Trump Agrees He'll Unite Democrats Against Him?

[Sunstone]

And it’s speculation that Hillary would have won. And pollsters were embarrassing fly wrong last time.

How many flies did the pollsters embarrass?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

You mean before when the Democrats tried to impeach him they weren’t united?

IDK. Ask Trump. He said it, not anyone here.

And pollsters were embarrassing fly wrong last time.

Only the ones who predicted the EC. Those who predicted the popular vote were mostly accurate, pouring Hillary ahead by a slight margin. Not really the same "Dewey beats Truman" type of polling problem.

 

[crossfire]

It appears President Trump agrees with Fox commentator Brit Hume that Dems will unite against him:

Trump RT's Brit Hume Post Predicting Dems Unify Against Him

Does the President not want the job anymore? Is he clueless? Does he just carelessly RT anything he reads on Twitter from Fox employees?

Well, if the democrats don't unify against Trump, then it means that the democrats will be leaking out to empower third parties (and Trump wins,) right? LOL! Trump saves the Democratic party? LOL! Of course he would retweet that!

 

[Left Coast]

And it’s speculation that Hillary would have won. And pollsters were embarrassing fly wrong last time.

Untrue on both counts. She won the popular vote in actuality, so we know there is at least some realistic scenario where most voters pick her. If you want to claim that Trump would've won under a popular vote, you'd need to demonstrate that such a system would've swung the actual results by over 3 million votes.

As for polls, they predicted Hillary would win nationally by a couple percentage points, and she did. Sadly our system disproportionately weights the votes of smaller states.

RealClearPolitics - Election 2016 - General Election: Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein

 

[Watchmen]

Untrue on both counts. She won the popular vote in actuality, so we know there is at least some realistic scenario where most voters pick her. If you want to claim that Trump would've won under a popular vote, you'd need to demonstrate that such a system would've swung the actual results by over 3 million votes.

As for polls, they predicted Hillary would win nationally by a couple percentage points, and she did. Sadly our system disproportionately weights the votes of smaller states.

RealClearPolitics - Election 2016 - General Election: Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein

For the third time, I never said Trump would win the popular vote. I said we do t know and anyone who claims they do is kidding themselves. Perhaps you don’t understand that had the election been played by “popular vote” the parties would have campaigned differently from start to finish, potentially resulting in very different numbers. For example, you mention Trump needing to swing 3 million votes. That’s not the case because of those 3 million some may have never voted in the first place. Some might still vote for Hillary, and some might vote for Trump. Money would have been spent differently. Speeches would have been different. Where the candidate spent his or her time would have been different. And so on.

 

[Shaul]

IDK. Ask Trump. He said it, not anyone here.

If you read the OP you will see that President Trump was quoting someone else.

 

[BSM1]

Yes. Good doesn't always win (and many, many suffer far more than I).

It seems that would be relative to whose poison you decide to drink.

 

[Left Coast]

For the third time, I never said Trump would win the popular vote. I said we do t know and anyone who claims they do is kidding themselves.

This depends on the semantics of what it means to "know." We can make an educated, probabilistic guess based on the data we have. Scientists do this all the time. It's not a completely black box as you're trying to claim.

Perhaps you don’t understand that had the election been played by “popular vote” the parties would have campaigned differently from start to finish, potentially resulting in very different numbers. For example, you mention Trump needing to swing 3 million votes. That’s not the case because of those 3 million some may have never voted in the first place.

Yes, they may have, but would they? And if so, why? All hypotheticals aren't equally plausible. This is what you don't seem to be understanding.

Some might still vote for Hillary, and some might vote for Trump. Money would have been spent differently. Speeches would have been different. Where the candidate spent his or her time would have been different. And so on.

Yes, but we're still dealing with the same voting population denominator. That's the point I'm making. The only way for Trump to get more votes than he did, particularly enough to win a popular vote, would be to get more votes than he did in blue, populous places. And no number of additional speeches from Trump or "money being spent differently" would plausibly get him millions more votes in places like California and New York. Which makes the notion that he'd win a popular vote very implausible.

 

[SoyLeche]

And it’s speculation that Hillary would have won. And pollsters were embarrassing fly wrong last time.

Was it really that the polls were “wrong”? Most of them had a Trump victory within the margin of error. Nate Silver gave Trump a 1 in 4 chance right up to the end. We just happened to flip two heads in a row this time.

the main problem with the polls is that people in general don’t understand statistics. It’s like the person who says,”I don’t believe in probability because even if the weatherman says there’s only a five percent chance of rain it still might happen”.

