Luke Ford

A Jewish friend says: There is an obvious divergence in the polls, with the Los Angeles Times’ poll the outlier.  It has a different polling methodology in that the same persons have been polled since the polling started so it does reflect voters changing their minds.  Whether it is more accurate than traditional polling methods drawing a different sample to poll will be proven after the results are in.
 
Almost all the national polls show a “tightening” of the race, especially since Comey made his announcement a couple of weeks ago.  It also remains to be seen whether Comey’s memo of today makes any meaningful difference in the results.
 
Politico ran a story earlier this week based on a Morning Consult Poll that they said showed that there isn’t much difference in how persons say they will vote based on whether they are  interviewed by a human being or responding to on-line anonymous questions.  The theory was that Trump supporters may be reluctant to admit their support of Trump to a human being.  Overall Trump did narrow the gap based on the entire sample from 5 points to 3 points, and among those earning $50K a year or more from 10 points to 1 point.
 
There also is a big difference in the samples for some polls among, registered voters, likely voters and voters who have made up their mind.  Apparently Trump holds a not insignificant lead among voters who have decided who they will vote for.
 
Some sites that fervently back Trump-The Conservative Treehouse and The Gateway Pundit – think that there is a “monster vote” out there of up to 73 million persons who will cast ballots for Trump.  Since most projections are the total number of  voters will be around 120 million persons, this would, if true, deliver a blow out-mandate type of election.  
 
Virtually, all establishment pundits and pollsters have weighed in that this won’t happen.
 
The Trump supporters also say that the clear enthusiasm gap between the Trump personal appearances at rallies and those of Clinton show that Trump voters are more numerous and more committed to vote than the Clinton supporters.  It is worth recalling that this same pattern was raised by Mitt Romney supporters in 2012 because he was filling areas with fervent supporters, yet he lost the election by a margin predicted by the polls.
 
Before I get to the prediction of the election, if Trump wins the election, it will  be the death knell for traditional political consultants and even traditional grass roots activism and get out the vote operations.  It will be very damaging to those who create, buy and broadcast political advertising.  It will be very damaging to traditional media ways of covering elections.  (Much of this media damage will be self inflicted because of the obviously one sided coverage of the campaign to favor Clinton, and the rest because the Wikileaks reveals the close relationship between many of the top “reporters” and the Democrats.  I think that most persons realize that reporters and journalists have to cultivate sources and relationships, but much of what has been released in the emails goes far beyond that)  However if Clinton wins the election almost everyone who would be shook up by a Trump victory will go back to  business as usual, although there will a continuing diminution, at least as far as the press goes, in influence, since traditional print media are all losing money, and a significant minority (if not an outright majority) no longer trusts the mass media.
 
The election will come down to a few states.   What is clear is that African American participation (relative to the rest of the electorate) is down and that a higher percentage of Blacks will support Trump than have supported Republican presidential candidates in decades.  It does look like Latino participation is up, but it really must be  broken down into subgroups of Latinos- Mexicans, Central Americans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans.
 
The Cubans are typically a strong Republican contingent  and are very important to the Republicans in Florida.  However, as a result of the economic distress in Puerto Rico, a number of Puerto Ricans, who typically support Democrats are voting in Florida.  Large numbers of Mexican and Central American immigrants now live in all parts of the country.  However, a large percentage of them outside the Southwest (California, Nevada, Arizona, New  Mexico and Texas) are illegals and should not be able to vote. 
 
It is not exactly clear how strong Clinton’s support among women is.  She certainly has the strong backing of single or unmarried women over fifty, but this may not be true for married women or younger women.  Since this is the centerpiece of her support, how these demographics break will be instrumental in calling the election. 
 
It is also not clear whether millennials (or Bernie Bros) will support Clinton.   Clinton’s campaigning is based on stirring up fear among this group of Trump presidency, but their personal loyalty to Sanders, in light of the Wikileaks comments about Sanders) and Clinton’s continuing close relationship with investment banks may either lead them to abstain for voting or even vote for Trump. 
 
In terms of watching the election, if Clinton carries Florida, she will win the election.  If Trump carries Florida, North Carolina and New Hampshire and either carries or comes close in Virginia, Trump will likely win.  If Trump does not come close in Virginia, we have to wait until we see the results of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.  If Trump carries Pennsylvania he will likely win.   If he carries Michigan and either Wisconsin or Minnesota he will likely win.
 
