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.