Summations Only

That's exactly what they tried to do. Pennsylvania was thought to be as much of a lock as California. The same for Michigan. The voter models they were using to tell them where to spend their money was wrong, and no one really knew it was wrong until after the election. What they saw was higher than expected voter turn out in rural areas in some states, with Pennsylvania being a perfect example.As the old saying goes, hindsight is 20/20.Added in edit:Here are some links for the polling data leading up to the election. The polling in both Pennsylvania and Michigan look pretty good for Clinton, especially so in Penn where Republicans hadn't won in quite some time:realclearpolitics.comrealclearpolitics.com A lot of that has to do with voter turnout as well. The demographics that tend to vote Republican have traditionally turned out in higher numbers in off year elections. Obama was sponsored by large corporations, and he kicked ass. Obama was as Republican Lite as it gets. Even his healthcare plan was a Republican plan. Obama crushed it in the voting booth.I can't help but lean towards the old saw that Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. Personality has a lot to do with getting elected, and Hillary just flat out lacked personality.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

It's really the electorates. Your opinion is erroneous. If the electorate suggests the Democrats should swing more to the right - if the indication is there are more votes to pick up on the right than would be dropped to the left, then that's the way the Democrats should go in order to win the election. The radar exists, I'm just arguing for making it more precise. I'm hoping it will better detect if and when the Party swings leftwards but I accept willingly the opposite can and occasionally at least, will, happen. You've confused the point. I was talking about the Democrat nominee who, once nominated would win the most that could be won by any given Democrat candidate. We can't know who this would be in a given election, though we may have opinions, in part because the nomination system essentially obfuscates information. My main point was general to any election, not simply this specific one.This election is interesting as means to discussing this particular issue because the margins were small, the vocal defectors on the left seem significant in number, it was recent and the second place candidate in the primaries did comparably well - 55:43 - it may not have been the case, but it is possible that an approval system could be sufficient to swing this to the second place candidate, and this might have translated to a different main election result given the small margins in said election. Yes I do think that. Because in this scenario he would have gained the approval of more of the Democrat party primary voters, ie., gained more votes in the primaries than Clinton. Since that system wasn't used, and since that result did not take place, you just invented the outcome in the Presidential election should it happen.Unless you have access to alternate realities? So you think that if the majority of the DNC approved of Sanders over Clinton, they'd lose more votes than if the candidate with lower approval was nominated. I imagine many Clinton supporters may go to Trump if they couldn't stand Sanders which would increase Trump's count where Sanders supporters may have more veered towards the left where the votes don't have as big an impact. But then, you've not really discussed numbers whenever I've asked about them so I'm having to imagine where you think those votes would go. I doubt the phrase 'all the time' meaning 'often', 'regularly', 'routinely', 'frequently' is only a British thing. Can we agree that the fact that vote numbers go up, by the degree that they do, with the regularity they do, means that absolute vote numbers are not a suitable tool of comparison with over a century of vote results? That one can only make sensible comparisons like this if absolute numbers remain highly stable, which in the four year jumpiness of elections in a country with population growing between 1.5% and 0.7% per year over the past 50 years? Especially given that this means the population has doubled in the last 50 years? That this means percentages are better tools for doing historical comparisons?

It was inconceivable that he could win in 2016. Our conceptions are clearly not adequate to deal with a cannon as loose as him.

