US Elections, 2016 Ed. - Page 42 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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By Doug64
#14711323
And the latest Rasmussen 4-way poll for the race:

  • Donald Trump 39%
  • Hillary Clinton 41%
  • Gary Johnson 9%
  • Jill Stein 3%
  • Some other candidate 3%
  • Not sure 5%

Republicans
  • Donald Trump 69%
  • Hillary Clinton 13%
  • Gary Johnson 11%
  • Jill Stein 0%
  • Some other candidate 3%
  • Not sure 3%

Independents
  • Donald Trump 38%
  • Hillary Clinton 29%
  • Gary Johnson 12%
  • Jill Stein 8%
  • Some other candidate 6%
  • Not sure 7%

Democrats
  • Donald Trump 12%
  • Hillary Clinton 77%
  • Gary Johnson 4%
  • Jill Stein 1%
  • Some other candidate 1%
  • Not sure 5%

Splitting the RCP collection of polls between those of Likely Voters and those of Registered Voters (and dropping one that's wildly out of step with the rest), the average of LV polls was Clinton +3.75 while the average of the RV polls was Clinton +6.
#14711470
It looks like were getting back into the whole "skewed polls" territory with Trump supporters starting to sound a lot like Romney supports from 2012 ... that the polls are bogus or they're skewed or they're not reliable or they're exaggerated or that they don't really mean anything or that they actually show something entirely different or that no one is taking into account voter motivation, likely turnout, registered voters vs. likely voters ... that groups are either over or under represented.

It looks like some have learned their lesson from the last election, but there are still those that keep pumping out the message that the polls aren't telling the real truth.
Start at 5 min. mark
[youtube]XoiL6gEr0Do[/youtube]
User avatar
By ArtAllm
#14711567
baltwade wrote:
It looks like some have learned their lesson from the last election, but there are still those that keep pumping out the message that the polls aren't telling the real truth.


One prominent Englishmen (Churchill) once said: "Do not trust any statistics you did not fake yourself".

Another prominent Englishmen (Disraeli) told in his novel Coningsby: “[T]he world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes".

The most stupid conspiracy theory is the theory presented by these corrupt talking heads in the controlled media.
#14711580
Correct me if im wrong but that poll only puts Trump 2 points behind?

for real? That's well within the margin of error right?

His polls have slightly improved, RCP had him out at 8% but he's back to 6% now. Most polls improved by one or two points.
By Doug64
#14711611
colliric wrote:Correct me if im wrong but that poll only puts Trump 2 points behind?

for real? That's well within the margin of error right?

His polls have slightly improved, RCP had him out at 8% but he's back to 6% now. Most polls improved by one or two points.

Make sure that the polls you're comparing are the four-way polls, Clinton's lead is slightly lower there -- +5.5 instead of +6, and that high only because of an extreme outlier (+13) that's about to drop off the list.

One of the interesting questions this election is how solid Johnson and Stein's support really is. Traditionally third party candidates underperform the polls on Election Day, as voters that said they'd vote for them grit their teeth and vote for the major parties instead. But with Trump and Clinton so badly disliked, if there's any year to buck the trend this is it.
#14712074
colliric wrote:Correct me if im wrong but that poll only puts Trump 2 points behind?
for real? That's well within the margin of error right?

For that particular poll, sure. But Rasmussen is known to have slightly more favorable numbers for Republicans. The vast majority of polls have Clinton ahead by more than a couple of points outside the margin of error ... and really that doesn't quite give you an honest look at the election. National polls are quick and easy indicators, but you really need to look at state by state polls. The three big battleground states that Trump absolutely has to win are Ohio, Florida, and Virginia. He's down in all of them. Florida and Ohio are close, Clinton only up by a few, within the margin. Virginia is looking like a blow out, Clinton up by double digits, well outside the margins. And even if Trump won all three, that wouldn't be enough. He needs to win a couple more states where Clinton's lead is even higher than in Virginia.

So if you only look at a couple of national polls, especially certain ones, you could easily get the feeling that the election is pretty close ... competitive. However, if you look at the state by state polling ... it's basically hopeless for Trump ... an easy victory for Clinton.
#14712217
Yeah, Trump basically has to run the tables and win absolutely everything. He has almost no ground game for the GOTV and Hillary is basically using the same political people/machine that Obama ran with in 2012.

We're looking at another Romney level landslide.

Beren wrote:I wonder how Americans can keep watching those political shows. Either CNN or Fox News, doesn't matter.


Every election cycle, CNN pulls out the hologram live on air! Last cycle they didn't tell Wolf Blitzer and when the hologram showed up he shouted, "Zoiks! A gh-gh-gh-gh-ghost!" and ran off, leaving a cartoonish trail of dust shaped just like him.

