Capella's 24-hour, VERY bigly OH MY GOD HOW DID WE GET HERE thread (4 Viewers)

[Doug B]

Michigan still very close, but looking like it could go to Trump.  With these 16 Electoral Votes, this puts Trump at 305 which means he didn't even need Florida to win 

Crazy close ... ~12,600 vote lead for Trump as of right now. 96% in.

 

[Hov34]

Drain the Swamp!  Down with the political elites!  We need change!

97% of incumbents re-elected in congress.

Yep.  I heard Marsha Blackburn  on NPR this morning "not surprised" at any of this.  

Agreed, I live in her district and she needs to go - but of course never will, just like other "always" Dem districts and other "always" Rep. districts.  We need term limits for congress.

 

[Doug B]

Would it be possible to provide news with an opinion and political bias that isn't so derogatory?

That's in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?

 

[Sand]

Gonna find it hard to take any political polling/analysis seriously again. They all whiffed in a big way.

LA times?

 

[Ditkaless Wonders]

Drain the Swamp!  Down with the political elites!  We need change!

97% of incumbents re-elected in congress.

That may be, but when they go back and find no swamp in which to live how will these amphibians survive.  They are swampthings, necessarily they need their swamp.  They were re-elected so that we could watch them wither and suffer before dying like a fish out of water.

Either that, or, you know, business as usual and all that bluster about draining fragile ecosystems without EPA approval does not amount to anything.  

 

[Gr00vus]

LA times?

True, I had forgotten about them. Such an unconventional methodology, turned out to be a good approach. I was very skeptical. I wonder if it'll work for future elections.

 

[Jayrod]

True, I had forgotten about them. Such an unconventional methodology, turned out to be a good approach. I was very skeptical. I wonder if it'll work for future elections.

I'm out of the loop here.  What's the deal with the LA Times?

 

[Sand]

Just thought the turnout vs the last several elections is interesting. Here is the number of popular votes for the major parties' Presidential candidates since 2000 (source is the wiki page for each election).

2000: Bush 50.5m, Gore 51.0m

2004: Bush  62m, Kerry 59m

2008: McCain 60m, Obama 69m

2012: Romney 61m, Obama 66m

2016: Trump 59m, Clinton 59.5m

What strikes me is that the number of Republican votes has been fairly constant in the last few elections, but the turnout for Democrats was pretty weak this year. 

Trump wins with lowest turnout since 2000.  Amazing he won.  

 

[Gr00vus]

I'm out of the loop here.  What's the deal with the LA Times?

They started a poll, back in the spring, in which they continuously polled the same exact set of people throughout the course of the campaign. I think it had Trump tied or slightly ahead throughout. 

 

[Sand]

I'm out of the loop here.  What's the deal with the LA Times?

The followed the same 3k group of people throughout the election and kept repolling them.  All the others randomly sample every time.

Not convinced it works.  We're at n=1 right now.

 

[Bruce Dickinson]

Just thought the turnout vs the last several elections is interesting. Here is the number of popular votes for the major parties' Presidential candidates since 2000 (source is the wiki page for each election).

2000: Bush 50.5m, Gore 51.0m

2004: Bush  62m, Kerry 59m

2008: McCain 60m, Obama 69m

2012: Romney 61m, Obama 66m

2016: Trump 59m, Clinton 59.5m

What strikes me is that the number of Republican votes has been fairly constant in the last few elections, but the turnout for Democrats was pretty weak this year. 

This was the first Presidential election in a while without the Voting Rights Act.  Over 900 polling places that were open in 2012 closed for this cycle, mostly in minority neighborhoods.  

 

[Buzzbait]

That's in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?

Sometimes it's shades of gray (i.e. eye of the beholder) and sometimes I think a spade is a spade and it's obvious.

We're never going to get away from people being upset that their opinion isn't widely accepted. That's just human nature. I just think the media has becomes so biased and intolerant that no matter the message the other side is always considered a jack hole.

