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How Clinton lost Michigan — and blew the election. Interesting read.

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danm999

Member
There should have popped up a red flag in the Clinton campaign when Bernie won Michigan.

I think Moore said on the on the primaries election day in Michigan, Clinton was about +20 in the polls higher than Bernie and she lost, 12 hours later.

I mean, this is some pretty selective reading of things. Primary results don't really work like that as we saw on Election Night.
 
He got lucky by not only telling people that Trump would win but describing exactly how he would win and where he would win? That's a lot fucking luck.

He's been awful since the aughts! He described how we all thought Trump might win if he was going to win. That's not skill. If I had to describe HOW Trump was going to win before hand, the way he won would be EXACTLY THAT. It's not skill!
 

kirblar

Member
He got lucky by not only telling people that Trump would win but describing exactly how he would win and where he would win? That's a lot fucking luck.
He got lucky when Comey threw it, yes.

Without Comey, Clinton wins. It would have been closer than expected, but she wins. Trump's margin was tiny and we saw what happened in polling and w/ late-breaking voters.
 

Nikodemos

Member
A lot of the rural-ish places she campaigned in were lost from the start, because the people there wanted to hear that their old coal/manufacturing jobs will return, and they wanted to hear that from somebody who wasn't Hillary Clinton.
 
Because the campaign should have known better. They should have pieced together their incorrect data from the primaries where Bernie performed better than expected and where she outright lost Michigan. The campaign should have put stock in the people actually on the ground begging for in-person support.

And as for after the fact, you also have to ask why the hell the Trump team had better and more accurate data in key areas. There is zero excuse for that.

Unless someone can point me in the direction of evidence that says differently, I don't think Trump had more accurate data (and that that's why he campaigned there), so much as he knew this was his only path to victory so he played it as hard as he could. Remember, even on election night most of Republicans that were willing to talk still thought he was going to lose the election.
 

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
I wouldn't use Moore as some prophet or something. The guy is wrong A LOT. He made a correct assessment based on a microview that proved correct. If Clinton's team had done a better job actually assessing all of these microviews, we might have had a different result.

Travelling through three states, I noticed an unusual lack of Clinton signs. Through Cities and Towns of states that went for Obama, I saw a flood of Trump signs. It had me worried.

Now after reading the article, it makes me wonder if these same states received the same response from the campaign when asking for signs. It would actually be really interesting, statistics wise, to see how many signs DNC produced and where they sent them.
 
Unless someone can point me in the direction of evidence that says differently, I don't think Trump had more accurate data (and that that's why he campaigned there), so much as he knew this was his only path to victory so he played it as hard as he could. Remember, even on election night most of Republicans that were willing to talk still thought he was going to lose the election.

Right -- the Trump team and RNC data thought he would lose. He had one path to victory. We all knew what it was. This was it. He won it. It worked.
 

guek

Banned
It doesn't ease any of my frustration or anger that Clinton trusted polls. Messaging was a problem, Comey was a problem, the media was a problem, all of those made a impact. The point of this article is that hubris was also a major issue that enabled the campaign to forego a ground game and ignore anything that disagreed with their shit model. The election was close and could have been salvaged any number of ways, the campaign getting their heads out of their asses would have been one way to do it.

I mean, calling news networks and telling them to stop saying Trump has a chance speaks volumes.
 
I said Britain specific. methodology means everything to polling data.

It's wonderful that you don't actually want to engage in this discussion about why exit polls aren't accurate because you were unwilling to accept that pre-polling of Brexit was entirely accurate. I continue to not understand the point you're trying to make, and suspect it's because you don't actually want to admit that you were wrong that the pre-Brexit polls were accurate for reasons I can't understand.
 
I swear I feel like some of you were born yesterday and this is your first election. Why would she waste her resources in a state where is she is leading by 5 points? Why would you?

Why do people continue to say that when she had a 20+ point margin going into the Michigan primary only to get beaten by Sanders. You'd think her and/or her team wouldn't want to take any chances of it happening again.
 

Principate

Saint Titanfall
It's wonderful that you don't actually want to engage in this discussion about why exit polls aren't accurate because you were unwilling to accept that pre-polling of Brexit was entirely accurate. I continue to not understand the point you're trying to make, and suspect it's because you don't actually want to admit that you were wrong that the pre-Brexit polls were accurate for reasons I can't understand.