CNN is the channel where they rock it on election night! It's usually Wolf Blitzer and his co-host, sitting on 30 packs of Keystone light, just talking like bros about the election and cracking beers.
By Doug64
#14712633
Orson Scott Card's take on voting your conscience, for what it's worth:

    By the way, when I said I wish no one ill, I have to place a limit on that. I wish both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump the disappointment of not winning the presidency.

    At this point, that would require either the untimely passing of both candidates (though they’re both getting elderly, so nature can run its course without any kind of intervention), or a third-party candidate winning enough states to throw the election into the House of Representatives.

    That might be the achievement of Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, because that party is on the ballot in every state. Or it might be Evan McMullin, running as an Independent, who will be on less than a majority of state ballots — but that could be enough, in a close election, to deny an electoral college majority to any candidate.

    (McMullin can’t get onto the North Carolina ballot — the deadline was early in June. But in Louisiana it takes only a $500 fee to get on the ballot, in lieu of 5,000 signatures. And in Iowa, the McMullin movement gathered way more than the required 1500 signatures in time to meet the deadline. He’s also on the ballot in Utah and Colorado, and there are still ten or so states whose ballots aren’t yet closed.)

    Suppose, as both Hillary and Trump continue to implode, providing more and more evidence that neither one has ever told us the truth about anything important, disgusted voters hand one state — Oregon? Wisconsin? — to the Libertarians, and a couple of western states to Evan McMullin (the best candidate this election cycle) — let’s say Utah and Colorado. That’s 22 or 25 electoral votes. If the electoral votes for Democrats and Republicans are about even, the election is not decided.

    Let’s have none of this nonsense about how the person with the most popular votes should win, and if the House of Representatives votes “wrong” somebody was cheated. It’s not about “fair.” It’s about choosing a sane, honest president, fit to govern this country for four years.

    The game is played by the rules (yes, even in 2000, when the Supreme Court blocked Democrats and the Media from stealing Florida). When no candidate gets an electoral college majority, then the House of Representatives decides the election.

    Only it isn’t a simple majority vote in the House. Instead, each state’s delegation decides how that state will vote, and then each state casts one vote.

    That’s right. There would be only fifty votes, and California, New York, and Texas would get exactly the same number of votes as Wyoming, Delaware, and Alaska. Welcome to the compromises that shaped the Constitution — many of the Founding Fathers expected most elections to be decided in the House. That’s how they wanted it to work.

    Counting party affiliation of each state’s delegation doesn’t necessarily get you the probable result. There are plenty of Democrats in Congress who know perfectly well that Hillary is a liar and a crook and would rather vote for almost anyone else; as for Republicans, well, Trump has run against congressional Republicans, so exactly how much loyalty do they owe him, if he fails to win an electoral majority?

    In 1824, it wasn’t top vote-getter, Andrew Jackson, who won in the House; it was second-place candidate (out of four) John Quincy Adams. Now, Adams did not get a second term, and Jackson won the White House in 1828; the point is that the House does not have to pay any attention to popular vote or electoral college totals in making their decision. Voters are free to punish congressmen for their vote in the next election, of course.

    But the House of Representatives could conceivably save us from the worst president of the United States ever — which is the outcome offered to us by both major parties this election year.

    Voting for a third-party candidate is not a wasted vote. No one can know which candidate a third-party candidate will hurt more. In 1968, arch-conservative George Wallace became the most recent third-party candidate to actually carry states and win their electoral college votes. Everyone “knew” that he was stealing votes from Republican Nixon; yet the blue-collar Democrats in the industrial states voted heavily for Wallace, costing Humphrey states the Democrats had expected to win. Nixon won after all.

    Did Ross Perot cause George H.W. Bush to lose to Clinton in 1992? I don’t think so. While he got the demographic that Trump is aiming for — angry, protectionist, xenophobic — those are as likely to be union members that the Democrats think they own as to be Tea-Party-style Republicans. (The real spoiler in 1992 was Pat Buchanan, who basically wrecked George H.W. Bush within the Republican Party during the primaries.)

    What I’m saying is simple: If you can find a third-party or Independent candidate that you believe would make a better president than the Clown or the Crook, it isn’t throwing away your vote to bestow it according to your conscience instead of treating it like covering the spread on an NFL game.

    Suppose one of the major party candidates wins — the most likely outcome — but a record number of voters cast their ballots for Independents and Third Parties. No candidate can rationally claim a “mandate,” though of course Trump will claim victory whether he wins or not. (Look for him to build a duplicate White House in Arlington, Virginia, and surround himself with people who pretend that he’s governing America.)

