Can Our Democracy Survive This?

[_Mayan Elephant]

I don't recall seeing any polls that predicted him winning any or all of those states.

Kevin, are you suggesting that the polls failed to incorporate all the facts and realities or that the democratic leadership governed and campaigned perfectly but was robbed?

Good god. The mindfuck it takes to accept that the most popular group is the most popular but mostly loses popularity contests looks unpleasant. We have gone from saying that in a small sample they were the most popular but in a big sample they are not, to in the biggest sample they are most popular but within boundaries they are not, to saying their less popularity is too small to say they are less popular so in fact they are more popular.

[_Chap]

What is ME on about?

[_Kevin Graham]

I don't recall seeing any polls that predicted him winning any or all of those states.

Then you weren't paying much attention to them.

Florida polls released November 1st - 7th
Clinton +1: Quinnipiac
Clinton +1: Gravis
Trump +4: Trafalgar Group
Clinton +2: Opinion Savvy
Trump +3: Remington Research
Tied : CBS News/YouGov
Trump +3: Remington Research

So when Trump wins by 1% that is basically a direct hit when taking the aggregate of the latest polls. We didn't have as much polling data for Michigan but the two most recent polls were:

Clinton +5: Gravis
Trump +2: Trafalgar Group

Pennsylvania polls released November 3rd-7th:

Trump +1: Trafalgar Group
Tied: Harper
Clinton +2: Gravis
Clinton +1: Gravis

Kevin, are you suggesting that the polls failed to incorporate all the facts and realities or that the democratic leadership governed and campaigned perfectly but was robbed?

I didn't say it was robbed and polls aren't supposed to "incorporate" facts. We'll never know for sure what would have happened had the media not been so fixated on Hillary's emails but polling data suggests a 2 point bump was a minimal effect. Hillary had a 5.6 point lead in mid-October and that shrunk to 1.5 after the Comey letter.

Good god. The **** it takes to accept that the most popular group is the most popular but mostly loses popularity contests looks unpleasant.

They lost the popularity contests in swing states, but by very slim margins. They still won the overall popularity contest across the nation by a much wider margin.

[_EAllusion]

There was about a 4 point swing post Comey letter including an immediate collapse in Clinton's polling numbers right after the story came out. You can't directly attribute all that swing to Comey because there already had been a pattern of the polls shrinking back to a tighter race after Trump's latest embarrassing performance in the debates faded. But it is highly likely that some of this movement, at least north of 1%, was due to Comey's letter and later recantation. This is the view of both the Trump and Clinton campaigns. Since Clinton lost by less than 1% in 3 states that would've given her the election, it seems quite likely that she would've won sans the letter.

Polling was off and this benefited Trump, but it wasn't *that* off.

[_EAllusion]

Good god. The mindfuck it takes to accept that the most popular group is the most popular but mostly loses popularity contests looks unpleasant.

I stated Democrats won more votes and you described that as insane despite the fact that Democrats literally have won more votes over the past generation. At the presidential level they've won 6 out of the 7 last popular votes and barely lost the other one. They've consistently done well in legislative voting despite getting crushed in legislative representation. The problem here is you can't seem to appreciate that the election system isn't decided by simply who is the most popular or who can get the most votes on a national level. You are confusing popularity with doing what is necessary to win given the rules of the election systems. This leads you to react with frenzy to a rather innocuous observation on my part that Democrats are being hurt by clustering caused by their relative lack of appeal to rural voters. Gerrymandering is also a problem, but even if that were fixed overnight, the outsized power of rural voters would still be causing them to be underrepresented in government relative to their popular support.

[_Doctor Steuss]

Here are some of Project 538’s projections on 10/28 (the day the letter hit the news), and what they had changed to by 11/1.

Popular Vote (Trump)
10/28 – 43.9%
11/1 – 45.2%

Electoral Votes (Clinton)
10/28 – 325.9
11/1 – 303.1

Chances of Winning (Trump)
10/28 – 18.5%
11/1 – 28.8%

[_Kevin Graham]

Here are some of Project 538’s projections on 10/28 (the day the letter hit the news), and what they had changed to by 11/1.

Popular Vote (Trump)
10/28 – 43.9%
11/1 – 45.2%

Electoral Votes (Clinton)
10/28 – 325.9
11/1 – 303.1

Chances of Winning (Trump)
10/28 – 18.5%
11/1 – 28.8%

Yes, their projections shifted dramatically in favor of Trump leading up to the last couple of weeks and I remember someone from Huffington Post mocking them for saying Trump's chances were that good.

[_Doctor Steuss]

Yes, their projections shifted dramatically in favor of Trump leading up to the last couple of weeks and I remember someone from Huffington Post mocking them for saying Trump's chances were that good.

Nate Silver ended up going Trump on them for that, and raging at the HuffPo editor via a tweet storm.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/n ... ter-230815

[_Mayan Elephant]

At the presidential level they've won 6 out of the 7 last popular votes and barely lost the other one.

let us beat that dead horse. the presidential contest is made up of 51 unique popular votes. those are the damned rules. that is the goddamn system. scoring this by a different set of rules and a hypothetical and different system, to prove your thesis, is, again, insanity. ya know, repeating the same goddamn mistake with the same goddamn result, insane.

polls do not count. election results, they count. and the democrats are NOT winning the actual contests.

pretending that the democrats have it all right, except for these hijacks and anomalies, insane. ya know, repeating the same mistake with the same result.

being more popular in california and failing to export that popularity because it is based on such a peculiar and separatist community, does not translate into a higher popularity. the election results have dealt blows to the democratic party.

The problem here is you can't seem to appreciate that the election system isn't decided by simply who is the most popular or who can get the most votes on a national level. You are confusing popularity with doing what is necessary to win given the rules of the election systems.

EA. that is absolute BS. it is completely not true. it is exactly the opposite of true. and, frankly, your insult describes the very crap you are doing.

you, you, you are confusing popularity. you are confusing crap. you are translating sample polls and extrapolating conclusions based on samples. you are confusing popularity in a fictional contest (the total national contest) with the popular vote in 51 actual contests. you are confusing a poll of likely voters, with the actual results of people that actually care enough, and express support, by voting.

doing what is necessary to win AN ELECTION is part of becoming popular and gaining popularity. what the “F”, man? can you hear what you are saying? we are not talking about winning a contract, where doing what it takes to win and being popular can be at odds. we are talking about winning a popularity contest and doing what it takes to be popular.

i appreciate that the presidential contest is a popularity contest. it is 51 unique popularity contests. you seem to think it is something else, like some goddamn polling contest or something.

[_Mayan Elephant]

There was about a 4 point swing post Comey letter including an immediate collapse in Clinton's polling numbers right after the story came out.

polls are dildoic, but since you brought it up, maybe the polls can shed a little light on this.

what were the polling results for a democratic candidate that was not under FBI investigation compared to a candidate that was under FBI investigation?

if the polls asked about "Hillary's Criminal Investigation" instead of the "Comey Letter", would the results of the poll and conclusions be the same?