It’s getting a little ridiculous. Either people are using “landslide” to mean something that word doesn’t mean, have very short memories, or are incredibly dismissive of the actual facts.
I guess “landslide” can be subjectively defined, but it seems to me that according to any sensible definition a landslide must be at least comparable to what constitutes lopsided Presidential elections in the past. So here are the worst ass-kickings yet:
As you go back further in history the number of EVs up for grabs change and I can’t be bothered to do the math to figure out where Grant’s two elections rank, but suffice to say there were many, many Presidents elected by EV counts that were very one sided; Grant twice, Pierce, Lincoln the second time, Monroe twice, and on and on.
The odds of Clinton winning by a margin comparable to the ones noted above are, maybe, one in ten thousand. Maybe.
I think the answer is in your first explanation: at this point, I think some people are using the world “landslide” to mean “any victory where the winner earns 300+ EV.”
Don’t worry about it. I issued a decree that forbade the Republican from ever winning the presidency again. Even if you think it’s a make-believe decree, it’s still more powerful than a moldy ham sandwich.
Incidentally, OP, you might want to consider proof-reading the next time you post a poll. You misspelled Hillary Clinton, DUHH.
P.S. This is why I hate non-public polls. Are the eleven people who think Trump will actively evil and America-hating, or are they just pessimists (who don’t believe in my decree)?
I honestly think at first close of polls on the East Coast, with only 1% reporting, the news will say, “Well, we have one percent of the votes tallied in Rhode Island and we declare Hillary Clinton as the winner. No other states reporting in yet.”
I haven’t checked all the poll aggregate sites but on 538 Trump’s chances of winning have gone up about 15% since the story broke and still trending up. That is not insignificant. Does that count as changing anyone’s mind?
Well, one can consult with the polling aggregators such as 538 and the Princeton Election Consortium to see what the current popular vote margin is. Right now it’s somewhere between 3 and 4 points, which it the midrange of what it has been for a long time and is consistent with the 2012 election, so it’s probably quite accurate.
From there it’s pretty easy to figure out two things:
What would it HAVE to be for Clinton to win an enormous number of electoral votes? Let’s say to get at least 300 more than Trump, a 419-119 result (which is close to the 1988 election.) The answer to that is probably 13-15 percent, at least. You can figure this out simply by assuming battleground states all go Clinton, which gives her 358 EVs, including Arizona (we are already assuming she outperforms the polls as of now) and then examining the remaining Trump ang figuring out how far the vote must swing to turn an additional 61 EVs. You’ll be surprised how far it has to go. States are REALLY polarized, more than they used to be.
At 13 points she has clearly won Georgia (16) and South Carolina (9) and now Texas (38) is getting very close. Let’s give her credit for Texas at a 13-point lead, so that’s 421 EVs. That meets our criteria. (I don’t know what the hell’s going on in Utah; with a 13-point swing maybe she wins it, or maybe it goes McMullin, so I’m ignoring it. Doesn’t matter.)
What are the odds of Clinton leading by 13 points by next Tuesday?
I’ll tell you what they are; Nonexistent. We’re getting into fantasyland. Clinton is not going to gain 9-10 points in the polls; that has to be really, really obvious. She’s not going to gain five or six. There is absolutely no evidence or reason to believe such a thing is possible, none at all. The electorate is extremely set in its ways. There is nothing left to hit Trump with that’s any worse than what’s already happened. Assaults women? Won’t release his tax returns? Insults Gold Star families? Advocates assassinating his opponent? Nothing has bitten into his base yet. Nothing will.
All these poll aggregators are neglecting an important fact: The world is a garbage fire and God hates us all. Trump will win in a squeaker, and then get bored and frustrated and wander off.
Hillary by no more than 4 points. It should be 10 points but it remains close. And I do hope the spread is wider. I don’t like Hillary and gave Trump every opportunity to show he could be president, and he just kept making himself look worse. I wish it would be someone else but this ship is already far out to sea.
Your proposed method here is a mistake. The vast majority of the polls moving the 538 percentage from Oct. 29 to today were in the field before Oct. 29. Moreover, since the end of the third debate, Trump has been slowly trending up. So watching how 538 has moved since October 29 is a very inaccurate way to assess whether Comey’s letter is moving voters.
A smarter way would be to look at how the samples in polls conducted before and after the Comey letter have come out, or to examine polls in the field post-Comey and compare them to pre-Comey and see if the trend is accelerating. Morning Consult, at least, showed no movement. The daily trackers are a bit too noisy for that exercise, but we’ll have a few more polls to look at soon. I suspect that we’ll see whatever trend was happening pre-Comey continue at more or less the same pace, which is probably a slow Trump climb, but one that is too slow and too short-lived to pass Clinton.
But you said the odds are “maybe one in ten thousand”, not zero.
I agree with your basic conclusion. I was questioning the seemingly arbitrary number that you used to make your point.
But I get it. Stuff like this happens maybe 35,000,000 a day …
The evidence or reason to believe that such a thing is possible is that there isn’t enough data to say that it isn’t. We’ve only had 50ish presidential elections; an event could be as likely as 1 chance in 50 and still probably wouldn’t have ever showed up in history. More so, if you consider only “modern” elections to be relevant, for any given definition of “modern”.
Here is an ongoing student “every kid votes” simulation thingy. Totally, and I mean totally, non-scientific, as kids just vote how they want. My school participated in it and it is ongoing.
Maybe by coincidence, it has matched the result(end result, not state by state) of the last 3 elections. No idea if it goes back further.
That’s an interesting point, but I implore you to simply look at the plain facts - all the polls, the history of polls in modern elections, the commentary you have read, everything you know - and ask yourself; “do I think it’s actually reasonably possible Clinton could win by 13 points?”
What would you be willing to bet if I offered to pay you $100 if that happened? Would you lay down $100? No, right? $50? $20?
I would not bet a dollar against a hundred on Clinton winning by 13.
QFT. Every time.
My California buddy complained that Hillary would not “have a mandate” because it’ll be so close and so many people are voting to stop Trump (In his words, “I’m voting to save democracy.”) My response was “dude, it isn’t a mandate. It’s a job.”