I think it really could be. I have been listening to the Keeping it 1600 podcast through this political season. It's a good podcast hosted by a bunch of Obama alums -- all guys who have been a big part of modern presidential campaigns. On the most recent episode Dan Pfeiffer made an interesting observation about the 2012 Obama Campaign's "Trust but Verify" approach to data. He contrasts that with a campaign (and voting public) that seemed to be too confident in the data. The discussion starts about 5 1/2 minutes in, and goes on for a few minutes. They didn't just believe their polls (or the media polls). They cross checked everything with other information inputs, and all the sources needed to agree before they had confidence that they really had a solid handle on reality. Here's what they looked at. 1. Traditional Statewide Live Caller Polls 2. Data Analytics (Robopolls) 3. Field Operation Feedback (What are people hearing on the ground.) If all three inputs agreed, then all was good. If there was any discrepancy, it set off alarms. We're already hearing that people in the field in the Rust Belt were sending up alarms, and nobody from the Clinton campaign listened. They were all dismissed because the Clinton campaign's data said there wasn't a problem. I keep going back to this piece that Politico published in September. It's all about Elan Kriegal and his Clinton campaign data operation. Everything was being run through Kriegel. My hunch is that Clinton lost because the campaign believed everything Kriegal was telling them. He had the numbers, and they wanted to believe the quantitative data. But they ignored the qualitative warning signs that were telling them quite plainly that the numbers were wrong. Especially in certain Rust Belt states.
I saw him once, too. I was trying to find the one with the never ending grad student. When I saw him, we had a guy who never quite had his experiments completed and was kinds scruffy like the guy in the comic.
To keep things a bit lighter, I've been listening to the NPR politics podcast (and clearly, from some of the comments on the various threads, I'm not the only one), and they made mention in one of the podcasts this week that both Clinton and Trump were going off the same data each had internally received, and both started Tuesday with the assumption that Clinton was going to win. I find that interesting, which says that both of them, along with the professional pollsters (Bill Mitchell excluded) all got it wrong.
I've certainly heard that too. But that only says that the quantitative folks missed this one badly. But in Clinton's case, they should have caught the error -- or at least they should have taken the signs that the numbers were wrong much more seriously.
...and was foolish enough to write an op-ed in the New York Times or Washington Post or wherever arguing that GM and Chrysler should simply allowed to go bankrupt. But Mitt Romney's not a venture capitalist. He was operating at the other end of the corporate lifecycle.
@Germerica it looks like what you have been saying the last few days is proving to be right. Time for your I-told-you-so dance.
I don't think this is actually all that difficult - they got the likely voter screens wrong. Going forward, I think you stop doing polling, and you start doing clustering.
That's what I've been saying the last few days as well. (#humblebrag), the urban vote came out and voted. Trump CRUSHED her in the Rurals. Obama managed to earn enough trust in those areas that it wasn't total destruction.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...070d6a-a935-11e6-ba59-a7d93165c6d4_story.html "Still, progressives hoping that a heavy dose of populism will be enough to win back the working class must not be under the illusion that the Trump constituency was motivated solely by economics. In fact, Trump’s immigration stand (he won 86 percent of voters who want to build a wall on the Mexican border, according to CNN’s exit polls ) and his law-and-order appeal (he won 74 percent among those who rejected the idea that the criminal justice system treats black Americans unfairly) were key to his victory. When exit pollsters asked voters to name the most important issue facing the country, he won among those who listed immigration or terrorism; he lost among those who cited the economy. Trump’s hard-edged social conservatism, not just a general anti- establishment appeal, drove up white turnout in many key counties. Finally, lest anyone doubt that the outsized attention given to the matter of Clinton’s use of a private server was decisive, consider that 45 percent of voters said that her use of private email bothered them “a lot,” and they voted better than 12-to-1 for Trump. " In case anyone cares about facts...it wasn't economic populism. It was bigotry. #completely********ingobviousifyouknowyourassfromaholeintheground
The Obama voters who switched to Trump, id guess were driven by economics. The Dems don't need to win a plurality of rural voters. They don't have a chance of winning social conservatives, and they shouldn't do so when it runs 180 opposite their progressive social stances - that's called selling out. They can and should win the working class voters who's primary concern is economic and workers rights
It seems that CW is that black voters didn't show up enough. I wonder how meaningful that is in terms of the electoral college. To the extent that CW is true, I can think of 3 possible factors. 1. Lack of excitement for Hillary 2. Voter suppression 3. Demoralization due to media coverage I wonder what the size of each factor was? I know #2 was a big one here in NC. Or misogyny. In all seriousness, do you have any data as to their numbers?