    Your vote for a third party candidate tells Congress and the new President who you really wanted, and if enough of us do that, they’ll pay attention. They’re not stupid. They may respond to lobbyist and fat-cat money, but they respond a lot more to voters — when the voters send them a message.

    Voting for Trump because you fear Hillary more, or vice versa, doesn’t send either Trump or Hillary any message at all. But voting for Gary Johnson or Evan McMullin or Jill Stein (Green Party) or Darrell Castle (Constitution Party) or Chris Keniston (Veterans Party) will send a message, and Congress will try to decode it, especially if that third-party vote was heavy in their own district.

    For us in North Carolina, that means writing in the candidate of our choice, if he or she isn’t on the ballot, or voting for a non-Democrat or non-Republican, if there is such a ballot option.

    Write-ins take special effort when you’re voting — you can’t tap out your write-in on the screen in the voting booth. But even if it slows down the line, I urge you to vote your conscience. The only vote that’s thrown away is a vote cast for someone you think would probably make a bad president.

    Right now, I’m planning to write in Evan McMullin, because while I don’t agree with him on everything, he comes a lot closer to aiming at the America I want to live in than anybody else.

    Whoever you vote for, if you’re voting for a candidate you really believe in, I think you’ve done your job as a citizen of this republic.

    If I voted for either Trump or Hillary, to me that would be a thrown-away vote. A vote for garbage.

    That’s my message to both major parties: Reform yourselves so that decent human beings get nominated every year, instead of these crap candidates you foisted on us in 2016.
#14712793
Doug64 wrote:Whoever you vote for, if you’re voting for a candidate you really believe in, I think you’ve done your job as a citizen of this republic.
I think that's right on the head. You should never vote for someone you don't believe in. You should never cast a ballot for the lesser of two evils. If more and more people would vote for third party or independent candidates, the Republican and Democratic parties would more amenable to the complaint and concerns of the public.

All that other stuff about winning electoral votes and no one getting 270 electoral votes and sending the election to the House ... that's not going to happen. And the remarks about the House over riding the will of the people being the right thing to do ... that's just garbage.
By Doug64
#14712823
baltwade wrote:And the remarks about the House over riding the will of the people being the right thing to do ... that's just garbage.

If no one gets a majority of the vote -- and the situation Card describes would be impossible if anyone did -- then there is no "will of the people." A plurality is not a majority.
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By Hong Wu
#14713145
http://www.wnd.com/2016/08/trumps-black ... und-state/

Trump's support among American blacks is surging, polling at 20% in Florida, which is unusually high for a Republican. He's picked up praise and endorsements from leading figures like MLK's daughter and from fringe black groups (what you might call the "real" BLM) like the Nation of Islam and Black Panthers. These leaders have been waiting for someone who would give an honest assessment of the problems black communities deal with, without pandering, and Trump may be that man.
By Doug64
#14713176
Here's last Thursday's Rasmussen poll for the race:

  • Donald Trump 38%
  • Hillary Clinton 42%
  • Gary Johnson 9%
  • Jill Stein 2%
  • Some other candidate 3%
  • Not sure 7%

Republicans
  • Donald Trump 76%
  • Hillary Clinton 12%
  • Gary Johnson 6%
  • Jill Stein 0%
  • Some other candidate 2%
  • Not sure 4%

Independents
  • Donald Trump 32%
  • Hillary Clinton 28%
  • Gary Johnson 20%
  • Jill Stein 4%
  • Some other candidate 4%
  • Not sure 12%

Democrats
  • Donald Trump 8%
  • Hillary Clinton 79%
  • Gary Johnson 4%
  • Jill Stein 2%
  • Some other candidate 1%
  • Not sure 5%

And for Hong Wu, how the Black vote looks:

  • Donald Trump 17%
  • Hillary Clinton 69%
  • Gary Johnson 6%
  • Jill Stein 2%
  • Some other candidate 0%
  • Not sure 5%

For the polls in general, the RCP average is Clinton +4.5 with every poll, Registered Voter or Likely Voter, between Clinton +3 and Clinton +5 except Quinnipiac (Clinton +7).

For the Senate, the Democrats are currently looking to end up with around 51 or 52 seats. In the House, Democrats are looking at picking up 10 to 15 seats, well short of the 30 they need to take control.

And a few polls on what Likely Voters currently think of the federal government.

How angry are you at the current policies of the federal government?

