Political Prediction Thread

[Mouthwash]

"In much of western Europe, on all the issues that matter, competitive politics decayed to a rotation of arrogant co-regents of an insular elite, with predictable consequences: if the political culture forbids respectable politicians from raising certain issues, then the electorate will turn to unrespectable ones." -Mark Steyn, over a decade ago

(I think that fulfilled predictions count.)

You tend to angrily dismiss most things I say, presumably by force of habit. And a few years ago, the idea that an egomaniacal, bigoted sex offender would take over was unthinkable. Nobody saw the fall of Mosul coming a few years prior. Or Crimea. I make pessimistic predictions, people reflexively contradict me, I turn out to be right, and does anyone in my life decide to stop reflexively contradicting me? Of course not.

While he didn't explicitly predict the seizure of Crimea, it's worth noting that George Friedman foresaw (in 2009) that Russia would respond to geopolitical pressure by acting aggressively and trying to carve out a sphere of influence in the post-Soviet countries.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Holy cow, nearly 60 % of the white voted Trump ? The anger is real.

And also, more of Trumps voters disliked HC than HC voters disliked Trump. Considering how outrageous Trump was, that's pretty damning ^^

That's what I've been saying - this election would hinge on angry white voters showing up and everyone else staying home.

How do we search threads with the new software? I'd love to re-posts my predictions on this but I don't want to have to manually search the thread for them.

 

[Mouthwash]

That's what I've been saying - this election would hinge on angry white voters showing up and everyone else staying home.

Trump did increase the Latino turnout over Romney. There's that.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I remember your posts, hobbs. And your Cassandra-like gloomy, ignored predictions, Phrossack. They didn't fall on utterly deaf ears.

I paid attention because I'm an old feller, and you were giving me access to how the millennials were thinking in this election cycle. If they're not positively inspired, they won't vote. Pointing out that Trump is a danger to the things they value wasn't enough if Clinton didn't give them something to vote for.

But the instantaneous student protest movements against Trump, and the NotMyPresident theme, also tell me one more thing: they trusted that their elders would vote for Clinton in sufficient numbers that everything would be all right, despite their own inaction. Now that they've seen with their own eyes, and will see for four years, the results of their inaction, I think they'll be highly motivated again in 2020, maybe even in 2018.

Would Booker appeal to them, do you know?

 

[_random_]

That's what I've been saying - this election would hinge on angry white voters showing up and everyone else staying home.

How do we search threads with the new software? I'd love to re-posts my predictions on this but I don't want to have to manually search the thread for them.

Like this:

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Thank you so much. That search bar is so close to the background color that I missed it. And I looked in that spot! haha

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I remember your posts, hobbs. And your Cassandra-like gloomy, ignored predictions, Phrossack. They didn't fall on utterly deaf ears.

I paid attention because I'm an old feller, and you were giving me access to how the millennials were thinking in this election cycle. If they're not positively inspired, they won't vote. Pointing out that Trump is a danger to the things they value wasn't enough if Clinton didn't give them something to vote for.

But the instantaneous student protest movements against Trump, and the NotMyPresident theme, also tell me one more thing: they trusted that their elders would vote for Clinton in sufficient numbers that everything would be all right, despite their own inaction. Now that they've seen with their own eyes, and will see for four years, the results of their inaction, I think they'll be highly motivated again in 2020, maybe even in 2018.

Would Booker appeal to them, do you know?

I think so. He's certainly charismatic. I was about to write that he may be too far to the left to pick up solid millennial support but then again Bernie Sanders shattered that myth.

I heard on the radio that the millennial generation has surpassed the baby boomers to become the largest age group in the country. We're a large enough group to swing an election whether or not we vote. A few million of us found that out Tuesday.

Trump did increase the Latino turnout over Romney. There's that.

And?

 

[_random_]

I think so. He's certainly charismatic. I was about to write that he may be too far to the left to pick up solid millennial support but then again Bernie Sanders shattered that myth.

I'd say too far to the right, if anything. I personally really dislike Cory Booker, but after four years of Trump/Pence we'll see how high my standards are.

 

[Sommerswerd]

It just occured to me that I owe an apology/crow eating acknowledgement (to Boots in particular) for all my endless trash talking about how PA would not and could not flip under any circumstances. I realize now that the biggest flaw in my reasoning was that I didn't even consider the possibility of low Democratic turnout, but the reality is that I was wrong... so sorry Boots (and anyone else I trashed talked about PA... J maybe?) you were right about PA.

 

[Bootstoots]

It just occured to me that I owe an apology/crow eating acknowledgement (to Boots in particular) for all my endless trash talking about how PA would not and could not flip under any circumstances. I realize now that the biggest flaw in my reasoning was that I didn't even consider the possibility of such low Democratic turnout, but the reality is that I was wrong... so sorry Boots (and anyone else I trashed talked about PA... J maybe?) you were right about PA.

Haha, no, I understand your reasoning. No apology needed, but unnecessary apology accepted.

