That would be great payback for 2000. Also a rerun in some ways.
Trump would claim the Electoral College is rigged and probably file at least one and possibly several lawsuits trying to overturn the election.
But I don’t think it’ll happen. But really, everyone. Wait to see the polls sometime after the excitement of the conventions has died down. Sometime in early August. That’ll give you a very good view of how the election will turn out.
So, who would be better, and win more votes? Kaine will deliver Virginia and likely Florida.
If a Trump loss in Ohio is an independent event, because Kasich undermines him, a victory is not quite impossible. A Kasich-led sabotage would not stop Trump from winning Pennsylvania if his campaign goes very well.
If it’s not an indepdent event then that means his campaign has not gone very well, so he’s lost Pennsylvania and various other states he needs, and has no chance.
The relative skew such as it can be detected seems to be in the other direction. Or at least was. When Trump was down more in national polls (like 6-ish, so 3-ish worse than Romney did in 2012) he wasn’t doing particularly worse than Romney in key states, so implying that if anyone won EC but lost popular it would more likely be Trump than Clinton.
Now the national polls are quite close, Trump ahead in a few of the latest ones (including two non-Rasmussen LV polls) which was rare for awhile previously, down less than in the RCP average than Romney lost nationally, and state polls RCP avgs as of now are generally in line with that: Trump slightly up in FL which Romney lost by ~1, down 1 in OH which Romney lost by 2, down 3-some in PA which Romney lost by 5 etc, NC is an exception, Romney won by 2, Trump still down by 2. Trump wins if he can take FL, OH and PA and hold all Romney states of which only NC was close in 2012 (Clinton is only going to win other Romney states if she doesn’t really need to, ie if Trump falls significantly behind nationally). There are other possible combinations for Trump, but Clinton in each case only has prevent him winning and and and: she’s still a little ahead.
But I don’t see a reason from a pro-Clinton POV to take comfort in ‘it’s an EC not popular vote race’ if Trump shows up ahead in national poll avg. The state polls will catch up with the national if the national RCP avg moves to Trump up like some of the latest polls. Relative strength in various states v national doesn’t move around that much, IOW the correlation of changes in state polls and national polls is pretty high. That’s why national polls are not ‘meaningless’ as the partisans of the candidate who don’t like the results often say.
Of course the race hasn’t stabilized post both conventions, ground game at the end, ad money, nobody knows the future, etc.
The Wall Street Journal just put Clinton at 310 electoral votes. That’s a safe margin requiring Trump to win several states that Romney lost.
For the last year just about every source looking at electoral votes has put Clinton at over 300. That’s why I’ve been saying for the past year that Clinton will win no matter who runs against her. If Trump couldn’t bounce well past Clinton from the RNC, then it would take a spectacular meltdown for Clinton not to regain her several point lead after the DNC.
There is no more likelihood for drama here than there ever was any likelihood that the conventions would be contested brawls instead of scripted infomercials. People want drama but the numbers were always there to deny that.
The only “exciting” running mates are further left and risk alienating the middle–the middle that all elections are fighting for. They’re the ones who decided who wins.
Plus, you don’t have to be an exciting person to get people excited. I’m very, very excited about Kaine after that speech. Sure, it pandered a bit to the left, but I think it was a great counter to the fear and gloom of Trump. I think it perfectly outlined the problem with Trump. And I think he’s the first personable person I’ve seen in this presidential campaign, and, in my lifetime at least, the more personable candidate has won.
I also noticed that Clinton’s smile was genuine, which I’d not seen before. Except in a couple points where she seemed actually a bit flustered by praise, she seemed genuinely happy the entire time. That suggests she’s going for a more genuine approach, which has been what I’ve wanted her to do this whole time.
I mean, I will probably make a post on Facebook talking about how God has not given us a spirit of fear. Running on that is brilliant. Being able to be the patriotic party for one is brilliant. For once, I’m more excited about Clinton than I am angry about Trump.
No Republican has ever won the Presidency without carrying Ohio. Ever, going back to Fremont in 1856. It’s crucial.
Kaine did a really good speech. Very stark contrast with the Trump fear and loathing camp. Battle lines are being drawn.
Wanted to respond to a post about people going into the voting booths and in their privacy and anonymity punching Trump’s name, couldn’t find it…
I think it is more likely people will go in there and have a sudden crisis of conscience, and say to themselves, “Yeah, it’s been all fun and games up to this point, but do I really want to vote for this raving madman?”
I’m not worried about the last time. I’m worried about the first time.
Kaine may not help (nor be intended to help) Hillary with blacks or Hispanics or other ethnic groups, but I think he may help with another voting group: Christians.
