2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: What's with all the threads about Sanders? This is DU. He is NOT [View all]SMC22307
(8,090 posts)Hell, even a Trump-voting family member who has spent time working in Denmark said he'd move there in heartbeat. Germany, too.
You see smears; I see constructive criticism re: policy differences. Bernie also defended Hillary re: *the damn e-mails*, so he can't be scapegoated for that.
Back to Florida:
2008
Obama: 51.03%
McCain: 48.22%
Third Party: .75%
2012
Obama: 50.01%
Mittens: 49.13%
Third Party: .86%
2016
Hillary: 47.8%
Trump: 49.0%
Third Party: 3.2%
That's a big increase in third-party voters. Sure, it's easy to blame mythical protest voters, but DU underestimates: 1) Clinton fatigue; 2) Hillary hatred lingering from the '90s; 3) dislike of Obamacare (especially those with soaring premiums and deductibles); 4) rejection of political dynasties (Jeb lost); and 4) etc.
This Professor Lichtman from AU is interesting -- he's correctly predicted presidential election winners since 1984:
So, we studied every American election from 1860 to 1980. This was in 1981, guided by the thesis that presidential elections are primarily judgments on the performance and strength of the party holding the White House. And from that study, we came up with 13 simple, true/false questions, where an answer of true always favors the re-election of the White House party. And we came up with a really simple decision rule: if six or more of the keys are false, that bodes defeat for the party holding the White House.
...
Critically, the party holding the White House did not achieve major policy change in the second Obama term. So, they didnt have a big domestic accomplishment to run on. In addition, they didnt achieve a big splashy foreign policy success.
....
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/accurately-predict-presidential-election/
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