 

[Watchmen]

This depends on the semantics of what it means to "know." We can make an educated, probabilistic guess based on the data we have. Scientists do this all the time. It's not a completely black box as you're trying to claim.



Yes, they may have, but would they? And if so, why? All hypotheticals aren't equally plausible. This is what you don't seem to be understanding.



Yes, but we're still dealing with the same voting population denominator. That's the point I'm making. The only way for Trump to get more votes than he did, particularly enough to win a popular vote, would be to get more votes than he did in blue, populous places. And no number of additional speeches from Trump or "money being spent differently" would plausibly get him millions more votes in places like California and New York. Which makes the notion that he'd win a popular vote very implausible.

The data would be different because the campaigning would have been different. So the data on which you’re basing your assumptions and speculation is flawed.

 

[Left Coast]

The data would be different because the campaigning would have been different. So the data on which you’re basing your assumptions and speculation is flawed.

Campaigning affects a finite portion of the electorate, to a finite degree. A portion pollsters can and do quantify. It's not like if we had a popular vote, everyone would completely rethink their political ideology. Let me ask you: would you have voted differently if you knew the president would be elected based on the popular vote? If Hillary or Trump had campaigned more or less in your state? If you want to claim that such a state of affairs would have changed the outcome so Trump would win, that needs to be demonstrated. And there's no plausible projection I've seen where the demographics for that work, based on what we know about voter's political ideology.

 

[SoyLeche]

Campaigning affects a finite portion of the electorate, to a finite degree. A portion pollsters can and do quantify. It's not like if we had a popular vote, everyone would completely rethink their political ideology. Let me ask you: would you have voted differently if you knew the president would be elected based on the popular vote? If Hillary or Trump had campaigned more or less in your state? If you want to claim that such a state of affairs would have changed the outcome so Trump would win, that needs to be demonstrated. And there's no plausible projection I've seen where the demographics for that work, based on what we know about voter's political ideology.

Seems to me that at best a different campaign strategy would have just led to less Trump votes in battleground states. He probably would have lost the popular vote by even more if he’d focused on it.

counterfactuals are difficult though.

 

[Watchmen]

Campaigning affects a finite portion of the electorate, to a finite degree. A portion pollsters can and do quantify. It's not like if we had a popular vote, everyone would completely rethink their political ideology. Let me ask you: would you have voted differently if you knew the president would be elected based on the popular vote? If Hillary or Trump had campaigned more or less in your state? If you want to claim that such a state of affairs would have changed the outcome so Trump would win, that needs to be demonstrated. And there's no plausible projection I've seen where the demographics for that work, based on what we know about voter's political ideology.

For the last time, I didn’t say Trump would win. Why do you keep trying to spin what I say? Do you disagree that the raw numbers would be different?

 

[Watchmen]

Seems to me that at best a different campaign strategy would have just led to less Trump votes in battleground states. He probably would have lost the popular vote by even more if he’d focused on it.

counterfactuals are difficult though.

Pure speculation. How many people in blue states don’t vote at all because they know their candidate is almost certain to win or lose?

 

[Left Coast]

For the last time, I didn’t say Trump would win. Why do you keep trying to spin what I say? Do you disagree that the raw numbers would be different?

I'm not trying to spin what you say. Yes, I'm happy to concede the numbers would change to some degree. I'm not convinced they would be changed significantly enough for Trump to win, because there are finite ways, given our political demographics, that he could do that. And those ways are completely implausible.

So also for the last time, if a person wants to claim the numbers would be changed significantly enough in a favorable direction for Trump, they would need to demonstrate that.

You want us to believe that the question is just a completely inscrutable black box that we have no way to even plausibly hypothesize about. That is, I'm sorry, just not true. Pollsters know how many committed partisan voters there are, they know how many swing voters there are, they know what factors influence swings when they do happen, and so on. So can we know these things with absolute certainty? No, obviously not. We can have a probabilistic degree of confidence about it based on the data we have. And we can at the very least reasonably rule out implausible hypotheticals.

 

[SoyLeche]

Pure speculation. How many people in blue states don’t vote at all because they know their candidate is almost certain to win or lose?

Of course it's speculation. I admitted such.

We could do some calculations if you want. We have voter turnout data for the states, and we have the voting records. We could figure out what it would require to get Trump the votes he would have needed under a popular voting mechanism. Might be fun.