# Was the election result really so surprising? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 11, 2016, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490 "2016-11-11T13:00:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/41 "2016-11-13T09:44:16Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > You may personally like Hillary Clinton but [both Clinton and Trump](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/) are disliked by voters at a record-breaking degree. … Attributing Clinton’s loss to an unwillingness to vote for a female candidate dangerously misses the point. I think this is correct in looking at the numbers from afar. Mrs Clinton was never very charismatic, any objective observer had to admit this - she lost to Barack Obama for this reason and her bad skills at the public campaigning. > [@Rigamarole](#): > > Also, people continue to underestimate the role that **charisma** plays in electing a president. It’s by far the most important thing in determining the outcome. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say: > > **The more _charismatic_ candidate _almost always_ wins, regardless of party, policy, promises, or anything else.** \* yes, it is also the case outside of the US where there is some kind of direct competition of a comparable kind. People are people. > [@](#): > > \*this is also why Bernie would have won where Hillary failed. Bernie has a force of personality, and is actually likable. This is an assertion that seems in no way supported by an evidence other than your personal preference, making a mirror image mistake of those who are claiming Mrs Clinton lost only because she is a woman, ignoring her non-charisma and limited appeal outside of a certain base. From afar he seems like an angry man and not very convincing if you are not of the hard Left. In the primary season unlike the comparable challenger, Barack Obama against Mrs Clinton, he was unable to sufficiently motivate outside of his core white american Left audience. But that he did very well against her despite not I think outside of a narrow base - a different one from Mrs Clinton said already her approach was wrong, her instincts for the campaigning were wrong and weak, and she was deaf to the criticisms of her style and could not change them. So this ties to this comment, wisely put by Stranger > [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > The failing here was as much hubris by the Clinton campaign as it was the angry mood of the voters; Clinton depended on her urban and suburban base of traditionally Democratic voters as well as the people that should have been offput by Trump’s barefaced bigotry. … Instead, she picked a running mate who wouldn’t outshine her, but also who didn’t appeal to anyone that wasn’t already going to vote for her. I’m sure it would be dangerous to suggest having a two-woman ticket, but the people who wouldn’t vote for that weren’t going to vote for Clinton anyway, and having Elizabeth Warren on the ticket might have swayed the signficant block of female and younger voters who decided to abstain rather than vote for someone who made millions of dollars in speaking fees speaking one way to corporate interests which was at odds with her campaign talk. Doubling down on a progressive running mate, and making it clear that she would be viewed as an equal in policy discussion would have gone a long way to courting the apathy of the tradiational base that decided to sit this election out or vote for the unwinnable Stein. > > Which is fine; it leaves Warren free and clear to run in 2020 without carrying the failure of this election. And I hope to fuck that she does run because it will put paid to the notion that Clinton failed because we can’t elect a woman as president, rather than failing because we couldn’t stand the idea of Hillary as president. Clinton is a canny political operator (she certainly bears a large measure of responsibility in getting Bill Clinton elected multiple times) and was at least a capable senator, but as this campaign demonstrated, she was not seen as personally appealing even by some of her most enthusiastic advocates, **and angry, fearful people do not want to hear about policy or facts. It’s shitty, but it’s the reality of humanity.** the emphasis added. I do not have any opinion on Warren (and am so intensely interested in this because of the great impact the USA election will have in my world), but it is surely the grand lesson of the events of the Brexit and this American election, that the cold bloodless approach of the technocrat to the political campaign for the highly emotional and the highly contested issues is a failure. It is a failure also of the technocratic to recognize some real limitations to the models, in a way similar to the failure of the quant models of the 2008 crisis - not that these things have no validity, no utility - but there is a gross over-estimation of the reliability of the tools, of the certainty of the numbers, and the solidity of the data which leads to the ignoring of the Error Potential and under-estimating of the risks. It is better to acknowledge this and be humbler about ‘the big data’ than to throw it all out. and for the political classes, often not very numerate, a cold shower for them. I hope the American opposition will not go the way of the British labor but will look at the broad charismatic appeal. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/42 "2016-11-13T15:27:09Z")
> [@Llama\_Llogophile](#): > > On Tuesday we all knew Trump would have to take just about every battleground state to win. It was unlikely in the same way the Cubs winning the World Series in game 7 was unlikely, but it wasn’t unthinkable. > > I never watch network television, so maybe it felt different to people watching live coverage on Tuesday. Since they have to fill a huge amount,of air time the networks have to just keep talking even if they’re not saying anything important. But I feel like it’s wrong to blame the media and polling. This outcome was unlikely, but I think the shock people describe is more from hating the idea of Trump as president. Believe me - I sympathize, but it’s not like we didn’t have some warning in the last week that this could happen. What’s surprised me is that, post election, people are acting like the polls and the media had been predicting a landslide for Hillary Clinton. It’s my recollection that while she was expected to win, it was acknowledged to be a close race. That so many battleground states went red was surprising to me, but in the weeks before the election I’d considered a Clinton victory likely but a Trump victory all too plausible. ---
