What are you saying here? Go TPP to make China takeover quicker? If that's it, you have no idea what your gut is talking about. China is not part of TPP.

So true! Just did audiobook of both back to back. Thinking how different this one will be with trumps twitter and clintons Wikileaks's

Whew. I was hoping they wouldnt be part of it.

Interesting group of countries. Lots of 10 cent a day work places in there.

And in news that Tarcone doesn't believe in, but I give better credit to (sorry, Tarcone, just had to make a quick joke)


Jennifer Jacobs ✔ @JenniferJJacobs
National poll by @Reuters

Clinton leads by 7 points.

Clinton 44
Trump 37
Johnson 6
Stein 2

Oct. 7-13http://reut.rs/2dTI0bM
Follow
Political Polls @PpollingNumbers
Reuters/Ipsos Polls

Florida
Clinton 48 (+6)
Trump 42

NC
Clinton 46 (+4)
Trump 42

Pennsylvania
Clinton 46 (+4)
Trump 42@JenniferJJacobs
11:18 PM - 15 Oct 2016
166 166 Retweets 178 178 likes

1h
Political Polls @PpollingNumbers
Reuters/Ipsos Polls

Florida
Clinton 48 (+6)
Trump 42

NC
Clinton 46 (+4)
Trump 42

Pennsylvania
Clinton 46 (+4)
Trump 42@JenniferJJacobs
Follow
Political Polls @PpollingNumbers
Reuters/Ipsos Polls:
#Iowa:
Clinton 45% (+1)
Trump 44%
#Nevada:
Clinton 41% (+2)
Trump 39%

New Hampshire
Clinton 46% (+4)
Trump 42%
11:21 PM - 15 Oct 2016
103 103 Retweets 91 91 likes

1h
Political Polls @PpollingNumbers
Reuters/Ipsos Polls:#Iowa:
Clinton 45% (+1)
Trump 44%#Nevada:
Clinton 41% (+2)
Trump 39%

New Hampshire
Clinton 46% (+4)
Trump 42%
Follow
Political Polls @PpollingNumbers
Reuters/Ipsos Polls:

Wisconsin
Clinton 42 (+5)
Trump 37

Colorado
Clinton 47 (+6)
Trump 41

Michigan
Clinton 44 (+7)
Trump 37
11:25 PM - 15 Oct 2016
74 74 Retweets 71 71 likes

Follow
Political Polls @PpollingNumbers
Reuters/Ipsos Polls:#Ohio:
Trump 43% (+1)
Clinton 42%#Arizona
Trump 45 (+6)
Clinton 39
#Georgia
Trump 50 (+8)
Clinton 42
11:39 PM - 15 Oct 2016
310 310 Retweets 348 348 likes

Follow
Political Polls @PpollingNumbers
Colorado @GravisMarketing/ Breitbart (R) Poll:

Clinton 44 (+5)
Trump 39

A 5 point shift toward Clinton in a weekhttp://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/15/exclusive-breitbartgravis-poll-clinton-opens-lead-over-trump-44-39-in-colorado-gains-5-points-in-a-week/ …
11:44 PM - 15 Oct 2016
Photo published for Exclusive-Breitbart/Gravis Poll: Clinton Opens Lead Over Trump 44-39 in Colorado, Gains 5 Points in...
Exclusive-Breitbart/Gravis Poll: Clinton Opens Lead Over Trump 44-39 in Colorado, Gains 5 Points in...
Exclusive--Breitbart/Gravis Poll: Clinton Opens Lead Over Trump 44-39 in Colorado, Gains 5 Points in a Week
breitbart.com
67 67 Retweets 79 79 likes

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Political Polls @PpollingNumbers
#NEW National ABC/Washington Post Poll:

Clinton 47 (+4)
Trump 43
Johnson 5
Stein 2

If polling is ignoring "real American's" voices, how about we look at registration and actual voting that's already happened? Surely data there wouldn't be able to ignore the silenced voices of Trump voters.

