How Donald Trump might lose and how Hillary Clinton might lose: Daily Bullshit, May 23, 2016 (updated)

Updated for a story on how Donald Trump is unifying the Republican Party.[1]


Horse Race

I’ve been seeing but not archiving a lot of the kind of analysis that attempts to predict the electoral college vote based on (recent) historical votes. Electoral college analyses are obviously important because it’s the electoral college rather than the popular vote that will actually determine the outcome, but Juan Williams’ analysis basically starts from what Mitt Romney and Barack Obama did in 2012.[2] This is not 2012, Donald Trump is not Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton isn’t Barack Obama. Of these, Clinton is closest to Obama—and probably closer than a lot of Bernie Sanders’ supporters are prepared to admit—but to treat Trump’s appeal as in any way similar to Romney’s is simply absurd and to treat an election year marked by an extraordinary anti-establishment sentiment as similar to other years or a race between two establishment candidates to one pitting an anti-establishment candidate against an establishment candidate is facially invalid.

The kind of electoral college analysis that will actually mean something will rely on polls of all fifty states rather than relying on history to identify potential swing states or cherry-picked states with large Latino/a populations. This means pulling together a lot of hard work in the way that I think Nate Silver (whose article listed today is on another topic), for example, specializes in, and I simply don’t think that’s been done yet.

For his part, Silver focuses on how Sanders’ voters—many of them independents—might affect the general election[3]:

In the YouGov poll, just 55 percent of Sanders supporters said they’d vote for Clinton over Trump in November. However, only 15 percent said they’d vote for Trump. That leaves 30 percent of Sanders voters who say they are undecided, would vote for a third-party candidate or would sit out the election.[4]

It remains to be seen, of course, just what they’ll actually do. But judging from the reaction to Robert Reich’s Facebook post calling on Sanders’ supporters to “work like hell” for Clinton should she win the nomination, it seems like many might indeed simply sit the election out or vote for Jill Stein, the presumptive Green Party nominee.

Nate Silver, “The Hidden Importance Of The Sanders Voter,” FiveThirtyEight, May 19, 2016, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-hidden-importance-of-the-bernie-sanders-voter/

Rebecca Savransky, “Trump overtakes Clinton in poll average for first time,” Hill, May 22, 2016, http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/280848-trump-overtakes-clinton-in-rcp-average

Juan Williams, “Electoral map looks grim for Trump,” Hill, May 23, 2016, http://thehill.com/opinion/juan-williams/280768-juan-williams-electoral-map-looks-grim-for-trump


Star Trek: Axanar

Andrew Liptak, “Paramount’s Lawsuit Against Axanar Productions Star Trek Fan Film is ‘Going Away’ (Updated),” Gizmodo, May 21, 2016, http://io9.gizmodo.com/paramounts-lawsuit-against-axanar-productions-star-trek-1777959978


Donald Trump

Will Hillary Clinton be able to match this with Bernie Sanders’ supporters? I really don’t think so.

David Sherfinski, “Donald Trump’s assurances, Hillary Clinton antipathy unify Republicans,” Washington Times, May 22, 2016, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/22/hillary-clinton-antipathy-unifies-republicans-behi/


Footnotes

  1. [1]David Sherfinski, “Donald Trump’s assurances, Hillary Clinton antipathy unify Republicans,” Washington Times, May 22, 2016, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/22/hillary-clinton-antipathy-unifies-republicans-behi/
  2. [2]Juan Williams, “Electoral map looks grim for Trump,” Hill, May 23, 2016, http://thehill.com/opinion/juan-williams/280768-juan-williams-electoral-map-looks-grim-for-trump
  3. [3]Nate Silver, “The Hidden Importance Of The Sanders Voter,” FiveThirtyEight, May 19, 2016, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-hidden-importance-of-the-bernie-sanders-voter/
  4. [4]Nate Silver, “The Hidden Importance Of The Sanders Voter,” FiveThirtyEight, May 19, 2016, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-hidden-importance-of-the-bernie-sanders-voter/

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