Official LRC President Donald J Trump Thread

FL Flipper wrote:

Flagpole wrote:

I'd call it a triple. Beto winning would have been a home run. Gillum (notice the spelling) was a surprise loss...not a huge surprise, but a surprise nonetheless. No one really thought they had a chance at taking the Senate, so if they did that, that would have been the very rare perfect game.

Gillium not winning was a major blow. I can't understand how he lost to that bigot.

Well, repubs voted into office a dead guy into the Nevada state senate. They voted into the House a a guy caught stealing hundreds of thousands in campaign funds in California. And they voted for a guy who blatantly tampered with the election as governor of Georgia. And they voted for the person most reviled by both democrats and republicans back into the Senate in Texas.

The probability of a fair roll of dice cannot be reasonably disputed because the values are totally discrete. A die cannot suddenly double all it's face values mid-air, although that would be some serious quantum level sh!t. There is always a 1/6 chance of rolling values that sum to 7. A poll can be rendered totally inaccurate if a huge blizzard whips up on election day.

It appears your are examining the 538 poll and extrapolating results that fit the definitive outcome of each race because the possibility of a W or L was existent for each. If I had a poll that predicted each actual winner only had a 1% chance to win then I could say my poll was correct because I had a non-zero chance, but my poll would not be very accurate.

Now Nate's poll happens to be very accurate in my opinion, but there are many other variables that make it so good other than after the fact analysis, such as the solid poll grading and weighting they do.

POTUS v. POTUS wrote:

Anyone have the score on the races that Trump campaigned for versus the races that Obama campaigned for?

Who won the Battle of the POTUSi?

Trump was pushing the Senate race at the cost of defending House suburban districts. It's clear that the Republicans outperformed expectations in the Senate. It's disappointing that his racially divisive fear mongering campaign style and indifferent attitude to facts is effective with broad portions of the electorate, but apparently it works.

agip wrote:

L L wrote:

There are 435 House races, so any one race isn't a big deal or didn't get national focus. That's about the aggregate, which was good.

The KS governor race wasn't really national news going in. A nice pickoff, though.

The national news stories going in were the governors races for Florida and Georgia. Not good for Dems.

The big Senate races were MO, IN, AZ, TN, TX, MT, FL and NV

The Dems only pulled NV which was a Hillary state anyway.

Maybe you can throw in WV, but Manchin was always favored to win and he helped confirm Kavanugh.

Republicans outperformed expectations and won almost every contested big race.

I think you are being too picky. There were huge pickups by the Dems in the US House, and statehouses across the nation.

Focusing on headline races isn't so useful.

The following is bigly important to note.

Senate total votes cast: 44.7 million for democrats / 33.1 million for republicans

House total votes cast: 50.7 million for democrats / 46.9 million for republicans

Anyone have the history of a first term POTUS's party gaining Senate seats in midterm election? My co-worker says it hardly ever happens.

them votes wrote:

agip wrote:

I think you are being too picky. There were huge pickups by the Dems in the US House, and statehouses across the nation.

Focusing on headline races isn't so useful.

The following is bigly important to note.

Senate total votes cast: 44.7 million for democrats / 33.1 million for republicans

House total votes cast: 50.7 million for democrats / 46.9 million for republicans

Doesn't look like such a big deal to me.

By your House numbers it looks like Dems beat GOP by 3.9% of the total vote. This compares to Clinton beating Trump by 2.1% of the total vote. Not exactly a huge swing, especially for a mid-term.

Your Senate numbers make it look like a HUGE Dem victory but this is only because so many blue seats were in play - huge Dem majority baked into the inputs here. This is also the reason that the Dems lost in the Senate in spite of winning more races than they lost.

All in all I don't see anything bigly important to note in the numbers that you chose to highlight.

them votes wrote:

agip wrote:

I think you are being too picky. There were huge pickups by the Dems in the US House, and statehouses across the nation.

Focusing on headline races isn't so useful.

The following is bigly important to note.

Senate total votes cast: 44.7 million for democrats / 33.1 million for republicans

House total votes cast: 50.7 million for democrats / 46.9 million for republicans

^This is fact and a major issue for the country. If a civil war were to ever actually erupt in the US I think--at the center of it--would be this issue. The fact is that our current system, demographics, migration patterns within the US (from backwards, sh!thole states to desirable states that are overwhelmingly liberal / Democrat) is starting to insure that the minority opinion (GOP / conservative ideas) rule over the majority.

Where / when this is going to be a problem is when the majority begins to recognize this fact--which they started to in 2016 when Trump lost the popular vote but one anyway. When Dems try and address this issue through legislation the GOP will lose it's sh!t. Given Trump's rhetoric and the unfortunate election success with that rhetoric we will start to see more and more idiots on the right run campigns using such language--which when combined with the fact that the minority is dictating to the majority bad things are probably on the horizon.

bueller? wrote:

Anyone have the history of a first term POTUS's party gaining Senate seats in midterm election? My co-worker says it hardly ever happens.

Hey, I know that you are just asking for a friend. But here's the deal. The GOP gained Senate seats primarily because Obama crushed Romney in 2012 carrying along with him a whole lot of Senate seats. Those Obama Senate seats were now up for grabs six years later.

The GOP did not have a whole lot of seats to lose. And the ones that they did have to lose were held by senators who had won six years ago in spite of Obama's win. So the odds were that they weren't going to lose now without having to overcome the Obama effect. Flip side for the Dems. Lots of Dem senators who could be more easily defeated now that they did not have Obama's coattails to ride on.

Bottom line - nothing to see here (let your friend know ;-).

As it pertains to this thread, all of the specific races that I have been talking about over this last month or two turned about to be Democrat losses.

I'd bump my posts if I were right.

So now I am admitting my misses across the board.

