Election 2016

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 12:29 pm

I asked this a week ago, and I don't think it got answered:

RobbyPants wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Because the reality is that the superdelegates really are as fascist and racist as the rest of the Republican electorate and won't lockstep vote against him.
Is this something we know about these people, or is this based on how they are picked?

Is there anything to back that? People on other sites seem to agree that Trump won't just flat-out win on that second vote. I'm curious why they'd be proportionately more pro-Trump than the rest of the voter bloc.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 1:19 pm

It seems incredibly unlikely. When the delegates go unpledged, more of Trump's delegates are going to defect to other candidates than other candidates' delegates are going to defect to Trump. If Trump comes out of a brokered convention the nominee, it will be because the Republican party decided it was in their best interests to bite the bullet.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 1:28 pm

What exactly does a Trump presidency entail

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 1:52 pm

I find it difficult to imagine Trump could get much done with the livid hatred of Congress that he's looking at, so unless he completely rebuilds the Republican party in his image, he's probably "only" going to appoint some really awful supreme court justices. On the other hand, if he does rebuild the Republican party in his image, which is very possible with the party collapsing right now, he will most likely completely and permanently dismantle American democracy. So. Hopefully that won't happen.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 2:20 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:I mean, we know the story of Egypt and how they failed to craft a democracy by having a half dozen major candidates such that they ended up with a runoff between the Muslim Brotherhood and the remnants of Mubarik's fascist regime, two groups that were justifiably hated and feared by a majority of the population and were overtly hostile to secular democracy.

That is really just another story about F(2)PTP voting gone wrong. The first two past the post went into the second round run-off. The election looked like this (there were more than these five, but the rest all pulled well under a million votes, so I'm ignoring them):

Mohamed Morsi, ~5.7 million votes. Nationalist Muslim Brotherhood candidate.

Ahmed Shafik, ~5.5 million votes. Member of the former regime candidate.

Hamdeen Sabahi, ~4.8 million votes. Probably best described as a democratic socialist candidate.

Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, ~4.0 million votes. Democratic Muslim Brotherhood candidate.

Amr Moussa, ~2.5 million votes. Probably best described as a centre left candidate.

You'll notice that that list goes from "most votes to least votes," but it also goes from "most unfavorable to least unfavorable." As Lewis Carroll would say, it's a poor sort of election that only works backwards. Any sort of preference voting scheme almost certainly would have put Moussa or Fotouh in charge of the country. Even a five-round run-off delegate and convention system (in which delegates are freed up only as their candidates are forced out instead of being free after the first vote because lol) probably would have ended in Sabahi.

Honestly, the overwhelming majority of times shit goes wrong, it boils down to either "FPTP voting is terrible" or "a dying political movement allied itself with a radical political movement to stay alive, and then as soon as the radical political movement was in power they declared themselves supreme overlords for life." The former of those describes Egypt and Trump. The latter of those describes Hitler. Hopefully it won't end up describing Trump.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 2:22 pm

OgreBattle wrote:What exactly does a Trump presidency entail

Nobody knows. Trump doesn't understand what a POTUS even does and seems to think its a dictatorship position, and also doesn't understand basically anything else; his proposed policies range from impractical to horrifying to world-ending-insanity. What would actually emerge from the conflict between his bizarre decrees and whatever attempted restraint the actual professionals could muster is an impermeable problem.

All we can say for sure is that it will be very bad.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 2:55 pm

He gave an answer in the last "debate" which amounts to:

"We need to give Japan and South Korea nuclear weapons because nuclear proliferation is bad."

With all the accompanying references to nuclear like it was a noun you'd expect from Trump.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 3:07 pm

RobbyPants wrote:I asked this a week ago, and I don't think it got answered:

RobbyPants wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Because the reality is that the superdelegates really are as fascist and racist as the rest of the Republican electorate and won't lockstep vote against him.
Is this something we know about these people, or is this based on how they are picked?

Is there anything to back that? People on other sites seem to agree that Trump won't just flat-out win on that second vote. I'm curious why they'd be proportionately more pro-Trump than the rest of the voter bloc.