  • Very angry 34%
  • Somewhat angry 33%
  • Not very angry 19%
  • Not at all angry 12%
  • Not sure 2%

Republicans
  • Very angry 52%
  • Somewhat angry 37%
  • Not very angry 6%
  • Not at all angry 4%
  • Not sure 1%

Independents
  • Very angry 40%
  • Somewhat angry 35%
  • Not very angry 13%
  • Not at all angry 9%
  • Not sure 4%

Democrats
  • Very angry 13%
  • Somewhat angry 28%
  • Not very angry 35%
  • Not at all angry 22%
  • Not sure 2%

How much of the time do you trust the federal government to do the right thing?

  • Almost always 5%
  • Most of the time 19%
  • Some of the time 39%
  • Rarely or never 36%
  • Not sure 1%

Republicans
  • Almost always 1%
  • Most of the time 12%
  • Some of the time 37%
  • Rarely or never 48%
  • Not sure 1%

Independents
  • Almost always 2%
  • Most of the time 14%
  • Some of the time 42%
  • Rarely or never 41%
  • Not sure 1%

Democrats
  • Almost always 10%
  • Most of the time 30%
  • Some of the time 38%
  • Rarely or never 19%
  • Not sure 2%

Is the federal government today a protector of individual liberty or a threat to individual liberty?

  • A protector 32%
  • A threat 52%
  • Not sure 16%

Republicans
  • A protector 13%
  • A threat 76%
  • Not sure 11%

Independents
  • A protector 23%
  • A threat 58%
  • Not sure 19%

Democrats
  • A protector 57%
  • A threat 25%
  • Not sure 18%
#14713356
Hong Wu wrote:Trump's support among American blacks is surging, polling at 20% in Florida, which is unusually high for a Republican.
Nope. Just looked at the newest national polls and those out of Florida. Of the ones that gave a demographical break down, Trump is still kicking around the 5-8% mark with black voters. Of the ones that lump all minorities together, he's still in the 16-18% range.

Basically, nothing's changed. There's no shift, no surge, and no uptick.

What you have is an article published by a hard leaning conservative opinion site that cherry picked one data point out of one poll, that looks to be an outlier, and then tries to spin it as a trend towards the candidate they are supporting.

Really ... what's the point in cherry picking data? It's backwards reasoning. To only believe the data that supports your own personal wants ... it's idiotic. We go through this every election, and the results are always the same ... Carl Rove like breakdowns on election night.
By Doug64
#14714449
And for how much voters trust our major party nominees:

Is Hillary Clinton a liar?

  • Yes 56%
  • No 31%
  • Not sure 13%

Republicans
  • Yes 87%
  • No 9%
  • Not sure 4%

Independents
  • Yes 64%
  • No 17%
  • Not sure 18%

Democrats
  • Yes 20%
  • No 61%
  • Not sure 18%

Is Donald Trump a liar?

  • Yes 56%
  • No 31%
  • Not sure 13%

Republicans
  • Yes 29%
  • No 55%
  • Not sure 16%

Independents
  • Yes 55%
  • No 27%
  • Not sure 18%

Democrats
  • Yes 82%
  • No 12%
  • Not sure 7%
#14714553
Doug64 wrote:And for how much voters trust our major party nominees:
Is Hillary Clinton a liar?
Is Donald Trump a liar?
I think you're confusing two different and separate questions here.
First, what person would honestly answer that they thought that Clinton or Trump (or any politician) wasn't a liar? We accept that politicians (or anyone who has to maintain a positive public persona for their livelihood) are going to lie, but that doesn't mean that the public doesn't trust them. This is especially true when you make the distinction between trusting someone on a personal level and trusting someone to get a job done.

I've known some honest people that I couldn't rely on and I've known some dishonest people that I could.

The really big difference between how the public views Clinton and Trump is how much they trust them to be able to do the job. Look at the gap in these numbers from the latest Fox News poll:

How qualified do you think Hillary Clinton is to be president of the United States?
    Very qualified - 40%
    Somewhat qualified - 25%
    Not very qualified - 9%
    Not at all qualified - 26%

How qualified do you think Donald Trump is to be president of the United States?
    Very qualified - 15%
    Somewhat qualified - 28%
    Not very qualified - 13%
    Not at all qualified - 45%

Do you think Hillary Clinton has the knowledge to serve effectively as president?
    Yes - 72%
    No - 26%

Do you think Donald Trump has the knowledge to serve effectively as president?
    Yes - 40%
    No - 59%

Do you think Hillary Clinton has the temperament to serve effectively as president?
    Yes - 64%
    No - 34%

Do you think Donald Trump has the temperament to serve effectively as president?
    Yes - 37%
    No - 61%
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