Eh. I'm going to take this with an appropriately sized grain of salt. When you see two people whom you consider to be more or less cut from the same economic elite, screw-the-working-class cloth (fairly or unfairly), of course other non-economic considerations are going to come to the fore.
31% listed Terrorism and Immigration, he won those big. 52% listed the economy, well check my math but that seems like over half and greater than 31%, She won that by 10 points. Now look at the wall, man that is a huge difference the 41% that want the wall went heavy for him 82%; the 54% that oppose it went to her with 76%. Also take a look at International trade, Those that think International trade cost jobs (42%) went to Trump big 65%. It would be interesting how that breaks down by state. #youonlyseewhatyouwanttosee. But fvck it, lets say you are right and the economy is not the reason why Clinton lost, then what? is the DNC fvcked? Are you saying that we have gone fill white nationalist and the GOP have found the magic formula to win elections until a decade or 2 into the future when the demographics change? BTW good link, I am going to waste hours of work time looking at it.
When I have sometime I'll look at the exit polling from 2012 to 2016 for Romney vs Trump voters. My hypothesis is that social warriors didn't change much, but that Romney got less voters more worried about the economy. I don't think exit polling cross tabs directly answers the question of why an Obama voter, voted Trump
Another thing, rural voters made up only 17% of the voters on the CNN exit poll. Trump won 62% Hilary won the 34% that voted in urban areas with 59% But Trump won the suburbs 50% to 45%, that accounts for 49% of the exit poll respondents. Now we know the polls were wrong, so the exit polling may also be incorrect in the way they projected turnout, perhaps rural voters in reality accounted for a higher than 17% total, but the exit polling samples are under representing them.
I have a lot of respect for that 14 percent who want to build a wall, but were smart enough to realize that Hillary, Gary, or Jill were more likely to "git 'er done."
It is misleading to focus on polls that include those who would have vote for Trump anyway and were expected to do so even if Hillary had won as comfortably as most pollsters had projected. To understand why Hillary ended up losing, you will need to focus instead of those voters who were flipped or who didn't bother to show up for Hillary.
While generally true, it is easy to overstate that. There are people that are moderate regarding immigrants on a racial/ethnic level but still want strong enforcement of illegal immigration. Democrats generally are not very interested in talking about enforcement. At least not on the campaign trail. They lay out two options ... path to citizenship or 'you're racist!'. Not saying that the GOP is any more willing to compromise. Personally I do think that there needs to be a path to citizenship component. But unless you talk about the other half of the equation, you're practically pushing away millions of moderates who just want to curve illegal immigration. If Democrats are not interested in enforcement they need to answer some questions. We now accept about 1 million legal immigrants per year. Do we want to decrease legal immigration in order to facilitate illegal immigration? Or do we essentially just welcome anyone that finds a way to get here ... Without specifics, it's just a lot of empty platitudes about being stronger together ... Sorry if this drifts too far off topic, but I think that calling it just bigotry is over simplifying. It's a component, maybe even the biggest component. But there are other legitimate policy questions out there that I'm not sure Democrats have really answered this election.
Obama has deported more undocumented people than any president ever. Maybe I've been unfair. Let me get right on that economic anxiety you've got & see what I can... You know what? Never mind. pic.twitter.com/oG3cPCf9Lp— David Waldman - @KagroX.bsky.social (@KagroX) October 14, 2016
You keep doing this, there is a shit lot of people that vote Trump that are racist, Trump and the GOP is going to win those by huge margins. The people that flipped from Obama to Trump in the election those are the ones that Boloni is talking about, if in your opinion those were secret racists or the last 8 years turned tem into racist, then the DNC is fvcked. The Democrats can not win with out some of those middle income whites that defected to Trump, Boloni, me and others think that some can be won back with a better economic message (a message that even I do not agree is correct), it seems that to you they are now unwinnable and that the DNC would just be wasting time trying to go after them. IMO if you are correct (and you may be) then the next elections are going to svck big time, I do not see a path for the DNC other than praying for an own goal by the Republicans.
Here is where @American Brummie can prove his theories. I do think, like him, that sexism and racism played a part in the flipping of voters in the Mid West. I think that there were several mistakes and that Hillary took the states for granted (we all did) but at the end we have to see why the Rust belt voters went with the Orange Racist Misogynist..