Trump
gregladen | October 11, 2016Above is my latest electoral college projection.
This uses the technique previously described. However, instead of using RCP averages for all polled states and then using extreme (non-tossup) states to develop the regression model, this method uses only polling from states with one or more recent poll, and only with good polls. these poll numbers are then "predicted" by black/hispanic/white/Voted_Romney numbers, and that generates a model, based on just over 20 states, designed to predict all the states.
As expected, the r-squared value is much lower using this method, but this method does…
gregladen | October 10, 2016You can't say who really won the debate, because on Friday, news broke, confirming other news from the prior Monday (and general suspicians) indicating that Donald Trump is not fit to be President in Yet Another Way, and his campaign essentially imploded. So, instead, we'll ask, "who won the weekend?"
As you know, I'm the last person to write off Donald Trump. From the very beginning, without fail, I've been warning you that he'll do well, that he'll win the GOP debates, that he'll win various primaries, that he'll win the nomination, etc. All of it. I have never once been wrong about this…
gregladen | October 9, 2016I have no idea why so many smart people are saying that anything that happened over the last few days changes this election, or destroys the Republican Party. Pay attention, people. that is not what is happening.
The Republican Party has become the party that harbors racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, hate, politically expedient willful ignorance about all things science, classism, anything anti-PC, and dedicated service to the demands of the wealthiest Americans.
Most of that comes from the Tea Party the rest comes from the elite in the party. In this way, the Republican Party…
gregladen | October 8, 2016You know the problem. Not just the release of the "I'd grab her ..." tape, but starting before that. Here, watch:
A roughly written Facebook comment by me, reacting to much of the reaction I'm seeing:
To everyone who is saying that Trump is out of the race because of his admitted preference for sexual assault as a way of getting women to like him: Sorry, you are wrong, and you may be living in a bubble.
Do a transect across humanity, in the US. You will find that a double digit percentage of both women and men (though I'll allow you the possibly true but possibly not true idea that more men…
gregladen | September 27, 2016It was a tossup, but in a rather complicated way.
Even the regular commenters with major network news, and PBS, clearly indicated that Hillary Clinton won this debate. And she did. She not only had better answers, but actual answers. Trump acted very poorly and Clinton acted presidential. Trump got caught in several lies, and made several more lies that were to be caught later. He made a fool of himself and Clinton did very well.
Therefore, it was a tossup. It was a tossup because a couple percent of the populous are former Bernie Sanders supporters with so much butt hurt that they will not…
gregladen | September 22, 2016This is it. Don't mess this up.
It isn't that common that a single event can have a cascading effect on so many things. And if it does, such an event would not be that likely to have an entirely negative effect on all it touches. But, the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States would be such an event.
Therefore, in turn and in opposition, your vote this November 8th matters as much as his presidency would matter. So, you must vote. (And please remember to NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP. That's the point. Do not vote for Trump.)
Also please, make sure that if you intend to vote for a…
gregladen | September 16, 2016"After years of peddling a false conspiracy theory that President Obama wasn't born in the United States, Donald Trump — just 53 days before Election Day — now says he believes the president was born in the U.S.
"President Obama was born in the United States. Period," Trump said at a campaign event in a ballroom in his new hotel in Washington. "Now, we want to get back to ... (bla bla bla)."
That's from NPR.
This is clearly going to hurt Donald Trump with his base. The accusation to begin with wad deplorable, after all.
That was today, a few minutes ago.
But yesterday ...
Start about…
gregladen | September 14, 2016Ignorant hateful white men who worship a rising fascist dictator look like this.
gregladen | September 14, 2016Following up on one of the issues addressed in "How The Press Created FrankenTrump and Ruined Civilization", we have this:
gregladen | September 13, 2016ScienceDebate.org is an organization that, for years now, has been pushing to get the candidates running for President of the United States to engage in a debate over science policy, just as they debate foreign policy, or economic policy, etc.
And, ScienceDebate.org has had some success. Some of the candidates, at the primary level, have engaged in such a debate, and at the national level, some of the candidates have contributed written answers to citizen-generated questions about science policy.
And now, they've done it again.
The four main candidates (two actual main candidates and two…
gregladen | September 2, 2016I was half expecting Trump to soften on immigration. The logic of that? His main supporters, who hate all immigrants and are a bunch of racist slobs will vote for Trump no matter what he says because the are morons. But, the fence sitters, the amoral "Good Republicans" who would vote for him because they have learned to fear Democratic economic policies (this group are also all morons) might vote for him if he was less crazy sounding.
But no, that didn't happen. Instead, he embarrassed our nation buy telling the President of Mexico, to his face, that he's going to have to pay for this wall…
gregladen | August 24, 2016This explains a lot of things:
Boy, do we ever need campaign finance reform.
gregladen | June 7, 2016This is an excellent moment to revel in the complexity of life, and argument, and to appreciate the value of the honest conversation.
A candidate is the presumed nominee when she or he obtains the required number of pledged delegates to be at 50% plus a fraction in the total pledged delegate count. This is because a candidate must have a true majority to win the nomination when the delegates are all counted up at the convention, and the pledged delegates are required to cast their lot with the candidate they are pledged to, assuming that candidate exists at the time of the convention.…
gregladen | May 17, 2016As Rachel points out, the first one is pretty conventional. The second one is a killer. Have a look:
gregladen | May 4, 2016Donald Trump is now the presumed Republican candidate for President of the United States. Prior to Cruz and Kasich dropping out of the race, it was not 100% clear that Trump would achieve enough delegates to "lock" the convention, but he was vey close. I am not sure if Trump will be the only candidate on the ballot for the remaining GOP primaries. Had Cruz and Kasich remained in the race, my estimate was that Trump would be about six delegates short of a lock, but even if those candidates are still listed on some future ballots, it seems likely now that Trump will win enough delegates to go…
gregladen | April 20, 2016UPDATE May 26th 2016
Moments ago, Donald Trump's delegate count effectively went above the number needed to guarantee the nomination at this summer's Republican National Convention.
As reported by NBC, "Donald Trump now has the support of 1,238 delegates — just a hair above the 1,237 threshold needed to clinch the Republican presidential nomination"
UPDATED
The update includes adding actual delegate counts for races so far, recognizing that for Pennsylvania this means only 17 delegates out of 54, even though he won there, because Pennsylvania is strange. Also, some other revisions.
This…
gregladen | April 18, 2016EDITED AFTER NEW YORK PRIMARY
NOTE: UPDATED AND IMPROVED VERSION OF THIS ANALYSIS IS HERE
There is almost no way that Donald trump will get to the Republican National Convention with anything less than a fairly strong majority of pledged delegates. But can he get there with the 1237 delegates needed to lock the nomination on the first ballot?
I made a list of upcoming contests and initially estimated Trump's delegate take using the oversimplified method of multiplying the percentage of available delegates with Trump's percentage according to the most recent available polls. This slightly…
gregladen | April 13, 2016... and why we never got the Equal Rights Amendment.
Donald Trump is a very good Republican candidate. In terms of both style and substance, Trump does a good job of representing that part of the Republican Party that has been in charge of that party for several years, the Tea Party. The Republican Party has built itself up to become, effectively, the majority party in the US by pandering to this part of the base, along with gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression. So, really, there is no reason that Republicans running for office around the country should be upset with the…