Prediction of 2016 Trump landslide

[MiraiRonin]

Found this blog post online and wanted to ask American FDR listeners what they thought of it (I'm in Australia); the author claims that predictions of a close election are groundless and we are about to witness a pro-Trump landslide. Are his facts accurate, his reasoning plausible?

 

The original blog post is here: https://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/destruction-of-nate-silver/

 

Destruction of Nate Silver

 

Why aren’t you guys quoting Nate Silver anymore? Because he’s a crock.

 

He hasn’t been ‘mistakenly’ wrong. He has been wrong again, and again, and again.Check it out.

 

Everyone is going to be looking at the Trump vs. Clinton general election from the prism of 2000 battleground. “First, let us give these states to Clinton, those states to Trump, and focus on the one or few battleground states.” 2000 was close because both candidates sucked. Gore? Bush Jr.? 2004 was also close because both candidates sucked. Bush Jr.? Kerry? 2008 was completely misread by people since 2006 was misread by people. Democrats won control of the House in 2006 due to conservative districts punishing Republican GW Bush Administration by voting for the Democrat. After all, Obama campaigned on lower taxes, stronger military, etc. Carville hilariously wrote a book saying that there would be 40 more years of Democratic control. 2012, you have Obama vs Romney, a terribel(sic.) candidate.

 

Here is why 2016 won’t be ‘close’ in the perspective of 2000 type ‘battleground’ scenarios and ‘ground game’ crap.

 

First, I think we are in a Re-Alignment. I know this is said every election, but we are due for one. Liberal and Conservative alignment is dead. What is happening is a Globalist vs Nationalist alignment. Republicans would be very smart to have Trump help undergo the alignment of Republicans into Nationalists. The Democrats, especially with their super-delegate bullshit, are delaying their inevitable re-alignment into a Globalist Party. They will get there, but it may be a shellacking for a general election or two in order to get it.

 

Second, most people reading this site have never seen a true landslide election. The strangest general election ever was Carter’s. Reagan and Nixon won 49 states in two of their elections. The point is that the 2000-ish ‘this is going to be CLOSE and battleground states OMG’ type thinking may not apply here. It could very well be a blowout. Trump, like Reagan and Nixon, will get Democrat votes. Laffer, from the infamous Laffer’s Curve, predicts Republican candidate to win 47 states. He predicts this because he has seen Nixon and Reagan elections because in those cases the Democratic Party put up a ‘machine candidate’ who just royally sucked. Hillary Clinton royally sucks. I think she is the worst (electoral wise) candidate the Democrats could have chosen. They could have put in anyone else.

 

Third, Hillary Clinton will be the first time we have ever had a female Presidential candidate. How will people respond? I do not think they will respond well. So many women do not want a female president. We have had two instances of female VP picks. Mondale in 1984 (lost 49 states) and McCain in 2008 (big loss). Cruz had Fiorina as a VP pick before Indiana primary and Cruz got blown out. Inside the beltway thinking says it is good to put up female VP candidates, but the public doesn’t seem to agree. Based on this, a main female presidential candidate will likely be blown out.

 

Fourth, Hillary Clinton has the most baggage I’ve ever seen a political candidate have. It goes beyond the emails and money cheating. I am talking Monica Lewinsky and all the other bimbo eruptions. Many young people did not live through that. They will be shocked that Hillary Clinton stuck by and allowed Bill Clinton to humiliate her again and again. I expect young feminists to vote against Hillary Clinton because of that.

 

Fifth, Hillary Clinton is seen as ‘status quo’. With so many Americans upset at the direction the country is going (polling wise), I think this will be an anti-status quo election.

 

Sixth, this is extremely important and will not be mentioned anywhere. Pundits think Hillary Clinton is ‘popular’ because Bill Clinton was ‘popular’. The truth was that Bill Clinton was never popular. Did you know that Bill Clinton never won a majority of the vote in either the 1992 or 1996 elections? He won majority of electoral college votes, but he couldn’t get the majority of the popular vote. In 1996, he got 49% of the vote. In 1992, he got 42% of the vote. This happened because of a third party candidate called Perot who got, astonishingly, 20% of the vote in 1992.

