The Trump Presidency | Biden Inaugurated

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JustAFan said:
But you had Hillary pretty much ignoring Red states for a large part of the process, paying only lip service to them until poll numbers showed they might be in play. You would not actually have to compete for votes in all 50 states, you would still have campaigns crunching the numbers and saying, well at best we can get 30% of the vote whether we go there or not, we are better off spending on our money in other states where we can generate more votes. Campaigns would simply target the states with the most voters who could be swung one direction or the other while pushing their get out the vote efforts in those states where they can get the most voters out there. The idea that under either system politicians will not do this sort of math is naïve.

Both systems promote ignoring certain segments of the population based solely on how they would affect the outcome and the results the campaign could get for their efforts in any given state/country/district.
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But...you literally would. A vote in Kansas would be as pivotal to the result as a vote in New Hampshire.

Obviously, there would be ways of optimising ad spends and visits. You're correct in that they would focus on persuadable voters in general, rather than persuadable voters in states that are close to the balancing point. Which seems to me more intuitively democratic (small d)?

JustAFan said:
Really? You don't see the silliness of that argument? They may have been key battle grounds but to pretend they are the sole reason an election went a certain way by coming up with the "well if they did not vote (which is really saying if they did not exist at all?) is plain silly. What if all the States that Hillary won did not cast any votes? She would have zero electoral votes and Trump would have won 304 to nothing!!!!! Wow.
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It's purely an academic point that those were key counties to the result and are presumably the only three counties you can say that about. It's an electoral statistics site, they like factoids like that.
 
Dwazza said:
Don't be, the only reason to block oil and gas drilling in the arctic is to support production in the oil sands.
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That would be more in line with his disappointing (and un-scrutinised) record on environmental issues.
 
JustAFan said:
But you had Hillary pretty much ignoring Red states for a large part of the process, paying only lip service to them until poll numbers showed they might be in play. You would not actually have to compete for votes in all 50 states, you would still have campaigns crunching the numbers and saying, well at best we can get 30% of the vote whether we go there or not, we are better off spending on our money in other states where we can generate more votes. Campaigns would simply target the states with the most voters who could be swung one direction or the other while pushing their get out the vote efforts in those states where they can get the most voters out there. The idea that under either system politicians will not do this sort of math is naïve.

Both systems promote ignoring certain segments of the population based solely on how they would affect the outcome and the results the campaign could get for their efforts in any given state/country/district.
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No, a popular vote system would make it relevant if you got 30 as opposed to 31% in that no-name state, as opposed to every vote there meaning absolutely nothing. It would increase the importance of all states that aren't OH/PA/FL. Including liberal Texans and conservative NYers.
 
senorgregster said:
Well what is it? It's total nonsense.
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How is something factual nonsense?! It's 1 thing from a list of 56 of interesting peculiarities, in this case that Trump's margins in 3 counties were enough to win the election. That's literally it. That if Clinton had managed to get the same number of votes as Trump in those three counties, out of the whole country, she could've won. It's a practical example of the closeness of the election. How it deserves to be called a lie and nonsense I have no idea.
 
Ubik said:
How is something factual nonsense?! It's 1 thing from a list of 56 of interesting peculiarities, in this case that Trump's margins in 3 counties were enough to win the election. That's literally it. That if Clinton had managed to get the same number of votes as Trump in those three counties, out of the whole country, she could've won. It's a practical example of the closeness of the election. How it deserves to be called a lie and nonsense I have no idea.
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It is the classic if my aunt had balls she would be my uncle.
 
senorgregster said:
It is the classic if my aunt had balls she would be my uncle.
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If the aunt having balls was subject to a vote that came down to a very fine margin across a very small geographical spread, yes, it would be exactly like that.
 
Just use the same illogical argument (sorry, can't think of a better word) saying Obama wouldn't have won without Miama, Cleveland and Philadelphia. What difference does it make? It's not like those counties are going away.

By the same logic, just three counties re-elected President Obama in 2012: Miami-Dade County, FL; Cuyahoga County, OH and Philadelphia, PA.
 
Obama won Dade by 200k, Cuyahoga by 250k, Philadelphia by almost 500k. So the geographical spread is the same in terms of number of countries (and to be expected of a Democrat who will always get most votes from densely packed areas), but about 10x greater in terms of the votes needed to swing it.

Pretty sure multiple people in this thread have felt it worth pointing out that the small margins in WI, MI and PA are what decided the election, so I still fail to see how someone pointing out you can fit the margins even more locally into 3 counties turns it into nonsense and lies.
 
