The 2016 Presidential General Election

fivethirtyeight.com has a lot of articles with odds on outcomes of the primaries, but I don't see anything about the general election. Given that we know who the two likely nominees are, it's time to start thinking about November.

The X factor is Bloomberg.

No way I can keep it up for the 8 months between now and the election in the Fall.

Tom_Reingold said:

fivethirtyeight.com has a lot of articles with odds on outcomes of the primaries, but I don't see anything about the general election. Given that we know who the two likely nominees are, it's time to start thinking about November.

nohero said:

No way I can keep it up for the 8 months between now and the election in the Fall.

Tom_Reingold said:

fivethirtyeight.com has a lot of articles with odds on outcomes of the primaries, but I don't see anything about the general election. Given that we know who the two likely nominees are, it's time to start thinking about November.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uepFO4psgKE

yahooyahoo said:

The X factor is Bloomberg.

Or Romney, believe it or not.  (I tend to not)

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/03/01/roger-stone-abundantly-clear-mitt-romney-is-waiting-in-the-wings/

Isn't that the definition of insanity, trying the same thing again and expecting different results?

Don't rule out Bernie.

author said:

Don't rule out Bernie.

Why not? The MSM ruled him out early on and after he won 4 states on super Tuesday CNN was showing Hillary way ahead - by giving all the hundreds of Super delegate votes to her.

These votes are not cast until the convention and can and have been changed in the past.

Tom_Reingold said:

fivethirtyeight.com has a lot of articles with odds on outcomes of the primaries, but I don't see anything about the general election. Given that we know who the two likely nominees are, it's time to start thinking about November.

Fivethirtyeight is not going to say much about the general election at this point because they understand that it's far too early for meaningful polling and prognostications.

It's time to support your candidate in whatever way you can.  It's not time for making predictions about the general (You can predict, of course, if you think that's fun.  But it's meaningless)

Clinton has a lot of baggage.  I get the impression that the FBI investigation into her email usage is a real investigation and could result in her finding herself in an increasingly uncomfortable position.  

BCC said:

author said:

Don't rule out Bernie.

Why not? The MSM ruled him out early on and after he won 4 states on super Tuesday CNN was showing Hillary way ahead - by giving all the hundreds of Super delegate votes to her.

These votes are not cast until the convention and can and have been changed in the past.

tjohn said:

Clinton has a lot of baggage.  I get the impression that the FBI investigation into her email usage is a real investigation and could result in her finding herself in an increasingly uncomfortable position.  

BCC said:

author said:

Don't rule out Bernie.

Why not? The MSM ruled him out early on and after he won 4 states on super Tuesday CNN was showing Hillary way ahead - by giving all the hundreds of Super delegate votes to her.

These votes are not cast until the convention and can and have been changed in the past.

I have had the same impression for quite some time.

I remember the lie about Bernie dodging mortar fire in Iraq while visiting.  Luckily he made it to the airport building safely.  Oh wait.............it was not Bernie lying to the American public.   Not bothering with the truth seems to be a Clinton trait.

It's kind of sad.  She has been under a non-stop character assassination attack from the Republicans since 1992, yet her most serious wounds are the self-inflicted wounds.

author said:

I remember the lie about Bernie dodging mortar fire in Iraq while visiting.  Luckily he made it to the airport building safely.  Oh wait.............it was not Bernie lying to the American public.   Not bothering with the truth seems to be a Clinton trait.

@mjh, that answer helps me. Thank you.

I'm horrified by the current campaign but at the same time I'm confident that HRC will be the next president, all the controversy about her notwithstanding. American voters elected BO twice; I can't see them going for Trump or Cruz or any of the other idiots. The GOP clown car is pandering to a very small portion of the voting public. (Of course it's imperative to get as many Dems out to vote as possible.)

I'm hoping that HRC nominates BO to the Supreme Court if BO hasn't been able to get a nominee through before the election. (Man, is that a scandal. I hope the GOP gets its a$$ handed to it in November.)

If Bloomberg jumps in as a third-party candidate, and I don't think he will, it will change everything and not for the better. I like and admire Bloomberg, and he might even make a great president, but not now. He will suck votes from the Dems and that ain't good. (Just by way of background, if I ever see Ralph Nader on the street, I will punch him in the face.) Bloomberg couldn't run as a Republican now.