If the Democrats failed to regain the House, it would been a huge disaster and a vindication of Trumpism.

All we really had in Congress was the avoidance of disaster.

What I saw last night were way too many people in the country that are still strong supporters of Trump and his words and actions.

That is sad.

bueller? wrote:

Anyone have the history of a first term POTUS's party gaining Senate seats in midterm election? My co-worker says it hardly ever happens.

probably is rare yes

but this year's senate map was just horrible for the Dems - just a roll of the dice thing, and it came up that dems had to defend a bunch of red state seats.

in 2020 the map goes back the other way and the Rs will have trouble defending many seats.

whereas the house is always roughly the same, so year to year comparisons can be fair.

except for the all the gerrymandering and vote suppression the white nationalist party does - that does foul things up.

L L wrote:

As it pertains to this thread, all of the specific races that I have been talking about over this last month or two turned about to be Democrat losses.

I'd bump my posts if I were right.

So now I am admitting my misses across the board.

If the Democrats failed to regain the House, it would been a huge disaster and a vindication of Trumpism.

All we really had in Congress was the avoidance of disaster.

What I saw last night were way too many people in the country that are still strong supporters of Trump and his words and actions.

That is sad.

agreed that the white nationalist party still responds to naked racism and lies. I'm hoping that when trump is gone, that fever will recede but I'm probably too optimistic.

But be happy with what the dems got, including a far larger than usual number of House seats flipping at midterms. And look at the dem governor races - it's almost even now D/R in governors mansions. And the statehouse races were good too.

chin up eh

Democrats lose again

Nope.

Sorry, but that is really a nothingburger.

House total votes were won by Dems. Dems won majority of House races.

Senate total votes were won by Dems. Dems won majority of Senate races.

Yeah, politics sucks, gerrymandering is evil - as is Trump. And the Electoral College is an unfortunate anachronism that is here to stay. But overall, nothing much has changed. It's an imperfect system which works reasonably well, however frustrated folks might sometimes get with it.

Racket wrote:

Fat hurts wrote:

And in that case, perhaps you can teach me something.

I do think the dice analogy is helpful. An election is a discrete event just as a single roll of the dice.

Nate assigns a probability to each possible outcome, just like you do with dice.

So my point is that the election didn't produce the most likely outcome. But it is wrong to attack Nate on that basis. It would be the same as attacking the probability model for dice because you rolled a nine instead of a seven.

Am I wrong?

It appears your are examining the 538 poll and extrapolating results that fit the definitive outcome of each race because the possibility of a W or L was existent for each.

No. I wasn't making that point at all. And I did address your concern in a previous post. I said that Nate is trying to model the real world, which is obviously more unpredictable than dice.

Again, my criticism was just that it is wrong to attack Nate just because the outcome didn't fall in the middle of his bell curve. It would be the same as attacking the probability model for dice because you rolled a nine instead of a seven.

There are ways of making a valid criticism of Nate, such as pointing to a flaw in his algorithm. But attacking the model based on one discreet event would be mathematically incorrect. That was my point.

agip wrote:

Average Jose wrote:

What’s average? 32 seats flipping? 35 not out of the ordinary.

Since 1946, the average midterm loss for the president's party is 25 seats.

so this is pretty big. 40% more than average. Can't call it a trickle.

How about giving us some recent data, gramps. Nobody gives a f*ck about what happened in1946.

L L wrote:

The big Senate races were MO, IN, AZ, TN, TX, MT, FL and NV

The Dems only pulled NV which was a Hillary state anyway.

Maybe you can throw in WV, but Manchin was always favored to win and he helped confirm Kavanugh.

Republicans outperformed expectations and won almost every contested big race.

I think there is still a good chance that Democrats end up winning those races in Montana and Arizona.

Florida is still not over, but not looking good. Same with the governor's race in Georgia.

L L wrote:

As it pertains to this thread, all of the specific races that I have been talking about over this last month or two turned about to be Democrat losses.

I'd bump my posts if I were right.

So now I am admitting my misses across the board.

If the Democrats failed to regain the House, it would been a huge disaster and a vindication of Trumpism.

All we really had in Congress was the avoidance of disaster.

What I saw last night were way too many people in the country that are still strong supporters of Trump and his words and actions.

That is sad.

Perhaps some voters actually voted for the candidate on the ballot, not Trump or Obama.

Fat hurts wrote:

L L wrote:

The big Senate races were MO, IN, AZ, TN, TX, MT, FL and NV

The Dems only pulled NV which was a Hillary state anyway.

Maybe you can throw in WV, but Manchin was always favored to win and he helped confirm Kavanugh.

Republicans outperformed expectations and won almost every contested big race.

I think there is still a good chance that Democrats end up winning those races in Montana and Arizona.

Florida is still not over, but not looking good. Same with the governor's race in Georgia.

In Georgia that voting machines were switching votes in heavily democratic districts is a big deal.

Nate choked wrote:

agip wrote:

Since 1946, the average midterm loss for the president's party is 25 seats.

so this is pretty big. 40% more than average. Can't call it a trickle.

It IS a trickle. Wimpy little trickle. After spending the most money ever on a midterm cycle by one party.

Compare this to Clinton and Obama's midterm "waves" against them, and you see why it is so disappointing:

Clinton lost 54 House seats and 8 Senate seats.

Obama lost 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats.

Trump will lose 30-35? House seats and GAIN 4 Senate seats.

Not even the same ballpark.

You can't really make those comparisons; not for anything other than historical interest...they don't prove anything. Depends on what seats are up for election and a whole lot of other things. You can't point to those numbers and just say this means people like Trump more than they did Clinton or Obama. It's also a very different political climate. The GOP isn't really the GOP anymore. We have a populist who is really a despot wannabe as the President.