Pat Caddell, Jimmy Carter’s pollster, who has been very critical of the Democrats, says Trump can win if he points out how he and Clinton differ on the issues, since Trump’s positions are more popular.  Trump has not followed this advice  but rather run the 2 minute commercial, now criticized as anti semitic by Josh Marshall and Al Franken.   Scott Adams thinks the commercial is very persuasive and that Clinton cannot really  counter it.
 
My prediction is that Trump will win the election, although narrowly and not in a blow out.   This despite the superior “ground game” that Clinton has, her early voting advantage (although this has been disputed) and despite the unprecedented intervention in the election by Obama who is more popular by far than either Trump or Clinton and fears he has stirred up against Trump. 
 
Despite this prediction, it is possible that Clinton will pull it out, and it is not impossible that Trump will win the electoral vote yet lose the popular vote by a margin of a million or more opening himself up to attacks that his presidency lacks consensus and is illegitimate.
 
Assuming there is no ongoing litigation challenging some state’s results, the time between the election and inauguration will be most interesting.  I don’t think any outgoing president has attacked the other parties candidates in such harsh terms – yet Trump and Obama will have to work together for the transition.   There is the possibility that the Republican congress may enact legislation that they know they can’t get through under Trump for Obama to sign, creating even more fissures in the Republican party.
 
I do think the consequence of the demonization by each candidate of the other, will certainly lead to protests, likely lead to riots and possibly lead to insurrection by the followers of the defeated candidate.

Comments:

* All these years it seemed Trump was just a flamboyant real estate developer and producer of beauty pageants. But now it’s apparent he’d been paying attention to all sorts of subjects all along. This comes as something of a surprise. He actually has a coherent world view unlike most others who offer disconnected homilies about this or that small issue. What did Romney stand for? Can anybody remember?

* For the Republican side, this election has never been about Trump, but the issues that only he had the guts and patriotism to raise. It is the Democrats who wanted this election to be about Trump the man, and they got what they wanted.

* Heck, things would be looking different if just the GOPe hadn’t actively tried to sabotage him.

Meanwhile, Ari Fleischer pens a column in Jeff Bezos’ blog announcing that he will not vote for Trump.

* It was a great ad – runs directly counter to the bleating narrative of the Left and NeverTrump Right that Trump is an authoritarian. That was just straight up meat and potatoes populism.

It would be very fitting if Michigan or Pennsylvania give Trump the victory. The rust belt will rise again!

* Ironically, the four minute selectively edited video from Michael Moore’s new documentary has gone a long way to help explaining a Trumpian coherent, big picture worldview.

In other words, I’ll be voting for Trump on Tuesday because Michael Moore endorsed him and persuaded me that I should vote for a person who’s not a Romney globalist, pro-Wall Street, pro-Invade and Invite the world, etc.

* I find it pretty astonishing that people are dismissing Trump’s chances in this election.

He’s down by only 2% in the national poll average at this point.

Any number of factors can put him over the top:

Generally, in a change election, voters break toward the challenger.

Turnout for Trump’s base may be distinctly higher than expected because of their far greater enthusiasm — and turnout for Hillary distinctly lower because of far lower enthusiasm than for, say, Obama.

There may well be a Shy Trump effect, as there was in Brexit (which accounted for at minimum a 4%, and perhaps up to 7%, discrepancy between the final poll averages and the electoral outcome.)

Any one of these factors could take Trump over the top, and in a perfect storm in which all played a role, could give him a dominant win.

Of course it may be that none of these things really affect the outcome, and that he loses.

But from my point of view, the factors that are now unknowable will be the decisive ones in this election. I can see no reason to assume his chances are worse — or better — than 50-50, given that we can’t know how they will work out. A 2% difference, given all the unknowables in this highly variable and unprecedented election seems negligible to me.

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Single, childless women are a danger to society. Some of the most hardline, butthurt SJWs are single white women. Single men aren’t great either, but their dysfunction is mostly inward and less likely to manifest as ideology.

Big, traditional families are more conservative, and single people tend to be more childish with immature views of the world. The way of the world. This is true for non-whites as well, except most express their racial conservatism by voting Democrat.

I believe the solution is to reform academia. College education has very negative impact on birth rates and family formation. If Trump gets in, he needs to defund/gut the colleges of humanities/social justice courses (many of which attract naive young women). Without them, there would either be fewer women in college, or fewer indoctrinated college women. And definitely fewer leftists.

