The Briefing Room
General Category => Politics/Government => Topic started by: SirLinksALot on July 21, 2016, 10:26:15 pm
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SOURCE: FIVETHIRTYEIGHT
URL: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumps-convention-is-flirting-with-disaster/ (http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumps-convention-is-flirting-with-disaster/)
by: Nate Silver
Welcome, class, to Conventions 101. If you’re looking for Conventions 201, you’re in the wrong place; please see Professor John Sides down the hallway. And put those cellphones away, please. We’ll get to the drama created by Ted Cruz on Wednesday night in a moment, but let’s start with the basics. For instance, as far as we’re concerned, conventions serve two major functions:
1. Conventions serve to unify the party. Conventions, literally speaking, are party meetings. At its convention, a party nominates candidates for president and vice president, along with taking care of other party business, such as establishing rules for future nominations.
2. Conventions are showcases for the presidential ticket. All the major broadcast and cable networks cover the conventions extensively, giving parties the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in media exposure. In contrast to other sorts of political events, the media generally lets the parties set the program, and make their case to the American public in a relatively uninterrupted way. It’s a unique, once-per-cycle opportunity.
Put another way, conventions are both the official end of the nomination process and the unofficial beginning of the general election process. In the modern political era, nominations are usually decided well ahead of the conventions, so they can come to resemble extended infomercials instead.
Still, these functions can sometimes come into conflict. If you watch only the prime-time coverage of conventions, the parties generally put on a good show. But at odd hours, there can be disputes on the convention floor. Or the party will put on speakers who present red meat to the party faithful, or who fulfill obligations to party constituencies, that it wouldn’t necessarily want swing voters to see.
But modern conventions are generally successful events. They almost always produce polling “bounces” in favor of the party that just held them. These bounces can be short-lived and aren’t always predictive. Still, some part of the convention bounce usually sticks, and polls taken a few weeks after the conventions are generally much more accurate than those taken a few weeks beforehand.
At a minimum, the parties almost always succeed at converting some undecided voters, who are leaning toward the nominee but who aren’t yet fully committed, into their column. So Hillary Clinton wants to persuade straggling Bernie Sanders supporters (and there are still quite a few of them) to join her cause, and Donald Trump wants to do the same for supporters of Cruz and other Republican candidates. Ideally, they’ll also bring some swing voters along. But if the nominees can’t achieve some modicum of party unity, the convention is a potential disaster.
So from a Conventions 101 standpoint, what happened in Cleveland on Wednesday night was a potential disaster for Trump and the Republicans. Cruz, the second-place finisher in the primaries, conspicuously refused to endorse Trump, and left the stage to a chorus of boos. An unusually large number of Republicans have also declined to endorse Trump, including Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who isn’t appearing at the convention even though his state is hosting it. But those defections might be forgotten about for a few days, provided that the party put on its best face in Cleveland.
Cruz’s refusal to endorse Trump, however, took place at center stage. It was bad from both a uniting-the-party standpoint and from a showcasing-the-ticket standpoint. It was among the most dramatic events that we’ve seen at a convention in recent years.
If you sneak into Conventions 201, you’ll find that the story is more complicated. We don’t have all that much data on what makes for successful conventions and what doesn’t, and convention bounces aren’t always that predictable. Some conventions that are remembered as disasters, such as the 1972 Democratic convention, did produce minimal or even negative bounces for their parties. But Jimmy Carter got a fairly large bounce out of the 1980 convention, even though Ted Kennedy was defiant toward him, one of the better precedents for what happened on Wednesday.
Conventions 201 might also encourage you to think carefully about distinguishing correlation from causation. Is it the conventions themselves that matter, or that they provide a leading indicator about how the rest of the campaign might go? Barack Obama didn’t get much of a bounce after his 2008 convention, which was well-staged but felt like an anticlimax after his dramatic victory in the Democratic primaries — whereas John McCain and Sarah Palin made a big splash. But Palin soon turned from a positive into a negative influence for the GOP ticket, and Obama’s campaign performed very well down the stretch run. From that standpoint, this year’s RNC has been problematic not only because Trump is squandering an opportunity to put on his best face for the voters, but also because he’s made a lot of unforced errors, suggesting that his campaign might struggle in all sorts of ways from now through November.