 

[avoiding injuries]

I think it was a tie between the wall promise and the birther movement that got him the nomination. 

Gonna be some unhappy deplorables if he doesn't deliver.

We've gotten to the point where people post stupid things to make themselves feel better after the whooping they suffered last night. I forget which step this is in the grieving process. 

 

[Buzzbait]

They started a poll, back in the spring, in which they continuously polled the same exact set of people throughout the course of the campaign. I think it had Trump tied or slightly ahead throughout. 

Interesting. I completely missed this. Was the sample diverse to mimic voting demographics or completely random?

3k is an awfully small sample size so I have my doubts that it is something that could be leveraged for future elections. Sounds like it may have been more luck than anything but that's a knee jerk comment without really knowing anything more than what I'm reading here for the first time.

 

[avoiding injuries]

Just thought the turnout vs the last several elections is interesting. Here is the number of popular votes for the major parties' Presidential candidates since 2000 (source is the wiki page for each election).

2000: Bush 50.5m, Gore 51.0m

2004: Bush  62m, Kerry 59m

2008: McCain 60m, Obama 69m

2012: Romney 61m, Obama 66m

2016: Trump 59m, Clinton 59.5m

What strikes me is that the number of Republican votes has been fairly constant in the last few elections, but the turnout for Democrats was pretty weak this year. 

Two things jump out to me. The big jump in total votes from 2000 to 2004, and then Obama just crushing it for his two elections. The Republicans have stayed pretty consistent since 2004 while the Democrats came back to reality. 

 

[Doug B]

I just think the media has becomes so biased and intolerant that no matter the message the other side is always considered a jack hole.

Good point. Change the bolded to "social media", and it's all the more true.

 

[Gr00vus]

Interesting. I completely missed this. Was the sample diverse to mimic voting demographics or completely random?

3k is an awfully small sample size so I have my doubts that it is something that could be leveraged for future elections. Sounds like it may have been more luck than anything but that's a knee jerk comment without really knowing anything more than what I'm reading here for the first time.

They say they tried to get a representative sample. I think what it best tracked was movement among undecideds. And it think undecideds ended up having a huge impact on this election.

 

[JIslander]

We've gotten to the point where people post stupid things to make themselves feel better after the whooping they suffered last night. I forget which step this is in the grieving process. 

I'm talking about the preliminaries.  Those were central to his campaign.

 

[Doug B]

This was the first Presidential election in a while without the Voting Rights Act.  Over 900 polling places that were open in 2012 closed for this cycle, mostly in minority neighborhoods.  

This needs a link: LA Times article. An excerpt:
 

“We will learn more in the coming days about the specifics of the challenges faced by voters around the country, but we already know the truth: The Voting Rights Act is vital and necessary to protect our elections," said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

"Voters were confused because of changes to their polling places and a lack of accurate information provided to them by their state officials," she said in a statement.

"In jurisdictions formerly covered by the Voting Rights Act, voters saw 868 polling places closed, forcing too many people to travel as far as 25 miles just to be able to vote," said Ifill, who monitored voting sites in Alabama, where new ID laws were used.

I am looking for corroboration for the bolded part. I can perhaps excuse rural voters in exceptional circumstances having to travel that far ... but I am hoping not to find that people living close to obvious voting locations (schools, etc.) were being forced to travel so far.

EDIT: Something else that occurred to me is that "polling places closed" does not necessarily mean that new polling places didn't come online. Of course, if information about the new stations was disseminated poorly and/or cynically ... that's an issue.

 

[ffldrew]

Drain the Swamp!  Down with the political elites!  We need change!

97% of incumbents re-elected in congress.

Yep.  I heard Marsha Blackburn  on NPR this morning "not surprised" at any of this.  

Agreed, I live in her district and she needs to go - but of course never will, just like other "always" Dem districts and other "always" Rep. districts.  We need term limits for congress.