Ubik said:
Obama won Dade by 200k, Cuyahoga by 250k, Philadelphia by almost 500k. So the geographical spread is the same in terms of number of countries (and to be expected of a Democrat who will always get most votes from densely packed areas), but about 10x greater in terms of the votes needed to swing it.

Pretty sure multiple people in this thread have felt it worth pointing out that the small margins in WI, MI and PA are what decided the election, so I still fail to see how someone pointing out you can fit the margins even more locally into 3 counties turns it into nonsense and lies.
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I think we are making a mountain out of a molehill here. But I'd just leave it at this bolded part which is simple and accurate. Excluding counties is not. If you want to detail it further, you'd simply describe the percent change required to flip the state. For example, in WI, I believe if 0.4% of the voters, or around 11,000, voted Clinton instead of Trump, Clinton would have won.

The small margins in WI, MI and PA are what decided the election.
 
senorgregster said:
I think we are making a mountain out of a molehill here. But I'd just leave it at this bolded part which is simple and accurate. Excluding counties is not. If you want to detail it further, you'd simply describe the percent change required to flip the state. For example, in WI, I believe if 0.4% of the voters, or around 11,000, voted Clinton instead of Trump, Clinton would have won.

The small margins in WI, MI and PA are what decided the election.
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Yeah, and there are single counties in those states that have a gap equal to or bigger than the winner got. What's the problem?
 
again. mountain molehill. but the original tweet...

Just three counties – Macomb County, MI; York County, PA and Waukesha County, WI – elected Donald Trump...

no they did not!
 
Demonstrates how far up shit creek the political climate is now when people read political bias into innocuous stuff like that.
 
Silva said:
Remember when Jill Stein was going to get 5% by herself? :lol:
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Its great that she got hammered in Nov 8th, then proceeded to disgrace herself with her faux-recount donation scams. I doubt we'll be seeing much of her again.
 
Raoul said:
Its great that she got hammered in Nov 8th, then proceeded to disgrace herself with her faux-recount donation scams. I doubt we'll be seeing much of her again.
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It's a shame though because at heart, like the UK Green Party, they have some great ideas and their hearts are definitely in the right places and they definitely want the best for people and the planet. However, they keep putting up completely flawed or looney candidates, Stein was no different.
 
langster said:
It's a shame though because at heart, like the UK Green Party, they have some great ideas and their hearts are definitely in the right places and they definitely want the best for people and the planet. However, they keep putting up completely flawed or looney candidates, Stein was no different.
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The Green Party does have some great ideas, especially on green issues. Trouble is Stein is a galactic drama queen who likes to protest outside events for attention and pull stunts like the WI, MI, PA recounts. She has basically defamed the moral leverage the Green movement has built. Hopefully they will find a new candidate for next time.
 
Raoul said:
The Green Party does have some great ideas, especially on green issues. Trouble is Stein is a galactic drama queen who likes to protest outside events for attention and pull stunts like the WI, MI, PA recounts. She has basically defamed the moral leverage the Green movement has built. Hopefully they will find a new candidate for next time.
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I agree completely. She really didn't help herself with her 9/11 comments either, or her anti-vaccination stance. That's never going to go down well with the masses. Like you, I hope they find a sane and credible candidate for 4 years time.
 
Raoul said:
Its great that she got hammered in Nov 8th, then proceeded to disgrace herself with her faux-recount donation scams. I doubt we'll be seeing much of her again.
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Dunno, she just got herself a large email database of people that are apparently willing to give up money for lost causes.
 
Raoul said:
The Green Party does have some great ideas, especially on green issues. Trouble is Stein is a galactic drama queen who likes to protest outside events for attention and pull stunts like the WI, MI, PA recounts. She has basically defamed the moral leverage the Green movement has built. Hopefully they will find a new candidate for next time.
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The protesting is fine by me, they're a minor political party and have very few ways of gaining attention.
 
Will Absolute said:
It's a non-starter. A constitutional amendment must first win the support of two thirds of both Houses of Congress, then be approved by three quarters of the States. Smaller states would have to vote to reduce their own influence in the American constitutional system.

Democrats would have to stage a complete takeover of federal and state legislatures to carry such a reform. And if they achieved that, they'd have no reason to change the system.
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Exactly!

The Democrats keep discussing meaningless bullshit.

They should better try to answer two questions:

1. Why so many middle and low class whites do not believe that the Democrats will help them.

2. Why their nomination process with super-delegates, caucuses etc is actually less democratic than what the republicans do.
 
langster said:
It's a shame though because at heart, like the UK Green Party, they have some great ideas and their hearts are definitely in the right places and they definitely want the best for people and the planet. However, they keep putting up completely flawed or looney candidates, Stein was no different.
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Is Stein any worse than Hillary or Trump?
 
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