I think and hope Hillary. I really wish that a different woman would be our first female president. But any living life form is better than Trump.
I really hope it’s not a close call, I believe that women will vote for Hillary, but the Duck Dynasty guys are going to come out and vote for Trump.
If it’s a close call, ‘The Donald’ will expound about it for years.
I hope that the US opens it’s eyes to see that Trump is a good salesman, but poor businessman and certainly not a statesman.
God help me, I hope I’m wrong.
Clinton.
The reason? Trump isn’t going to get enough votes. I’d wager about 140 million people will vote in this election cycle. The winner will need over 70 million votes to win.
Trump has alienated women, latinos, and various other groups. Generally the GOP candidate loses the latino vote by maybe 40-50 points (75 to 25 or so). Trump is losing it by more like 60-70%.
Also latinos will make up 12% of the electorate this year. Historically they were smaller. In fact, this year I believe latinos are tied with blacks as a % of the electorate, both at 12%.
Add in all the women who will not respond well to Trump’s behavior towards women, his multiple rape accusations, etc. and I doubt Trump wins.
Trump does well with poorly educated, working class conservative white people. There aren’t enough of them to get to 70 million votes. Just because Donald Trump won 13 million votes in the 2016 GOP primary doesn’t mean he is going to get 70 million votes in the 2016 general election.
Also I ‘think’ Johnson has been polling better than Stein, which means more votes will be bled off the GOP than the democrats.
Also the democrats are working from an easier electoral college base. The Dems are all but guaranteed the west coast, northeast, northern midwest and Hawaii. that alone gives me about 240 EVs, the ‘red wall’ is closer to 180 EVs (180 EVs are all but guaranteed to go red off the bat before the swing states factor in). All they need to get to 270 is a few more states. There are too many paths to victory for the dems, too few for the GOP. Basically, the dems need their regular states plus 30 EVs. Republicans need their states plus 90 EVs. Not going to happen this cycle with Trump.
Even if Hillary wins (and she probably will) the fact that 60 million people are going to vote for Donald Trump is a really bad sign. Even if Trump loses, that is still really bothersome. That means an emotionally immature, narcissistic empty suit will have 1/5 of the country (1/3 of eligible voters) willingly handing over control of the military and executive branch to him.
Clinton. She won the moment Trump became the endorsed Republican candidate; at the very latest. She could be found the week before the election standing over Bill’s dead body with a smoking gun in her hand and yelling “I did it” and still win by a landslide.
Maybe even more of a landslide.
I’m not really pessimistic about a Clinton presidency. Her husband did a pretty decent job and she seems to share his values. I’ll vote for her. On the other hand, I’m horrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency.
And I know the OP didn’t ask which one I prefer, so I’ll say I do strongly believe Hillary Clinton will be elected the next POTUS.
I think it will be Trump. He positioned himself as the candidate for change. He outlined all the problems and tried to link them to Obama/Hillary in his convention speech.
Populists often do well in elections.
It’ll be close but I think he’ll squeak out a win.
That’s not my preference but Hillary is a weak candidate. Consider how much trouble Sanders (a Socialist) gave her.
Oh boy – this looks like my day to honk people off. 
That is why, in the end, I feel he has no hope to even make a strong showing in the end - about the only thing he has ever stood for in this election cycle is change. We voters like to talk about change, we like to endorse change, we dream of and pray for change. But in the end we all too often end up not following through when we step into the booth (those places that still have booths). Trump has, and will have, his supporters but the voting public will, on election day, pick the devil they know. And Clinton has Trump beat hands-down at that.
One of my favorite sayings:
“Everyone wants change but no one wants to change.”
mmm
If the orange-skinned hate promoter wins, I think there might be a civil war. I’m not willing to give up my rights and I will not accept the sexist racist asshole as my “leader.” It’s still legal to buy assault weapons, right?
They say people don’t vote* for* a candidate, rather they vote against the other candidate.
This seems to be the case with the numbers for each candidate above! At least with myself. Not particularly fond of Clinton, but no way would I want Trump.
I prefer a president/boss/chief who keeps things running quietly and smoothly - like Bush senior.
Thread relocated from IMHO to Elections.
Yeah but Obama got about 70 million votes in 2008, and 66 million in 2012.
Trump is doing about average for a GOP candidate for president among blacks, getting about 10%. He is doing below average with latinos, who will make up a bigger % of the electorate than in the past. Normally the GOP gets maybe 25-30% of the latino vote, Trump is polling closer to 15-20%. Maybe that number will narrow, I’ve seen polls showing a more normal 40-50 point trail for the GOP, instead of the 60-70 point that some are showing this cycle.