Early ballots and voter-registration numbers show Democrats surging in Florida


2016 by the numbers: One month out, is Hillary Clinton headed for a win?


Democratic strongholds in Northern Virginia see big increases in early voting

Here is Nate Silver about Trump:

7 Times Nate Silver Was Hilariously Wrong About Donald Trump | The Daily Caller

Here is your 538. Showing how they screwed up on Trump in the primaries:

How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump | FiveThirtyEight

And this NY Times article that discusses 3 points Ive been making, well a couple:

Log In - The New York Times

I'll summarize:

■ an unrepresentative sample that doesn’t accurately reflect the population it’s trying to measure.

■ a flawed likely-voter model that misjudges the composition of the electorate.

■ late events or changes in the race after the poll was conducted that moves voters.

So likely Clinton voters are voting for Clinton? Earth shattering info. Thanks.

Yep, you nailed it. :rolleyes:

Not to restart the war but yes, Nate was wrong.. when he didn't trust the data. As it says, he did what he was going against in previous elections, the "Pundit". He didn't believe that someone with the History of Trump would won so he didn't trust data that told him otherwise.

Believe it or not, his poll is the most OPTIMISTIC of the aggregators about Trump's chances:

The Princeton Election Consortium has Trump's chances of winning 2-5%

Princeton Election Consortium — A first draft of electoral history. Since 2004


The New York Times's Upshot (which replaced 538 when Silver signed with ESPN): Has Trump with an 11% chance

Log In - The New York Times

Nate Silver's Polls-Plus method (which uses polling, economic statistics and past voting patterns) gives Trump an 18.3% chance

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...forecast/#plus

Where do you feel Trump will get these extra votes from Tarcone?

Any type of minority he has insulted at some point during his campaign. Women right now are completely against him.

I am sorry but the White/Male American vote is not going to win the election for Trump.

I posted an article showing women are going to vote for Trump.

I think there is an misrepresentation of women who were really insulted by his lockerroom talk. As seen in the article posted. These women will vote for Trump. Quit talking to your liberal female friends. Go into real america and talk to some of those women. You may be shocked.

There is a huge us vs. them mentality out there. And not just in fly over states. I could see a record shattering voter turn out. And if that happens, they wont be voting fro HRC. And they probably were not polled.

Im far from liberal. I think Trump is a complete moron that acts like an infant and wouldnt trust him making any decisions when it comes to nuclear weapons. As for "Real America" I am sure I live more in that "Real America" area(whatever that even means) than even you do. I am from a very rural area in Southern Minnesota/Northern Iowa. These so called "liberal" women you talk about basically thought Trump was a complete moron far before the "locker room" comments.

Actually, 538 had an item on this, that does say 75% of GOP women say they will still vote for Trump. However, IN general, more women identify as D or I then GOP, so even 1 out of every four women hurts him in an area where he's already down (according to the polls you're disagreeing with)

For Many GOP Women, Party Loyalty Trumps Personal Affront | FiveThirtyEight

I'd post the maps that Silver posted that showed the electoral maps if just women voted or just men voted, but that's been overdone too much..

So I will instead post a different electoral map:

https://twitter.com/alplicable/statu...03706665017345

I dont know. Im in rural Missouri. And from what I see, there is a lot voting Trump.

And Missouri is much more conservative than Iowa.Lived there. Know that.

Your posting from sources that have already admitted they missed on Trump. Why are they right now?

just to buttress my point, here's something about the exit polls from 2012:

http://cawp.rutgers.edu/sites/defaul...ggpresvote.pdf

Barack Obama won the 2012 election, mostly because of women.

He lost men (all ages) 52-44%
He won women (all ages) 55-45.

So if one fourth of GOP women stay home (if the comments have had that much effect, let's even say 1 in 10), he's close to losing 59-41, which is just about impossible for him to make up on the male side.

You're not reading what I posted earlier.

He missed on Trump. The data did not! He just didn't trust the data, because it didn't fit his notion. You notice he's a lot more conservative now, and just letting the data speak?

