CajunBlazer
CajunBlazer's JournalI didn't say I thought Trump will win
Only that his chances of winning have been increasing steady since the Democratic Convention and Hillary's have been steadily decreasing.
What the author sees as "Trump is at a high, Hillary at a low, and she is still ahead", others see a trend that could continue.
Regardless, this election cycle is at a turning point and I see three major factors which could affect the outcome:
1) Hillary has more funding as big contributors have been hesitant to invest in Trump given the campaign he has waged. Hillary has a much better ground game, especially in swing states.
2) Usually as elections get closer, people who early on say they will vote for 3rd party candidates began to see the futility of that course of action and come back to one of the major party candidates. Will that happen this time? Probably, but to what extent and which candidate will benefit is hard to predict. I suspect it will vary from state to state.
3) The debates - if Hillary were much further ahead, I would be less concerned. I am sure that Hillary will be very well prepared, but when someone lies as often as Trump does, he is difficult to manage. It like a team that plays hands on defense in basketball on the theory that the refs can't call every foul committed. In those games the refs have to call enough fouls to keep the game fair. Following that analogy the moderator in the debates has to be on his/her game and call out Trump on his lies. If the moderator doesn't keep in check Hillary will certainly challenge his lies, but with much of the audience across the nation that hasn't been paying close attention, it will be one candidates word against the other. I really don't know who will win at that game.
In an election this close any and all of these three factors can tip the race to one candidate or the other. We must do everything possible to GOTV.
Election 2016 – Too Close for Comfort
A number of Democrats have grown complacent about the Presidential Race. Given that Hillary Clinton has maintained a lead in all of the swing states since the Democratic convention and with Donald Trump continually undercutting his own candidacy, they are confident of victory. I recently read that that even Clinton campaign insiders are switching their sights to a landslide instead of a mere victory.I hope they are right, but in politics overconfidence often leads to bad results and I am seeing signs that Hillary’s big leads in pivotal states have been steadily shrinking since the Democratic Convention as has the probability that she will win the election. Don’t get me wrong, I am not writing this to throw cold water on the Clinton crowd. I am a big Hillary supporter, but I don’t like the way the polls are trending.
Nate Silver, probably the best election statistician in the nation. uses recent state polls which he adjusts for built in bias and timeliness, to predict the current probabilities of winning Presidency of each of the candidates on an ongoing basis. The results are posted on his FiveThirtyEight website. Who will win the presidency?
As you can see from the two screenshots below which were taken from the Silver’s website, according his calculations the probability that Hillary Clinton will win the Presidency as dropped from its high 89.2% on August 14th (right after the convention) to 71.5%. Donald Trump’s chances of winning have increased accordingly. (Since I took those screen shots, but before publication of this article, Hillary’s chances of winning have dropped again, to 69.1% – that’s how quickly new polls can affect Silver’s projections.)
(Snip)
Link to the rest of the article:
Election 2016 – Too Close for Comfort
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Gender: MaleHometown: Alabama
Home country: USA
Member since: Sat Jun 13, 2015, 05:35 PM
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