Quote (obisent @ 17 Nov 2016 12:45)

Wb, I remember you saying awhile ago Trump had at least a 33% chance to win.

What do you think the Clinton campaign could have done differently to avoid the current outcome.

Quote (excellence @ Nov 15 2016 09:59pm)

he spent most of the cycle bragging about Hillary->!'s fundraising ability anyway :rofl:
maybe he has a point (for once in his pathetic post history) - Democrats don't know how to spend properly since their :only: strategy (other than call the other side a racist sexist misogynist xenophobe deplorable) is to throw money at problems like a lotto winner in a strip club.

or people telling the pollster to shove it and hanging up, that usually counts as a solid vote for (C)linton

Quote (Pollster @ 25 Aug 2016 16:48)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/22/clinton-already-dominant-on-the-airwaves-reserves-nearly-80-million-more-in-tv-time/?postshare=5031471866365502&tid=ss_tw

Clinton's camp reserved $77 mil in TV time for Sept/Oct in 8 states: FL, IA, NC, NH, NV, OH, PA, and Nebraska's 2nd district (Omaha). You might notice CO/VA absent; both HfA and Priorities USA paused their ads there months ago, and haven't seen a reason yet to start them back up (PUSA also paused their ads in Pennsylvania). Trump's first ad buy was only for $4.8 mil and was slated to run from 8/19-8/29, in NC/FL/OH/PA.

Pretty soon we'll see what the plans are for the outside groups. PUSA started August with about $39 mil COH and still has roughly twice that amount reserved for TV ads that haven't aired yet. Trump has 4 Super PACs and allies (like the NRA) who will, I'd assume, be making reservations for the fall soon too.



It looks like the GOP needs Trump to really rebound before Election Day for things to fall exactly that way. They gave up on IL/WI back in July and once Darryl Glenn won their nomination in CO every major GOP committee declared him on his own. The Dems are flooding the zone in IN, now with four polls showing Bayh leading by 15-20 points in basically a dare to national Republicans of "do you really want to spend a bunch of money here just to lose anyway?"

GOP internals have Trump trailing in PA and NH by double-digits, which turned Toomey and Ayotte's small leads into deficits. To stop the bleeding and end their losses at only 4 seats they'd need Trump to only lose by a couple of points instead of the 6-8 he's down now. Or their problems would go away if he found a way to win, I guess.

Quote (Pollster @ 15 Nov 2016 21:06)

Naturally I appreciate the laugh on this, but the reality is that I'm the one who never said that Trump couldn't win an election. Other users, including coincidentally IceMage, often remarked with surprise at various stages when I wouldn't declare this race "over." I refused to do that because I know how elections can go sometimes.



I assume you mean the public polls on that -- HfA/PUSA/DNC's private polling were largely accurate absent the couple of errors you expect to see across any large-scale project. There were a couple of problems with the public polls, a lot of them the same in 2014: the industry is facing long-term challenges and there aren't easy fixes for some. There were far fewer live-caller surveys in the states down the stretch this year, as a result a larger share of what people were seeing was made up of junk polls by amateur universities, or groups with no money, or online groups with unproven/flawed methodologies.

You also have the very real excuse of Comey's intervention(s) and how that'd upend the numbers. That's really hard for polls to pick up on because both of them happened so late, with 11 and 4 days left before Election Day. Clinton's polling picked up on it, they knew that both his original letter to Congress and even his "oh no big deal, nothing to see here, these are just emails we've read already" clarification were very beneficial to Trump, but public polling is of too low quality to adequately measure the effects of something like that in such little time.

Re: Trump, I don't feel any different than how I did when (I believe) thundercock asked me both this spring and last year a hypothetical "what if Trump won?" I obviously sympathize for the 10s/100 million whose lives will be much harder (if not ruined altogether) by him going after the ACA, Ryan going after Medicare and Medicaid, cutting assistance for working families who need it, everyone who's a part of a group/demographic he insulted or targeted during the campaign, but I think most people knew enough about what they were getting when they voted (the one exception is the millions of working-class people who voted for him but who will suffer greatly by his policies, but I still feel bad for them regardless).