 

Seventh, the pundits will have tunnel vision because they believe that unfavorable ratings are equal. They are not. Most presidential candidates try to appear as the hero. Trump, in a most brilliant move, is trying to appear as the villain. This is why the media cannot stop reporting on what he says. It is why he loves being the ‘great villain’ with GOP against him, conservative pundits against him, Democrats against him, etc. The more Trump is attacked, the stronger he gets. Trump isn’t running as a hero or as a moral saint. This is why his unfavorables are so high but he keeps winning elections. In other words, I think Hillary’s unfavorable numbers doom her but Trump’s unfavorable numbers boost him. Trump isn’t seen by his supporters as a candidate, he is seen as a murder weapon. The supporters wish to use Trump to murder the political class and destroy them as they believe they have been destroyed by their policies. In 2020, when Trump runs for re-election, Trump will reverse this and run as the hero which will leave the 2020 candidate in the dust acting like he (and it will be a male Democratic candidate in 2020) prepared to go ‘more villain’ to answer 2016’s surprising Trump win. Trump will play the devil in 2016, the angel in 2020.

[shirgall]

Yeah, Nate made some bad calls in this cycle.

 

The article has a fact in error. The first female Presidential Candidate was Victoria Woodhull in 1872, not Janey-come-lately Hillary Clinton in 2016.

 

The first female (and first Jew) to recent an actual electoral college vote was Tonie Nathan in 1972. I knew Tonie. She was a fireball. Tonie would have eaten Hillary for lunch.

[Tyler H]

Just my opinion, from what I've seen of this third wave feminism movement, the fact that she's a woman will trump (haha) the fact that Bill is a scoundrel and she stays with him.

 

I also think that the powers that be will get the president they want, whomever that may be.  

[Cruiser]

Trump winning the presidency is unpredictable. What would guarantee a Trump landslide, would be a major crises or potential terrorist attack on American domestic soil.

 

[shirgall]

A little more Nate Silver crow:

 

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump/

 

 

Since Donald Trump effectively wrapped up the Republican nomination this month, I’ve seen a lot of critical self-assessments from empirically minded journalists — FiveThirtyEight included, twice over — about what they got wrong on Trump. This instinct to be accountable for one’s predictions is good since the conceit of “data journalism,” at least as I see it, is to apply the scientific method to the news. That means observing the world, formulating hypotheses about it, and making those hypotheses falsifiable. (Falsifiability is one of the big reasons we make predictions.1) When those hypotheses fail, you should re-evaluate the evidence before moving on to the next subject. The distinguishing feature of the scientific method is not that it always gets the answer right, but that it fails forward by learning from its mistakes.

 

But with some time to reflect on the problem, I also wonder if there’s been too much #datajournalist self-flagellation. Trump is one of the most astonishing stories in American political history. If you really expected the Republican front-runner to be bragging about the size of his anatomy in a debate, or to be spending his first week as the presumptive nominee feuding with the Republican speaker of the House and embroiled in a controversy over a tweet about a taco salad, then more power to you. Since relatively few people predicted Trump’s rise, however, I want to think through his nomination while trying to avoid the seduction of hindsight bias. What should we have known about Trump and when should we have known it?

 

...

 

The big mistake is a curious one for a website that focuses on statistics. Unlike virtually every other forecast we publish at FiveThirtyEight — including the primary and caucus projections I just mentioned — our early estimates of Trump’s chances weren’t based on a statistical model.

 

...

 

[utopian]

I'm just waiting for a one on one debate between Hillary and Trump where Trump makes Hillary cry over bill's cheating and her emails and Benghazi. Then when she falters and cries Trump is going to ask us if we really want a crying woman in our supposedly highest office. 

 

Ya know, I notice something very interesting working in my simple little restaurant. Women don't want to be served by women. They play bitchy games at each other, and women seem to know other women won't take responsibility. Women want men in charge, so they can have them take the responsibility they refuse to own themselves, and be able to complain about the men afterwards. 

[utopian]

For a small donation I'll write you a fanfic titled 50 shades of Trump where Hillary finally gets revenge on Bill for all the cheating by spending a night with powerful persuasive and mentally and physically abusive billionaire. Hillary will be quite enthused at all the explicit action and storyline, especially since she seems to be special in Trump's eyes compared to his last submissive, Megan Kelly.  

 

Judging by fairly recent popular romance material, I'm sure it will be quite a hit.