I've been hearing lots of talk about why the Dems lost so much in 2016. I think it was because

[napi21]

of soooo many outlets, news, cable TV, radio, most of the pundents, were strongly stating Hillary will not only win, but she'll brieng along with her the House & Senate majorities too! Almost all the pollsters joined in that same song for MONTHS before the election. I think a lot of people simply said, "I'm tired and Hill is so far ahead, it won't matter if I don't bother to vote."

I'm listening to Chris Matthews now, and his panel were talking about solutions to why it's so difficult to get Dems out to the polls. I heard similar discussions on radio recently, probably because the election for the Dems chair happens this Saturday.

Along with filing suits against anyone adjusting voter roles for nefarious reasons, we need to STOP trying to energize our voters by bragging that our candidates are SURE TO WIN! Obviously it doesn't work! I suspect the pollsters will not do that because of how bad they all looked in 2016. We MUST convince our promoters to do the same!

[yallerdawg]

1. Hillary supporters were lulled into complacency.

When Kaine's Virginia was too close to call, then Florida and North Carolina, it was like watching a train wreck.

Democrats didn't show up.

Hate trumped love on Election Day.

[JTFrog]

2. Let's see, Comey, Russia, wikileaks, RT, fake news, gerrymandering, election hacking......

Are we really fucking still debating this?

Was it the millions of votes that she got more than her opponent that makes people wonder?

*sigh*

[Lanius]

5. Fake news, gerrymandering and election hacking

The elections are stacked against the Dems in many states and districts.

[TrekLuver]

7. And even with allllll that she still almost won.

[unblock]

8. voter suppression, unverifiable voting machines, fewer places to vote, disenfranchisement laws,

voter id laws....

... and a media that gave 80% of its election coverage to donnie and hailed him as the most fascinating candidate ever, and basically yawned at the possibility of electing the first woman president ever....

... and a media that somehow was unable to characterize the election as a choice between a incompetent dictatorship vs. a democracy headed by the most capable, experienced candidate perhaps ever.

... and a media that insisted on covering breathlessly the obviously partisan sham investigations in ginned-up fake scandals about hillary while largely dismissing all the crap about donnie, either calling it partisan attacks, or admiring how he gets away with it.

[BlueStateLib]

3. I think immigration was a big issue

[Hannahcares]

4. Dems lost because of proprietary voting machine software

Last edited Mon Feb 20, 2017, 11:03 PM - Edit history (1)

Dems will not win again until we have voting machines and tabulators which do not contain proprietary code! Wake up Dems! Hillary won WI, MI, PA and Florida.

Please read jonathon Simon's Code Red.
Peace, Hannah

[sarah FAILIN]

9. I've been trying to look at this myself, but I don't know where to start

I want to know who owns these machines and who programs them.

Downloading the free excerpt now of the story.

[delisen]

16. A few sources

Cylance is a startup that has some information-I think they are developing new machines.

<http://fortune.com/2015/07/28/cylance-42-million/>

There is also a group that has researched all the voting machines and has some interesting data. The Diebold touch screen machines are used in 5 states and in some counties in other states. The use electronic cards that are supposed to be easy to change, even remotely. They are old technology and their were many reports of their flipping votes in 2016, in Georgia and elsewhere.

I can't remember the name of the organization but I think it had a number of tech people and good data on the vulnerabilities of some of the machines in use.


Here's a group. If you contact some of the university professors who are studying the issue they might be able to point you in the right direction.

<https://www.cnet.com/news/e-voting-machines-vulnerable-to-remote-vote-changing/>

[virtualobserver]

6. I blame the almost religious faith in 538

Even though 538 completely missed the Trump win of the Republican nomination, everyone was convinced that it was a lock for Hillary.

[TrekLuver]

10. Well I did have some "concerns" when I saw the individual state polls. There were a lot of

undecideds...I though OMG what if those people break for Trashpot? You pretty much "were not allowed" to post anything but victory threads for Hillary. Any kind of concern or what about this posts you were called a troll.

[virtualobserver]

19. It was a failure of her campaign staff....they were as overconfident as DU'ers were

As a candidate, Trump was an abomination. It shouldn't have been close.

[TrekLuver]

22. I know I was very sad about how close it was. America failed us that day.

[unblock]

11. 538 was not at all alone. no one serious was calling it for donnie.

and 538 made it clear that a 60-65% (or whatever it ended up being by election day) chance of hillary winning was not at all a lock.

a 35-40% chance of donnie winning is not at all insignificant and you can't say the model is wrong just because the less likely outcome happened. obviously that doesn't make it right, either, just that you can't blame the model for one particular outcome.

besides, a last minute surprise like the comey crap was something these poll-based models can't easily react to.


that said, at the end of the day, hillary's vote total was pretty much the same as obama's four years ago. it not obvious that there was a massive lack of enthusiasm and participation. obviously, a few votes the certain states made the difference, but this was at most one of many, many factors.

[virtualobserver]

17. It was 71% overall.......77% in Penn. 78.9% in michigan 83.5% in Wisconsin

my point is that 538 got it wrong in both the primary and the general.

[unblock]

21. of course the problem is these aren't independent estimates.

they're not entirely dependent in the sense that there are things that could happen that affect one state but not another, but something like the comey thing affects the whole country. so if the long shot comes in for michigan, it's entirely possible that the same causes of that would also cause the long shot to come in for wisconsin.

i agree that no forecaster should be taken as gospel, though the fact that he "got it wrong" before doesn't in and of itself bother me. if think they shouldn't be taken as gospel more because they inherently cannot predict things with great certainty, they can only provide probabilistic estimates, much like predicting the weather.

if the weather service says there's only a 5% chance of rain, and it does in fact rain, they didn't necessarily "get it wrong". you'd have to look at a lot of their predictions to get a gauge on that. e.g., take a look at 20 times they predicted 5% chance of rain. if they "got it wrong" one time out of 20, then in fact, calling it a 5% chance of rain was dead accurate.

zero or two times would come as no surprise either. of course, if it rained 7 times, then i would certainly doubt the estimates....

[njhoneybadger]

12. Nate was warning all along that trump could win

Even the day before the election he said that he was off every election by 3 points and if that 3 points were in tRumps favor he could win.

[virtualobserver]

18. His numbers were widely reported, not his warnings.

[CK_John]

13. Everybody in the middle class known their jobs are never coming back, automation

is going to wipe out a middle class. 500,000 40yr old's are not going to go to computer/tech school to work for a 19yr old boss.

Learn to weld and get good eye protection.

[njhoneybadger]

14. Fucking Comey, Fucking Comey,Fucking Comey

[Initech]

20. +10000000000000000000000000000

Comey committed an act of treason and stole the election. That is it.

[njhoneybadger]

15. Don't ever forget they fucking stole it!!!!!!!!