**Author:** ![Memnon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f1d935/32.png) [@Memnon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Memnon)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/43 "2016-11-13T15:55:30Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > Certainly since the TV era there have been only maybe a handful of exceptions (Nixon I’ve heard? Not sure, as it was before my time). But at least in recent memory… Nixon may have been a jowly, snake-eyed crook, and may have had only the merest smidgen of charisma, but he was more charismatic than Hubert Humphrey, who came off like Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell, so the theory still holds. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/44 "2016-11-13T16:16:33Z")
I just came by to say I told you so. The folks here shilling for Hillary in spite of all her obvious flaws are representative of exactly why she lost: arrogant, closed-minded, self-righteous jerks who flat out refused to see the forest for the trees. Her loss didn’t surprise me in the least, mostly because I predicted it, _warned_ of it. But I was derided, verbally abused, laughed at and ignored. I knew what I was talking about in 2008 and I knew what I’ve been talking about since summer 2015: The country _hates_ Hillary Clinton. They hate her more than they hate an incompetent, vulgar, narcissistic asshole. They hate her because she’s a corrupt, lying, arrogant, warmongering, Wall Street one-percenter who was running on a platform of “He’s gross and no, you can’t have decent-paying jobs, a fix of our still-horrible healthcare program, or a return to tuition-free public universities because we have to be _pragmatic_.” So she lost to the guy who promised to return manufacturing to America (even if he can’t), kill the job-destroying TPP (which he already has), secure our borders and protect our jobs from being taken by immigrants (even if that’s a lie), and renegotiate NAFTA & CAFTA. Because that’s what most Americans are clamoring for. And they know it was the Clintons’ policies that hurt them the most, from destroying the Welfare safety net to free trade that decimated U.S. jobs, to deregulating Wall Street banks that tanked our economy. Bernie Sanders would have trounced Trump in a landslide because those were the very issues he was speaking to. That data was there proving it all along. The polls consistently showed Sanders trouncing Trump by double digits and Hillary consistently either losing to him or barely being within the margin of error. Bernie was speaking to the populous movement this country has been desperate for since the Great Recession. He was overflowing 30,000-seat arenas while she couldn’t get 300 people into a high school gymnasium. Those kinds of attendance numbers speak to enthusiasm and a willingness to turn out for a candidate. Trump was also pulling in those kinds of crowds, while Hillary was attending swanky Hollywood and Hamptons fundraisers for $350,000 a seat. Talk about out of touch. The woman was Romney in a lady suit and we soundly rejected that four years ago! But you didn’t care. You had to be right. She had so much more experience, even thought she absolutely fucking didn’t, and even if that experience was dreadful and filled with bad judgment calls, wrong votes, maniacal cackling over a dead foreign leader, shitty alliances with war criminals like Henry Kissinger, close-knit bonds with the bankers and Wall Street firms who cost half the country their homes and life savings, and was part of the corrupt establishment the majority of the country was absolutely furious with. She lost not only because _she_ was arrogant, but because _you_ were arrogant too. You think your high-falutin intelligence actually means Jack shit when it comes to having your finger on the pulse of America. And if America doesn’t agree with you, they’re stupid morons who deserve to be spoken of with derision. Well fuck you. _You_ gave us Donald Trump as president because you refused to nominate the only guy who could’ve beat him. You refused to acknowledge the cheating and the obvious collusion and the outright fraud that was being reported all over the country. You didn’t care that Sanders voters were being turned away at the polls because their lifetime Democratic registration had been flipped to Republican, their names were mysteriously disappeared from the rolls, entire books of new registrants at universities went missing, entire city blocks in Bernie’s hometown had been purged, polling places by the hundreds were shut down, outrageous lies were being hurled at Bernie supporters, the complicit media was blacking him out while running Trump’s rallies start to finish.Those machinations were benefiting your candidate; why should you give a fuck? I bet you give a fuck now. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/45 "2016-11-13T16:21:03Z")
Heh. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/46 "2016-11-13T16:26:54Z")
the passions of the partisans always impress me and their blindness to their flaws while yelling at their opponent for the same flaws… From afar it is slightly amusing to watch you ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/47 "2016-11-13T16:39:45Z")