I don't know what county you lived in, so here's some numbers:

United States presidential election in Missouri, 2012 - Wikipedia

Considering there's some areas around there that went 77% for Romney, I don't doubt that there's a lot of energy for Trump.

I just don't think it's useful to extrapolate that to the nation. That's all.

And what I posted earlier about polls still stands. I dont trust them in this election.
As you know, this is a different sort of election. And one that will defy the polls.

Maybe Clinton wins by 20 points or maybe loses by 5 points. But having a 6 or 7 point lead, to me, is an even split at this point.

BTW, in food news, the full set of state skillet pans would set you back about 10 large:

And I dont think your polls should be used to extrapolate that to the nation either.

Im guessing very few polls have hit those counties that were 77% Romney.

I bet they hit those counties that were +50% for Obama. Those are the urban areas. That is what I have been saying all night.

Well. if that's the case, let's look at the numbers

(2012: Romney 53.76%, Obama 44.38 %)

There's not as many polls of Missouri as there is other states, because for Clinton to win Missouri would require such a wave that the election would be a landslide)...

But the polls are pretty much the same as before:

2016 Missouri President: Trump vs. Clinton - Polls - HuffPost Pollster


Poll
Trump
Clinton
Other
Undecided
Spread
Monmouth University
Oct 9 – Oct 11
406 Likely Voters
46 41 8 5 Trump +5
UPI/CVOTER
Oct 2 – Oct 9
378 Likely Voters
51 45 5 Trump +6
Ipsos/Reuters
Sep 16 – Oct 6
871 Likely Voters
49 37 14 Trump +12
UPI/CVOTER
Sep 19 – Oct 2
570 Likely Voters
53 44 4 Trump +9
Ipsos/Reuters
Sep 9 – Sep 29
708 Likely Voters
48 36 16 Trump +12
UPI/CVOTER
Sep 12 – Sep 25
571 Likely Voters
52 44 5 Trump +8
CBS/YouGov
Sep 21 – Sep 23
1,087 Likely Voters
46 37 9 7 Trump +9
Ipsos/Reuters
Sep 2 – Sep 22
660 Likely Voters
51 35 14 Trump +16


So, the story it's saying is that Trump is STILL very likely to win, despite multiple horrific weeks.. which is pretty much what is happening!

One of the things that I think gets lost here is that national polls, it's a lot harder to get right because you're not trying for a representative of Missouri (6 million), it's 318.9 million

anyway, it's 2:10 am here, and I think you and I have butted heads against each other long enough tonight.

At least when we discuss and not throw insults around (And I will say both sides, not just blaming you or me), it can be rather civil :)

tarcone, here's the problem. I'm going to try to nutshell this:

you're basing your "Trump is going to surprise people" on your notion of "Real Americans" turning out for him.

You're dismissing the urban centers, saying that the polls are oversampling the population centers and undersampling rural voters.

But here's why that does not matter:



This is what the map looks like if Clinton carries all the Obama states and Trump carries all of the Romney states.

That's a 332-206 EV margin based on current population, okay? That means Trump needs to somehow flip 64 EVs from the Obama column into his own to win the election.

Now, looking at that map, tell me where "Real Americans" are going to change the math. Upstate New York is pretty conservative, and yet the state goes for Democrats essentially every election because New York City alone accounts for ~8.5 million out of New York's total population of 19.75 million. That's nearly half of the state's entire population in a dense urban area which votes overwhelmingly Democratic. So those 29 EVs are off the table despite upstate New York being rural and conservative.

Pennsylvania's got two major urban areas - Pittsburgh and Philly - and a lot of rural land in between. It's also traditionally thought of as a swing state. Okay, let's look there: state population is about 12.2 million. Pittsburgh and its suburbs are about 2.5 million, and metro Philly is about 6 million. So in those two urban centers, 8.5 of the state's 12.2 million, leaving about 3.7 million in the rest of the state. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, cast about 60% of its ballots for Barack Obama, while Philadelphia County, home of Philadelphia, saw an 85/15 split. We know that Republicans CAN carry Pennsylvania in national elections, and do, but they're fighting an uphill battle in the state every 4 years just based on those raw numbers.