I asked that for a reason a lot of the points mentioned are in reference to amaerica which is an order of magnitude higher both in population and land mass which affects the logistics of competently conducting an exit poll. Britain is far smaller land with a much lower population thus those issue wouldn't have anywhere near as substantial an affect,
 
I asked that for a reason a lot of the points mentioned are in reference to amaerica which is an order of magnitude higher both in population and land mass which affects the logistics of competently conducting an exit poll. Britain is far smaller land with a much lower population thus those issue wouldn't have anywhere near as substantial an affect,

The pre-Brexit polls were accurate. Again, what point are you trying to make besides saying they weren't?
 

Neoweee

Member
If Hillary won PA, she would almost have certainly won MI/WI, because it would be driven by a general swing in the state of the race.

States arent fully independent of each other. The overall state of the race collapsed in the face of the Comey letter and sunk every state, and almost certainly by more than the tiny fraction of a percent that MI and WI were lost by.

They simply were not into jeopardy until the last 10 days of the race, and Hillary was right to focus on PA and FL. There simply is no electoral map without one of those two.
 

Suikoguy

I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
Because she went by the statistics and the numbers. Trump didn't. Look who won.

This is a really weird argument.
Apparently you want political campaigns to be run by intuition and gut feelings?
 

guek

Banned
You're acting like every other poll out there didn't show the same results. This was an industry-wide failure. And that doesn't just apply to Michigan.
You're acting like there weren't real warning signs that the polls were wrong. There were and the campaign didn't care.
 

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
You're acting like every other poll out there didn't show the same results. This was an industry-wide failure. And that doesn't just apply to Michigan.

The Clinton campaign didn't even have a respectable level of internal polling.
 
I wouldn't use Moore as some prophet or something. The guy is wrong A LOT. He made a correct assessment based on a microview that proved correct. If Clinton's team had done a better job actually assessing all of these microviews, we might have had a different result.

Travelling through three states, I noticed an unusual lack of Clinton signs. Through Cities and Towns of states that went for Obama, I saw a flood of Trump signs. It had me worried.

Now after reading the article, it makes me wonder if these same states received the same response from the campaign when asking for signs. It would actually be really interesting, statistics wise, to see how many signs DNC produced and where they sent them.

Human beings are herdable animals: the reality is that they need waypoints to know which way they should go if they are not paying attention to minutiae and details. Undecideds will defer to the "popularity effect" in these situations. A campaign actively choosing not to display the presence of candidate support representationally via things like campaign signage or directly via door-to-door or phone-based canvassing is a fundamental mistake based on a misunderstanding of human psychology.
 
Yes and plenty of previous British exit polls were also accurate. That's why people were shocked when it happened. It's not a common thing.

?????????

The actual, real polls before Brexit were accurate and showed a 50/50 race. The exit polls showed a 52/48 split against Brexit, which is close. The results were 52/48 in the other way.

What point are you actually making???????
 

IrishNinja

Member
Hopefully Trump's win drains the swamp of shitty DNC consultants.

literally about the only good to come of this mess, he says before they try to run someone like kaine in 2020

Now imagine that team running the country. We dodged a bullet.

you know after actually having to be under trump for the next 4 years or however long it takes for him to do something impeachable, i'd say the # 2 tragedy here is being subjected to your political views where we could've had a 1 year reprieve

Okay, so, liberals, let's not slob on Moore's dick for 4 years just because we lost.

i honestly thought we chucked him in the bushes somewhere between farenhype & sicko, his kerry support campaign was about it for me

and i long for the day when everyone stops lining up to point out each other's "bubbles" as if we're somehow objective enlightened beings now

It's not a brave post, it's a normal post. PoliGAF told me Hilldawg would crush Orange Hitler.

I disagree.