> [@Ramira](#): > > The[538 discussion](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gave-trump-a-better-chance-than-almost-anyone-else/)makes it clear that it was misuse of the polling numbers or the lack of numeracy to understand that is behind the idea of polling great mistake. Why is anyone interested in Silver’s excuses? He needs to shut up, and especially so do his chorus of admirers. > [@Rigamarole](#): > > Hillary, however, vaguely alienated half the country with her “deplorables” comment. She referred to half of _his supporters_. And they were born alienated. > [@Colibri](#): > > What is still incomprehensible to me is how Trump could have won in a First World, relatively well-educated country that by any objective standard wasn’t really in bad shape. Anybody who is aware of the UK’s Brexit vote, or the power of France’s National Front, for just two examples, should not have been surprised that there is a strong receptiveness to nativism in the US too. > [@](#): > > I was, however, rather surprised that the polls so thoroughly failed to capture the situation. And since the polls happened before the election, this manifested itself as the election being surprising. The disconnect, when there hasn’t been one historically (even in 2000), along with the stories about Russian hacking, do make me suspicious. And let’s not forget the remaining Bernie Buffers who stayed home and pouted on Election Day, or at least didn’t work to stop Trump as strongly as they might have - and now wish to claim they told us all so. They share in the responsibility, far more so than those of us who \*did \*do those things. Speaking, that is, of people who need to shut up, and have needed to for some time now. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/48 "2016-11-13T16:44:50Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > She referred to half of _his supporters_. And they were born alienated. So, if I say “you know what is wrong with the hood? Half the people there are stupid, uneducated and irresponsible” I’m ONLY going to piss the ones that are and know they are? Or are about half of them going to say “Hey, that’s okay because its true and he ain’t talking about me!” I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that ain’t what is going to happen. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/49 "2016-11-13T16:47:07Z")
Not the best analogy there, since that’s what Trump claimed about \*all \*of the African-American community. For example. Claiming \*Clinton \*was the divisive one is laughable. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/50 "2016-11-13T16:51:30Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > . > > Claiming \*Clinton \*was the divisive one is laughable. Trump saying/doing stupid shit that did him no favors (and make a long list and I’ll probably agree to much of it) does not magically make Hillary’s stupid stuff not stupid or irrelevant. Besides, we have already had a national debate on which one in toto was worse. It was called the election 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/51 "2016-11-13T16:57:46Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Why is anyone interested in Silver’s excuses? He needs to shut up, and especially so do his chorus of admirers. . Perhaps so they can learn about the statistics and how to read statistics and the sampling based statistics without make gross numeracy illiterate error of analysis? Or you can just be angry and shout out angry excuses about failures without examining them. I have no particular love or admiration of this Silver, but I can recognize a discussion that is at least having a rational root in the mathematics. There does not seem to be any excuses, any way, as his site had already flagged on the 4 november that the supposed lead of Mrs Clinton was within the ‘margin of error’ of the sampling, which is simply the uncertainty that any sampling has around the real value of a population. it is not the fault of the sampling based statistics that people are not numerate and do not understand properly and do not take into the account properly such thing. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/52 "2016-11-13T16:58:42Z")
The math means nothing if it does not correlate with reality. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/53 "2016-11-13T17:22:14Z")
It did indeed correlate with the reality. I am sorry if you do not understand the mathematics and are making the usual mistake of persons not very numerate. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/54 "2016-11-13T17:25:35Z")
The numbers predicted a very probable Clinton win. The reality was otherwise. I am sorry if you cannot grasp that. I am amused, however, at the charge of innumeracy. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/55 "2016-11-13T17:34:10Z")
A few days before the election, when everybody was slamming Nate Silver for giving Trump the best chance… I saw that as a big red flag. When I got my invite to the secret group “Pantsuit Nation”, it set my jinx-detector howling. Yet still, I thought it was going to be OK. The truth is that improbable events are happening all around us, every day. They’re just more shocking when they bring bad news. I let that bias blindside me as well. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/56 "2016-11-13T17:43:20Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > The numbers predicted a very probable Clinton win. The reality was otherwise. The numbers showed a probability but also that it was within the margin of error. > [@](#): > > I am sorry if you cannot grasp that. I grasp very well the probabilities and that the 538 projection was a very large warning sign in the days before. > [@](#): > > I am amused, however, at the charge of innumeracy. 😃 you should not be. It is sad the inability to understand the mathematics of the probabilities and how to read the probabilities based on the sampling, but not uncommon. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/57 "2016-11-13T17:47:05Z")
Well said, **Shayna**. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/58 "2016-11-13T17:47:18Z")
> [@MemoryLeak](#): > > Enron performed most of its magic during Clinton’s presidency. The shenanigans were exposed during 2001 and it began its long bankruptcy at the end of that year. Enron was in Texas. W was governor of Texas. Ken Lay was close enough to W to have the nickname “Kenny boy”. Now why was this something else Clinton did? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/59 "2016-11-13T17:50:59Z")
Moved to Elections. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2016, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490/60 "2016-11-13T18:02:02Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > Well said, **Shayna**. Thank you. But let it be known that I wrote that when this post was in the BBQ Pit. It has since been moved here, so I’d better not get any warnings for it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-election-result-really-so-surprising/771490.md?page=4)