Trump is probably screwed on the second vote. But he's a lot stronger on the first vote than people acknowledge. The media keeps saying his target is 1237 pledged delegates, but there are still like 200 unpledged delegates and a significant number are going to vote Trump. His pledged tally is his floor, and he'll probably hit the convention's first vote with 60 or so more than that. Honestly,if Trump has around 1150 delegates, the media will declare nevertrumpers successful but he'll still probably win on the first pass. And then people will freak the fuck out.

-Username17

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 5:14 pm

So what are the odds that there's a second vote, as things stand?

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 5:52 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: Trump is probably screwed on the second vote. But he's a lot stronger on the first vote than people acknowledge. The media keeps saying his target is 1237 pledged delegates, but there are still like 200 unpledged delegates and a significant number are going to vote Trump. His pledged tally is his floor, and he'll probably hit the convention's first vote with 60 or so more than that. Honestly,if Trump has around 1150 delegates, the media will declare nevertrumpers successful but he'll still probably win on the first pass. And then people will freak the fuck out.

-Username17

That's what I misunderstood, and this makes more sense. I thought you were talking about the second vote, not the unpledged delegates of the first.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 6:25 pm

Schleiermacher wrote:So what are the odds that there's a second vote, as things stand?

About fifty fifty. Right now, Trump has about 95% of the delegates he needs to clinch the nomination without any votes from the unpledged.If that trend continues and Trump stumbles into the convention with 95% of 1237, he's 62 delegates short, which is almost exactly the number of unpledged delegates he can expect to vote for him. If he gets a below expected number of unpledged support or he falls short in the last races and turns up with 1100 or less delegates, there's a second vote. If he continues to do as well as he has been or over performs in the final stretch, he's the nominee on the first vote.

Other hilarious scenarios exist. Ted Cruz could get within striking distance and be pushed over the top by a near unanimous front of unpledged delegates. I do not see this as a likely outcome. The fact is that even Cruz's pledged delegates hate Cruz. Getting two hundred plus unpledged delegates to all agree that stealing the election for Lyin Ted Cruz in broad daylight is better for the party than allowing Trump to win or opening up to the chaos of a genuinely contested convention seems unlikely.

It's also possible that something Trump says or does finally has actual consequences and he hets only a handful of delegates in future contests. Then Trump, Cruz, and Kasich all limp into the convention with a paltry showing that isn't even close to enough and the first vote is just a formality and the replacement candidate the delegates put up on the second ballot will have already been negotiated.

But for now, it looks like it's about fifty fifty whether Trump wins on the first vote and we probably won't know until June or even the convention itself which way it'll go.

-Username17

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 7:08 pm

I'm in the weird position of caring about the primary in May for Indiana and not sure if I should vote against Drumf or vote in the Dem primary. Usually Indiana doesn't matter at all.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 7:16 pm

I would say your actual order of things to do is:

1) Vote against Trump
2) Stay home.
3) Waste your time voting in the Democratic Primary.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 7:25 pm

Trump is actually behind where he needs to be to win the nomination outright, and with the field consolidated down to three the road ahead is harder than the one behind. I'm going to predict something like 1100/850/350. But because of the winner-takes-district system this shit is really sensitive to small fluctuations.

Erik wrote:I'm in the weird position of caring about the primary in May for Indiana and not sure if I should vote against Drumf or vote in the Dem primary. Usually Indiana doesn't matter at all.

Kaelik beat me to it. The Democratic primary is basically a foregone conclusion, but whether or not we'll get a brokered convention out of the Republicans is a close thing. Find out who's doing best against Trump in your state (or even your district), and vote for that person.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 7:45 pm

Yeah, Indianna is winner take all by district. If you want to play spoiler, find out who the top vote getters in your district are likely to be and then vote for whichever would be most funny. Most funny would be Trump if it looks like he won't make threshold (more chaos on their side the more votes Trump has when he is denied), or NotTrump if it looks like he'll get the delegates he needs (more chaos on their side if the winner wins by less).

