicated an analysis for you. 

I'm surprised you're not bringing up the other possibility that you seem to love - the conspiracy. Why were every poll - which had been incredibly accurate for the last 12 years and had if anything gotten better - so unable to predict this? Why were the polls - which largely had been entirely accurate in this year's primary - so inaccurate in predicting things like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, whose vote showed crazy different turnouts than expected? Why was there so much reporting of Russian cyberattack the night of the election? Why were there so many voting discrepancies between exit polling and results? 

I find your post to be incomprehensible gibberish.

Again:

1 - I spent a year (actually more than that) reading through many thousands of comments to political articles.

2 - I noticed far more support for Trump than Clinton in those comments.  For a time, Sanders was far more popular than Clinton.

3 - This told me that Clintons campaign was in deep trouble.

4 - When I mentioned point 3 here, my concerns and methodology were dismissed out of hand.

5 - As it turns out, this methodology appears to have been an accurate predictor, far more so than the polls which predicted a Clinton landslide.

Now, is that too complicated for you?.

 

[ThinkerX]

3 minutes ago, mormont said:

However many times you bring it up, personally reviewing a bunch of internet comments still isn't a sound research method. Getting broadly the right result doesn't validate it. Sorry.

It worked, therefor it is valid.

[The guy from the Vale]

1 minute ago, ThinkerX said:

It worked, therefor it is valid.

That's not how this works. It really isn't.

[mormont]

 

6 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

It worked, therefor it is valid.

If you'd consulted a psychic and they told you Clinton would lose, that would have been an accurate predictor. Does that mean that it would have been valid? What about if you'd tossed a coin and it came up for Trump? Or had your cat pick a winner?

'It worked, therefore it is valid' is nonsense.

ETA - I appreciate you feel validated. But that's not at all the same as your method being valid.

[ThinkerX]

Just now, theguyfromtheVale said:

That's not how this works. It really isn't.

1 - how many political polls have you responded to?

2 - have you noticed the way the pollsters try to steer people, or cannot accept your answers?

3 - And again, my method worked.  Deal with it.

 

[ThinkerX]

2 minutes ago, mormont said:

 

If you'd consulted a psychic and they told you Clinton would lose, that would have been an accurate predictor. Does that mean that it would have been valid? What about if you'd tossed a coin and it came up for Trump? Or had your cat pick a winner?

'It worked, therefore it is valid' is nonsense.

Again. You are talking gibberish.

No psychics.  Nothing but reading through many thousands of comments to political articles.  Comments that expressed the true views of large sections of the populace unfiltered by polls.

 

[The guy from the Vale]

1 minute ago, ThinkerX said:

1 - how many political polls have you responded to?

2 - have you noticed the way the pollsters try to steer people, or cannot accept your answers?

3 - And again, my method worked.  Deal with it.

 

I'm not based in the USA.

Your method produced the correct result by chance. That's not the same as working. For it to work, you actually have to develop a decent methodology and a theoretical grounding for why it works. As mormont said above, There's a number of methods to get a prediction that may well prouce the right result occasionally (as in, half of the time) without actually being methodologically sound.

[Altherion]

34 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Wisconsin was lost by 27k votes total.

Pennsylvania 70k. 

Michigan 12k.

Let's not talk about it like this was some absurdly big jump. Again, the numbers are pretty clear - Republicans had virtually the same voter turnout from 2008 to 2012 to 2016. (I haven't looked back at 2000 and 2004, but I wouldn't be surprised). What changed was Democratic turnout.

It's not actually obvious to me that this is the case. Here are the results for Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for every year. Comparing them:

Michigan:

2016: D: 2,264,807 | R: 2,277,914

2012: D: 2,564,569 | R: 2,115,256

2008: D: 2,872,579 | R: 2,048,639

In this case, the Republican votes increased by about 5% per year while the Democrat one decreased by over twice as much and 2016 is the year they intersected.

Pennsylvania:

2016: D: 2,817,409 | R: 2,890,633

2012: D: 2,990,274 | R: 2,680,434

2008: D: 3,276,363 | R: 2,655,885

Here, the Democrat count decreased during both years, but the Republican one jumped by 8% in 2016 after being nearly the same in 2012.

Wisconsin:

2016: D: 1,382,947 | R: 1,407,028

2012: D: 1,620,985 | R: 1,407,966

2008: D: 1,677,211 | R: 1,262,393

This is the only one which fits your narrative: the Republican count stayed the same in 2016 as in 2012 (though both are quite a bit higher than 2008), but the Democrat one collapsed in 2016 after staying about the same in 2012. In both of the other states, the Democrat vote from 2016 would have beaten the Republican one from 2012, but here this is not the case.

[mormont]

5 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

Again. You are talking gibberish.

No psychics.  Nothing but reading through many thousands of comments to political articles.  Comments that expressed the true views of large sections of the populace unfiltered by polls.

Alright. One last try then I quit.

If your method gets the right result once, you have the right result. If it reliably gets the right result over and over again, you have a valid method. Do you understand the difference? Because if not, there's no point to this conversation.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

@Kalbear

Eh... the polls were more accurate this year than in '12. The inaccuracy this time around just went in the opposite direction and flipped more states. But as for the popular vote margin, they were pretty accurate. It was just really really close.

The polls weren't more accurate in certain places. Again, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania - anywhere there was a large contingent of rural white voters - went WAY different than what polling suggested, by like 10 points or so. 

And not a single poll saw this even remotely coming. Much less multiples. Even GOP polls indicated a Trump loss. Again, the percentages aren't nearly as interesting as the actual numbers on the states. 

And I don't see how the popular vote is meaningful. 

3 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

It worked, therefor it is valid.

That is precisely the opposite of a scientific method. 

Quote

 

5 - As it turns out, this methodology appears to have been an accurate predictor, far more so than the polls which predicted a Clinton landslide.

Now, is that too complicated for you?.

 

The methodology is not an accurate predictor, because it says nothing about what you predicted other than "Clinton in deep trouble". Deep trouble implies a major landslide loss (which didn't happen).