I'd prefer more competitive district lines that challenge a representative every 2 years -  there is some value to having experience in running the ship.

 

[bagger]

Protests ongoing at Harvard and Cal Berkeley.

 hippies.

Even when your preferred candidate doesn't win you have to respect the process.

 

[Andy Dufresne]

Andrew Sullivan jumps of the deep end and holds his breath until dead.

 

[shader]

Michigan still very close, but looking like it could go to Trump.  With these 16 Electoral Votes, this puts Trump at 305 which means he didn't even need Florida to win 

That's what Michael Moore said in a pre-election article.  He predicted that Trump wouldn't even need Florida.

 

[The Future Champs]

We've gotten to the point where people post stupid things to make themselves feel better after the whooping they suffered last night. I forget which step this is in the grieving process. 

Depression.   This is healthy.   

 

[avoiding injuries]

I'd like to see him propose term limits. At least mention them. 

 

[Yankee23Fan]

Andrew Sullivan jumps of the deep end and holds his breath until dead.

I love The Onion.

 

[Bruce Dickinson]

This needs a link: LA Times article. An excerpt:
 

I am looking for corroboration for the bolded part. I can perhaps excuse rural voters in exceptional circumstances having to travel that far ... but I am hoping not to find that people living close to obvious voting locations (schools, etc.) were being forced to travel so far.

Slate article covering some of the early voting suppression shenanigans

FWIW, I don't think the drop from 2012 to 2016 is entirely because of voter suppression efforts.  It's pretty clear Clinton didn't energize voters the way Obama did.  But it was a factor.  And it was difficult to listen to Trump whine about a rigged system throughout the campaign when 25 states with red legislatures were working hard behind the scenes to the rig the game in Trump's favor.

 

[Andrew74]

I was so excited about a stock buying spree last night. 

 

[Doug B]

Slate article covering some of the early voting suppression shenanigans

FWIW, I don't think the drop from 2012 to 2016 is entirely because of voter suppression efforts.  It's pretty clear Clinton didn't energize voters the way Obama did.  But it was a factor.  And it was difficult to listen to Trump whine about a rigged system throughout the campaign when 25 states with red legislatures were working hard behind the scenes to the rig the game in Trump's favor.

And this PDF appears to be the study underlying the articles we've linked. And it's apparent that closed polling stations were not replaced in kind.

 

[Chaos Commish]

Andrew Sullivan jumps of the deep end and holds his breath until dead.

There was one good paragraph. 

 

[rodg12]

Slate article covering some of the early voting suppression shenanigans

FWIW, I don't think the drop from 2012 to 2016 is entirely because of voter suppression efforts.  It's pretty clear Clinton didn't energize voters the way Obama did.  But it was a factor.  And it was difficult to listen to Trump whine about a rigged system throughout the campaign when 25 states with red legislatures were working hard behind the scenes to the rig the game in Trump's favor.

This is staggering.

 

[jonessed]

Good point. Change the bolded to "social media", and it's all the more true.

Social media creates a perverse tunnel vision that basically travels with you wherever you go.  I don't understand how someone with any intellectual curiosity can bury themselves in it, but many do.

 

[tommyboy]

Just thought the turnout vs the last several elections is interesting. Here is the number of popular votes for the major parties' Presidential candidates since 2000 (source is the wiki page for each election).

2000: Bush 50.5m, Gore 51.0m

2004: Bush  62m, Kerry 59m

2008: McCain 60m, Obama 69m

2012: Romney 61m, Obama 66m

2016: Trump 59m, Clinton 59.5m

What strikes me is that the number of Republican votes has been fairly constant in the last few elections, but the turnout for Democrats was pretty weak this year. 

Not a surprise. It was Hillary after all

 

[NREC34]

I get that.  It just justifies the GOP acting like total crybabies who don't get their way.  Obama trolled them by nominating someone that was about as non-controversial as possible and they still take their ball and go home.