The Democratic primary is basically over now and will likely be actually over by May. A vote for Bernie is a protest against decades of corporate malfeasance, and a vote for Hillary is a statement of resolve for party unity in the face of current nihilism. Both are reasonable things to do. In general, the optimal end of this campaign is Hillary winning the last few contests by very narrow margins. That way she goes into the convention as an undisputed winner and the Bernie camp gets a lot of delegates in so they can write minimum wage increases and shit into the party platform. Conversely, the worst case scenario is Sanders getting blown out for a while and then getting blow out wins at the end, leaving his camp utterly defeated and in no position to get anything in the platform yetstill leaving the stench of failure all over the nominee.

-Username17

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Mar 31, 2016 10:15 pm

I'm glad a few people in the national media have finally sucked it up and pointed out that Trump's position on punishing abortion seekers is a totally natural and predictable consequence of a pro-life movement that treats abortion as murder. I was all but gnashing my teeth as my local media tripped all over themselves to say that Trump just isn't caught up on policy as if that actually means anything.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Sat Apr 02, 2016 4:41 pm

Apparently the Sanders campaign is hoping superdelegates will flip the nomination, but in their favor. It could happen!

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Apr 02, 2016 6:36 pm

Well yeah, there's obviously no point to having superdelegates if they won't let someone who's behind in pledged delegates win and he has every right to try to convince them.

Sanders said in an interview with CNN on Sunday that he believes the superdelegates will “begin to look at the reality, and that is, in poll after poll, we are beating Donald Trump by much larger margins than is Secretary Clinton.”

Since in addition to providing a safeguard against Trump, they also make judgement calls for tactical advantage that they're theoretically more qualified to make than the party at large and this is exactly the argument to make when trying to convince them to override the popular vote.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Apr 02, 2016 6:40 pm

Last I checked, while it was true that Hillary polled worse against Trump than Sanders, Trump didn't really stand a chance against either of them. Then again, this was before the superdelegates came down so hard on Hillary's side and quite possibly convinced a whole lot of Sanders supporters that it's their candidate or annihilation.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Apr 02, 2016 6:44 pm

name_here wrote:this is exactly the argument to make when trying to convince them to override the popular vote.

In fact, it is literally the exact same argument that Frank has been pounding down our ass for months for why it is totally okay for Clinton to get all the superdelegates.

Chamomile wrote:Last I checked, while it was true that Hillary polled worse against Trump than Sanders, Trump didn't really stand a chance against either of them.

That's still pretty much true, and you can see it even from what Sanders is saying. He wins by a greater margin in polls... which means they are both winning by margins that are large enough that he can't honestly claim Clinton might lose.

K · Post by K » Sat Apr 02, 2016 7:18 pm

Chamomile wrote:Last I checked, while it was true that Hillary polled worse against Trump than Sanders, Trump didn't really stand a chance against either of them. Then again, this was before the superdelegates came down so hard on Hillary's side and quite possibly convinced a whole lot of Sanders supporters that it's their candidate or annihilation.

Trump is currently polling for a massive defeat because he has offended very large groups of people, so it really doesn't matter if Bernie fairs slightly better against him.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Apr 02, 2016 7:39 pm

Well, duh.

Obviously whichever candidate has more superdelegates has an advantage in the race, so obviously both candidates want to court the votes of superdelegates.

Bernie really only has three paths to the nomination:
1. Flipping a substantial majority of superdelegates
2. Winning somewhere above 75% of remaining regular delegates
3. Benefiting for an event so drastic that it causes Hillary to drop out.

#3 is totally out of Bernie's hands, so it's down to #1 and #2 - both of which are long shots, but any success at either of those also reduces the degree of success he needs on the other one.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Apr 06, 2016 3:02 am

Looks like Cruz and Sanders won Wisconsin. Cruz nearly doubled Trump's share of the vote (with 70% of it in). It appears things are sorting out over on the red team as they try to keep Trump from becoming Team Captain. I bet if Kasich wasn't running, he WOULD have doubled it.

The Democrat race is tighter, roughly 55-45.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Apr 06, 2016 5:46 am

Note that enough of the votes have already been cast that Bernie Sanders needs to win 56% of all remaining delegates to win the pledged delegate count. Any further states that he "wins" by 56% or less leave him in the same hole or even dig him deeper. Every remaining 55% victory is a loss.

-Username17

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Apr 06, 2016 5:52 am

The count at 99% votes tallied, according to CNN, is 56.4 to 43.2, for Sanders.

So he won that one.