Presidential Election 2016

[Tiller]

PS: There's this very prolific reddit account I just noticed called "CANT_TRUST_HILLARY".



Not only is it new, but holy shit has it been doing stuff (average of about 10k link karma per day and 1k comment karma per day). Right now, as I type this, there are 3 posts on the front page from it. IMO, there's a team of people running it specifically so they can plaster "CANT_TRUST_HILLARY" all over reddit as a form of [obvious] subliminal messaging, who are probably paid to do so.

Shills! Shills! :tinfoil:

[David Greene]

so, uh, Sanders now has a bedrock-lead in NH, and it's looking like Iowa has followed the same path, and he's been making some inroads in earning support from african americans.

This last point is important. I think he really has made inroads. BLM made him pay attention to issues important to Black people and he's responded. Now a lot of the Black leaders I know are encouraging Black communities to embrace Sanders.

This is all very good!

[grant1simons2]

Saw some BLM posters around the UofM supporting Bernie

[David Greene]

I wouldn't be surprised to see an age-related split in Black support. Older activists may very well lean toward Clinton while the younger crowd latches on to Sanders. Clinton has some longstanding relationships with traditional Black leadership.

I actually see it as very encouraging that we could have the two top Democratic candidates fighting for the support of Black Americans.

[mplsjaromir]

Bernie still has a huge problem with Latinos. It will interesting to see how he polls in states that aren't 90%+ white.

[FISHMANPET]

His views on immigration are... unexpected, at least not what we expect from the "left"
http://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9014491/be ... nversation
Search for "Koch" and then read right above that and continue to see what he said to Ezra Klein about immigration.

[David Greene]

Yeah, it's a definite blind spot for him. He needs to get serious about changing.

[Tiller]

John Kline isn't running for re-election (didn't know until today). One more potential seat for democrats on the long march to retaking the house (gotta protect Nolan too).
http://www.startribune.com/with-pawlent ... 327747571/

$1.2 million in 2 days. Color me impressed.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/bernie-sande ... pac-attack

No longer a firewall for clinton:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... story.html

There are also 'some people' saying that Trump has peaked,
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/d ... ata-213806
though we've been there before.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... ately.html

I've got a general question which could make for some substantive discussion. How could the national election affect our state-level elections?

I'd personally hope we'll have coattails from a successful democratic bid for the whitehouse to help us retake the state house/retain power in the senate. There doesn't seem to be much demographic data out there for voter turnout in races for the minnesota legislature (that I've found). I would guess we'd want to boost democratic turnout among blue collar workers to retain/win seats in outstate minnesota, while continuing to push the envelope around the fringe of the metro. We only need what, like 8 seats? (just checked, yup: of course with as large of a majority as possible to hedge against defections)

[QuietBlue]

I think Kline's retirement definitely puts that district in play and it's not a given that the Republicans will keep it, particularly since it will be a Presidential election year and the district has narrowly gone for Obama in the past. Especially since there don't seem to be a lot of people on that side of the aisle rushing to replace him.

For the state legislature, it will be interesting to see how vulnerable Mack and Kelly are in light of recent events, or if they even seek reelection.

The mayor of Lakeville, Matt Little, is challenging Dave Johnson for the state senate seat as well. Normally I'd say any Democrat taking on Johnson would have a tough road, but Little is very popular and I think he'll be a force to reckon with.

[MNdible]

I don't understand why anybody would trade being the mayor of a largish city for being a backbench state legislator. Ambition, I guess, but the former definitely seems like a more interesting and rewarding position.

[FISHMANPET]

The long march to the top has to start somewhere.

[mattaudio]

Being mayor of most suburban cities is the same as being on the city council, but with some additional ceremonial duties. City managers do all the managing, council as a whole (with mayor's vote) does all the governing. At least that's how it was when I grew up in Lakeville.

[MNdible]

Makes sense, I guess.

We were going to rename this thread to a more encompassing Election 2016, right?

[Silophant]

Yep.

