Political Prediction Thread

If enough GOP big wigs denounce Trump over his sex talk/action, he might well tell them and the GOP to stuff it and walk from the campaign. "Teach them a lesson" as it were. If this continues to top the news cycle for many more days, I'd give him a 30-40% chance of walking.
Well, I read this morning (8 hours after my post) that The Donald said he would never quit. :(
 
New prediction: Trump's poll average falls to 12 points behind Clinton in a week's time, then slowly claws back until he loses by 8 or 9 percentage points. Clinton's number of EVs falls between 346 and 399.
 
My Prediction:

The first female premier of the US will put more coal miners out of work than the first female premier of the UK. The big difference will be that the left will support her.
 
How many coal miners are there in America compared to what there was in Britain?
 
My Prediction:

The first female premier of the US will put more coal miners out of work than the first female premier of the UK. The big difference will be that the left will support her.

The big difference is that the left will try to create a safety net to fall back on and get them on their feet as we deal with the reality that the jobs are going and have to go, while the right would just leave them dangling in the wind.
 
How many coal miners are there in America compared to what there was in Britain?
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows ~68,000 employed coal miners in 2015. I think it's less now, and I've no idea what the number of unemployed coal miners is. Google says our total population was 319 million in 2014. It's probably a little more now.
 
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows ~68,000 employed coal miners in 2015. I think it's less now, and I've no idea what the number of unemployed coal miners is. Google says our total population was 319 million in 2014. It's probably a little more now.

Oh. So I guess my prediction must be wrong. From the graph below, Thatcher lost about 200,000 coal mining jobs (she was in power '79 to '90), so Hilary could not come close to that. I am surprised, as I understand that the US has a lot more coal than we ever did.

UK coal mining jobs:
800px-UK_Coal_Mining_Jobs.png


The big difference is that the left will try to create a safety net to fall back on and get them on their feet as we deal with the reality that the jobs are going and have to go, while the right would just leave them dangling in the wind.

I am certainly not going to defend the way Thatcher treated the miners, but it is not like they were completely left to fend for themselves, and this is at a time when everyone in the UK had free healthcare and education such that not many people felt the need to go private (unlike now). When your left wing is Hilary working through a Republican congress I would not take the difference to be a given.
 
US Coal mining jobs have already been devastated by automation and cheap natural gas. US coal production was increasing until 2008 (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_coal). The amount of people working in the coal industry, not so much!
 
I'm becoming cautiously optimistic that Clinton will win. I still worry that there may be a large segment of people who lie to pollsters as social pressures makes it hard to admit to voting for Trump. But the numbers are getting bad enough for him that I can't even see that phenomenon putting him over the top. Moreover, I have no evidence for such phenomenon at work, just a gut feeling.

I'm becoming more worried though that he will not accept the results of the vote and will goad his followers into some sort of civil unrest that de-legitimizes the entire government. He's already railing against a 'rigged' election before the ballots have even been counted. This is not good for our democracy. I hope the moderators of the next debate hammer him about that the way they did at the last one for his comments with Billy Bush.
 
I'm becoming cautiously optimistic that Clinton will win. I still worry that there may be a large segment of people who lie to pollsters as social pressures makes it hard to admit
There are such people... they are called female Republicans... and I'm expecting Hillary to get a 3-5% bump based on those ladies stating they will vote Republican or 3rd party but getting in the booth and voting for the 1st female President.

I remember the day(s) immediately after Pres Obama won in 2008... the very next day in particular. You could easily tell who voted for him. There were knowing smiles, winks and a sort of beaming expression on their faces. I am thinking that a lot of women will want to be part of that come Nov 9th... I know I do, and I'm not even a woman:).
I'm becoming more worried though that he will not accept the results of the vote and will goad his followers into some sort of civil unrest that de-legitimizes the entire government. He's already railing against a 'rigged' election before the ballots have even been counted. This is not good for our democracy. I hope the moderators of the next debate hammer him about that the way they did at the last one for his comments with Billy Bush.
Now that you mention it... I think you just blew up my prediction about how the debates will go... Obviously the moderator will begin by trying to get Trump to retract all his "election rigging" talk, calls for revolution if he loses, etc... Of course Trump will resist, and try to deflect and the moderator will try to tie him down, which will cause Hillary to pounce on him for being "dangerous", and "not respecting democracy" being "just like some banana republic dictator" and then pivoting into "he cozys up to and admires dictators, Saddam, Kim Jong Un... and then of course she will mention Putin and his connections to Russia... Trump will respond by calling her a criminal, corrupt, colluding with every government agency, rigging the election, emails wikileaks... and the debate will become a crap-show before it even begins...
 
Trump loses
Clinton is impeached in office for e-mails
Ivanka stands as Republican candidate in 2020
Beyonce stands for Dems
Beyonce wins
 
Ivanka stands as Republican candidate in 2020
Beyonce stands for Dems
Beyonce wins

I for one would certainly prefer Beyoncé as POTUS over Ivanka Trump. She's also a more capable businessperson than Mitt Romney, or the Donald for that matter.
 
My (minor) prediction : Colorado will be the tipping point state.
 
New prediction: Trump's poll average falls to 12 points behind Clinton in a week's time, then slowly claws back until he loses by 8 or 9 percentage points. Clinton's number of EVs falls between 346 and 399.

Okay, that didn't happen. I should have stuck with my "Trump Cycle" theory rather than expect that the Access Hollywood tapes/debate losses would have done anything other than crash him briefly and then allow him to claw back so that he'd be at the top of the cycle again by November 2 and quite possibly Election Day. Here's a new set of predictions. They're mostly just hunches.

1. Non-Cuban Hispanic turnout increases more than expected*.
2. Non-college-educated white turnout is higher than expected.
3. Black turnout is lower than expected.
4. Cubans don't shift enough relative to higher NCEW turnout to make Florida more Democratic-leaning than the nation as a whole.
5. Some sort of "shy Trumpist" effect appears to the tune of 4 or 5 ppt among college-educated whites, but is statistically zero among any other demographic.

The expected net effect would be a nail biter of an election. The most likely outcome based on current polling would be the following map**, with Clinton eking out a narrow win by carrying her 272 EV "inner fortress" and Nevada being unpredictable between #1 and #2***:

Spoiler :
RJB5TgR.png


*I just realized "expected" is a weasel word, so I'll lay out a couple of different versions of "expected" for predictions 1-3 and my level of confidence relative to each. I am fairly confident that these will be true relative to the 2012 election. I am very confident that these will be true as a proportion of all voters, adjusted for total turnout, relative to the 2012 election. I am much less confident that these will be true relative to most current "likely voter" models, which I don't even know the assumptions of. I'll call the latter the "strong form" of my prediction and stick with it anyway.

**Note that all the predictions except this map are in terms of the turnout rates and margins relative to expectations of the nation as a whole. If Trump shoots himself in the foot at the last moment, has a November Surprise, or if the race just turns out to be a more lopsided win for Clinton, this map would shift without affecting any of the other predictions. Likewise for Trump doing better than expected.

***Choosing between #1 and #2: this election in a nutshell. Both are gross, but one is much grosser than the other.

edit: added two footnotes, because it's hard to make a precise and well-explained prediction without long, detailed footnotes.
 
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I was too optimistic with my predictions. The UK is leaving but the EU is still around. Hillary managed to be the candidate and will lose to Trump. And Erdogan turned out to have more support than I expected.
Things always remain irrational longer than I expect.
 
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