And no, he did not get lucky, he nailed the election point by point and PoliGAF told me he was a delusional nut.

yeah, it was clearly poliGAF and not, you know, literally every other corner/poll around
some of ya'll really need to put down the pitchforks already
 

jfkgoblue

Member

Blader

Member
The thing is, a candidate like Obama is a once in a generation type candidate, you can't rely on getting lucky with your candidate to consistently win elections. Yes the margins were small, but they are the result of a more broad trend that has been moving to the right for some time. The Democrats turning their back on the white working class is what gave us this, these were reliable Democrats for a long time, but they feel that Democrats stopped caring about them. We are in the midst of a big political realignment and Trump simply accelerated it. So while the margins were small, I feel like we gotta look at the trend and that suggests that these states are unlikely to switch back soon.

On the flip side of that, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona are on the trend blue, this happens every 40-50 years or so with 1980 being the culmination of the last shift, with the "Solid South" firmly switched from Democratic to Republican.

Some prognosticators are already starting to call this the "Seventh Political system"

Not to sound like I'm singling you out on this, but I'm kind of tired of the "Obama is a once-in-a-generation" candidate rhetoric. Obama is a great speaker, a great campaigner, a great organizer, a great candidate, and, more often than not, a great president. But he's not some unique black swan event (outside of, you know, being the first black president). Democrats have had talented, articulate, charismatic candidates who could win the presidency with the help of whites, blacks and Hispanics before, and they will continue to do so. We can talk about this broad trend of the white working class leaving Democrats, but the party was able to win back enough of these voters after Nixon's southern strategy to elect Carter, Clinton (twice), and Obama (twice).

I'm not saying I expect Democratic presidents to win a majority of the white vote anytime soon -- if anything, that likelihood will keep shrinking. But there are enough white working-class voters in there margins to flip back for next time, as Dems have done five times before since the civil rights and voting rights acts sent Dixiecrats to the GOP.
 
I read some where where it said white turnout was higher, but the fact remains that there wasn't a huge surge in Latino voters, and the 1% increase, was correct.

Again, we actually won't know anything about any racial turnout until the voter file is updated. Exits, again, are not accurate. I was merely pointing out that your assumption on white voters was wrong, based on the exits, but those could also be wrong. We won't know for a while.
 
Premise is bullshit. Clinton could have won Michigan and Wisconsin and still lost. It was Penn. that mattered, and she went hard there and still lost.

She went hard at the urban areas of Penn and forgot about going to more rural areas. Basically, her schedule had about half the dates that Trump's did and that's probably why they lost.
 

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
I read some where where it said white turnout was higher, but the fact remains that there wasn't a huge surge in Latino voters, and the 1% increase, was correct.

Didn't 30% of Hispanics vote for Trump anyway? A lot of Cuban Americans I've talked to leaned Republican.
 

ZOONAMI

Junior Member
This quote will be a little long, but it is important. I'll try to bold most of the important parts.





This was a PRESIDENTIAL campaign by a seasoned Politician. Holy shit.

The lack of lit does really confuse volunteers. It's about $. It's being spent on television. People know hillarys name, but not a whole lot about her background or policies. Brochures dropped off by locals in the booonies does more than you'd think.
 
Its fine to use numbers. What Hillary's campaign seemed to do is rely SOLELY on numbers and ignore ground game reports from people who were actually there.

Her data was dirty because it did not control for the shame effect. Trump won the election because the majority of his targeted demographic was "silent" and didn't admit they were for him until after the fact. This may actually be weaponized in the future to make data less reliable in terms of polling.

Best as a campaign to have all your bases covered. Obama's campaign is likely to be the model for the way to do it right for many years to come.
 

jfkgoblue

Member
Didn't 30% of Hispanics vote for Trump anyway? A lot of Cuban Americans I've talked to leaned Republican.
Cubans have always been Republican, they have been Republicans since the 60's, in fact, if the Republican candidate doesn't win the Cuban vote in Florida that means they are not winning Florida.

According to exit polls, Trump only got 54% of the Cuban vote, which could spell big trouble for the GOP in Florida going foward.
 
Didn't 30% of Hispanics vote for Trump anyway? A lot of Cuban Americans I've talked to leaned Republican.

We'll never really know, and we certainly won't know until we get the updated voter files, but it's likely she didn't do any better with Hispanics than Obama based on county data. But again, tbd.
 