I agree that a Bloomberg candidacy would be destructive if not disastrous. I'm disturbed that somewhere between 30 & 40 percent of people who are polled about whether Obama should appoint a nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court say no. It's a minority, but a large one. 

I am not confient that Hilary will win either the nomination or that she would win the general. There are a LOT of voters who distrust and despise her and will vote for anyone else. I think if she does get elected she will enjoy the same obstructionist congress Obama and her husband had. 

In fact, Bernie Sanders as an independent has been working both sides of the aisle in congress for decades. Rather than demonizing Trump, he seeks to understand why his message has been so popular and what can be done to reach those voters.  That strikes me as a more likely winning strategy than Hilary's politics as usual.

http://youtu.be/D7px3zMGKD4

Considering this election cycle is turning normalcy on it's head, I never know what to think.  As polarizing as Clinton can be, the Right has not even begun to construct the scaffold for Sanders, so he has gotten off scott free to this point, making all of those RealClearPolitics  polls that show him beating every Republican in the general election a fantasy, in my opinion.  If they start on his 'scary', to their minds, socialist stuff, Nicaragua, early sex writings, tax hikes for every level of income, etc., that is going to be a lot of negative info to overcome for middle America.  A lot of those folks aren't known for seeing issues in depth, and they can be turned by sound bytes.  I also know Democrats who don't want single payer health insurance, because they dont trust the government, and they see what a nightmare the VA has been for a lot of people.  It's hard to believe that in this era of stark division, enough people would elect a man to the left of Obama.  Again, not that logic has much to do with the current election... There were people in NH primaries that were trying to decide between Trump and Sanders!!!

callista said:

Considering this election cycle is turning normalcy on it's head, I never know what to think.  As polarizing as Clinton can be, the Right has not even begun to construct the scaffold for Sanders, so he has gotten off scott free to this point, making all of those RealClearPolitics  polls that show him beating every Republican in the general election a fantasy, in my opinion.

Not just your opinion. Iis my opinion and the opinion of political scientists and respected pollster like Nate Cohn.

Nate Cohn said you can't take current polls that Sanders can win at face value. The Republicans have not yet mounted real attacks on Sanders. Right now, they're giving Sanders a free ride hoping Sanders will be nominated.

Cohn said they'll have so much baggage on Sanders that the attack ads will practically write themselves.

There will be attack ads against anyone who is a candidate in November. The attack ads against Clinton, Trump or Cruz can "write themselves". With Trump those ads can be a replay of the speech by the last Republican Presidential Candidate, Romney. He called Trump a liar, conman, phony and failure.

The biggest problem facing the Democrats is overconfidence. The Republican Party is in the process of committing suicide.

Any Democrat feeling overconfident right now needs to get over it.  Republican Party issues notwithstanding, Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate is far from a perfect candidate.

LOST said:
The biggest problem facing the Democrats is overconfidence. The Republican Party is in the process of committing suicide.

That's why I called it their problem.

There is never a "perfect" candidate. Eight years ago the Country elected a little known first term Senator with a foreign sounding name.

The Republican Party has won the popular vote only once in the last 25 years. After their defeat in the last election they did a post-mortem and concluded that they would not be able to win the Presidency this year unless they substantially increased their share of the Hispanic vote. What their Primary campaign has now done is the opposite. They have decreased their share of that demographic to almost zero.

There is a thought that Trump has brought in Democrats and Independents to his campaign and the Republican Party but I wonder how many of those Trump supporters actually voted for Obama in 2012.

In a comment on FiveThirtyEight about Trump voters, they were saying that many Dems voted for Trump to increase the odds that he becomes the Republican nominee, as he's seen as more beatable, not because they actually liked him.

LOST said:

There will be attack ads against anyone who is a candidate in November. The attack ads against Clinton, Trump or Cruz can "write themselves". 

The difference is that with Clinton whatever has come out has come out and has been used against her. Her polling will not get worse.

With Sanders they haven't even started.

Personally, I like Sanders stance on many things more than Clinton. An example is free tuition in public colleges, which is doable.

BG9 said:

Personally, I like Sanders stance on many things more than Clinton. An example is free tuition in public colleges, which is doable.

What would it cost and would it be a sustainable program?

