Trump campaign: "we can safely assume" 201 electoral votes

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/24/trump-campaign-we-can-safel.html

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I think we all know the conventional wisdom about AssUMe…

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Looking at the fivethirtyeight version, for certain values of “safely”, the major point of difference is Az, which is currently pale blue. However, all the “tossup” states in Trump’s version are some shade of blue on fivethirtyeight. So, overall, he’s wildly optimistic rather than delusional.

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That he has any support whatsoever, in any state, makes me die a little on the inside.

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Yeah. This isn’t technically wrong, but labeling those states “battlegrounds” is disingenuous. Even using fivethirtyeight’s most Trump-leaning estimates, Clinton is a strong favorite to win in NH, ME, PA, VA, MI, WI, and CO.

tl;dr: Seven out of the twelve “battlegrounds” aren’t, and four of the five that are are leaning Clinton.

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If you put this map next to that of fivethirtyeight.com’s map you can see a few differences:

  • Arizona’s going to Clinton on 538
  • Minnesota also going to Clinton on 538

That means they can “safely assume” 21 votes less; 180.

With Colorado being very blue on 538 in stead of being in the balance as it is on the Republican’s map, Clinton can safely add 9.

So that would safely put Trump on 180 and Clinton on 196. And every state that the Republican map shows as brown are varying degrees of blue on 538’s map and many are blue enough to add to Clinton’s “safe” number. Let’s just say I would not be as confident as the Republican’s that shared this map.

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Here’s how the map would look like if you consistently applied a rule that considers Michigan (Clinton +10) a tossup state:

Also, they consider Minnesota a safe red state, WTF? That place hasn’t voted Republican in almost 30 years, now they’re going to win it with while running seven points behind natiowide?

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That’s what “Lesser of Two Evils” voting gets you.

There are people who believe Trump is the lesser of two evils because we’ve been bombarded with an image of Clinton that always came with a notion of scandal. There are also people for whom an R next to the name is the basic qualifier.

There’s this assumption that the people who vote for Trump largely have perfect information when the reverse can be demonstrated to be the rule. His base is abhorent, but they don’t put him over the top in any state, if my understanding is correct. I tend to agree with HRC that there is a specific basket of deplorables and the rest are along for the ride.

This remainder of people by and large are perfectly willing to believe the media is running a hit job on Trump, because they’ve been taught and conditioned to believe the media is hopelessly imbalanced. Then you can go into all sorts of bullshit denial. They aren’t even accepting polling data as legitimate at this point. So I don’t get depressed that there is a large proportion of people buying into a specific vision, but that there is such a large number of people who are in denial of basic reality. The latter is more easily fixed than having close to half the country be virulently racist.

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It is yet another unfortunate consquence of our broken winner-take-all Electoral College system that history will record that entire states voted for this pouting and spray-tanned knuckle-headed narcissist.

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They’re just laying the foundation to allege voter fraud if any of those “safe states” turns in the next few weeks.

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Politics is at least 80% tribalism, with little to no rational thought for most people.

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It takes a “unique” perspective to state that literally everything against you is “rigged” but unmonitored online polls that have no safeguards in place.

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Is this a prelude to suspending campaigning in those states, since he can safely assume he’s won them?

And then he can concentrate on PA, which by happy accident isn’t a long commute for him.

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Unfortunately there are people who will never vote for one party or the other. period…end of story. Clinton could be Ghandi and Trump could be the Prince of Darkness from the movie Legend…those right wing whacks would still vote for him.

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Not farfetched at all, given the Republican platform differs with Ghandi “bigly”, and evangelicals see Satan as God’s tool just fulfilling an apocalyptic plan.

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I don’t think he’ll lose all of those greyed out states, he’s been consistently polling ahead in Ohio (though by small margins, and not in every poll) and Iowa since the conventions. And Florida, Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada could still go either way at this point. Even if he won all of those though (which is extremely unlikely) Clinton would still have 273.

The most conservative estimate at this point puts Clinton beating Obama’s total in the last election, but not his first. His descent in the polls seems to have bottomed out at the moment (between 5-10 points behind). Though the full effect of the final debate may not be reflected yet, so he could start dropping again.

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More than 30 years, Minnesota hasn’t voted for a republican since nixon, the only state along side the district of columbia to have not voted for reagan in 1984, when Minnesota native Walter Mondale was running.

I lived in the twin cities at the time and was in grade school. I clearly remember being totally certain that Mondale was going to win – after all, all of the adults I knew supported him!

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Has he? I wouldn’t say that, although he’s definitely in the running.

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Typical of Trump’s lack of sensitivity to the differently-abled, they used a dark green and dark red for their map, which are easily confused by the color-deficient.

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I’ve been tracking it on a different website, which I think is a bit more conservative about what pollsters it includes. But yeah, either way it’s close, Clinton could easily win there.

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