Not to sound like I'm singling you out on this, but I'm kind of tired of the "Obama is a once-in-a-generation" candidate rhetoric. Obama is a great speaker, a great campaigner, a great organizer, a great candidate, and, more often than not, a great president. But he's not some unique black swan event (outside of, you know, being the first black president). Democrats have had talented, articulate, charismatic candidates who could win the presidency with the help of whites, blacks and Hispanics before, and they will continue to do so. We can talk about this broad trend of the white working class leaving Democrats, but the party was able to win back enough of these voters after Nixon's southern strategy to elect Carter, Clinton (twice), and Obama (twice).

I'm not saying I expect Democratic presidents to win a majority of the white vote anytime soon -- if anything, that likelihood will keep shrinking. But there are enough white working-class voters in there margins to flip back for next time, as Dems have done five times before since the civil rights and voting rights acts sent Dixiecrats to the GOP.

Once in a generation generally means about once every 20 years. Carter was elected because of Nixon. Which leaves us Kennedy/LBJ in the 60s, then Clinton 30 years later in the 90s, then Obama 10/15 years later in 2008. So, yeah, once in a generation.

The worst part is she barely even needed to show up to win Philly.

Remember that the idea isn't just to win Philly (because of course she was going to do that), it's to drive up turnout in Philly (and Pittsburgh) so much that it drowns out the turnout in the rest of the state. Her problem (and the problem that Dems are going to have fix right now in states like PA/MI/WI before it gets really bad and affects them in Minnesota and, worst case scenario, Illinois) was that Republicans were actually able to drive up turnout in the rest of the state to the point where it drowned out her huge victories in the cities.
 

Principate

Saint Titanfall
?????????

The actual, real polls before Brexit were accurate and showed a 50/50 race. The exit polls showed a 52/48 split against Brexit, which is close. The results were 52/48 in the other way.

What point are you actually making???????

I'm talking about the accuracy of previous exit polls before that event that were accurate. It's not that difficult to follow. Since it mirrors what happened in Michigan. Though in this case even more accurate polls had a substantially high margin of error.
 
Be wary of any explanatory journalism from Politico that doesn't include a heavy dose of self-reflection in their own culpability:



You're gonna mention all that and not the part about Politico heavily pushing the They're Both Bad bullshit?

This is why I take these postmortems with a grain of salt. Not a single one from established publications will ever acknowledge the fact that the way they covered the campaign had at LEAST a small amount of impact in the election. No self-awareness, no reflection, no nothing. It's infuriating, because they WERE a factor, they knew they were a factor, but they will forever pretend they weren't and conveniently omit that side of the conversation to save face.

These postmortems have limited effect when the publications writing them have horse blinders on and are feeding us only half the story.
 
The worst part is she barely even needed to show up to win Philly.

There's a difference between winning Philly vs. maximizing your vote out of Philly. Democrats usually win PA because they're able to squeeze more votes out of Philly than almost any other congressional district in the country.

You also need to blunt your losses in rural PA, but there's a reason why she'd stress Philly.
 

guek

Banned
This is why I take these postmortems with a grain of salt. Not a single one from established publications will ever acknowledge the fact that the way they covered the campaign had at LEAST a small amount of impact in the election. No self-awareness, no reflection, no nothing. It's infuriating, because they WERE a factor, they knew they were a factor, but they will forever pretend they weren't and conveniently omit that side of the conversation to save face.

These postmortems have limited effect when the publications writing them have horse blinders on and are feeding us only half the story.

The only ones I've come across are on NPR where they routinely point out the media fucked up.
 

jfkgoblue

Member
Once in a generation generally means about once every 20 years. Carter was elected because of Nixon. Which leaves us Kennedy/LBJ in the 60s, then Clinton 30 years later in the 90s, then Obama 10/15 years later in 2008. So, yeah, once in a generation.
Yep, and Republicans haven't really needed one since their voting bloc is much more motivated to vote than the Dems.

Clinton also had a huge assist from Ross Perot, if it wasn't for Perot, he never would have been elected. He only won 43% of the vote after all.
 
I'm talking about the accuracy of previous exit polls before that event that were accurate. It's not that difficult to follow. Since it mirrors what happened in Michigan. Though in this case even more accurate polls had a substantially high margin of error.

Yes, it is. You're not making a point about Brexit. This is not a discussion anymore.
 
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