Ohio's got 11.35 million people. Greater Cleveland is about 2 million of that, and greater Cincy is another 2 million...but spills over into Kentucky and Indiana, both states which Republicans run away with (and so each additional "Real American" vote in those states is wasted, as far as Trump is concerned). Still, 40% of the population of Ohio is in its two biggest metro areas. It's another state that Republicans can, and do, carry, but the urban/rural split means Democrats have an advantage there.

But let's say Trump wins both of those states. That's +38 EVs to his column, of the 64 he needs. Where else is he going to get a push from "real Americans" to put him over the top? It isn't going to be in most of the Midwest, because Romney already carried those states. If there's a change in most of them, it will be a change that hurts Trump.

Minnesota's not going for Trump. Scratch them off the list.

Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan are all possible, but Trump has been lagging badly in Wisconsin and Michigan, both of which are states with Republican governors and Legislatures.

Wisconsin, in particular, has the bulk of its population along its southern border, in Dane County (Madison) and Milwaukee County (Milwaukee). The Milwaukee suburbs skew Republican, but the city itself skews Democratic, and Dane County is the liberal bastion of the state. The only other population center of any size is the Fox Valley (Appleton and Green Bay). The rest of the state is incredibly rural, and incredibly depopulated (I believe the entire state is equal to roughly the population of Greater Los Angeles). You can run up the margins in northwest Wisconsin, and it's still not going to amount to a fraction of what Dane County is going to deliver to Hillary Clinton.

I could continue, but I'm not going to. The point is that "real Americans" already demonstrate their strength in the traditionally "red" states of the Midwest and the Mountain West, so it doesn't *matter* if there's a surge in those states. Trump doesn't benefit.

The states where he could see a benefit, the urban voters you dismiss as being "oversampling" can still dwarf any rural turnout Trump sees if the Democratic GOTV effort is doing its shit.

Trump isn't going to win this with a surge of "real American" votes. Rural Americans tend to be older and whiter and there just aren't enough of them to matter.

Where Trump wins this is if there's a suppression of Clinton voters - that could be the "strict voter ID" laws that were supposed to deliver 2012 to Romney tipping the balance this year, instead; that could be some mega bombshell landing on Clinton in the final three weeks while Trump looks super-presidential in the final debate; that could be BOTH campaigns imploding and the urban/minority demographics just stay home in disgust while "real" (white) Americans show up because that's what they do; that could be Marco Rubio's Senate campaign getting enough turnout in Florida coupled with a lack of ticket-splitting to deliver Florida to Trump, and he manages to flip OH and PA also. The reason he's got about a 1-in-6 shot to win this thing, per 538, is because he DOES have a path.

It's just the same path Romney needed - run the table on all the competitive states while holding onto the Republican "firewall" in the South, the Midwest, and the Mountain West. Trump can't afford to lose Arizona. He can't afford to lose North Carolina, and he can't afford to lose Georgia. He has to hold onto all three of those from 2012, and he has to flip the Big Three of OH/PA/FL. But you'll notice the three states he needs to flip are all populated states. There are rural areas in each of them, but the rural vote in those states only affect the race if the urban vote is close.

And if these polls that show high single-digit and low double-digit leads for Clinton are "oversampling" urban voters, as you suggest, the implication is that the race isn't all that close in the cities.

Which means "real America" isn't going to carry the day for Trump, say sorry.

Each election cycle we get the same people coming out claiming the polls are all wrong. And each election cycle they end up looking like morons. We're a few weeks away from being able to point and laugh at them once again.

Half the people you are going after aren't even liberals. Although it seems at this point your definition of liberal is someone with a basic understanding of statistics and the ability to pass an 8th grade Civics test.

Although I think tarcone's reasoning/understanding is flawed, I would say in his defence is that in our two most recent election (Brexit & the GE) the polls WERE wrong.

