2016 election in review

Well, perhaps I should stop making election predictions! I thought Hillary Clinton would win, but I'm not at all surprised that Donald Trump won. 

In the end, this election turned on the ability of Trump to break through Hillary's "blue wall" in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Along with Indiana and Ohio, the rust belt was the difference in this election.

It's worth taking one more look at Trump's closing ad. I think this ad will go down as the defining ad of the campaign. Take a look and see what you think.

2016 election prediction

I misread the polls badly in 2012 and thought Romney would win a close election. It turned out it wasn't that close. For all of the reasons I discounted the polls in 2012, times 100, I really don't know what to think of the polls this time around. All of the convention wisdom has been busted this election cycle. Undoubtedly, the race has tightened considerably within the last two weeks. Is it enough to push Trump over the edge? Possible. Most of the prediction sites have given Trump something like a 35% chance, which is up from the teens just a few weeks ago. We're definitely in margin of error territory. A Brexit-like result is certainly not impossible here.

Still, though, despite all of the winds in Trump's favor, a few strands remain. First, Hillary Clinton has likely banked many millions of early votes. This is likely to preserve a small number of votes that might have left her within the last week. Second, the surge to Trump appears to have come not from undecided voters, but from Republican-leaning independents who are coming back to the base (from candidates like Gary Johnson). Third, the path to electoral victory is strategically easier for Hillary as compared to Trump. There are simply many more options. Trump has to basically run the table on all of the swing states.

I think Hillary Clinton will win this election. Here is my predicted electoral vote map:

The closest states on this map (in order of decreasing electoral votes) are: Florida (29), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4). RCP's "no toss up" map has Nevada and New Hampshire currently leaning toward Trump, but I think they'll ultimately end up on the Clinton side.

Now, with that being said, here is Trump's best chance of winning. As you can see, it comes by the narrowest of margins, but isn't all that far-fetched--in fact, all I did was start with RCP's "no toss up" map on Saturday, November 5th (Clinton 297, Trump 241) and flip Florida's 29 electoral votes to Trump. Florida is so close that this single flip (which is entirely possible) would change the outcome of the election. These predictions show just how close the election might possibly be:

Again, I think Hillary Clinton is likely to win. But if Trump can pull it off, the map will likely look like this one above.

Did Hillary Clinton win last night's debate?

If we were able to conjure up a completely objective standard by which to judge last night's debate, I don't think any reasonable person would conclude otherwise. But as I have said elsewhere, politics is about perception. Politics is not really about facts--it never really has been. The media, and the Clinton campaign, are obsessed with fact-checking. My timeline is filled with "gotcha" fact-checking of both candidates' statements.

Regardless, the obsessive fact-checking reflects a media that is (in my opinion), actually trying to be objective (even if they're failing at that, too). Nonetheless, it also shows that the media is also woefully out-of-touch with a significant portion of the electorate. The people telling you Hillary decisively won the debate are the same people who told you Trump was consistently losing the Republican debates. The people telling you Hillary decisively won the debate are the same people who told you Trump could never win the nomination. Politics is, in fact, highly subjective in a way that the media can probably never capture. What a Hillary supporter sees as her careful dismantling of Trump's previous statements comes off to a Trump supporter as a rehearsed talking point delivered with a fake, cringe-worthy smile. In some cases, what the candidates say matters less than how they say it. This is particularly true with Trump.

What this ultimately means is that the candidates have to be judged through a different lens. The standard by which each candidate needed to meet was and is different. Trump didn't need to "win" this debate. He is not a typical candidate (in this very not-typical 2016) and really, only needed to clear a series of relatively low hurdles: Don't make a major gaffe; don't say something patently offensive. No doubt, there are some among you who will argue that he couldn't even do this. Nonetheless, you're looking through the wrong glasses. If nothing Trump has done within the last year derailed his candidacy, surely nothing he did last night will do that, either. Anything he said or did last night was minor. Hillary Clinton is judged against the usual presidential debate standards, and in that regard, she too did nothing which would signal a significant change in the race. You may think that I'm setting the bar too low for Trump. I don't think I'm setting the bar at all, I'm just telling you where I think it is.

As someone who will not vote for either of these two candidates, but acknowledging that I'm not exactly unbiased (as none of us are), I thought Trump did as well as he could have expected for about the first 30 minutes. He came across as forceful and no-nonsense, and had Hillary on her heels. She was defensive, rehearsed, and wooden. During the second half, Hillary was much stronger, and Trump (quite ironically), lost his debate stamina and lost any focus he had. The blows he tried to land missed widely.

In the end, listening to the talking heads was hilarious. They've been wrong every time for the last year and they expect us to listen to their analysis now. Quite frankly, nothing last night will change the current state of the race. No amount of fact checking matters at this point. We're stuck in a very close race where Hillary likely has a small lead. To be continued...