And to give everyone an idea how statistically meaningless that 7% is in a presidential election, that’s the percentage of the black vote that Obama didn’t get in 2012.
A lot of them? No way. Some of them? Certainly, despite BrainGluttons announcement that they would not.
It looks like something a little less than one in ten of them would now, which is significant.
But I personally think that Trump can roughly double his backing both among blacks and among current Sanders supporters, both which now stand at about 7%.
Pointing out that Karl Rove has the same opinion on Trump as Clinton is a very powerful strategy. Trump will keep using stuff like this and I think it will work to an unexpected degree, and be the pilot hole for the big bore that is coming to tear both sides of the political establishment a single, giant new asshole.
The thing is the other 93%, or at least 85%, of the black voters are an absolute necessity for the Dems. Without them they can’t win much of anything. That’s one of the reasons that I think the political landscape is more likely to crumble and reform than drift.
I guess that depends on your definition of significant. I don’t think the support that Obama didn’t get from black voters in 2012 was very significant. Maybe you do? I don’t think he did.
Hillary is consistently polling in the low double digits and high single digits against Trump. And this is assuming he’s even the nominee - while she doesn’t do as well against Cruz, you think Trump just goes quietly into the night endorsing Cruz or whomever or he makes a shitstorm that makes that 7% defection number look like a pimple on a gnat’s ass compared to the Republicans who defect their own nominee?
All the Hillary doomsayers never seem to take that into account. I have no idea. It’s kind of a big story.
How anyone can see the dysfunction going on with the GOP and look at what is actually a healthy (if contentious) policy and demographic debate within the Democrats and seem concerned about the latter and ignore the former seems silly to me.
Black voters aren’t going anywhere this year. The person they are overwhelmingly voting for in the primaries is going to get the nomination. And then they’re suddenly not going to show up? 
Oh, and black voters outvoted whites four years ago. And other minority groups have only been increasing in numbers. Not sure where this crumble you speak of is happening unless you mean white people. But that’s not bad for Hillary or Democrats, now is it?
By significant I mean that the total amount of votes is enough to be important in the election, and even swing it in the right circumstances, not that 7% support shows a large amount of support or something. By significant I mean has some significance, not, is highly significant.
7% of black voters is a lot of voters, in raw numbers, as is 7% of Sanders supporters.
I think Trump has a good shot at being the next POTUS, but Hillary has a little better shot, for the reasons you mention. But Trump vs Clinton is going to be like no other election we have ever seen, assuming it happens. And don’t be surprised if Trump is able to use his magic to do to Hillary what he did to Jeb and Rubio effectively enough to get into the White House. He is very good at it, and his vocal supporters and crowd sourced campaigners are by far the smartest and funniest communicators in the arena at the moment.
Cruz isn’t going to pull 1/10th the Sanders supporters or anywhere near the numbers of black voters as Trump will.
And, yes, of course, there will be GOP anti-Trump defectors. Quite possibly more that go in the other direction. But maybe not.
What’s happening on the GOP side is potentially more beneficial to thembecause it is more completely destructive, at the moment. This is potentially harmful to the Dems if, as I suspect, new movements will have to be grown from seed on both sides. The Dem’s will be the latecomer.
The crumble could very well start with Trump getting 10-15% or even more of the black vote. Again, almost all the concerns that drive people to vote for Trump are shared by black voters.
No Republican presidential candidate received that high of a percentage of the vote since 1960 before the Civil Rights Act was signed.
Oh, but Trump is special? Yeah, blacks especially hate him:
[QUOTE]
Quinnipiac University released a national poll Thursday showing that while Trump is leading the Republican Party nationally, he is polling poorly with black Americans in the general election.
The poll found:[ul][li]When asked “Would you say that Donald Trump cares about the needs and problems of people like you or not?” 92% of black people said no.[/li][li]52% of black people said Trump does not have strong leadership qualities.[/li][li]73% of black people said Trump is not strong or trustworthy.[/li][li]79% of black people said they have an unfavorable view of Trump.[/ul]When asked “If the election for President were being held today, and the candidates were Hillary Clinton the Democrat and Donald Trump the Republican, for whom would you vote?” 3% percent said they’d vote for Trump.[/li][/QUOTE]
Additionally, black voters love her husband and they really like Obama who will doubtlessly be campaigning for her.
Do you have any evidence why you think that black voters will abandon people they like to vote for someone they don’t like in levels that historically haven’t happened since many black people had trouble voting at all?
Well, since demographics and polling say this won’t be particularly close, then no worries.