The reason I said it might flip is that I looked up the proportion of votes that the Philly metro area made up compared to the rest of the state. I think I found it was only about 3/8 of the state total, and realized that a sufficiently large swing in the rest of the state (including Pittsburgh) could overwhelm it. Pennsylvania is not like Illinois, where over 2/3 of the population is in one metro area and thus able to totally dominate the state, and that's why it was winnable for Trump.

I made a variety of predictions in this thread, many of which were wrong. I can't be bothered right now to go back and find all of them, but here were my last six (or seven) predictions, without outcomes below each one. I did better on these than on predictions earlier in the thread, which I will go back and publicly mark in a later post.

1. Non-Cuban Hispanic turnout increases more than expected*.
-Correct that it increased relative to Romney, probably wrong that it increased more than it was expected to by whatever likely voter models were used.

2. Non-college-educated white turnout is higher than expected.
-Dunno - haven't looked at the data enough to know either way. I suspect this is at least true relative to total turnout, but I don't know for sure.

3. Black turnout is lower than expected.
-Correct.

4. Cubans don't shift enough relative to higher NCEW turnout to make Florida more Democratic-leaning than the nation as a whole.
-Correct.

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.
-Dunno. That this demographic had a shy Trumpist effect is probably true, because he won that demographic while losing them in most polls, and the difference in margins appears larger than the aggregate poll miss. Whether the effect was the magnitude I expected or whether it appeared in other demographics is unknown to me.

6. A map showing Clinton winning 278-260.
-Wrong. Less wrong than the map I posted even later in another thread, which was the consensus 322-216 map. So here I was wrong and wronger.

And then there was a wrong prediction from a month ago about Trump getting crushed following the Access Hollywood tapes, which I've already said was wrong but now it's really, really wrong.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I'd said before that the "shy-Trumper" thing was a myth in part based on me seeing plenty of Trump-Pride here in Massachusetts (if Trump supporters aren't shy here, they aren't shy period), but I think that to the extent polls were wrong (keep in mind that many polls were showing ties, statistical ties, or Hillary +1... which in essence was correct), they were wrong because they were either counting or extrapolating for Democrats who ultimately didn't show up, as "Likely voters". LA Times was guilty of doing this more or less in favor of Republicans.

I think that the Brexit-factor did manifest itself in terms of making Republican leaning voters ultimately decide to go ahead and vote Republican rather than being swayed by Hillary's siren-song about how bad Trump was. Hillary's campaign focused on pulling in disaffected Republican-leaning white males instead of going after young, female, hard-left, Hispanic or black voters (picking Tim Kaine instead of Bernie, Gabbard, Warren, Castro, or Booker was one of the most obvious signs of this). She took the base for granted, and went for the Republicans instead to try and run up the score. But this tactic failed miserably because the Brexit-factor was in full effect, so the Republican leaning voters were having none of it. They stuck Republican, and all the while, the Democratic base was left uninspired, uncourted, and uninterested.

The pollsters did not anticipate this or account for it, so now they try to blame their flawed calculations on the Republicans being "shy", ie tricking/lying to them about who they really intended to support. I'm still calling BS on the "shy Trumper" thing for this and other reasons.

 

[Bootstoots]

I'm not entirely sure but I doubt the turnout will explain it entirely: it was not much lower than 2012 and was higher than 2000, for instance. Low turnout among base voters was definitely a huge factor in Clinton's loss, but turnout was mediocre rather than terrible.

Shy Trumpers aren't the sorts of people who would ever have a sign for him. They're the sorts of people who were holding their nose closed with both hands and telling themselves that they'd get their tax cuts and SC nominees if they put up with him. There's a lot of ideological diversity among the people who voted for him, and I'm nearly certain that a higher percentage of people who disapproved of him voted for him anyway than has ever happened in the modern history of polling. It's those voters who could be shy Trumpers.

The rest of your analysis is correct, I think - I don't consider the LA Times poll to have been right so much as lucky. FWIW, this is also what I would have thought of Sam Wang if we had exactly the outcome his model thought was the most likely. The problems did seem to involve insufficient correlation among regions, demographic groups, etc. which is more or less what I thought was going on with his model. It was yet another Long Term Capital Management, like the risk-management programs that led to the housing crisis.

Nate Silver's postmortem: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features...rump-a-better-chance-than-almost-anyone-else/

 

[metalhead]

LA Times missed the margin by more than most other polls, FWIW.

NCE Whites were a lower share of the electorate this time around than in 2012, moreso than simple demographic shifts would show (assuming exit polls are accurate, not necessarily a safe assumption). They just went 10 points or so more for Trump than they had for Romney.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Shy Trumpers aren't the sorts of people who would ever have a sign for him. They're the sorts of people who were holding their nose closed with both hands and telling themselves that they'd get their tax cuts and SC nominees if they put up with him. There's a lot of ideological diversity among the people who voted for him, and I'm nearly certain that a higher percentage of people who disapproved of him voted for him anyway than has ever happened in the modern history of polling. It's those voters who could be shy Trumpers.

