I’ll also mention here that I’ve taken to betting against myself in prediction markets on either/or issues and elections to test with real money just how much of my predictions are wishful thinking. If Andy is right, I am about to become a very rich man.
Hahaha that’d lock in the disaffected Republican vote…but in the final analysis I don’t think it’d persuade many Pubs to cross over who weren’t going to anyway. No, he’ll be a Democrat.
It would persuade me. As of right now I’m for Gary Johnson, but I’ve always been a huge fan of Lindsey Graham and knowing he’d have a seat at the table would be big for me. There are some REpublicans who are pretty close to being Democrats of course. I wouldn’t be influenced if she picked Olympia Snowe. But Graham is actually a solid conservative, he just rejects the battier notions of the conservative movement.
Would you volunteer to be the food taster if Lindsey was at Hillary’s table?
That’s probably why Clinton wasn’t 2nd in line the last eight years.
Because Hillary is to Obama what Lindsey is to Hillary? Really? Really??
Well, if you’re going to accuse Republicans of being willing to poison the President, it should be noted that Clinton is a lot more ambitious to become President than Lindsey Graham ever was.
If Hillary picked Lindsay Graham, who is one of the biggest warmongers in DC, I’d actually consider voting 3rd party.
There’s zero chance of this, luckily. Almost every election someone floats this idea, but it never happens, and triply so in this election (considering how critical Graham has been of President Obama, and considering how tightly Hillary has hugged the President, among many, many other factors).
But I’d be happy to make a bet with you, adaher. I’d give you 10-1 odds, too.
Graham’s ambition is not the danger to Hillary. He is not the most deranged, partisan member of the Republican party.
Now I’ve said that despite my “pro-TRUMP” posts, I’m going to be intending to vote for Clinton in November, but in very unlikely event she makes Graham (or another warmonger) her VP, I will cast my ballot for the Donald or write-in Pepe the Frog, whichever amuses me more. Of course it won’t happen and I project that it’s more likely I’ll be fucking Elle Fanning.
Gary Johnson and Lindsey Graham are pretty much polar opposites. And Olympia Snowe is only appreciably a “moderate” because of her stances on cultural issues-she voted against the ACA for heaven’s sake! Needless to say even if Clinton (which again she won’t) picks a “moderate” like Snowe, I will vote TRUMP.
Resurrecting this thread – I think we can now evaluate adaher’s primary predictions as a whole. If you are game, adaher, we can also play around with general election predictions.
Just a sum-up post, firstly – more detailed analysis will follow. In total, it looks like ~50% of your predictions (usually who would win a certain primary) were good. In my view, adaher, compared to Nate Silver and other “professional” political prognosticators, your primary predictions were not good at all. You could have gone strictly with RCP polling averages and would have had a much, much higher success rate. I think wishful thinking too often muddled your analysis, pushing you to greatly overestimate Kasich’s performance while greatly underestimating Hillary’s.
What have you learned from this primary, and how will you apply it to any future predictions (if you make any)?
I don’t feel too bad, since even Nate Silver was surprised by everything that’s happened. But yes, wishful thinking does lead me to predict things i shouldn’t.
As for the general election, who knows? I’m sure Trump and Clinton will do their best to try to lose and turnout is going to be unpredictable. Historically, when candidates are unpopular we see low turnout. So does that help Trump? Who knows? Or maybe Trump is so uniquely bad that we get record high turnout?
I do feel comfortable predicting some Senate races though:
California-Linda Sanchez(D)
Florida-Patrick Murphy(D)
Illinois-Tammy Duckworth(D)
Wisconsin-Russ Feingold(D)
Pennsylvania-Pat Toomey®
Ohio-Rob Portman®
Nevada-Joe Heck®
New Hampshire-Kelly Ayotte®
Colorado-Michael Bennett(D)
Arizona-John McCain®
By my count, that’s a net 2 seat pickup for Democrats.
So all the tossups go red. How surprising.
You think Murphy and Bennett are a sure thing? Florida is a classic tossup and Bennett is quite vulnerable.
I think PA and OH are likely Democratic wins and with plutonium at the top of the ticket, AZ and NH are in play as well. NV is a reliably blue presidential state, with the Great Democratic Energizer Trump on the ballot, that’s going blue as well. Pick up FL as well and we’ll see a nice working Democratic majority.
Toomey and Portman are popular. Clinton’s going to need coattails for those to flip.
Coattails? All we need is the anti-Trump anti-gravity wave.
Here are the PredictIt derived win probabilities for those states (except CA for which there is no market yet). All markets except AZ are listed as choices between D or R while AZ is McCain yes or no.
State D R
Arizona 40.0% 60.0%
Colorado 74.7% 25.3%
Florida 55.1% 44.9%
Illinois 78.0% 22.0%
Nevada 61.0% 39.0%
New Hampshire 54.8% 45.2%
Ohio 53.5% 46.5%
Pennsylvania 61.9% 38.1%
Wisconsin 77.8% 22.2%
And just for fun here’s a post from back in September in the Un-fork Hillary thread…
So my biggest outlier prediction is Toomey’s win, which is judged at 38.1%. So no real out there predictions.
The reason I think Toomey will win is money and the fact that his opponent is just too generic and unimaginitive to be the type to topple a fairly well liked incumbent. Hillary would have to have some pretty serious coattails to topple Toomey.