So off the bat, about 30% of the electorate is non-white and on average they will go about 75-80% Hillary. So Trump has to really win the white vote to make up for that. How is Trump going to do that? How is he going to appeal to white people who would normally vote democrat. In 2008, Whites made up about 73-76% of the electorate and Obama won in a landslide. How does Trump win now that whites are only 69-70%? Especially considering that a big part of that non-white growth (most of it really) comes from Latinos who are going to be more anti-GOP than they normally are.
http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2016/02/FT_16.01.26_eligibleVoterChange_diverse.png
Reagan Democrats do not exist, they’ve been republicans for years now. There really is no massive pool of white democrats willing to vote republican.
Also Trump really has no plans. On tax policy, one of his goals is to reduce the top tax rate from 39.6% down to 25%. When facts like that start becoming popular, do you think Trump can still run on a populism ticket when he wants to institute massive tax cuts for the wealthy? I don’t see it.
Again, the fact that 14 million people voted for him in the GOP primary doesn’t mean 65-70 million or more will vote for him in the general.
My view is with all the things against him (doing terrible among latinos, probably below average among women, no real solutions to back up his rhetoric, a plutocratic tax policy, etc) I fail to see how he gets the win.
Unless tons and tons of people who would vote Hillary stay home. That is about the only scenario. if Hillary only gets like 50-55 million votes and the rest go to third parties or stay home, then Trump may win. But I doubt it.
538 has it 60-40 Clinton. Why would I bet against that?
Are those the odds of victory, or the % of the electorate (they expect 60% of voters to support Clinton, 40% to support Trump)?
If those numbers are a % of the electorate, that sounds high for Clinton.
Also in the democratic primary, 538 was really wrong on some states. I don’t know if the pages are still up, but I know in some states they were off by 10 points or so. So I don’t know if I put a lot of stock in them this cycle. They were great in 2008 and 2012, I’m not sure about this time around.
That 60-40 is a Monte Carlo simulation based on the Electoral College. Run it 100 times with the polls the way they are and the assumptions built in the model and HRC wins 60 of those times, DJT wins 40.
in the last one hundred yearfs, when has a third-party candidate gotten enough electoral votes to matter in a presidential election?
Here’s my outlier rationale – Obama beat both McCain and Romney pretty handily, with about the same amount of general and party support as Clinton has now. On the other hand, both McCain and Romney had full-throated support not only from their party but from pretty much every conservative I tripped across. This time around there are so many conservatives - from people here, to people I know in meat-space, politicians, pundits, - all shitting on Trump that I see that as a general take on the zeitgeist of the country.
Or to adaherarize it. Americans won’t fall for Trump … at least not enough Americans will. As long as Hillary doesn’t murder anyone on live TeeVee I don’t see how Trump isn’t in for a massive beat-down, electorally speaking.
The Republican analysis from 2012 still holds up: to win the Presidency, DJT not only has to win every single person who voted for Romney, he has to add about 5-7% of the Obama constituency to his slate of voters.
I do not see how he is doing either one.
On the “getting every Republican who voted for Romney to vote for Trump” factor:
He has fractured the Republican party, arraying some powerful (Bloomberg, Bush’s) and popular (Cruz) forces against him.
He doesn’t have the organizational capacity of the Romney team and \will end up with a fraction of Romney’s GOTV totals.
He doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to run a truly robust campaign, and the RNC isn’t allowed to spend all it’s money on the Trump ticket.
On the splitting of the Obama coalition, he has…
Driven more Hispanics to dislike the Republican candidate than at any time in history
Ditto African-Americans, LGBT, non-Christians, women, college-educated people, and millions of the nations poor.
Hillary’s nightmare scenario is behind her: the FBI has concluded its investigation and, despite a bad couple of weeks, it is still behind her. Trump can harp on Mailghazi as much as he wants, but it will lessen in importance as time goes on as a factor in the minds of the undecided. Had the FBI waited until after November, had they waited until October, they could have sunk her changes/Presidency. But they released in early July, right before the conventions, and she and her team have 4 months to make people forget it.
And, lastly, I’m driving a bunch of voters and my guys always win when I do that. 
Complacency is the enemy, though.
First, I don’t necessarily buy that the anti-Trump conservatives will have much effect by the time the election rolls around, for one simple reason: because Hillary. They’re still conditioned to hate her, regardless of who their nominee is. Sure, they could go third-party, but I have trouble seeing where that would make a substantial difference electorally. Certainly not in any of the deep-red states, and there will still be those anti-Trumpies who vote for him anyway once in the privacy of the voting booth, for the above reason.
Nor do I think GOTV will be much of a problem for the Pubbies, with historically the highest proportion of voters. On the other hand, Trump is his own Dem GOTV program.
Bottom line is there’s just too much uncertainty. Any chance of Trump winning is untenable.