Nate Silver Gives Hillary 79% Chance Of Winning

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

Via ABC News 

This morning on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver predicted that Hillary Clinton will win the general election against Donald Trump. Clinton has a 79 percent chance of winning the election, compared to Trump’s 20 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s forecast.

“We’re at halftime of the election right now,” Silver said. “She’s taking a seven-point, maybe a ten-point lead into half time. There’s a lot of football left to be played. She’s ahead in almost every poll, every swing state, every national poll.”

Silver said “both candidates have a lot of room to grow,” but historically the only candidate to blow a lead like the one Clinton holds now was former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988.

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Relevant: In 2012, he called all 50 states correctly.

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

That 20% though 

[brendablethyn 536]

Wasn't he certain that Trump could never win the nomination?

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

1 minute ago, brendablethyn said:

Wasn't he certain that Trump could never win the nomination?

Yep and he admitted it was a mistake and used it to further improve the rigorousness of his research.

This explains it:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump/

It was one of very few.

[JevyDuty 2,961]

Everytime Nate speaks, people listen and it's not because he's guessing wildly.

[TrumpAteMyHeart 312]

This loser also predicted Trump could never get the nomination. We saw how that one worked out. Brexit should us that people are fed up with the establishment, no matter what the polls suggested. Trump is winning this. Y'all read it here first.

[Spyro 8,438]

9 hours ago, TrumpAteMyHeart said:

This loser also predicted Trump could never get the nomination. We saw how that one worked out. Brexit should us that people are fed up with the establishment, no matter what the polls suggested. Trump is winning this. Y'all read it here first.

 

9 hours ago, LebaneseDude said:

Yep and he admitted it was a mistake and used it to further improve the rigorousness of his research.

This explains it:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump/

It was one of very few.

 

[socotra 3,357]

Makes me lose faith in our democracy when one candidate has it in the bag so easily. Wish we could swap out Donald Trump for Jill Stein+Gary Johnson and have a real competition. 

[PartySick 172,435]

14 hours ago, TrumpAteMyHeart said:

Trump is winning this.

I hope we get to team up in the first annual Hunger Games

[ItsTommyBitch 12,640]

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

6 hours ago, Indyl said:

Makes me lose faith in our democracy when one candidate has it in the bag so easily. Wish we could swap out Donald Trump for Jill Stein+Gary Johnson and have a real competition. 

What?

A democracy doesn't mean contests should always be competitive. It means that the people choose who leads them. People are in favor of Hillary. Hillary will win. It's as simple as that. This is democracy in action.

The only reason it's in the bag is because the other major party candidate is a brain dead baboon. It has EVERYTHING to do with democracy because it was democracy that got Trump this far not anything else. The Republican clown car was a disgrace this year.

Another Republican candidate could have beaten Hilary, but frankly Hillary is so qualified for this that I honestly can't find someone else who could beat her on merit. Regarding third party candidates, Jill Stein is alarmingly inexperienced so I'm not sure why anyone would trust her with the presidency and Johnson is an OK candidate but nothing special.

 

[socotra 3,357]

3 hours ago, LebaneseDude said:

What?

A democracy doesn't mean contests should always be competitive. It means that the people choose who leads them. People are in favor of Hillary. Hillary will win. It's as simple as that. This is democracy in action.

The only reason it's in the bag is because the other major party candidate is a brain dead baboon. It has EVERYTHING to do with democracy because it was democracy that got Trump this far not anything else. The Republican clown car was a disgrace this year.

Another Republican candidate could have beaten Hilary, but frankly Hillary is so qualified for this that I honestly can't find someone else who could beat her on merit. Regarding third party candidates, Jill Stein is alarmingly inexperienced so I'm not sure why anyone would trust her with the presidency and Johnson is an OK candidate but nothing special.

 

This isn't democracy in action, this is a two-party filter in action. Because we have only two major parties, it paves the way for a lopsided election every once in a while. What does my vote matter at this point? If I vote against Hillary, it likely will have no impact on this election because so many people are going to be voting for her. Now, if people were aware of the other parties and our voting system were different, Hillary would very much NOT have it in the bag because of how much baggage she carries. 

People are "choosing" her, but in the loosest sense of the word. I would go with "settling" for her. People believe their vote will be wasted on a third party campaign, or they don't know about the third parties, or they hate Trump and so Hillary is the only viable option in their mind. I suppose it's democracy, but democracy in the most convoluted, lopsided manner possible while still being technically "democracy." 

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

12 minutes ago, Indyl said:

This isn't democracy in action, this is a two-party filter in action. Because we have only two major parties, it paves the way for a lopsided election every once in a while. What does my vote matter at this point? If I vote against Hillary, it likely will have no impact on this election because so many people are going to be voting for her. Now, if people were aware of the other parties and our voting system were different, Hillary would very much NOT have it in the bag because of how much baggage she carries. 

People are "choosing" her, but in the loosest sense of the word. I would go with "settling" for her. People believe their vote will be wasted on a third party campaign, or they don't know about the third parties, or they hate Trump and so Hillary is the only viable option in their mind. I suppose it's democracy, but democracy in the most convoluted, lopsided manner possible while still being technically "democracy." 

I'm confused.

You argue that there aren't enough viable candidates, yet also argue that everyone should be happy with the candidate that wins.

You can't have it both ways. The more parties there are, the less probability there is that people will unite behind one candidate.

If Jill Stein and Johnson were more part of more viable parties, then if Hillary wins, more people will have to "settle" for her because it's more likely they weren't rooting for her to begin with.