Now we reward that behavior and give the spoiled brats the keys to the Ferrari.

Don't want to ever hear them speak about the constitution again. 

 

[Dickies]

Slate article covering some of the early voting suppression shenanigans

FWIW, I don't think the drop from 2012 to 2016 is entirely because of voter suppression efforts.  It's pretty clear Clinton didn't energize voters the way Obama did.  But it was a factor.  And it was difficult to listen to Trump whine about a rigged system throughout the campaign when 25 states with red legislatures were working hard behind the scenes to the rig the game in Trump's favor.

Unreal.

 

[Otis]

I'm just gonna park this here, because this guy is basically one of the most reasonable people on the internet, all the time.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/11/its-going-to-be-okay.html

 

[jonessed]

Not a surprise. It was Hillary after all

Trump sucked too.  It should have never come to this.

 

[by_the_sea_wannabe]

This is staggering.

I don't like the closing of the voting places but I am also not in favor of "early" voting. It is election day not week.

 

[JIslander]

Yeah I do.  Two parts really.  The first was economic.  The ACA especially and what is has to done to small business owners and self employed people.  Because it is killing us.  I spend more on health insurance now by almost double than before it was passed and now spend more annually than I made at my first job after my masters program.  That increase cost for people that have a small business or who are self employed has crushed the family budget because at the same time general wages for everyone else aren't really going up so there are less clients to hire that small business.  Or if they do, they want the service for lower prices.  So the small business gets hit on both ends.  It causes the small business owner to work harder for less or the same money.  That means he is home less.  Focused less on his family.  And on his kids.  It stops family fun times, or at least lessens them.  Vacations become pie in the sky dreams that you can see on facebook and pinterest but your husband can't afford to do it. 

It's an admirable law.  It really is.  But it hit us right after we thought we were finally going to get some relief from the collapse of '08 and instead it knocked us right back down again.  Wives see what the business struggling does to their husbands and in turn their families.  And unlike men who can't always connect dot A to dot B, women can.  And they know.  In our social circle which is rather large the overwhelming majority of the families have a small business husband.  Most have stay at home wives.  Those wives see the family budget getting mutilated and can directly see the ACA doing it.  Or their husbands talk about it.  I know I do.  I have to make enough in a year to pay two secretaries an annual salary just to make sure my kids have health insurance and we are also forced to get them dental insurance that we don't need.

There are of course other things than the ACA doing this.  But that is a clear focal point.  Overall, the economic issues for these families though aren't going away.  And don't just look at the white collar guys in that group - the blue collar guys are worse off.  They don't get paid nearly what they should anymore. 

The second issue beyond economic is social.  Our kids are growing up too fast.  They are being bombarded with social changes that most women aren't ready to talk to their kids about.  This is massively evident in my social circles.  The moms talk  constantly about the social issues of the day and how to deal with them with their kids.  There is no filter anymore from news and society through the parent to the child.  There just isn't.  And the changes in society which ultimately might be necessary, are scary as hell when you feel like you are losing control of your family in the process.  I know my wife suffers that a lot.  My son comes home from school with projects to deal with issues that she can barely wrap her head around.  It's too much too fast, in the middle of the economic issues above.  It's creating a stress that they just don't need or want right now.

Now, that one is a little more selfish than the first, but it also results in the same blowback I wrote about above.  If you keep pushing and pushing and pushing and the person you are pushing isn't willing to go at some point they are going to actively push back.  And I think that is what these women are doing.  At least now.  I still think Trump was the very worst messenger for the message but he was the only one saying it.  These women like my wife see society just rushing head without thinking at all and they are pushing back, hard. 

There are other ones.  But I'd be willing to bet these are in the top set of issues for the general group.  I could be wrong.  All I have to go by is the groups of women I know.  And that makes anything I say society-oriented biased.  But these election results don't lie.  When women won't vote for the first women president there is a reason.  One is clearly she is just hated by a lot of people no matter her gender.  But if you are looking for other potential "real" reasons, I'd bet these are some of the main ones.