The thing about "holding your nose and voting" or "choosing the lesser of two evils" or "strategic voting"... whatever you call it... it always happens. I think that last part I quoted is the key, and I'm not sure its correct. I'm not willing to extend the "shy" label to every voter who "holds their nose" and pulls the lever for the major party that matches their community/ideological/demographic... That's not bign "shy", that's just run-of-the-mill voting. Also, the bolded, seems to cut against the shy-narrative, right? Because the whole point of the "shy" thing is that they are embarrassed about being racist, etc or voting for the racism guy, whatever... having diverse reasons for voting for him means less reasons to be shy about it.

Again, I think the "shy-Trumper" narrative is sounding more and more like a fig leaf to cover faulty polling and overconfidence among Hillary supporters.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't find it hard to believe there were a lot of shy voters. We spent an entire year calling him and his supporters racists, bigots and homophobic.

 

[metalhead]

The national polls will turn out to have been mostly fine. All the hand-wringing over national polling numbers is misplaced. It's the state polling that totally missed the mark in some cases.

It needs to be noted that Iowa polling goddess Ann Selzer once again nailed it, producing a Trump +7 poll there, where he won by a little less than 9. But more troubling for pollsters' reputation is that the most reputable state pollster in Wisconsin, Marquette Law School, was WAY off, calling it for Clinton +6.

The problem is that turnout was poorly modeled. I think that is more a problem of bad likely voter screens than shy Trumpers lying to pollsters. Why would they be shy? No, people were being tagged as likely voters saying they'd vote for Clinton, who didn't follow through and actually cast votes. I'll be waiting for the 538 story about how Ann Selzer was able to peg the turnout right, where so many others missed it. Her poll only tallied people as likely voters if they said they would "definitely" vote, so who knows?

 

[Sommerswerd]

I don't find it hard to believe there were a lot of shy voters. We spent an entire year calling him and his supporters racists, bigots and homophobic.

But again, who is "we"? Liberals? Democrats? Progressives? I can think of quite a few posters here who never embraced the idea that Trump supporters were any of those things. And what makes you (the royal you) think that these folks were cowed into shyness and hiding by you putting our liberal shame and disdain on them? Their belief in liberals' high-and-mighty correctness?

I mean I can go with the idea that what you say to your liberal (or conservative) friends might be informed by your desire to get along with them, I'm more skeptical that this would extend to the responses to an anonymous pollster.

 

[metalhead]

If the commentators are to be believed, Middle America believes that's what us coastal liberal elites have always thought about them, while we chuckle at their factories closing down and light our cigars with $100 bills. So I don't know why they'd be shy about sticking it up our, er, um, . . . noses. Let's go with noses.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

But again, who is "we"? Liberals? Democrats? Progressives? I can think of quite a few posters here who never embraced the idea that Trump supporters were any of those things. And what makes you (the royal you) think that these folks were cowed into shyness and hiding by you putting our liberal shame and disdain on them? Their belief in liberals' high-and-mighty correctness?

I mean I can go with the idea that what you say to your liberal (or conservative) friends might be informed by your desire to get along with them, I'm more skeptical that this would extend to the responses to an anonymous pollster.

The we is everyone you identified. I'm guilty of it as are a lot of people here. The media, while giving The Donald a ton of free coverage, also heaped scorn on him and his supporters. They deserved it and I'm glad it went down like that. Trump needed to be resisted in every way possible up to and including divisive, ugly rhetoric.

However, if I were a Trump supporter I wouldn't have wanted to talk about it with any of my friends. We all talked non-stop crap about Trump and his supporters and called him nasty things. I think it was well deserved and I still think a lot of his supporters voted for him from a place of hate. But there are a lot of them who are not actually hateful and just wanted change and jobs and recognition that life isn't as easy for whites as it once was. Yeah, to you and me that's ridiculous but a lot of people feel like that even if they don't frame the issues as such.

And a lot of those people don't want to be publicly branded as bigots and racists for voting for him.

Trying to claim that all the people who didn't turn out this election would have leaned toward Hillary is also a bit of a fools errand and is not provable in my opinion.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Her poll only tallied people as likely voters if they said they would "definitely" vote, so who knows?

That actually brings up the concept of the "shy-stay-home-Democrat".

What I mean is that Democrats and liberals are the ones who are likely to agree with the Trump=racism narrative. So liberals were the ones who were likely to feel "shy" about admitting that they weren't going to bother voting. How can you tell your liberal friends and relatives that you aren't going to bother voting for Hillary? So when the pollster asks them if they are voting, they say "Sure, of course, I guess" or "Probably" and the pollster looks at their results and gets Hillary +6 if you count all the "probably" voters, but Trump +6 if you only count the "Absolutely, come-hell-or-high-water" voters. So... not wanting to be mocked for posting a pro-Trump poll, they count the "probably" as "likely".

So what we may really be looking at, is not shy-Trump-supporters (which makes no logical sense) but instead, shy-absent-Democrats (which makes more logical sense).