You can argue that there are intersections, but at this point it seems you just have a problem with Hillary winning as opposed to anyone else.

We've already discussed how overwhelmingly qualified Hillary is compared to all the competition so I won't repeat them here, but I find it disconcerting that people are so ready to denounce their political systems when they don't win. The USA is a perfect example of a good democracy. If it wasn't, Trump would not have gotten to where he is.

Vote for whomever you want. Nobody is forcing you to vote for Hillary. That people aren't more educated about possible candidates is THEIR fault not the system's. I'd just refrain from claiming a vote doesn't matter. Just look at Britain right now. Every vote matters.

Side note: Why do people keep bringing up Jill Stein? She's incredibly inexperienced. She's so unqualified for the presidency that most of the Republican clown car beat her in that department. Johnson is another story. I can actually understand why someone would want to vote Libertarian. 

[socotra 3,357]

1 minute ago, LebaneseDude said:

I'm confused.

You argue that there aren't enough viable candidates, yet also argue that everyone should be happy with the candidate that wins.

You can't have it both ways. The more parties there are, the less probability there is that people will unite behind one candidate.

If Jill Stein and Johnson were more part of more viable parties, then if Hillary wins, more people will have to "settle" for her because it's more likely they weren't rooting for her to begin with.

You can argue that there are intersections, but at this point it seems you just have a problem with Hillary winning as opposed to anyone else.

We've already discussed how overwhelmingly qualified Hillary is compared to all the competition so I won't repeat them here, but I find it disconcerting that people are so ready to denounce their political systems when they don't win.

Where'd I argue that everyone should be happy with the candidate that wins? That doesn't make any sense. 

I'm not saying that our system can't offer meaningful candidates, because it can, and Hillary Clinton is one of the most qualified candidates in American history.

Exactly. I don't think people should HAVE to unite behind one candidate – we need to change the way we vote from the first-around-the-post system to something like a single transferrable voting system (the one I like the most, but even approval voting would be a step forward) so that third parties can grow and become major parties and then we have a variety of VIABLE options for president instead of just two. When there is a whole spectrum of ideological views, I don't know why we have only two political parties (I do, it's because the first-around-the-post system makes it impossible for any third party to be competitive). We need to switch to a proportional voting system, get rid of the Electoral College, and rid the Democratic Party of superdelegates. We should be voting directly for the candidate, not for delegates. 

This isn't about denouncing political systems when we lose – if Bernie Sanders had won, that would have been great, a triumph OVER the system, but it wouldn't have fixed the system. In fact, if Bernie Sanders had miraculously succeeded in persuading superdelegates to flip to his side and he somehow won the nomination because of superdelegates, I would've been 100% against that. 

All I'm saying is that every election year, we get presented with two people who can become president, because a third party candidate hasn't won since Abraham Lincoln. We shouldn't have to choose between two people, and it's more clear than ever now with two candidates that tons of Americans dislike that we need other major political parties. We're not going to create a better democracy until we get rid of these archaic systems that while technically democratic are inherently undemocratic. 

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

34 minutes ago, Indyl said:

We need to switch to a proportional voting system, get rid of the Electoral College, and rid the Democratic Party of superdelegates. We should be voting directly for the candidate, not for delegates. 

I don't necessarily disagree with your positions but I don't know about that. 

The USA is still compromised of states with their own hierarchies. A popular vote would essentially reduce the influence less populated states have on politics. Washington DC for example only has 3 electoral votes because it has, like all other states, two senators in addition to one representative.

Also minorities tend to live in the bigger cities so they have a bigger impact than via  popular vote especially since the voter turnout is historically against them.

It's about the voter turnout. 

Honestly I'd be ecstatic if it was the popular vote. Democrats would win most elections. They just aren't fair.

In addition to all that, you are running under the false assumption that people still know what's in their best interest. True democracies never work for several reasons.

1) Democracies operate for the majority of people not all of them. No system exists that serves all the people. The term "the people" makes no sense because people are ultimately a confluence of ideas and ideologies that inherently conflict with one another.

2) People are.. simply put...fools ... not because they are inherently stupid but because most don't have the time or luxury to sit down and analyze every candidate and how they would influence them. They leave it to the politicians to do the jobs for them. As much as I tell people to get educated, most won't and we shouldn't base our political system to rely on ignorance.

3) People naturally group up. Many join groups and operate together in order to accomplish their goals. The larger groups end up having influence on others. Those groups eventually grow to make new parties that dominate the system. Nothing ends up changing. You still have parties influencing the popular vote.

4) People are very likely to vote with their "hearts" rather than their "brains". It sounds very beautiful and Disney-esque but emotions don't make you live a better life. Smart decisions do. People think they need to "like" their representative as if that ever holds true. There are tons of reasons why you wouldn't like a candidate. If they serve your best interests that's what you should do. Love fades in the wake of an empty stomach.

I can go on and on. This foolish concept that people always know what's in their best interest in the intricate and complex field of politics needs to die already. People should have influence on who represents them but it most certainly should not be the deciding factor.

Just look at Brexit and see how the idiocracy prevailed over common sense. Look how people who live in rural areas and the older generations managed to **** over the younger generation who will have to live with that decision because the former simply turned out more and had a simple majority believing that the refugees are going to murder them in their sleep.

Politician input (or superdelegates) are there to ensure that small margins don't overrule what's in people's best interest if there are relatively even splits. I don't understand why people think they are bad things.

Honestly I think you and others grossly overestimate how good democracies actually are. True democracies are ruthless. They only work because they are still somewhat controlled. Otherwise society would collapse like any other "true" political system in history like Russian Soviet communism.