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Re: US Politics Thread
Early voting suggests tight race in key states despite Clinton camp boast
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is touting some “eye-popping” advantages in early voting, in an apparent effort to energize Democratic voters, but preliminary figures suggest the race remains tighter than her aides acknowledge.
The preliminary numbers appear to show Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, with an edge in several of the roughly 10 battleground states that will decide the 2016 White House race.
“We're seeing eye-popping vote-by-mail application numbers,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said on “Fox News Sunday.”
In Arizona and North Carolina, for example, more registered Democrats than Republicans have indeed cast early ballots.
But such numbers are open to interpretation, including how many Democrats in those two states voted for Clinton.
Meanwhile, early data shows Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with potential advantages of his own in battleground states Florida, Ohio and elsewhere.
Only some of the 37 states that allow early voting make public the number of registered Democrats and Republicans who requested early ballots and voted early, so final numbers won’t be known until Election Day.
Still, the Clinton campaign seemed bolstered in recent days by mail-in balloting in battleground Florida, where in-person voting started Monday in a majority of counties.
Early Florida numbers showed about an equal number of Democrats and Republicans had requested a record 3.1 million early ballots, compared with 2008 when Republicans led 49-to-32 percent and President Obama still won the state.
However, registered Republicans now have a slight lead -- 1.8 percentage points -- in the nearly 1 million ballots received by Friday.
Trump, on a swing through Florida on Monday, made another push for supporters to cast their votes now.
“You got to get out there. Who’s voted already?” Trump asked a cheering crowd in St. Augustine. “If you’re not feeling well on Nov. 8, we don’t want to take a chance.”
Clinton said in battleground North Carolina on Sunday: “From now until Nov. 5, you can vote early. It’s a big deal. You get to vote today, right after this event.”
Mook also pointed out Sunday that in Nevada, officials saw a “record turnout” in Democratic stronghold Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.
However, Trump has throughout the campaign appeared to have the support of some potential crossover voters, including Latino immigrants who back his tough message on illegal immigration.
A recent CNN/ORC poll, for example, found 33 percent of registered Latino voters in Nevada support Trump, compared to 54 percent for Clinton.
The Clinton campaign declined Monday to provide details on the states to which Mook and vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine referred Sunday.
Kaine told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the campaign “like(s) the early voting activity and the absentee-ballot requests coming in.”
Kendra Stewart, College of Charleston political science professor, said Monday that Kaine and Mook are “doing exactly what they should be doing by trying to use this as an opportunity to create enthusiasm within the party in the hopes of a bandwagon effect.”
However, she cautioned about the effort perhaps “leaving some Democratic voters less motivated to vote if they feel like their candidate doesn’t really need them” and giving the Trump campaign the opportunity to use the underdog strategy to try to rally supporters to get out and vote.
Elliott Fullmer, a Randolph-Macon College political science professor, suggested either camp could play up select early-vote trends.
“I don’t think it would be a surprise for a campaign to think any positive momentum would play well,” Fullmer said Monday. “And the more they can discuss an advantage in early voting, they will.”
According to the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project, roughly 6 million Americans have already cast early votes, which do not include absentee ballots.
More than 46 million people are expected to vote before Election Day -- or as much as 40 percent of all votes cast.
The District of Columbia also allows early voting. Included in the 37 states that allow early voting are Colorado, Oregon and Washington, which have only mail-in balloting.
Clinton holds a 6 percentage point lead over Trump in national polls, according to the RealClearPolitcs average.
Clinton -- who has been the frontrunner for the entire race -- also has leads in battlegrounds states New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Trump leads in battlegrounds Georgia, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio.
Though neither Georgia nor Ohio break down early balloting by party affiliation, Trump appears to have an advantage in both states.
In Ohio, such requests are down 10 percent among black voters, who in recent decades have tended to vote for Democrats. And requests among Ohio’s increasing white population, a voting bloc in which Trump appears to do well, is up 3 percentage points, to 91 percent.
In Georgia, ballot requests and returns among black voters trail 2012 levels.
Re: US Politics Thread
Confidence high in the Trump camp:
Pence: “I think there’s gonna be a whole lot of people, you know, sitting on the cable TV shows scratching their heads come election night"
— Ines de La Cuetara (@InesdLC) October 25, 2016
Re: US Politics Thread
Florida spirals away from Trump
From polling to early voting trends to TV ad spending to ground game, Donald Trump’s Florida fortunes are beginning to look so bleak that some Republicans are steeling themselves for what could be the equivalent of a “landslide” loss in the nation’s biggest battleground state.
Trump has trailed Hillary Clinton in 10 of the 11 public polls conducted in October. According to POLITICO’s Battleground States polling average, Clinton has a 3.4-point lead. Even private surveys conducted by Republican-leaning groups show Trump’s in trouble in Florida, where a loss would end his White House hopes.
“On the presidential race we’ve found Clinton with a consistent 3% - 5% lead in surveys that attempt to reflect Florida’s actual electorate,” Ryan D. Tyson, vice president of political operations for the Associated Industries of Florida business group, wrote in a confidential memo emailed to his conservative-leaning members this weekend and obtained by POLITICO.
Though Clinton’s lead is “within the margin of error for this survey, we would suggest that 3% really isn’t as close as it may seem in the state of Florida,” Tyson wrote, estimating a turnout of as much as 71 percent, or as many as 9.2 million Florida voters overall. If that happens and the polling margins hold, Clinton’s raw vote lead over Trump could end up being 275,000 to 460,000 votes.