I think it's when you say things like, "The popular vote number has no bearing on the Presidency," (Message 1416) that leads people to think you believe the electoral college outcome is somehow not connected to the popular vote in any important way. So they follow a train of argument based on that, but that's not what you meant, so of course confusion results.That's why I suggested that you and Rrhain don't need to argue over nomenclature (Message 1428). You both know the difference between the electoral college and the popular vote, and you both know that one is a direct function of the other.I was also trying to suggest that it seemed to Rrhain (and often to me, too) that you appeared to be placing all the importance on the electoral college and none on the popular vote. The way you phrase things often suggests this, so it's an interpretation that's hard to escape.We all understand that the electoral college outcome determines who becomes president, but I think that each time you repeat something like (sic), "Only the electoral college determines the president," that it's not going to be interpreted the way you intend, that people are going to think you're ignoring the connection to the popular vote, and you're going to have to explain yet again that you're not ignoring that connection, and then we'll be back on the merry-go-round you allude to later in the message. Regarding how the popular vote maps onto the electoral college? The likelihood of further discussion on this topic resulting in progress seems small, so maybe we should just let it lie. Interesting, but we already haven't agreed on much, so adding something new to the mix doesn't seem like a good idea. You *are* arguing both, just not at the same time. When you argue one it often seems that you do it to the exclusion of the other. It feels as if you're holding too opposite opinions at the same time. I think you were just trying to restate my position, but this actually misstates it. Were you maybe trying to say, "Yes, we agree that voting for someone other than Clinton while *expecting* Clinton would win *anyway* resulted in ironic consequences for those people who did this."? Yeah, I guess you could say that, and I think it's a strong position. Certainly every day brings more "consequences of a Trump presidency." He's not just worse than we imagined, he's worse than we could ever have imagined. It does not appear that there's a corner in Trump's future that he will turn and begin to become more rational, more constructive, more compassionate, less vindictive, and less vengeful. The trend is in the opposite direction. He's clearly becoming a worse and worse danger in many realms of the nation and the world. If you haven't yet read Jeff Flake's speech to the Senate I still recommend it. I link to it in a message above. It's just simple logic. I agree that there are confounding factors, like irrational voters and voters whose main issues don't break down along the familiar Democrat/Republican lines. I used to feel that factors like these were small enough to be safely ignored, but after learning that 10% of Sanders supporters voted for Trump I'm no longer so sure. We've covered this ground before, and my answer hasn't changed. I'm not a Democrat (neither are you in your role as a hypothetical American, and neither is Sanders). I hope both parties bring the best possible candidates forward. True, but I thought I was clear about this earlier. This time explaining using your example, you don't want to go back as far as Reagan, that was over a quarter century ago, but you can probably go back the last 5 or 6 elections without population increases overwhelming the comparison. True. It's false because the number of voters vary randomly by far greater percentages than 0.05%. It's false because it was only the week before the election that Comey reopened the email server investigation. It's false because it was Clinton who was targeted by Russian generated fake news.Speaking of fake news, you're probably not even aware of the extent to which it influenced your opinions about Clinton. I know my own opinions were affected. It wasn't that I believed any specific story or stories, and in fact I was probably unaware of many of them since I'm not a social media user, but I do remember being aware of so much negative Clinton news that it felt like one of those "where there's smoke there's fire" situations. I don't think anyone was immune to the flood of fake news. This is true. Yes, more would definitely have helped. On a rational level I know that some Clinton voters would have switched to Trump were Sanders the Democratic nominee, but I can't ignore the insanity that is Trump and so can't see how anyone in the political vicinity of the Democrats and in their right mind could ever vote for Trump.--Percy

This subdiscussion began when you said in Message 1404 in reference to the Democrats selecting a better candidate in 2020: That's your opinion, not the electorate's. You hope there's a type of "radar" available in the form of an improved primary process that will identify this person. And you hope that because you want the Democrats to select a candidate that you can vote for. And that makes no sense because you're not really a Democrat - they're too far to the right for you. What you actually hope for is what Sander's (also not a Democrat) was trying to do, come in from the far left and win the Democratic nomination.What you really want, and the opinion you have that we're really talking about, is a political party of national prominence that is a fair degree to the left of the Democrats. Well, maybe those are the words you're saying, but what you really want is a radar that's biased toward the left. Yes, you consider a gradual leftward swing inevitable, with the occasional setback. 60/40 by delegate count, which is analogous to the electoral college - and that's all that's important, right? D'oh! Sorry, my interpretation of how you were using the phrase must have gone astray somehow. When I said we don't seem to be getting anywhere I was referring to far more than just this numbers thing, but about this specifically, yes, of course, I said as much in my previous message. Yes, of course. The statement about Clinton receiving the 2nd most vote total in history was a response to the charge that "too many" disliked her, which was not a statement expressed as a percentage. Obviously many liked her plenty well enough to vote for her.--Percy

By doing better, I mean 'get more votes'. To get more votes you need the electorate to get behind you. It's very much the electorate to which I am referring. If they want my vote they need to push to the left, but my vote (and the votes of others with similar opinions) may not be all that important to victory. I would like the Democrat Party to move leftwards as they are the leftmost major party, naturally. But the radar I am talking about is one which better assesses, not my view, but where the votes will fall. I would certainly hope that the electorate is more left in 2020, but that's not material to whether a better system should be implemented. No. I want the electorate to be biased towards the left and for a radar to pick that up. But if it is biased to the right, the radar should equally pick that up. I'm not sure why you are taking my explicitly saying this repeatedly and deciding you know my position better, but please - here it is again:The approval method selects the candidate that is approved of by the most primary voters. This can't be left biased, since it is not given that the primary voters approve mostly of the leftmost candidate. That's right...and? For victory in the present DNC system, yes it is.But that's not really relevant to what I was talking about, which is using the Primary voters' approval to approximate the electorate's approval. *hat tip* Naturally - plenty of people voted for. An awful lot of them. Too many did not vote for her to pull her out of the risky marginal zone where luck and the college become factors that can confound expectations. The 'in history' part of the claim was where my objection lay. If the claim had been 'she got many votes' I'd have certainly not argued with you. I'd have not argued with 'she got the most votes'. The 'in history' bit was the sticking point.