But that is also why I don't think this is watershed change in all politics that some are saying.  I think this was a lot of pent up frustration all hitting at the exact same time.  The perfect storm of political backlash.  I doubt it lasts.  But I was clearly wrong about this election so what the hell do I know.

You don't have to answer this, but curious what "social" issues the kids were exposed to that would have pushed towards Trump vs Hillary?

 

[HellToupee]

How much is the Clinton foundation pulling in today?

:crickets:

 

[Zow]

I'm just gonna park this here, because this guy is basically one of the most reasonable people on the internet, all the time.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/11/its-going-to-be-okay.html

I like this.  But the ending question, "why did 50 million people vote for trump" scares me to answer. 

 

[Capella]

This was the first Presidential election in a while without the Voting Rights Act.  Over 900 polling places that were open in 2012 closed for this cycle, mostly in minority neighborhoods.  

Guess what. 

Only going to get worse too with this supermajority they're going to have. 

(Loud sigh)

 

[BassNBrew]

I like this.  But the ending question, "why did 50 million people vote for trump" scares me to answer. 

If you were making a living producing something tangible rather than chasing ambulances or defending deplorables, you might know the answer.

 

[JIslander]

Guess what. 

Only going to get worse too with this supermajority they're going to have. 

(Loud sigh)

Yep, we were supposed to set clocks back an hour on Sunday and remember not to set country back 50 yrs on Tuesday. Oh well.

 

[Jrodicus]

Trump voters don't have 401k's.

I thought the GOP was the party of the rich elite?

 

[Dickies]

I thought the GOP was the party of the rich elite?

They are, but 1% of the vote doesn't win an election.

 

[Chaos Commish]

I like this.  But the ending question, "why did 50 million people vote for trump" scares me to answer. 

Because they didn't vote for Hillary. That's not scary. It's going to be okay.

 

[Jrodicus]

They are, but 1% of the vote doesn't win an election.

Would you be surprised to know that more of the 1% votes for Dems than the GOP?

 

[Gary Coal Man]

I thought the GOP was the party of the rich elite?

Therein lies one of the great political shifts in American history that has slowly but surely occurred over the last several decades.

The Democrat Party used to be the party of the white working class, and the white working class in turn heavily voted Democrat.  

The Republican Party, on the other hand, used to be the party of affluent white people with college degrees or higher.  

Those two situations have essentially flopped where the GOP now has far more white working class support, and the Dems now have far greater support among affluent whites with advanced degrees.

Similarly, the Republican Party used to be the party more heavily backed by corporate money, while the Dems used be get a greater percentage of their contributions among individual donors.  We've witnessed a steady shift on this front as well over the last few decades, and in this particular election it was quite profound.  Nearly all the corporate money went for Clinton, while Trump was primarily powered by individual donations.

It's been quite a political shift to behold, and it played a major part in this election's outcome.

 

[Jrodicus]

Therein lies one of the great political shifts in American history that has slowly but surely occurred over the last several decades.

The Democrat Party used to be the party of the white working class, and the white working class in turn heavily voted Democrat.  

The Republican Party, on the other hand, used to be the party of affluent white people with college degrees or higher.  

Those two situations have essentially flopped where the GOP now has far more white working class white, and the Dems now have far greater support among affluent whites with advanced degrees.

Similarly, the Republican Party used to be the party more heavily backed by corporate money, while the Dems used be get a greater percentage of their contributions among individual donors.  We've witnessed a steady shift on this front as well over the last few decades, and in this particular election it was quite profound.  Nearly all the corporate money went for Clinton, while Trump was primarily powered by individual donations.

It's been quite a political shift to behold, and it played a major part in this election's outcome.

There are many here that refuse to believe any former Dems voted for Trump.  The fact that they are so disconnected is part of the reason for the shift.