[mattaudio]

[PhilmerPhil]

[Tiller]

Ayy I forgot about this:

(NSFW because profanity n stuff)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLb49i7VKvw

[Tiller]

Misc. News
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show ... 8414275515

Well, look at this! Back in 2007-2008, Nate Silver actually used statistics, as opposed to his gut.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/0 ... -the-Proof

Well, here's the explanation. New Hampshire polls are a leading indicator to national polls. Voters are more engaged and more informed in New Hampshire than they are nationally. As the primary season progresses, voters continue to become better engaged and informed, until the actual voting takes place, when the voters are presumably as informed as they ever will be.

In other words, if a candidate is doing better in New Hampshire polls than he is in national polls, that suggests that as voters become more informed, they will continue to slide toward that candidate. At so the candidate will do well in the voting booth, at which point all voters are highly informed (relatively speaking, at least). On the other hand, if a candidate is doing better nationally than he is in New Hampshire, that suggests that the candidate may not hold up to scrutiny, that he may be trading primarily on name recognition, etc. His support is superficial.

The litmus test of this then becomes Iowa. If a candidate is doing better in New Hampshire polls than he is in national polls, and that candidate does well in Iowa, that provides very powerful evidence that this increase in information works to the benefit of that candidate.

You might call this something like "the momentum of information". This hypothesis, by the way, has been confirmed by other researchers.

Sanders should file an antitrust suit against Trump's dank meme monopoly. Gotta get more competition in the market to drive down meme prices!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I8VQYgR8Kk

[MNdible]

Well, look at this! Back in 2007-2008, Nate Silver actually used statistics, as opposed to his gut.

He used statistics in the previous article as well. The difference is that, in this case, the statistics led him to a conclusion that supports what your gut feels.

[Tiller]

Almost forgot, but Scott Walker has dropped out:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/21/politics/ ... -election/

Well, look at this! Back in 2007-2008, Nate Silver actually used statistics, as opposed to his gut.

He used statistics in the previous article as well. The difference is that, in this case, the statistics led him to a conclusion that supports what your gut feels.

Using statistics without regard to correlation vs. causation isn't very logically sound. Reality isn't "african americans don't support Bernie now so they probably will continue to not support him". Ignoring the possible factors that could actually explain current poll numbers (such as voters' familiarity with a candidate), and providing shallow analysis which one thinks will be representative of reality because it matches one's gut, is not a rigorous process.

If the threshold for "using statistics" is using them to support a pre-defined narrative, then I can point you to a lot of other places that frequently use statistics. Breitbart, Gawker, and Stormfront must all be bastions of complex and analytical thought, because they love citing statistics (man, even after editing out a lot of snark, it just finds its way back in)! One must also look at what various statistics mean, and the methodology of using them.

In reality, Both Hillary and Bernie are old and white. Between the two, Bernie is stronger on the issues, and more personally appealing to voters. What is the big difference between the two candidates that is always present between varying poll results then? Is it just random noise (sometimes the case)? As it turns out, that would be the aforementioned familiarity, usually polled in terms of things like name recognition (which is the most basic level of familiarity: have you ever heard of this person?).

I'm so sorry that I would hold Nate to a higher standard given his "witch" status, (today's media doesn't exactly set the bar very high, so many of them are below the point above which I'm holding Nate to a higher standard) but I don't disagree simply because we have differing conclusions. I disagree because the process in which he reached his conclusions wasn't very rigorous. Models that don't change over time lose their effectiveness. To simply say "you're ignoring facts because you don't like the conclusions" is a cop-out that adds nothing of value to a discussion.

If someone with a different conclusion than I has a solid bedrock upon which he/she built that conclusion, and we have a good discussion, then that person has probably just changed my views. If some kind of breakthrough evidence were to surface in the scientific community which invalidated the concept of climate change, then fucking group me in with the Koch brothers because then they would be right. In this case, Nate actually has substance behind what he was saying, far more than some of 538's more recent articles, that is. I'll see if I can find what the "has been confirmed by other researchers" link in the article used to lead to since it may be helpful/interesting (currently is 404).

(I am fully willing to search through my browsing history to pull out whatever evidence I've run across, btw, just to pre-empt "but you didn't cite anything for what you just said! Hypocrite!")
Hitchen's Razor comes to mind, "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."