* 3am on the east coast? In hindsight, sure, it was wrapped up quickly but on the night of, with networks refusing to call states and Hillary refusing to concede, it dragged on forever. Despite Trumps bigly leads when Podesta came out on stage I went to bed expecting to wake up to a Hillary Win based on magically “finding” more previously uncounted ballots. It definitely didn’t feel like it was over fast.
* …it was always a given that the race hinged on what happened in the East and Midwest. The only Western state that was ever really in any doubt was Arizona, and it turned out he didn’t need it. People claimed he stood a chance at losing Utah, but I don’t think that was ever really going to happen. Trump’s Utah totals were more than twice as as high as Chamber of Commerce/Neocon buttboy Evan McMullin, and his unpopularity with Mormons is probably the only reason Arizona was ever so close.
That map is just another reminder that Republicans have been warned about immigration. Nevada and Colorado may very well be lost for good.
Another great outcome of this election was the vote in four states to increase the minimum wage. One of the states which did so was Arizona. Between that and Trump, the business lobby has been put on notice that their open borders policies won’t be tolerated any longer. It will be interesting to see if higher minimum wages have any effect on reducing immigration. I suspect they will.
* The polls weren’t ‘wrong’, they were deliberately skewed for Clinton; in the tank for their candidate as much as CNN, MSNBC, et al. And they were feeding the real, correct numbers to the Clinton campaign.
Five days before the vote, Clinton’s campaign cancelled the expensive and Coast Guard licensed fireworks display, long-planned for her victory celebration.
They knew.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s called crony capitalism, the oligarchy, ruling uniparty, fascism, or class solidarity. The information available to the public was coordinated, centrally-dictated disinformation; pure propaganda to influence voter behavior.
* My guess was that there was a plan to steal the election for Clinton that was (partially) aborted at the last minute for unknown reasons. The only explanation I can think of is that the security issues turned out to be worse than the “establishment” had realized and people came to the conclusion that the Clintons really couldn’t be let back into the White House, nor was she going to step down voluntarily in favor of Kaine. So they went to Plan C of letting Trump become President, with the further fallback option of being able to impeach and remove him later if needed.
I thought it was a long night myself, Trump needed to carry Pennsylvania in just about all scenarios and that wasn’t called until 3 AM, and Michigan still hasn’t been formally called for some reason.
* Much of the preference for hiring immigrants is due to the opinion that they are more controllable/ less uppity than native born American workers (both Black and White), plus if they are illegal they can be threatened with deportation.
Many “Hispanic” immigrants are actually American Indians and have a sort of stoic culture that employers like.
* There were Democrats and Never Trump Republicans on CNN & MSNBC who were predicting that Crooked Hildabeast was going to defeat Donald J. Trump in a Ronald Reagan Walter Mondale style Electoral landslide.
It shows how extremely out of touch Democrats and Never Trump Republicans in Washington DC, Los Angeles and New York City are for believing Crooked Hildabeast was going to sweep Flyover Country and turn it all into a sea of blue.
It shows how extremely out of touch the Democrats and Never Trump Republicans are for believing Crooked Hildabeast in 2016 is anywhere as loved by the American people as Ronald Reagan was in 1984.
These Democrats and Never Trump Republicans live in their own Left Wing bubbles where they do not personally know anybody in their circle of friends and family who doesn’t believe Crooked Hildabeast is the greatest thing to happen to Mankind since the invention of the airplane.
* When Podesta came out (about 1 or 2am Central time) and gave his spiel “every vote counts, still counting, etc.” I thought for sure a few car trunkloads of “forgotten” ballots would be found in Philly and Detroit. Then just a little while later Trump gives his victory speech and says Hillary called him to concede. I’m still genuinely curious what happened that night. Was Hill too drunk/enraged to give a proper concession speech, like rumors suggest? Or did she want to fight on but the fixers told her it was too late to “find” more ballots?
* I had the feeling that, with Comey’s first announcement, there was a crisis of confidence in Clinton within the ruling class. It seemed maybe Comey’s announcement expressed more than caused this crisis, which was precipitated primarily by WikiLeaks. You can’t have a politician who’s revealed to say she has public positions and separate (real) private positions for rich donors.
After the Comey letter, Clinton retreated to mudslinging and women’s identity politics (apparently struggling to hold the white, middle-class women’s vote). On columnist (whose name I don’t recall, a Harvard political scientist I think) opined presciently that the one way Clinton could lose is if she turns the election into a woman against man contest. And that’s what she ultimately did.
* In Colorado, more people voted Republican for congress than voted Democrat.
Congress:
47.8% GOP
46.7% Dem
5.3% Libertarian
President:
48.1% Clinton
43.4% Trump
5.2% Johnson
1.4% Stein
1.0% Egg McMuffin
So roughly 3% points of Clinton’s vote was #NeverTrump GOP votes who turned around and voted for Paul Ryan and the GOP majority in the House.
Something similar occurred in Virginia.
