I will worry if these results carry over into November.
The potential presidential match up that worries me the most would be Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton. Trump is strongly perceived as an outsider in an anti-establishment year. Even though Hillary won a narrow but solid victory over Bernie tonight in Nevada, that doesn't negate the fact that there is a strong anti-establishment tide on the Democratic side as well. It is clear that virtually the entire national apparatus of the Democratic Party has united strongly behind Hillary. It is a meaningful accomplishment that she's won such strong loyalty from her peers. But considering that, the fact that Clinton has had to battle so hard to hold back a challenge from Bernie Sanders speaks louder than her victory tonight does against a surging insurgent - one who was virtually unknown six months ago and had miles of catching up to do without the support of virtually any key inside players.
I am not taking anything away from Bernie Sanders in saying this, but does anyone really doubt that Hillary would be in deeper political trouble now than she already is had Elizabeth Warren, who would have started out far better known than Sanders, had chosen to enter the race for President instead of Bernie (who remains the politician I most deeply believe in)?
Two candidates this election year have generated unexpected and historic levels of excitement on the stump; Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Two have significantly under performed earlier expectations in that regard; Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, and both of them were pegged as the arch typical establishment politicians from their respective parties. Yes Hillary remains far more viable than Jeb does now, and clearly there is much stronger active support for Hillary Clinton than there is for Jeb Bush, but she has continually struggled to generate sustained grass roots passion at levels commiserate to either Sanders or Trump.
Trump prides himself on being spontaneous and coming across as refreshingly candid, whereas Clinton sometimes suffers from coming across as staged. There is troubling consistent polling data on the question of "telling it like it is" and being "truthful". Donald Trump, like Bernie Sanders, polls very well by that matrix. Hillary Clinton does not. Part of what makes an anti-establishment mood an anti-establishment mood is a loss of confidence and trust in the perceived system that the public believes runs our lives, and those who they associate with that system. Trump is better positioned to ride an anti-establishment wave than is Hillary Clinton.
If Hillary Clinton becomes our nominee she will be attacked from the right on many fronts by whoever the Republican nominate, as would Bernie Sanders. In addition though, as our former Secretary of State, she will be blamed by them personally for the continued existence of every threat out there in the world that may cause Americans to lose sleep. She can counter with experience, some significant nuanced accomplishments, a grasp of details, and overall superior judgment. Depending on the existing level of fear among the public during the election campaign that Republicans will seek to exploit, Clinton's foreign experience advantage could dissolve into her being made the scapegoat for everything that has not gone as well as people would have wished for. If there are ready made trust issues to exploit against Clinton on top of that, the latter scenario becomes easier for Republicans in general, and Donald Trump specifically, to sell.
If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee he would additionally be able to attack Hillary Clinton in ways that are considered highly unorthodox for most Republicans, from the left so to speak. That starts with the Iraq War where Trump would strongly attack Clinton for her pro Iraq War Resolution vote. Whereas Bernie Sanders has a long standing history of strenuously opposing international trade deals that many believe hurt working Americans, Hillary Clinton does not. She would be vulnerable to an attack by Trump there as well. Finally there is that matter of Hillary taking large sums of money from Wall Street to fuel her own election campaigns etc.
Trump positions himself as incorruptible, he would probably characterize Hillary as hopelessly compromised by big money interests, and do so in a manner far more viscous than anything that Bernie Sanders has said against her. I expect Trump would claim, true or not, first hand knowledge of ways in which Clinton is bought by Wall Street special interests that he himself is so familiar with.
In a normal election year I would still say that Hillary Clinton would enter a fall campaign holding most of the cards. I still think that's true, more likely than not, but I also know that this is far from being a normal election year. And that is why I will worry if the Presidential election ends up being between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
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She will have absolutely no way to counter his "insider knowledge" and even her denials will come across disastrously since its when she's at her worst when she's confronted with that kind of WS/insider corruption accusations.
She's going to lose. I 100% agree
Yup
Jeb was the presumed candidate for the right and with one pretty mild attack - "Jeb is low energy" - he takes him out. If he's the nominee up against Hillary, we've got big, big problems. Hillary's baggage could fill a freight train and we have an ongoing FBI investigation. Trump will paint her as a criminal and it will probably stick. (Keep in mind, we're political junkies but more than half the population couldn't name 3 Supreme Court justices for a million dollar prize. But they can probably tell you about every season of "The Apprentice."
The peer reviewed research suggests asking voters who they think will win is the best predictor of electoral success, ergo:
Simple surveys that ask people who they expect to win are among the most
accurate methods for forecasting U.S. presidential elections
https://forecasters.org/wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms/7-2a51b93047891f1ec3608bdbd77ca58d/2013/07/Graefe_vote_expectations_ISF.pdf
The peer reviewed reviewed research also suggests predictions/gaming markets yield accurate forecasts:
daily market forecasts to results from polls published the same day. These studies generally find
that prediction markets yield more accurate forecasts than single polls.
https://forecasters.org/wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms/7-2a51b93047891f1ec3608bdbd77ca58d/2013/07/Graefe_vote_expectations_ISF.pdf
Hillary Clinton is a 10/11 favorite at the offshore betting sites and the VT senator is a 7-1 underdog
http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics/us-presidential-election-2016/winner
If you bet on Hillary you have to put up $1,100 to win $1,000.00
If you bet on Bernie you have to put up $145.00 to win $1,000.00.
In closing, the peer reviewed research suggest polling, months out from an election are the least efficacious method of predicting electoral results, ergo:
intend to vote if the election were held today. That is, polls do not provide predictions; they
provide snapshots of public opinion at a certain point in time. However, this is not how the
media commonly treat polls. Polling results are routinely interpreted as forecasts of what will
happen on Election Day (Hillygus 2011). This can result in poor predictions, in particular if the
election is still far away, because public opinion can be difficult to measure and fragile over the course of a campaign. However, researchers found ways to deal with these problems and to
increase the accuracy of poll-based predictions.
https://forecasters.org/wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms/7-2a51b93047891f1ec3608bdbd77ca58d/2013/07/Graefe_vote_expectations_ISF.pdf