Although there have been some high-profile Christian leaders who have endorsed Trump (like Falwell Jr.), many more have been lukewarm or negative about his candidacy. The leader of the conservative Southern Baptist Conference has publically spoken against him, and other evangelical leaders are uncomfortable with Trump, at best. But as a general rule, evangelicals are unlikely to vote Democratic due to social issues like abortion and LGBTQ issues.
But Kaine may sway some of these votes. A devout Christian and active Catholic who strongly considered a career in ordained ministry and has served as an overseas missionary before getting into politics. It might be enough of a toehold to sway some religious undecideds.
It’s plain arithmetic that Trump has to win states Romney lost, since Romney lost. 
But being at least slightly ahead in states totaling 310 is by no means safe. We in fact know which are the very key states, don’t have to speak in generalities or totals. If Trump wins FL (Obama by ~1), OH (Obama by ~2) and PA (Obama by ~5) he wins if also holding onto all Romney states, the only one realistically in play in a close election being NC (Romney by ~2).
There isn’t strong evidence of any unfavorable skew in polls in those states v contemporaneous national polls (from Trump’s POV). When the RCP avg seemed to be falling to around +2 for Clinton pre-GOP convention results, or around 1% better than Romney’s actual national result, the key state polls were basically in the line with that, Trump a little better off than Romney finished, more than a little in PA, though worse off then Romney in NC. Today the RCP national avg ticked to +0.2% for Trump. It’s not reasonable to simply look at older state polls and say Clinton is fine. Contemporaneous state polls in all likelihood would show Trump now very close or up in all those states.
Of course the national poll situation could move back to Clinton’s favor, or not: nobody knows the future. But there’s no particular validity to saying Clinton has a substantial lead now because she’s holding onto razor thin margins in the key states which (along with safe Democratic states) total 310 EV, based on polling generally older than the national polls which show a tie.
As Alabamish as PA can be, I prefer to believe that my fellow Pennsylvanians aren’t majority-nuts enough to give all of our electoral votes to the Trumpenfeuhrer…
Penna. has been pretty reliably blue in recent elections, but just this morning NPR interviewed a rural Penna. county Democratic chair who is worried about all the blue-collar Dems he knows who are changing their registration to Republican because they support Trump.
We do know the past, and if we don’t look to the past we can’t make any predictions at all. Your mistake is to assume that the past doesn’t matter at all and only a straight line extrapolation of today’s results is possible. If you look at any of the better analysts, like Nate Silver or Sam Wang, they always look at past trends. They have to. Nothing else exists.
An alternative formulation would be that Democrats pick VPs to appeal to moderates, while Republicans pick them to shore up the base. This seems to work well to explain this year’s selections.
In the primaries we didn’t see any trend of Trump outperforming his polling, I don’t see why we would expect it in the general.
Looking at current 538 state polling averages, and defining “tossup” as states where one candidate currently leads by 2 points or less: Clinton 248, Trump 191, tossup 99.
With a more expansive definition of tossup, where one candidate leads by 5 or less: Clinton 206, Trump 180, tossup 152.
Assigning all the tossup states to the candidate currently leading, by however small a margin: Trump 280, Clinton 258 :eek:
Note that they still have Clinton as being more likely to win, since it is unlikely that (barring further movement in the polls, of course) Trump could actually pull off wins in ALL the states where he currently holds razor-thin margins.
She’s ahead, but could still easily lose.
People whose conscience is that strong will have already decided not to vote for Trump.
The problem is people whose conscience is weaker–they honestly believe that they are not racist; They have enough self-respect and are socially savvy enough to know better than to say in public that they kinda-sorta support Trump. So they tell the pollsters (and even their own family) that they’re for Clinton.
But in the privacy of the polling booth, they think “well,…just this once, ya know, nobody will ever know anyway, so maybe, just once, I can be a little naughty”.“I’m not prejudiced, but yesterday when I ate at McDonald’s there wasn’t anybody there who spoke English.”
It’s like when you see a $10 bill laying on the floor , and 'forget" to ask the person standing nearby if maybe they dropped it…You’re not really a bad person,…but just this once…
My own gut-level feeling is that a good 2% or even 5% of people feel this way. How many of them will act on their feelings? We will only know in November, when the statisticians compare the exit polls to the actual vote in the same voting station
Chappachula, I fear the same thing, but it’s also likely there are folks in the opposite situation: they live in a Midwestern small town, and all their friends and neighbors are supporting Trump and denigrating Clinton, and they’ve been telling pollsters they feel the same way – but in the privacy of the voting booth, they’ll go with predictable competence over who-the-heck-knows-what-will-happen. In other words, they expressed the “just this once” rebel-without-a-cause thing you mentioned to the pollster, but won’t on Election Day.
I hope there’s at least a few such folks.