I’ve seen the poll numbers you’ve shown me, and I’ve seen that based on what people did 4 years ago it takes very little movement in just one segment of the population to give Trump the win this year.
There is already at least one national poll from mid-February, by the way, that shows Trump beating Clinton (USA Today/Suffolk).
As the GOP slate winnows, I expect more and more GOP to glom onto the GOP candidate-apparent, just as I expect to see more Sanders supporters glom onto Clinton.
But at the moment, there’s still a lot of time left before 8 November 2016 and it seems like people are so frustrated, so mad at the establishment, so mad at government in general that many independents will decide to say “ya know what? Fuck you” and they’ll vote for Trump. And it really only takes a small number of people jumping on his bandwagon, even according to the website you used, to hand Trump the electoral vote and thus the presidency.
ETA: Believe me, I want nothing more than to wake up on 9 November and know that we dodged this bullet; I just don’t think we will.
I agree, and I’m eagerly waiting to see what happens when Rubio and/or Cruz drops out of the race. I suspect that Trump will take Florida handily and Rubio will be forced to bow out, so we’ll see what happens after March 15, I suppose.
This would probably require the ability for one of two ostensibly conservative/right-leaning candidates getting more votes than the only ostensibly progressive/left-leaning candidate in swing states.
That seems absolutely impossible – even in the best case scenario for a state like OH or FL or VA, maybe 55-60% of the voters are willing to just consider supporting a right-leaning candidate… if there were two such candidates on the ballot, how could one of them possibly exceed the 40-45% (at least!) that the left-leaning candidate would receive? I don’t think they’d even get close.
It seems to me that a third-party conservative candidate just means that Hillary will have a chance at states like Texas, while totally wrapping up OH, FL, VA and the like.
Well, I guess I don’t know what you want when you say “Prove. Me. Wrong.” You have a gut feeling, and some articles, and a poll. You might be right, you might be wrong, but what exactly are you looking for from us? A time machine and a newspaper?
As the matching poll showed, not all Americans, again when I referred to the Republican dungeon was in relation to the Dungeons and Dragons board game, another poster in a different thread made a reference to Trump being a winner using the game as an analogy.
The problem for Trump remains: Trump is still in the Republican only dungeon where he is sure a winner of his domain. But soon he will have to go out of that domain, where the Dragons (and not only Democrat ones -hello Mr Drako Romney!) are not impressed at all with Trump and most of the people are still showing more support to Clinton, even after all the scandals that have been pumped up.
I don’t think Trump will take all his votes from the Republican voters, as you presume, and there are some disaffected Democrats who could vote for him as well. In addition, Trump’s presence in the race has the affect of making other candidates more appealing by comparison, and I think someone like Romney would look better when compared to Trump than he would when compared to Obama. (For one thing, he’d be a fairly low-key Rich Guy, as compared to a much more ostentatious Rich Guy, and for another, being that his ostensible purpose in entering the race would be to combat the supposed racism etc. of Trump, that would make him appear more moderate and statesmanlike WRT such issues.)
But I agree that it’s a long shot.
Personally, I would prefer to see a mainstream Republican make a third party bid for the White House, even it’s doomed to failure. For one thing, it might help down-ticket Republicans, who could run on both lines and thus might get support on the Shmepublican line in addition to the Republican line. But even besides for that, it’s better to go down to an honorable defeat than to pledge your soul to Trump and then get defeated anyway.
I’m with Bo on this one. What 538 demonstrates clearly is that IF Trump gets his base (which is different from the traditional GOP base) to turn out he wins. If not; not.
Which means everything he’s doing from about now forward is about creating and maintaining excitement in his current base and in other plausible undecided supporters. Remember that in 2012, 2008, 2004, and 2000 non-voters outnumbered actual voters between 1.7 & 2 to 1. The reservoir from which Trump can draw wildcat support is Yuge if you’ll pardon the expression. Hillary? Not so much.
One other point:
Back up in post #30Happy Lendervedder runs some plausible numbers and has Trump winning a squeaker in the popular and losing in the EC. In post #40Fotheringay-Phipps suggests a sneaky tactic for the Rs to win in the House.
I’m not sure we want to see what happens when Trump’s base wins him the popular and he loses on a technicality or trick play. Especially one where the second place finisher (Clinton) is also denied.
Have you ever played a board game with a spoil-sport 4 yo? There’s not going to be tanks on the Mall, but we might see the first workers’ riots in the US since the Pinkerton days. The real concern I have is that if Trump’s supporters win the popular and are thwarted by the establishment, what happens in the 2018 Congressionals and the 2020 Presidential. We’ll see authoritarian opportunists running in every red and every heavily union blue constituency in the land.
When stage-managing 3rd World tinpot governments we always tried to keep the lid on dissent UFN. When eventually the dam broke we’d stored up so much high pressure hate that the peasants were quite willing to burn the place down just to watch the fire. See Caldera in Venezuela, Assad, Mubarak et al.
The solution to the legitimate grievances of the working class is to do something for them. Not to steal the election from them one more time in a historically unprecedented massively cynical trick.
In the immortal words of Lt. Cmdr Scott: “She canna take much more, Cap’n; she’s gonna blow!”
It’s past time for the establishment to depressurize the situation, not double down on haughtiness & tricks.
I don’t see Trump winning either. I know several lifelong Republicans who have voted Republican in every election since they were old enough to vote who say they would vote for Clinton before they would vote for Trump. And this is in Texas. I think Trump will loose a not insignificant percentage of the Romney Republicans in a general election.
Maybe it’s not so much people saying ‘fuck you’ to the political establishment so much as it them saying, ‘it doesn’t matter who wins . . . we’re screwed regardless! So let’s just shake things up and have some fun’.
I will have to say that his base is numerous, but while Trump’s base did show up in the polls for the Republican side, the same pollsters that told us what was coming are giving us trends that are telling us that (unless there is a magic property that is hiding all Trump supporters from all pollsters for the match up polls) the base is not enough for Trump to win in the general election.
The point here is that the base may be different, but it is not realistic to think that the same polls that found that base for the primaries now are missing them in the general election polls.
Calm down, Happy. (Man, what a weird phrase to type!)
I’m not asking anyone to prove it to me today. I’m offering my prediction, stating that I hope I’m wrong and challenging everyone to prove me wrong by not electing Donald Trump.
It wasn’t a personal and immediate challenge to you, eh.
I do not see Trump winning, but can not offhandedly dismiss the possibility. That’s why, despite being a Democrat, I’ve decided to cross over and vote for Kasich in my state’s primary. If nothing else, that’ll give me the opportunity to vote against Trump twice.
If it comes down to Donald vs. Hillary, I expect the DIRTIEST campaign on record as both are known quantities whose name recognition is very high and who both have “negatives” that are not merely through the roof, but through the stratosphere.
Once the, er, fur starts flying, anything can happen.