There were procedural errors in the GE, and because of the pre-election polls no-one believed the exit polls which turned out to be very accurate.

Apparently the procedural errors were corrected for Brexit, but what they didn't take into account was that because of the media narrative about Leave voters and an assumption that Remain would win handy, some respondents didn't admit to their true vote through a sense of slight embarrassment more than anything.

I can see this as an effect if the US narrative is the same as the world narrative (i.e Trump is an unhinged incompetent), and maybe Trump's numbers are slightly under if some people don't want to publicly admit their support.

So it may well be tighter than the polls suggest - whether it's enough to make it close is another thing.

That happens, but typically if the polls are wrong, either the methodology was fucked, or there was something else going on.

In the case of Brexit, it may have been a combination of the two. The methodology didn't capture what it ought to have, but there were also apparently a fair number of Brits who voted for Brexit figuring it was never going to pass, until, whoops, it did.

So the question is, was there actual support for Brexit not captured in the polls, or were people conveying their support/lack thereof accurately and then fucking themselves over with what they saw as a meaningless protest vote that turned out not to be so meaningless?

There were procedural errors in the GE, and because of the pre-election


And that can happen, but it's a phenomenon that gets cited in every election as a reason why the polls are somehow wrong, and it actually manifests far less frequently than it gets invoked.


And this is the key, yeah. Clinton might not actually be up 14 points. Maybe it's more like 8. But 8 is still enough that Trump gets waxed.

The key here is that the extent to which Clinton's support is accurately conveyed in the polls is the extent to which Democrats have a reasonable shot at flipping the Congress. If Trump's support is understated, that might be why some ostensibly-vulnerable GOP incumbent Senators aren't getting dragged down for their association with him as heavily as one might expect.

If Trump's support is understated, then Clinton's coattails aren't strong enough to put the House in play. It almost certainly isn't in play anyway, but if she wins by 15 points, it's not an outlandish possibility.

General observation: if you are so thin-skinned that you can't handle being lampooned by SNL without lashing out in a Tweet, you probably don't have the temperament to be President.

But surely no candidate is that thin-skinned, right?????????

Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks. Media rigging election!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2016

Dola:

"There you go again."--Ronald Reagan
"Media rigging election."--Donald Trump

Polls close, but can you believe I lost large numbers of women voters based on made up events THAT NEVER HAPPENED. Media rigging election!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2016

Post taken from FB. The opinion of a woman who was a proud elector in 2004 for President Bush. A woman who is now voting for Hillary Clinton.

Will every R woman share this opinion? No. But they exist.

edit: she's from PA though, so I guess she doesn't count as "real."

Really? The list is actually pretty impressive.

Can you explain why you think it helps China?
Trump says China gets an advantage from the Trans-Pacific Partnership | PolitiFact

To be fair ... I've spoken to several women and been surprised they lean Trump. There is a fair no. of women willing to accept Trump with all his "quirks", the strong driver is they have been historically GOP supporters and strong anti-HRC.

The Brexit polls actually shifted in favor of leaving in the weeks heading up to the vote and only shifted (slightly) back to staying in the days before.

Here's the money quote from the Bloomberg article above:

Until the McCain election, Missouri was one of the best bellweather states in the nation. McCain only won by 4,000 votes, so even that nearly went to the eventual winner. 2012 was a definite miss, but to say that Missouri isn't a good predictor of the national result ignores the results from the last century of presidential elections. Your above statement is the definition of a bellweather state.

I think SNL does a great job with HRC and Trump. Last night lapooning the debate e.g. Trump looming over HRC was funny and I'll be watching the first 10-15 min of SNL for the next several weeks.

I do think that they should leave some kids out of it. I get Donald Jr. and Eric have been vocal in the press etc. so they are fair game but don't think Ivanka and Tiffany fall in that same pool.

(Not sure if its my imagination but it seems that Ivanka has taken a less visible role nowadays)

She wants to have a business left, since Donald has trashed his current one for the likely shot at a Fox News competitor.

