This time tomorrow we’ll have a pretty good idea who the next president will be. Most of the states will have finished voting and the preliminary counting will be done in many states as well.
Despite FBI Director insinuating himself in the election at the last minute, I still expect Hillary Clinton will win, and win big.
Many Trump voters are expecting a Brexit-type surprise. I think this is unlikely for four reasons:
1. The Brexit polls were much closer in the last days than the presidential polls.
2. The “No” vote had been trending upwards. That is not the same as the tightening there has been in the polls in this race. The tightening in the presidential race is something that happens naturally as voters who are unhappy with their party’s candidate come home in the last days, not voters who are persuaded to the cause. There are many more of them on the Republican side.
3. There was no electoral college effect to account for in Britain.
4. The Republicans think there are many hidden voters on their side. That may be true. However, there are likely many hidden voters on the Democratic side as well. That is because most polling organisations don’t use Spanish speaking pollsters and the anti-Trump feeling amongst most native Spanish speakers is huge.
The are three east coast states in particular that you need to watch on election night – New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Florida. Donald Trump has to win all three of those or he won’t win the election.
New Hampshire
Clinton had been running ahead in the Real Clear Politics (RCP) poll average consistently, but Director Comey’s announcement vaulted Trump into the lead. Since Comey’s subsequent announcement that there’s nothing more to see, Clinton is once again polling in the lead but only by 0.6%.
North Carolina
The RCP poll average has been going from Clinton to Trump and back again for months. Currently they have Trump slightly ahead (1.0%), and the RCP average is traditionally one of the more accurate polls. The CNN poll of polls has Clinton ahead by 2%. Hope for Democrats lies in the fact that they have a better get out to vote operation.
Florida
The RCP poll average for Florida has also swung back and forth for months, with Clinton ahead more often and my as much as four points. Currently Trump is ahead is the polls, but only by 0.2%. It couldn’t get much closer. That lead to long-time Republican Ana Navarro to make the following announcement:
Ana Navarro: I'm a Republican but voted for Clinton; "Rather, I cast my vote against Donald Trump" https://t.co/AN2hI8XFVE via @CNNOpinion pic.twitter.com/TM965ogoh1
— CNN (@CNN) November 8, 2016
If Clinton wins New Hampshire and Florida she wins the election, even if Trump wins Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Michigan and Pennsylvania are traditionally Democratic states. Nevada has been a toss-up throughout the election season, but it’s looking more and more likely that Clinton has won that state, and that is largely because of Latino voters.
Clinton has a huge advantage in several demographics – women, African Americans, Latinos, and college-educated voters.
Trump has a big advantage in men, though it’s not as big as Clinton’s is in women. This is important because more women vote than men – women usually make up around 53% of voters. Trump has a big advantage among the less educated, and that advantage is bigger than Clinton’s amongst educated voted.
Latinos will tell you that Trump lost the election on the day he announced his campaign when he said:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
He says he’s winning Cubans, and it’s true that about 55% are voting for him. However, normally around 70% of Cubans vote Republican, so he’s not doing as well as he thinks.
I’ve posted a fair few anti-Trump and pro-Clinton cartoons on social media in the last few weeks. There are so many I’ve divided them into themed slideshows:
FBI DIRECTOR COMEY’S ANNOUNCEMENT ON CLINTON’S E-MAILS
TRUMP VS WOMEN
Incidentally, Trump’s tax policy supposedly cuts taxes for everybody. Putting aside that that would create an additional US$20 trillion according to the Congressional Budget Office, it’s not everybody that would get their taxes cut. As Hillary Clinton pointed out, 51% of single mothers would face a tax increase:
https://www.sharethefacts.co/share/45507710-0102-420f-8e0b-4b12522480ce
The very poor would also see an increase as he intends to increase the lowest tax bracket from 10% to 12%.
TRUMP ON IMMIGRATION
TRUMP ON SECURITY AND FOREIGN POLICY …
… WITH A SPECIAL SECTION FOR RUSSIA AND PRESIDENT PUTIN
THE DEBATES
I’ve got dozens more, but you’re probably getting sick of them by now!
As I finish this post, Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, has started voting. It’s 6pm Tuesday in New Zealand, which makes it midnight just as Tuesday starts on the east coast of the United States. Dixville Notch makes their name by being the first place in the nation that casts its votes. There are a few other places around new Hampshire that do the same.