Can we agree that the statement 'Clinton won the election' is false and move on, then? As you like. Just don't criticize me for not addressing causes if you demur from discussing them when I explicitly do, please. Again, as you like. I thought we had some area of agreement in this area, but if you don't want to discuss new things, and you want to avoid going over the same things again, it does rather limit us. I think this may be an artefact of you taking my arguments one at a time in exclusion to others - and not attempting to bind my positions together into an overarching position. I don't feel they are opposing. Do you really see them as opposing? Let me condense themThe election is determined by the electoral college. Trump won this.Clinton winning the popular vote but losing the election is as banal a point as saying 'the electoral college exists'.However, give her popular advantage only a small number of extra votes may have shifted the electoral college results.In order to be assured of victory you need a good margin. 2% is not sufficient. 3% is not sufficient - though historically it has worked it comes with some very narrow results in key States. 5% is probably enough to have a confident win, though not guaranteed, given the correlation between winning the Presidency and popular votes.A different candidate may have earned more votes in the Presidential election, achieving that approximately 5% margin.That possibility suggests a different selection method is something to considerOr perhaps a change in the distribution of a State's electoral votes - this won't eradicate the bumpiness, but it reduces the the importance of swing states which seems a good idea.I don't vote against candidates, I vote for them.However, I will consider voting for candidates of lefter major parties if they are left of the prior candidate to encourage this trend.Otherwise I will vote in such a way as to make clear that votes were dropped and approximately where so as to make visible to Party analysts where votes might be picked up next time. No, I said it the way I meant it. Are you saying you disagree with the area of agreement I attempted to find? But yes, that's seems ironic too. I read it. It's a good speech. I disagree with Moose regarding the running from a fight type characterisation. Though there is merit in staying and fighting - there is also a power in saying 'I shall not be in a government that has that man Presiding'. Hrm. I'm not seeing the logic. It seems seated in assumptions or opinions about the electorate. Without an empirical backing, logic has the habit of being used to confirm what you believed, rather than discovering truth. That's why the rationalists ended up making way for the rational empiricists as the preferred philosophy. 5 maybe - which is what I did earlier. She beat both of Dubya's, and came behind both of Obamas. In this light - it looks quite a bit less impressive. Going back to Bill Clinton and the US population was 270 million - some 50 million less than today. So it definitely breaks down by this point. The population was still under 300million for the Dubya elections. Indeed. One also wonders then if many of Clinton's votes were a function of her opponent - from those that were voting against Trump.As generally unpopular the word 'social' is in US discourse, I expect Sanders may have also done much better than normal expectations due merely to the opponent in question. Against a more reasonable Republican I'd predict Sanders would have done worse.That 10% of Sanders is nearly 1.5 million votes to subtract from Trump and give to Sanders - which is certainly significant. That said - the States Sanders won in the primaries {where most of those supporters were obviously} are quite well correlated with the States Clinton won in the Presidential election so it may have turned into a bigger popular vote but still a loss of the electoral college! Pennsylvania and Ohio are exceptions to this - notably, so that's something to consider in the analysis.

Since 1875 the GOP has won the POTUS electoral college 4 times while losing the popular vote. 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016.The Democrats have never won this way. The score is 4-0 so far.

Well she had a negative image long before November. Exactly, the model was wrong because they didn't look at rural working people and rural unemployed -- so Trump picked them up. Especially when you factor in Hillary's comments to the coal miners -- that was a major mistake. The rust belt was more Trump than Hillary because she didn't have anything for them other than more years of Obama II, when they got nothing to bail them out. Catering to Wall Street over people was her biggest mistake.Enjoy