I kind of want Trump to win just to see if liberals will really move to another country. But then again I'm the kind of guy who doesn't mind a little chaos and mayhem.

In your own example. McCain won Missouri in an election he lost by 7 pts. So Missouri skewed 7 pts to the right in 2008 and 14 pts to the right in 2012. Right now, Nate Silver has Hillary with 86% chance to win the election, but only 21% to win Missouri.

Missouri maybe used to be a bellwether, but certainly not anymore.

When did this turn into the #ConsoleWars thread?

:D

Out of article views there, so what's the truth?

And Matt Drudge hinting big story against Hillary, maybe sex related.

If you're every out of free articles on a news site you can open the link in an incognito tab or wherever your browser equivalent is

What new pedophile pimp is Trump going haul out to say he saw Abedin go down on Hillary?

#HillaryGropedMe

#1 or #2 trending topic for like 8 straight hours today.

Thanks, some one told me that, but I forgot already :)

So what, people are basically going to flood social media with made-up allegations to counter any allegations made against Trump? Sigh.

And completely trivialise sexual assault.

This story on McMullin is great, but likely to create a lot of enemies.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/ev...NVDtTc.twitter

This is really embarrassing for a major newspaper to put up.

Yeah have to agree. I would have expected to see it in a satire site like the Onion, but not here.

It's almost like it was published to "Opinion." Which is, frequently, where satire appears on the pages of American newspapers.

LOL. A bellweather has nothing to do with how it performed compared to the general population. It has to do with whether it picked the winner. Before 2008, Missouri had picked 24 of the previous 25 presidents if my memory is correct. They were within 4,000 votes of being right again in 2008. Definitely missed in 2012. We'll see where it lands this year. My guess is that it will miss again.

How it performed compared to the general population is a great way to determine if a state still qualifies as a bellwether. A bellwether means it's a predictor or indicator of something. A state that has been off by 7 pts and 14 pts in the last two elections is a pretty bad example of a bellwether.

I'm not sure why you bring up past performance when I agreed it used to be a bellwether, but no longer is one. Let me put it this way: If Missouri is called for Trump, it wouldn't be a useful predictor or indicator for the general election result. There are many other states that fit that description much better.

Hmm - looks like it has to do with the type of bellwether:

Bellwether - Wikipedia

edit: posted before lmcg's response

So, a potentially interesting story from near me that's starting to get some national play. A local GOP office quite close to Durham/Chapel Hill was firebombed last night, and "Nazi Republicans get out of town or else" was spray painted on a building nearby.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/16/politi...ce-vandalized/

I don't know much about the town itself (Hillsborough,) but of course Durham/Chapel Hill is quite left-leaning.

Trump already blamed the bombing on Hillary and the Dems.

I lived up there awhile, but not super familiar with the town. As you pointed out, though, close to all the colleges. So, pretty liberal at least close to there.

To be fair, bomb a Democrat HQ, they'd be pretty quick to blame Trumps rhetoric.

Heh. I'd say the most likely culprit profiles, in order, would be....

1. Lone-wolf loonie lefty
2. Lone-wolf loonie righty
3. Organized righties
4. Organized lefties

Hillsborough was where us UNC students used to go to watch a tobacco-spiting contest or cow-chip tossing contest. But that was 30 years ago.

You could convince me to switch the order of 1 and 2, to be honest

The term "Reichstag fire" comes to mind.

The person who did it now has a future working academia.

I wish the internet cared as much about when my internet goes down as when Assange's does. Mine goes out, Charter rarely even acknowledges it. His goes down, suddenly multiple countries are behind it.

I think we can both agree, rogue squirrels are almost certainly behind both outages.

Another close Utah poll.

Trump 30, Clinton 28, McMullin 29, Johnson 5, Stein 1

Am I the only one thinking that McMullin wins Utah as long as he doesn't have an "Allepo moment?" I'm operating under two assumptions on there:

1. That he still has the opportunity to gain voters simply because of them realizing he's in the race.
2. That as it becomes clear to Trump that he's going to lose, he's going to get more desperate and lash out in ways that will turn off more Utah voters.