There were more media there than voters. In 2012 they had nine voters, but two moved away. A new one just registered today, so they have a grand total of eight voters.
The polls closed after just a few minutes and the results are put on the official white board. They were:
Clinton: 4 votes
Trump: 2 votes
Johnson: 1 vote
Romney (write-in): 1 vote
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both still working hard speaking at rallies, Clinton with Lady Gaga opening for her.
I bet the Dixville Notch poll doesn’t get a mention at Trump’s rally.
I for one hope it’s predicatory, though as the RCP national poll of polls is Clinton 47.2% and Trump 44.2%, that’s unlikely!
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Heather, I think you’re correct that Clinton will win. I said three weeks ago that I didn’t think there was time for another October surprise to change the result. And while I didn’t reckon on the FBI Director bearing false witness on behalf of the Donald, even that isn’t likely to be enough, particularly as he’s now said, whoops, didn’t mean it. Comey is toast and the Republicans now have to chew on Clinton nominating a new director as well as all those Supremes.
I don’t necessarily think it will be as big a win as you, and we have Comey partly to thank for that too. I think 300+, but don’t expect it to go much over that. Comey’s biggest impact will likely be on the Senate, so the Reps can at least thank him for that.
My main worry is that there will be violence afterwards, given how Trump has irresponsibly stoked up his supporters to take matters into their own hands. Remember that he really is a narcissist. It wouldn’t surprise me if he refuses to concede even in a huge win to Hillary. We certainly shouldn’t look for him to put the country first in any way, like Gore graciously felt he needed to do in much different, more troubling, circumstances.
That’s a good one. Gore dragged the country through a month-long spectacle, if not constitutional crisis, in a bizarre and selfish ploy to rejigger the rules after the fact. He did the decent thing only after exhausting other options.
He gave up too quickly and left the deciding vote to a Supreme Court justice who said before the election that she hoped Bush would win so she could retire. Dumb.
That’s bullshit and I’m fairly sure you know it.
Clinton is a dangerous ideologue who happens to be paranoid, ruthless, and amoral. The American Dream will take a licking if she comes to power, but will endure.
The Democrats can be expected to flood the polls with deceased persons, criminals, and the merely insane — all just mad for Hillary. Hopefully enough of the other kind of “deplorables” will show up to get the job done.
Yea, the Dems are so clever, they’re able to rig the vote in all those states where Republicans control the voting laws and processes. In fact, they’re so clever that they’ve even been rigging those “independent” polls and aggregators of both commercial and academic organisations to show a likely win for Hillary just to cover their evil tracks. The truth is that the GOP is so fucked that EVEN HILLARY looks to win easily.
Yes, it’s such a massive conspiracy that more than half the population is in on it.
LOL
Sounds like I should have included all those cartoons about Trump’s conspiracy theories that the election is rigged.
You’re sounding like a troll jam. Does this descent into madness indicate a realization that Clinton will win by at least as much as Obama did in 2012?
I hope Clinton wins by more than Obama for four reasons.
1. It’ll expose what a bad candidate he is when he can’t even beat Clinton.
2. A big win will give her a mandate after a divisive election.
3. It’ll make Trump’s supporters (hopefully) realize that Trump was lying to them, including about the rigged system. The danger of violence is real I think.
4. Trump will have to take back all the stuff he said about Romney being a loser, choker, etc.
But Hillary lost and Trump won. I’m gutted.
As said elsewhere, I hope the Trump soup is not as hot as served, after all, he is a habitual liar. But I have not much hope, particularly not for SCOTUS and hence the civil achievements in the US over the last half century….
Internally, what could happen because of SCOTUS is quite concerning.
I got a bit of a bump this morning reading those cartoons. Otherwise, it’s just a long, stressful, wait. I’ll be watching Florida very closely.
Please forgive me for going off-topic, but is there any way to block comments from an idiot whose nonsense I don’t want to read? I can do it with Disqus and Facebook, but I don’t see any way to do it here. If not, just delete this post. If it makes any difference, I use Firefox.
I’m pretty sure that’s not possible in WordPress. (I’ll delete your comment and my response in a few hours to give you a chance to read this.)