Again, none of this is necessarily all that predictable. For all we know, Trump will deliver the speech of a lifetime on Thursday night and be up 7 percentage points on Clinton by the weekend. Our strong preference is to take a wait-and-see approach, and it will be a few more days before we can comfortably measure the magnitude of Trump’s bounce.
But if you believe that campaigns make a big difference — the empirical research is a bit mixed on that, by the way — the first three days of the convention are the latest and surest sign that Trump and his campaign have profound problems, which could make it hard for them to win even if geopolitical events break in their favor. Conventions are fairly often the pivot points in presidential elections, and the first three days haven’t gone well for Republicans.
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Silver is Liberal AF...but the statistics he used to predict the outcome of elections is pretty spot on.
Hes got Cleveland nailed.
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It is Trump and his vile ilk that will keep this dispute in the news and headlines for days and days.
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(http://i66.tinypic.com/1zm362p.jpg)
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(http://i66.tinypic.com/1zm362p.jpg)
Just shows how ignorant of history voters are these days.
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Just shows how ignorant of history voters are these days.
Because those same policies and ideas worked out so well for Italy in the 20's.
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Silver is Liberal AF...but the statistics he used to predict the outcome of elections is pretty spot on.
Hes got Cleveland nailed.
Yet hes been wrong on everything Trump (5 times in a row) and is open about his bias against Trump. Hurt feelings vs real World time. Support the GOP ticket to Stop Hilary.
There is nothing to gain, nothing positive or good that can happen by our side attacking the GOP Ticket.
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I hereby support TRUMP for President.... loudly and proudly!!
(IVANKA Trump, that is...)
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:pondering: The party is more important than anything? :nono: Sorry, the are many things above the party on my priority list.
Like the Constitution.
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There is nothing to gain, nothing positive or good that can happen by our side attacking the GOP Ticket.
We are not on "your side" any more. Your party Booed the Constitution and applauded the homosexual agenda, bigger more intrusive government, punitive actions against private property and industry and higher taxes.
There is nothing to gain for your prince, nothing positive or good that can happen for your prince by continuing to attack those of us who will never support or vote for your madman.
Focus on Hillary or woo Bernie supporters to your champion.
Because the harder you attack us, the larger our ranks grow.
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Yet hes been wrong on everything Trump (5 times in a row) and is open about his bias against Trump. Hurt feelings vs real World time. Support the GOP ticket to Stop Hilary.
There is nothing to gain, nothing positive or good that can happen by our side attacking the GOP Ticket.
Let us be perfectly clear. You Trumpers are NOT on "our" side. You are against principled conservatism at every turn. We will vote for the person on the ballot we feel best-qualified to be president. That will not be Hillary, or Trump.
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Let us be perfectly clear. You Trumpers are NOT on "our" side. You are against principled conservatism at every turn. We will vote for the person on the ballot we feel best-qualified to be president. That will not be Hillary, or Trump.
8888crybaby 8888crybaby
And Who Is your Jesus may I ask? :whistle:
7 Times Nate Silver Was Hilariously Wrong About Donald Trump
http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/04/7-times-nate-silver-was-hilariously-wrong-about-donald-trump/
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How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump
By Nate Silver
Filed under 2016 Election
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump/
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#NeverTrump has a track record of NEVER HAVING BEEN RIGHT. Happened because they substitute emotion for judgment.
#NeverTrump. You can't fix stupid.
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In time, we will all see. Won't we? The debate is over. Now, it is up to... time. I will say this for myself and only me... We are staring down double-barrels. And, Trump supporters scare the bejeepers out of me.
So, let's let time tell us who is right because winning the White House may be the easy part.