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Trump seems to have gone all in on the Sailer strategy. And despite everything, he is still in this. Even if he loses, as long as it isn’t a landslide, I think it vindicates the theory. Someone who never talked about grabbing pussy on tape will run with it, and we will call that person president.

* The Sailer hypothesis ignores the obvious point John Deryshire makes often: sociologically and culturally speaking, there are no whites, there are goodwhites and badwhites. Everything you can do to max out the badwhite vote drives down your share of the goodwhite vote (some moderate goodwhites vote R over taxes and what not).

This whole election has also totally disproved another Sailer hypothesis, that the electoral map can be shaken up by changing the GOP’s policies. Reality: Trump will win the exact same states as McCain and Romney +/- 3.

What you are left with is “Sailerism by Default”, relying on the badwhite vote whilst making futile attempts to reach out to goodwhites and nonwhites, which is what, in one form of another, every GOP candidate, including Trump, has been doing for 20 years.

* Trump has grokked this distinction. He is maxing out badwhite turnout with his downscale MAGA message while stanching the loss of goodwhites by hammering on Hillary’s unique history of brazen public corruption. It just might work.

* Trump is running a different campaign where he defies the establishment ideas like amnesty which are deeply unpopular across both goodwhites and badwhites, as well as blacks, and even many of the Hispanics who’ve been here legally.

Have you ever seen any other Republican presidential candidate have a black homeless woman stumping for him who gets kicked around by angry Hispanics?

Comments:

* Also, what is with Steve being so smug in this post? I guess he doesn’t like Trump. Well la ti da. That fact combined with a love of the musical abomination known as Hamilton will finally earn him a big goose egg.

Was the last fifteen years of being an iconoclast leading to something, or was it just a niche way to present your nominally superior IQ?

* I love how “Pervert Anthony Weiner” sounds like an official title.

* Coming up with those names has been one of Trump’s strong points since before the primaries started. Crooked Hillary, Lying Ted, Low-Energy Jeb; they all stick really well.

I guess it should bother me that a primary strength of the guy I voted for is name-calling, but sound bites trump nuanced debate every time.

* Abramovic is a “famous” conceptual artist. That “spirit cooking” stuff was just some stupid conceptual “art”. John Podesta is an Italian-American guy who likes to cook Italian cuisine. This is really grasping at straws.

* I followed along with one of their Podesta leak dissections. 90% of the time the e-mails never actually said what they thought they said. They would think there were massive revelations to be found in negative Hillary articles the campaign was simply sharing among themselves. Sometimes they even missed the important ones the leftie journalists picked up.

Reddit should be wall-to-wall why globalism is bad, illegal immigration is going up, is bad for jobs, Americans, borders are practically wide open, Hillary is for war (#DraftOurDaughters was hilarious), etc., etc.

Everything Chris Matthews said recently.

But in the final stretch they’re chasing squirrels like a bunch of clowns. It’s almost like they’ve been suckered by a disinformation campaign. So what if it’s true? The election is days away and you’re probably converting people to Hillary with what is, at this stage, TruePundit InfoWars David Icke (Satanic pedo rings are an Icke fave) tier conspiracy theorizing.

* I’m suspecting that “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” may go down as one of the great lines of the 21st century.

* I saw someone else describing the FBI Records account as “weaponizing the autism” of the chans and reddit to find the code that Podesta is describing and it seems like they might be right.

* We are being governed by a bunch of clowns who wouldn’t be competent enough to organize a church bake sale, yet they seriously regard themselves as philosopher kings. They habitually talk among themselves as if they are omnicompetent, superbly discerning technocrats, and yet their private communications reveal them to be nothing more than DMV clerks with Ivy League degrees.

I mean, I always suspected that this was the case, but the Wikileaks stuff just confirms it in depressing detail.

We are, as Noonan said, being patronized by our inferiors. These idiots display the egomania of Patton and MacArthur, yet their private communications show them to be searching for prop wash and blinker fluid while wondering which end of the rifle to point at the enemy.

That alone should be more than enough to piss people off.

* If she’s still on cumadin, the thyroid medication, AND drinking, she’s playing with fire. Sooner or later, it’s gonna kick her in the ass, like when she collapsed getting into that van.
Cumadin is tough stuff. It’s not like taking a vitamin. It messes with body and brain. Call it a deal with the devil. It’s better to take it, with all it’s long-term negative effects, than to die. It’ll take it’s physical and mental toll on her. You can count on it.