The electorate produces the election result, but that's obvious and not what we're talking about. Your opinion, what we're really talking about, is that Clinton was a weaker candidate than Sanders and that a better primary process would have selected Sanders who you believe had a better chance of beating Trump. Well, sure, we all want that, but your criticism of the current process and the way you assess evidence is rooted in the fact that you think you know a process that would have selected the "right" candidate. Would you be pushing this same process if you believe it would have selected the "wrong" candidate? You mentioned IRV voting earlier, which has strengths that approval voting does not, since approval voting can be gamed by the voters (for example, by knowing that making a second choice may weaken the chances of their first choice) and the possibility that the majority's top choice could lose. For reasons like these I just can't escape the notion that you're pushing approval voting because you think it would have yielded the results you wanted. I'm repeating this because your position seems driven more by your belief that approval voting would have yielded the "right" candidate for you rather than by your desire for a more accurate primary system. It's not that I don't understand what you're saying. It's that I think your opinions are influenced by what you believe the "right" outcome should have been. It's not inevitable, especially if leftward swings are wealth driven. How is it not relevant? Don't you want an accurate reflection of voter desire at the convention level, too? Not that changes are possible in even the remotely near future, but you want to be consistent.--Percy

Sure. You asked me, "What causes do you think we should discuss?" in my response to me saying how often "you've stated that it was the electoral college Clinton lost and that that's all that matters, not the popular vote." That wasn't a criticism of you "for not addressing causes." I truly doubt that a further investment in time discussing that subtopic would be fruitful. That's all I was saying.I'm not trying to unilaterally shut down discussion of that subtopic. If you feel differently then say something that hints at an avenue of progress. Uh, okay. But haven't we both already made our points pretty clear? Isn't this already a pretty long digression from the main topic? I mean, I'm game for further discussion of the subtopic if there's more to discuss, but getting even more into the details of the electoral college seems pretty distant from that subtopic. I see the opposite, and likely the truth lies somewhere in the middle. 2016 was the wrong election for protest votes. Yes, of course I disagree with your attempt to outline an area of agreement, though I appreciate the effort. But it doesn't even make sense for someone to vote "for someone other than Clinton while wanting Clinton". My rewording of what you said accurately reflects my opinion. I think you *do* see the logic, you're just raising a spurious complaint. I can firm up the phrasing a little bit: Very, very few in the general political neighborhood of the Democrats who were thinking rationally would have wanted to show their dislike of Clinton by registering a protest vote that helped contribute to Trump's election.--Percy

quote:

---

Let me explain again. Fixating on just the electoral college results while refusing to consider what happened to cause those results ignores important causative factors.

---

It doesn't? I thought your point was that there were a bunch of people that voted for someone other Clinton as a protest even though they wanted Clinton to win and thought that a protest vote was safe because they expected her to.It kind of ruins the irony if they voted against her, expected her to win, but didn't want her to win. I mean, I suppose academically there's an irony to mine there - but this group includes a large percentage of Trump voters so they got what they intended in the immediate sense. The original issue is, of all the protest voters how does this number compare to the number that thought a protest vote was 'safe'?The point being - were there enough 'principled' protest voters to have made a difference?

I am explicitly talking about the electorate. I've said so many times. My opinion does not decide the election. My point was that there may be other selection methods that find candidates that will get more votes - whether that be moving to the right or the left. My opinion is actually that this is a possibility in this particular election. And only a possibility. A possibility that an alternate selection system might have provided us with illumination on. A better selection process might not have selected Sanders. There's plenty of reason to suppose it wouldn't. It might have, but it might not. The 'right' candidate is the one that gets the maximum number of votes possible in the Presidential election for that Party at that time. If it can be shown that the particular method I have highlighted does worse at doing this, I will recant.If by 'right' you mean, heh, 'left'. And by 'wrong' you mean, ahem 'right' then I would still push this process, yes. Sure there are problems. I am assuming that the Primary Voters have the goal of selecting the candidate who will garner the most votes in the Presidential Election, but this is not an entirely safe assumption. There are likely many who will try game the system to select the candidate they believe will get the most votes, or at least, be most aligned to them.IRV may also be good - but only if there are multiple nominees running. In a two person race it's not much different than the present system. I also don't think it detects the danger of protest voting {or non-voting for a disliked candidate} in the Presidential election either, which was the reason I raised Approval Voting. I think I already agreed with this. It's not like anything in my view relies on the leftward trend continuing. I just expect it will. Feel free to explain your reasoning. My point was that there wasn't much in it regarding the primary voters which suggests a change in selection process has a reasonable chance of impacting the results of the Primaries. The pledged delegates follow this result - so if the Primary results been different, the pledged delegate results would also likely be different. Superdelegates complicate this, although new DNC rules turn many of those effectively into pledged delegates anyway.

As does every single politician. None of them are perfect. They did look at rural working people and the rural unemployed. What they didn't predict, and no one predicted, was that voter turnout in those demographics would be much higher than in previous years. Trump had them the entire time.

There was also voter suppression going on, for example, the new laws in Wisconson stopped many groups that tend to vote democratic from voting.