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In time, we will all see. Won't we? The debate is over. Now, it is up to... time. I will say this for myself and only me... We are staring down double-barrels. And, Trump supporters scare the bejeepers out of me.
So, let's let time tell us who is right because winning the White House may be the easy part.
And Hillary supporters make you feel all tingly and cozy inside? :whistle:
Funny how never trumpers seem to always overlook that? :shrug:
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And Hillary supporters make you feel all tingly and cozy inside? :whistle:
Funny how never trumpers seem to always overlook that? :shrug:
FYI.. I am not a never Trumper. Never have been. Have fun.
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And Hillary supporters make you feel all tingly and cozy inside? :whistle:
Funny how never trumpers seem to always overlook that? :shrug:
You make my original point, btw.
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#NeverTrump has a track record of NEVER HAVING BEEN RIGHT. Happened because they substitute emotion for judgment.
#NeverTrump. You can't fix stupid.
Are you proud of the statements your boy has made today? Trashing the family of an American hero?
This is not a game, pal. Your candidate is making a fool of himself. Tune into This Week on ABC tomorrow to see the full extent.
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And Hillary supporters make you feel all tingly and cozy inside? :whistle:
Funny how never trumpers seem to always overlook that? :shrug:
Speaking for myself, no, Hillary supporters don't make me feel warm.
That's why I'm not voting for her either.
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FYI.. I am not a never Trumper. Never have been. Have fun.
My apologies.
Just watched a guy jump from 5 miles up without a parachute and LIVE before I posted that! :0001:
Too much caffeine, too much excitement in one evening for this old guy! :shrug:
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My apologies.
Just watched a guy jump from 5 miles up without a parachute and LIVE before I posted that! :0001:
Too much caffeine, too much excitement in one evening for this old guy! :shrug:
No worries, friend.
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#NeverTrump has a track record of NEVER HAVING BEEN RIGHT. Happened because they substitute emotion for judgment.
#NeverTrump. You can't fix stupid.
Smears and name calling won't stop any of us from nevertrumping...
Guess what? Your boy is BLEEDING voters because he WON'T shut his pie hole
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Are you proud of the statements your boy has made today? Trashing the family of an American hero?
This is not a game, pal. Your candidate is making a fool of himself. Tune into This Week on ABC tomorrow to see the full extent.
Was it worse than Hillary calling Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith a Liar?
(Also a dead 'hero' son)
Will 'that' be on ABC tomorrow too?
Why don't you keep digging for dirt on Trump and forget about Hillary?
Oh .. Wait!! :shrug:
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#NeverTrump has a track record of NEVER HAVING BEEN RIGHT. Happened because they substitute emotion for judgment.
#NeverTrump. You can't fix stupid.
Funny, substituting emotion for judgement is Trumps strongest suit and as for You can't fix stupid? You have managed to state in a nutshell exactly why I won't vote for Trump, I don't believe he will ever stop doing, saying and threatening stupid things. To paraphrase Trump, he has the best stupid.
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To paraphrase Trump, he has the best stupid.
:amen:
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#NeverTrump has a track record of NEVER HAVING BEEN RIGHT. Happened because they substitute emotion for judgment.
#NeverTrump. You can't fix stupid.
YOU ARE MY HERO!!!!
LEAVE MY PEOPLE ALONE!
THE ONLY,SENSIBLE PEOPLE AROUND!!!!!!
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YOU ARE MY HERO!!!!
LEAVE MY PEOPLE ALONE!
THE ONLY,SENSIBLE PEOPLE AROUND!!!!!!
If aligncare is your hero, I can only say that you must be deluded also. Oh, and multiple exclamation points and all caps don't make your posts more emphatic, they only make them crazier.
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:beer:e
YOU ARE MY HERO!!!!
LEAVE MY PEOPLE ALONE!
THE ONLY,SENSIBLE PEOPLE AROUND!!!!!!
Again I must ask...is this the responsible and adult type of posting we're supposed to see from the co-owner of a board?
You're beginning to veer of the rails Charles Johnson/LGF style.