Congress:
50.5% GOP
48.3% Dem
1.0% Libertarian
A Libertarian only ran in 3 of Virginia’s 11 districts for Congress, but they got the same level of votes Johnson got in those districts.
President:
49.8% Clinton
44.4% Trump
3.0% Johnson
0.7% Stein
1.4% Egg McMuffin
So again, the McMuffin vote, about 4% of the GOP voters pulling Clinton and GOP for congress, and defectors to Johnson cost Trump the state.
Trump lost Nevada by 2.35% in the end. Given that he lost the popular vote nationally by 1.25%, this means Nevada still leans slightly Democratic (0.5% points). If Trump had won a simple majority, he would have likely won Nevada. Trump was actually much closer to winning Nevada than Romney was – Romney lost by 6.7%.
In the end, #NeverTrump cost Trump victory in Colorado, Virginia, Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire, and Nevada, and Trump still won the election comfortably. It would have been an even more convincing 350-188 win in the Electoral College and a 50-46 or 51-46 win in the popular vote without their efforts to sabotage his election. When you hear people talking about him losing the popular vote or the election being “close”, keep that in mind.
* Some observations partly based on volunteer time since Aug-
-WI pro-Trump sympathies prone to go underground due to greater concern about social acceptability. In particular, WI-1, Ryan’s district is extraordinarily timorous, apathetic, conformist. Was milquetoast Les Aspin’s district, and it will be far harder to repeat a Cantor-style primary ouster. Just ask Paul Nehlen
-IL, NY, CA, OR, CO, NM poll data is skewed by pockets of heavy voter fraud going under the radar, so DEM support is undercounted.
-NV poll data is worthless, and there is likely fraud in parts of Vegas. Nobody answers their phones there. Is southern NV not the most rootless place in the history of the world?
-Trump’s MI support was quite strong in the U.P., and people there were surprisingly candid about it -some would thank you effusively for supporting him. Why are MI voters less intimidated by the Hive narrative vs their neighbors? Probably cause they’ve endured austerity for so long, they don’t give a damn about media approval anymore.
-OH Trump support is probably at such a critical mass that folks feel there is no longer as much social censure risk. One surprise is how big the unassimilated Somali community is in Columbus. That may be startling some folks in central OH to embrace immigration control. OH is also becoming more like southern states in terms of white vote migration to the GOP with heightened concern about nonwhite criminality, & welfare abuse.
* Steve, you need to find the relative approval rating of the HIVE media narrative (or generic % approval or “trust in the media as as institution”) in various states to see where the Trump vote is most likely to be either driven underground, or to be cowed into not voting, or going NeverTrump. Suspect the Hive & SJW peer pressure has more power in CO than in MI for example. Things like newspaper subscription rates, % of full slate cable television payees, etc will be clues.
* I’d heard about the fireworks thing. Despite that, Hillary seemed quite shaken up for someone who had prior warning. But she was not the most grounded of people.
The following goes against my general philosophy of interrupting an opponent when they are making a mistake, but the election is over now and so my desire to gloat overrides whatever happens in 2020 (and by that time we will see an even bigger league Trump landslide, so not so worried there).
Of the swing states, it’s interesting that only Nevada was under-predicted for Clinton. I suspect this was a function of Trump’s more efficient use of resources and better tactics (but wouldn’t this show up in the polls?). In any case, Trump did better than predicted there.
I donated to Trump early (back when he offered to match me), and I found it interesting that Trump kept asking me (and everyone else who donated) what we thought the biggest issues were, and asked advice on how to handle the debates. I doubt Clinton did stuff like that.
Someone mentioned Nixon’s timing. A candidate has to peak at the right moment. That right moment is on election day, and days leading up to it. Naturally, Trump was keeping powder dry for use in the home straight – his campaign spending ramps up only right at the end compared to Clinton.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-numbers-us-presidential-election-2016-a7392136.html
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/heres-where-clinton-trump-spent-on-their-ground-games.html
Looking at the “Where they spent” graph, it furthers my point on campaign spending efficiency. Clinton evidently spent big in IL. Why? It was just wasted money. But the Florida amount looks wrong, so I did some more digging.
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-tv-ads/
Again, it is telling how Trump was nearly matching Clinton in the swing states close to election time. Since he didn’t have as much money spent, he used it in areas he could get more bang per buck.
As an “internet president”, Trump also spent nearly his Media budget on Digital Consulting/Online Advertising. Clinton bought mostly media.
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising/
Trump also spent the least, normalized, for a winning Republican president since 1960. George HW Bush looked to be close, but he was following Reagan. GHWB’s similar spend the following cycle was not enough. Under budget, and exceeding expectations.
http://metrocosm.com/2016-election-spending/
It goes to the point I made months ago here that Trump would beat Clinton because he’s more competitive, and does a better job of matching his strengths with the weaknesses of others.
Getting back to the original point that the pollsters under-predicted the swing states, I guess if they are manipulating the figures then they would have to under-predict the swing states. Maybe they thought they could make it seem less corrupt by over-predicting states such as Cali.