I only saw one analysis of Bernie's free tuition goal, and it did not seem sustainable, but the analysis did not seem complete to me. I read something in the Economist a couple weeks ago that suggested none of the tax plans - Republican or Dem seemed solid - again though all of the plans were incomplete in that there were not enough details.

If I had to place a bet, it would be that Paul Ryan will be our next president.

Here's why.

If Kasich takes Ohio and Rubio takes Florida no Republican candidate will have enough votes to guarantee nomination.  A brokered convention will chose the strongest, most electable candidate possible:   Paul Ryan.

Trump, propelled by his ego and the unfairness of having the nomination stolen will become a third party candidtate.

Bryan Pagliano, Hillary Clinton's former employee who handled her email server was just given immunity.   Those in the know are hinting or saying outright that the indictment of Hillary Clinton will follow.

The result will be that Hillary will either lose the nomination to Sanders or win  but will be severely weakened.

This could propel  Bloomberg to enter the race.

So , you will have either Bernie Sanders or a crippled Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee,Paul Ryan as the Republican nominee, Trump as an independent candidate and possibly Michael Bloomberg as an independent candidate.

The result could be that no single candidate wins a majority of electoral votes.

If that happens the constitution dictates that the House of Representatives chooses the President and the Senate chooses the Vice President. The house is overwhelmingly Republican.   But, for the purposes of choosing a president each state gets only one vote.   In that case the number of states controlled by Republicans outweighs those controlled by Democrats.   Paul Ryan wins.

sarahzm said:

If I had to place a bet, it would be that Paul Ryan will be our next president.

Here's why.

If Kasich takes Ohio and Rubio takes Florida no Republican candidate will have enough votes to guarantee nomination.  A brokered convention will chose the strongest, most electable candidate possible:   Paul Ryan.

Trump, propelled by his ego and the unfairness of having the nomination stolen will become a third party candidtate.

Bryan Pagliano, Hillary Clinton's former employee who handled her email server was just given immunity.   Those in the know are hinting or saying outright that the indictment of Hillary Clinton will follow.

The result will be that Hillary will either lose the nomination to Sanders or win  but will be severely weakened.

This could propel  Bloomberg to enter the race.

So , you will have either Bernie Sanders or a crippled Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee,Paul Ryan as the Republican nominee, Trump as an independent candidate and possibly Michael Bloomberg as an independent candidate.

The result could be that no single candidate wins a majority of electoral votes.

If that happens the constitution dictates that the House of Representatives chooses the President and the Senate chooses the Vice President. The house is overwhelmingly Republican.   But, for the purposes of choosing a president each state gets only one vote.   In that case the number of states controlled by Republicans outweighs those controlled by Democrats.   Paul Ryan wins.

Interesting scenario. Rubio unlikely to win Florida but with Cruz and Kaisich could get enough delegates to throw the nomination into a brokered convention, which could possibly lead to Ryan.

Your comments on Hillary are on the mark. There is so much BS produced by her supporters and ignorant talking heads that people who haven't been paying attention are unaware of how much trouble she is potentially facing.

sarahzm said:

If I had to place a bet, it would be that Paul Ryan will be our next president.

I read your analysis. Don't throw your money away.

I do not understand why so many folks have yet to realize that the Republican Party is now a minority Party and is now in the process of falling apart.

LOST said:

sarahzm said:

If I had to place a bet, it would be that Paul Ryan will be our next president.

I read your analysis. Don't throw your money away.

I do not understand why so many folks have yet to realize that the Republican Party is now a minority Party and is now in the process of falling apart.

I agree with you.  Personally, I support Hillary.  But, if she gets indicted all bets are off.   I think it would be particularly challenging to run a presidential campaign while under indictment.  

sarahzm said:

LOST said:

sarahzm said:

If I had to place a bet, it would be that Paul Ryan will be our next president.

I read your analysis. Don't throw your money away.

I do not understand why so many folks have yet to realize that the Republican Party is now a minority Party and is now in the process of falling apart.

I agree with you.  Personally, I support Hillary.  But, if she gets indicted all bets are off.   I think it would be particularly challenging to run a presidential campaign while under indictment.  

Hillary is not going to get indicted.  I know BCC will throw out a million arguments about this topic, but I don't plan to read these arguments as I've read enough about it to last me a lifetime.  I'm willing to place a bet though!!!