I've only got #1 a little ahead of #2, and it's mainly because the area is more liberal than conservative (dig a little more digging.) More population = more chance of one person being an idiot.

FWIW, this isn't from REAL 'MURICA, but it's at least encouraging for folks who don't feel like building a nuclear bomb shelter in their back yard.

It’s getting very, very hard to see how Donald Trump wins - The Washington Post

I think a Romney endorsement would seal the deal.

It's a liberal media plot to demoralize decent Trump voters. Don't be fooled!

Also in the news, Clinton buying ads in Arizona, Missouri, Indiana, Georgia, and.. Texas.

Innnteresting.

PredictIt saw a curious little move the last day or two, with Trump shares edging up by 2-3 cents. I took that as "enough" to get out and declare victory... but I wonder if there's still a run-up possibility there. Just by shutting up and not piling on with stupid things, he/they lessened the bleeding from previous such things.

Anyway, I took my profits, and am out of the market now... but wouldn't not be shocked if there's still a margin to gain from today's price (23c is the best proxy price I see).

Good stuff from Jeb's former communications director:

Donald Trump Is on a Presidential Death March We’ve Never Seen Before - The Ringer

So early voting started today in Georgia and I cast my ballot. A decent crowd, but they had enough poll workers to handle it. Took like 10-15 mins.

Yeah, I don't like this. If anything, I would like to see them take out some ads and link Donald Trump to the GOP Senate candidates in the states with close Senate races. Florida, Indiana, Pennsylvania... especially North Carolina and Florida.

But I guess they're trying for the landslide as those are the 5 states that are currently red that are possibly flipping, aside from Utah (thanks to McMullin) and Alaska.

It's a fool's errand to try and flip Texas.

Well, making the margin closer forces the opponent to start spending money in those states.

Seeing headlines like "Texas within the margin of victory" can have detrimental effects on states that are 'closer'.

Maybe we can die the Supreme Court away.

Who needs a full Supreme Court, apparently.

Saw an ad today linking Toomey to Trump (and a counter one from Toomey), so that's already happening in PA.

The other reason is to set up the state for future challenges. Making a play in Texas can mobilize the base and generate local excitement. And anything less than double digits in Texas is going to scare the crap out of Republicans 4-8 years from now.

yeah kind of surprised this hasn't happened yet. Is there bad blood between the two?

Maybe John McCain needs to lose his reelction bid.

I don't think so. Romney advisors seem to be helping McMullin behind the scenes. Also, McMullin is using Romney's e-mail list for fundraising purposes.

He probably wants to make sure that his endorsement will be meaningful. It would be embarrassing for him to endorse and then McMullin get 5% or something. Maybe a couple more polls like this will convince him.

Also in a couple states, (Indiana and Arizona) D money could be shifted to senate races, aimed at giving the D's the senate

I agree with you on Texas, but she is putting money in some of those states you mentioned too:

Clinton camp wades deeper into Senate fight - POLITICO

Right now, Nate Silver has Hillary with a greater chance of winning Texas than Trump does of winning the election.

Rogue squirrels from Ecuador themselves, at least in one of these cases, according to Wikileaks' Twitter account. :D

If the US can "make" Ecuador cut his internet, surely we can "make" Ecuador push him out the front door.

WikiLeaks is like every other tech company. It has a great idea, but eventually it needs to move on from the asshat that founded it.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN12H2E9

Damn, talk about an October surprise!

Disagree.

Well, let me rephrase.

Disagree that a Texas margin of victory in the single digits is, by itself, reason for Republican pants-shitting. Donald Trump is a spectacularly bad candidate, and while the base certainly COULD double down because "we weren't conservative enough and also we don't understand what conservative principles actually are we just like it when someone says the things we're too embarrassed to say ourselves," any number of changes could happen to the Republican nominating process to forestall such a repeat. Candidates could rise to grasp the zeitgeist who aren't walking, talking, dumpster fires.