You have no evidence for this and a lot against it unless you mean compared to me. But compared to Hillary Clinton? Not really.
No, not maybe not. Over a third of Republican Primary voters on Super Tuesday said they would not support Trump. Is that too long ago for you? Even in his home state where he had a huge win just a day and a half ago, a quarter of Republican voters said they would never vote for him.
Notice, this is a quarter of Republican voters (not Democrats or independents) in a closed primary that he won by 35 points.
So definitely cancel that maybe not.
When I wish for things, I wish for a pony.
It’s not like the spokesman went out of his way to make this announcement though. Mark Halperin asked him repeatedly until he gave a definitive answer.
Your opinion and $4 will get you a latte.
538 isn’t always right, and it’s been more wrong than usual as of late. I remember them projecting Jeb Bush to be the winner on the strength of research which argued that someone with X number of endorsements hadn’t ever lost the nomination. Well, he did.
I don’t speak of momentum for momentum’s sake. I mention it because it will be a factor at the convention – IF Bernie can somehow win 4 out of 5 next Tuesday and then go on a major win streak the rest of the way, which is possible as the race shifts back to more Bernie-friendly turf.
I know the odds are long, and I know that New York was a bad loss for Bernie. But we’ve already seen several instances this election cycle in which Bernie was supposed to be finished - only to come back and make even more headlines. It was only a week ago that Bernie was really starting to get under Hillary’s skin to the point where Clinton was starting to respond with pretty blunt appraisals of Sanders knowledge and whether or not he was even a real registered democrat. Nobody who’s winning a race comfortably says such things because they don’t need to be said. The fact that she says them means that Bernie’s still alive and kicking.
To use a baseball analogy, Sanders is trailing in the bottom of the ninth. Two outs, two strikes. Tuesday is it. But if he can take four of five, especially if one of those four is PA, then he’s back in the game. If not, if he gets trounced in MD, which is definitely possible, and if he loses in PA and/or CT, then it’s pretty much over. Sanders will have lost another major swing state, making it a decisive victory for Clinton in that regard, and it will be proven once and for all, that he doesn’t have enough crossover appeal.
Bernie’s on a national stage, whether he has a chance or not. If someone stood up there and made numerous accusations over and over again about you, would you let them slide? Especially from some guy whose only real investment in your party is for his own benefit?
Could you link to this. I’m a pretty regular 538 reader and I’m pretty sure you are misremembering.
I thought that was an interesting article. I wouldn’t think it alone would make anyone disavow Bernie, but it is a fairly comprehensive list of reasons why I’ve grown to like him less.
I posted a link to the article in Twitter, and soon after someone replied to my tweet with a link to this article. That same person is actually tweeting the article to every single person who posts the Medium article, so I’m at the least impressed by their commitment. I want to give Sanders a fair shake, so I went to the article, but the title is “Surprise! Author of viral ‘Becoming Anti-Bernie’ piece is corporate lawyer who defends hedge funds”. About half of the article is going into the background of the original article’s author, basically saying that because of all this she should be trusted. For all I know this all might be true, but it does sound like some of the baseless attacks on Clinton, so I’ll just try to get past that.
For actual refutation of Sanders, there are some valid points. He was called “The Amendment King” while in the house and got a lot of amendments passed it sounds like. He has got some legislation through with compromise. But then it compares the tone and temperament of Sanders and Clinton, and I guess that just all is subjective. It’s undeniable that Sanders is cranky and gets angry about things, I think that is part of his appeal to some of his followers. I don’t see Clinton as cold, fake, or awkward, and while people can think that of her, I can’t help but see how a lot of average women are accused of having the wrong temperament and demeanor no matter how they act.
I would guess asahi is misremembering as well. Two articles from 538 very early into the race:
Jeb Bush Has Endorsements — Just Not All The Right Ones, Sep 29 2015
Yeah, Jeb Bush Is Probably Toast, Oct 29 2015
But maybe there’s something I missed
I think the better analogy is that he’s trailing, it’s the bottom of the ninth with two outs and two strikes, and Bernie has never show any ability to hit a 95 mph fastball. And the pitcher is a fireballer.
That’s where he is. Behind in the delegate count, running out of time, and with mostly big, diverse states coming up. Big, diverse states are his kryptonite.
Bernie Sanders seems to be thinking exactly what I thought he would be thinking:
For a candidate even to mention the possibility of not winning means he knows he’s already lost.
Or maybe after being asked for the ten billionth time “will you support Hillary?” he decided to shake up his answer a bit.