For me professionally it's a good outcome because my clients will benefit from being the out-party, but that doesn't mean I don't feel bad for all the people who will suffer real pain from it.

Quote (obisent @ Nov 17 2016 09:45am)

Wb, I remember you saying awhile ago Trump had at least a 33% chance to win.

What do you think the Clinton campaign could have done differently to avoid the current outcome.

Quote (Santara @ Nov 15 2016 07:49pm)

The "financial dynamic" does not change the fact that Democrat vote totals fell in 2016, or that you're blaming the losses on Republican spending when in fact it was driven by low enthusiasm at the top of the ticket.

Quote (excellence @ Nov 20 2016 05:28pm)

so you hid all the actual polls to try and falsely influence public opinion.

we're all sure Trump will hire you - maybe for trash picker-upper!!!!!!!

obligatory: thanks for the fuckin' laugh loser!!!!!!!!!!

Quote (Pollster @ Nov 22 2016 06:51pm)

I'm not sure what point you think you're trying to make, especially as millions of votes continue to be counted and they adjust the overall landscape away from what you're suggesting.

There's no sensible reason why anyone should ignore the role that a key metric (arguably the most important one) played in determining the outcome of the Senate elections. The GOP obviously had a very large spending advantage this year downballot and it played a critical role in helping them mitigate their losses. There's just no getting around that with the numbers being what they are.

Quote (Santara @ Nov 24 2016 09:47am)

The point? That those eeeeeeevil billionaires and their eeeeevil money didn't cause the Democrats to lose. Democrats caused Democrats to lose. Even now, after they've added another 4.8 million votes (most of the remaining uncounted ballots) from mailed in ballots and such, Clinton is STILL about a million and a half votes short of Obama 2012.

Um, hello? No shit their down-ballot had a spending advantage, considering the number of people who figured the top of the ticket was a lost cause so they worked on shoring up the rest of the party. And they still lost ground in the Senate.

Quote (Pollster @ 29 Nov 2016 15:48)

The nation's last outstanding federal race was finally called yesterday: CA incumbent Darrell Issa narrowly held onto his seat by a mere ~2,300 votes. His lead bounced up and down between ~2k and ~5k since Election Day but in the end he'll squeak by for another term. His close call is emblematic of the difficulties facing the GOP in the entire southwest: this was not just a massive underperformance on its face, Issa won by 16% in 2012 and 20% in lower-turnout 2014.



There's no reason to indulge such a silly premise, especially when it's offered in a false choice. It'd be one thing if basic raw vote comparisons could somehow be instructive but they aren't; Clinton obviously doesn't need to match the largest vote winner in history in either of his cycles to refute your premise for how Senate Republicans, many in states that went mostly if not entirely ignored by the presidential race, were able to mitigate their losses. Such an outlook would also require the belief that all eligible voters who chose not to vote did so solely because they merely didn't want to vote, and we already know that's not the case in this country.

You don't need to try to justify or explain away the massive big-dollar financial edge that Senate/House Republicans had. It happened, it's real, everyone knows it's there because it's happened in every election since 2010. Rather than merely coming up with a conclusion that's ideologically satisfying and then trying to comport the available evidence to it, you really should just start with the available information and then form your conclusion based on it.

Quote (Pollster @ Nov 29 2016 02:48pm)

There's no reason to indulge such a silly premise, especially when it's offered in a false choice. It'd be one thing if basic raw vote comparisons could somehow be instructive but they aren't; Clinton obviously doesn't need to match the largest vote winner in history in either of his cycles to refute your premise for how Senate Republicans, many in states that went mostly if not entirely ignored by the presidential race, were able to mitigate their losses. Such an outlook would also require the belief that all eligible voters who chose not to vote did so solely because they merely didn't want to vote, and we already know that's not the case in this country.

You don't need to try to justify or explain away the massive big-dollar financial edge that Senate/House Republicans had. It happened, it's real, everyone knows it's there because it's happened in every election since 2010. Rather than merely coming up with a conclusion that's ideologically satisfying and then trying to comport the available evidence to it, you really should just start with the available information and then form your conclusion based on it.