“This is in all reality a landslide in our great state,” Tyson wrote, echoing the concerns of numerous Florida Republican insiders and experts. “Based on his consistent failure to improve his standing with non-white voters, voters under 50 and females, it seems fairly obvious to us that Mr. Trump’s only hope left in Florida is a low turnout.”
Trump has reacted to the steady drip of troubling numbers by launching an unprecedented seven-city Florida tour this week while simultaneously denying the data dispiriting many in his party.
“We are winning and the press is refusing to report it. Don't let them fool you- get out and vote! #DrainTheSwamp on November 8th!” Trump wrote on his Twitter account Monday morning before an event with farmers near West Palm Beach, where he repeated to the crowd, “I believe we are actually winning.”
Hours earlier, Trump took to Twitter to say that “the Dems are making up phony polls in order to suppress” his vote share.
But polls are just one reason Florida Republicans are alarmed. Mail-in absentee ballot voting was once a Republican strength thanks to the party’s organization and years of conditioning its members to vote by mail. But this year, Democrats are showing signs of catching up.
As of Monday morning, Florida Republicans had cast fewer than 42 percent of the more than 1.2 million absentee ballots. Democrats had cast 40 percent. Though that 1.7 percentage point lead is in the GOP’s favor, it’s greatly reduced since the same period in 2012, when Republican ballots outpaced Democrats’ by 5 points.
Still, Trump, during a Sunday stop near Naples, told the crowd that the “numbers are looking phenomenal in Florida.”
The early votes have not been officially tallied, but campaigns and operatives use the raw return numbers to measure a campaign’s health.
Generally, the top-of-the-ticket candidate whose party members cast more ballots before Election Day is favored to win the election.
Florida’s pre-Election Day ballot counts will grow ever bigger now that in-person early voting began Monday in a majority of the state's major counties. When it comes to in-person early voting, Democrats tend to outperform Republicans, but that doesn't usually happen until after a full weekend of early voting, particularly after the Sunday “Souls to the Polls” events, in which African-Americans cast ballots in person after church. So, if a Democratic advantage appears, it might not happen until Halloween.
At one point last week, Democrats briefly overtook Republicans in absentee ballots cast, marking the first time Democrats have ever caught Republicans in pre-Election Day ballots before in-person early voting begins.
But the lead didn’t last. By that point, the Trump campaign had realized it wasn’t actively calling and mailing absentee ballot voters to get them to mail their votes in. The campaign quickly instituted what’s called a “chase” program to pressure voters to fill out their ballots and send them in.
Little glitches like that make longtime Trump supporter and past political adviser Roger Stone, who lives in Florida, fret. He blamed most of the campaign problems on the Trump campaign leadership in New York. He said the campaign didn’t give enough money and flexibility to its former Florida director Karen Giorno — who was moved in a campaign shakeup — or to its current Florida campaign chief, Susie Wiles, who managed Gov. Rick Scott’s 2010 campaign.
Re: US Politics Thread
Michael Moore unintentionally makes a strong case for Trump:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pADHLsECWxY
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Anyone who believes Trump means what he says is a fucking idiot, & that includes yourself. He's a lying pos, using the rhetoric of the dispossessed, disenfranchised for his own personal gain. He is the establishment, & he's manipulating people with his dangerous lies. He doesn't give a flying fuck about overturning the system, he doesn't give a flying fuck about Joe blow: he only cares about himself.
It is not worth the "fuck you". & it won't feel good.
Re: US Politics Thread
Hillary is a lying, establishment prick. Prodding a stick to Putin's balls. Why are you afraid of Trump again?
It's not because he is establishment, it's because you don't know what he's going to do.
To be fair, Trump doesn't know what he's going to do, either. He's woefully unprepared, overwhelmingly unqualified to run a country and laughably unfit to lead the west's biggest armed forces.
That is scary. I'm not ashamed to be scared of a Trump presidency. He's not fit to run my local coffee shop or school board.
Re: US Politics Thread
I'm not afraid of Trump. Part of me hopes he wins.. the sadistic part, the part that loves to say, "I told you so".
Because I know exactly what he's going to do. He's a self serving lying bastard and he's going to continue to be precisely that. It will be a disaster.
I'm kinda looking forward to coming on here and pointing and laughing (some more) at buzz/SG..
If YOU don't know what he's going to do, how can you possibly trust him?! You make no sense.
You act like he's some kind of anarchist or revolutionary when in fact he's a reactionary bully who has benefited handsomely from the system you profess to hate. - & on that point, just because the system doesn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work for some. You think Trump represents you is only evidence you believe his lies.
That point Moore makes about the fuck you feeling good, yea for that split second that it takes these fuckwits to mark their X, & they get a dopamine hit. But when the fallout comes and they're even further up shit creek without a paddle how are they going to feel then? & who is going to represent them then? These lies are too important to believe.
Re: US Politics Thread
You already had Bush II in there, I wouldn't worry about incompetence too much. Scary? If he makes insane decisions he will be relieved from office. It's not like Hitler where you have a young, forced democracy in a millenia old autocratic culture.
Really, unless you think things are going great for the country and the west right now, there's no logical reason to be afraid of a Trump presidency. At worst it will be business as usual.