And then there's the nature of just what a single digit victory would look like. Is Republican turnout depressed because aw fuck no not voting for either of those candidates? Do Republicans defect to Johnson or a write-in campaign for McMullin? Is Democratic turnout super energized by Latinos who are finally bothering to come out and vote in Texas? Somewhere in between?

The details matter. If Republicans vote as reliably as ever they do but the vote is split between two or three #NeverHillary candidates, and that results in winning Texas by only 9 points instead of 20, 2020 and 2024 aren't necessarily cause for alarm.

If Republican turnout is depressed, that doesn't mean Texas is on the verge of going purple. That means that in 2 or 4 years dreams of a purple Texas are going to be laughed at once Trump isn't on the ballot anymore.

If the Republican vote remains united behind Trump and Republican turnout remains consistent with the last few elections, but Democrats turn out the Latino vote, that COULD be a bellwether, but their success at GOTV could also be reflective of how spectacularly dismal Trump's minority relations have been. In the latter case, that doesn't mean the turnout pattern will repeat itself.

Where I would shit myself as a Texas Republican isn't a high single digits win, but a low single digits win, or a narrow (within recount threshold) loss. Either of those are much harder to chalk up to Trump being awful, because the Republicans' cushion in the state has historically been such that their votes can split/sit and not really imperil the state.

Kinda like the discussion about urban/rural gerrymandering - Democrats control the urban centers, but in many states, their voters are packed as tightly as possible into supermajority districts while Republicans are in districts that aim more for 50% + some comfortable excess to maximize their voting power.

Texas is like that. Super-packed with Republican votes, and every marginal vote above what's required to win the state is wasted. Once Texas turns in a result within 3-4% (say, 52-48), I would start looking real hard for brown stains on Republican slacks.

Well I only phrased it that way because some Republicans have already been panicking due to their continuing decline among Hispanic voters. You're right that a 9 point victory in and of itself wouldn't be cause for panic, but it still could be depending on how that 9 pt margin was achieved. If Trump performs similarly or slightly worse than Romney across demos, but Hispanic turnout is way up, then that is cause for concern. If he does much worse among both groups with turnout flat, then it can be written off to a lousy candidate.

So the new talking point is that Billy Bush egged Trump on. I'm not sure if that's a better or worse defense than the pedophile pimp.

Yeah. Basically, the bottom line on Texas is that its purple prospects hinge almost entirely on Latino turnout and how sustainable that is going forward.

As well as whether the GOP ever gets its head out of its ass regarding minorities. Hispanic-Americans are overwhelmingly Catholic, which means that, at least culturally, they SHOULD be receptive to the Republican message.

But Republicans have been doing everything they can since 1994 to make the Hispanic voting bloc as reliably Democratic as...well, virtually every other non-white voting bloc.

I think the Catholic vote goes more Dem than you think:

http://cara.georgetown.edu/president...ote%20only.pdf

Latinos in America are also overwhelmingly younger, which would likely mean less religious and therefore more likely to vote for Democrats. 44 percent of eligible Latino voters are millennials. From 2010 to 2013, the percentage of Latinos age 18-29 who identify as religiously unaffiliated increased from 14% to 31%, and I'd assume that has continued to rise as it has across America as a whole.

Problem is, that doesn't break out by ethnicity. White Catholics tend to live in the Atlantic Seaboard, and to be a little bit more liberal. The reason the Church has focused so heavily on Latin and South America in recent years is because Latin Catholics more heavily toe the line on Church orthodoxy.

And that's the thing. Hispanic Catholics are much more conservative than white American Catholics are. They're a constituency that should be a natural fit for the Republican Party. But the GOP's rhetoric since the mid-90s has pushed Hispanic Catholics towards the Democrats. They may disagree on things like abortion rights, but the Democrats don't demonize Hispanics as being job-stealing, welfare-draining, anchor-baby-having invaders who want to steal America. And that, astonishingly, matters.