Wisconsin 4-month run-up: Clinton leads by 6 points ... until Nov. 8:

[ucrdem]

Here's a shot of RCP's aggregate of polls (about 20, listed at the link), showing Clinton consistently leading Trump by around 6-7 points from August until the last poll on Nov. 6 -- including both Comey letters, which don't seem to have moved the needle perceptibly:

But on Nov. 8, Trump miraculously gained 8 points to win. So what happened?


http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/wi/wisconsin_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5976.html

[Buzz Clik]

1. The polls were wrong.

If polls were definitive, we wouldn't vote.

[Tiggeroshii]

5. Were the 300,000 votes thrown out for wrong id also wrong?

That's like 3% in itself.

[onecaliberal]

81. No they weren't. Private companies programmed the machines before 1 off was ever cast

[ucrdem]

6. Which polls were wrong?

All of them? These are the WI polls:

[Exilednight]

11. As I stated before, the polls weren't wrong. Just the data sets which were used in these data sets

were wrong.

[ucrdem]

46. Okay but didn't Trump's numbers in the same polls use the same data sets?

There is NOTHING consistent between the pattern in all the run-up polls and the election night vote tally when for the first and only time Trump's numbers leapt ahead of the pack. And no catalyzing event either. Comey's dirty tricks didn't do zip it appears.

[uponit7771]

52. No, they used some shit from mars... they pulled DPutins LV out of their asses and threw them on

... some paper /sarcasm

You are 100% right and we were talking about this during breakfast that the digitized models should be able to pinpoint the exact anomalies by now... in the EXACT places were they got them wrong and be able to report.

But no, NONE of the freakin polsters have come out with a damn thing on their assumptions or variances NOTHING...

Its like they went all black and said screw you America... take DPuting and love him

[uponit7771]

48. Yes, every single one of those polls were wrong according to the msm... all the polling science

... from the last century digitized got it ALL wrong cause .... well... screw you /sarcasm

[Buzz Clik]

89. duh

[radius777]

65. Polls couldn't be that wrong

they could be off by a little, but not by that much in so many states, conveniently in the ones he had to win.

All major prediction models (including Nate's) showed Hillary with comfortable odds of winning. The prediction markets did as well, was steady for months.

The polls in the primaries were mostly correct, and as Sam Wang stated, overstated Trump's margin slightly, and understated Hillary's margins slightly.

I just don't buy that somehow white voters who could care less about coming out in the primaries suddenly showed up on election day.

I also don't buy that PoC voters who came out for Hillary in the primary suddenly didn't care about showing up for her on election day.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

68. Even Nate Silver cautioned a couple days ahead of the election that HRC's lead was pretty thin...

... in key battleground states.

When I started looking at it from that point of view, I got the same uneasy feeling I had in 2004 when I read about all the anti-gay legislation that was on ballots all around the country.

Silver basically said her lead was easily overcome with polling assumption errors, if any.

I think the response here was "Fuck Nate Silver look at Sam Wang!!"

Hillary had terrible unfavorable numbers for a Presidential candidate going in.

I don't think the polls accounted for the white hot hatred repigs have for the Clintons. I was teasing my neighbor's dad (from rural downstate Illinois ) about upcoming Hillary Presidency and he went in to a Vince Foster Benghazi type tirade - I mean I knew he hated the Clintons but I had no idea he bought in to all that bullshit. I mentioned to my partner later that I hope I'm wrong but we may be in for a big fucking surprise. People like him would crawl over broken glass to get to the polls to vote against a Clinton.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

75. Yep

But it couldn't be brought up here without being labeled "concern troll".

[Bob41213]

105. Or worse...

Concern troll was nice...

[LisaL]

76. Odds are just that. Odds.

You have low odds of winning the lottery. Some people still do.
People here put way too much credence into polls and odds.
It was ridiculous.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

80. Yeah, Silver had the Cubs at 1 in 4 chance of winning the Series.

I posted that to my Facebook friends after the Cubs won. I posted it with a *gulp* because the odds were better for Drumpf.

Cent Uygur also had a rant a couple days before the election that spelled out how a 35% chance was way too close for comfort. But he's persona non grata around these parts these days.

[radius777]

104. No candidate in 50 years has lost with her type of leads

that were consistent and steady, especially after she won all three debates.

Comey's illegal actions threw the race into turmoil, along with voter suppression and who knows what else Trump/Stone/Rudy/Putin did to rig the game.

The election was stolen in broad daylight.

[Buzz Clik]

90. You've got to be kidding. Were you not around for the primaries?

[MFM008]

78. not that wrong

6 points or more off?
Something stinks to high heaven.

[Exilednight]

2. People used the wrong data when putting together these charts.

A poll is several questions, but only a small handful are used to determine who is winning or losing. People who put these charts together looked at the wrong facts, figures and questions. Polls had her losing ground in MI, PA and WI about six weeks prior to election day.

The polls were not wrong, the people evaluating the information got it wrong.

[cilla4progress]

7. Isn't polling a SCIENCE

FfS?

[Exilednight]

8. Yes. But like any science it depends on the data sets that are used.

[treestar]

10. Yes and they worked before

the elections generally turned out as the polls said they would. So what's changed?

[Exilednight]

20. It's NOT the polls that were wrong. It was the people interpreting the poll numbers.

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone quoted a Nate Silver poll and I told them they were a moron, which was followed by an echo chamber of responses telling me how wrong I was.

[FBaggins]

15. It's most certainly ALSO an ART

If you hand the same raw data to several pollsters, they'll give you different results.

[LisaL]

16. Add to that, polling could potentially influence the results itself.

If a poll shows candidate ahead, some people might lose motivation to vote because the candidate is going to win anyway.

[FBaggins]

17. Absolutely

That's why the Clinton team kept pointing people to the 538 estimates showing as high as a 35% chance of a Trump victory. They wanted to make sure that people didn't think that the race was in the bag (all while they were pretty sure that the race was in the bag).

Frankly, I don't "get" that. But it clearly happens.

[LisaL]

19. That was my concern and I believe some of it did take place.

Losing three states by less than 1 point sucks. Some people might have believed those states were safe (and either didn't vote at all, or voted third party, or wrote someone in), and they ended up lost. And now we have president Trump.

[FBaggins]

21. I "thought" that they were safe too.

That's largely because the campaign told us that she had an impenetrable wall there.

Trump was campaigning actively all across the region in the closing couple weeks... while we mostly just waved at it politely. I don't know whether it was arrogance or incompetence... but we were supposed to be the ones with the experienced campaign team.

[LisaL]

26. Campaign was presumably getting the same polling results showing these states were safe.

If you are consistently up 6 points, you are going to think you are safe.

[FBaggins]

57. So where was Trump getting his polling from?

They clearly focused on those states over the last couple weeks before the election - while we scoffed at the notion that it was anything other than a waste of time or desperation as they saw FL/NC drifting away.

[radius777]

63. if they had rigging operations in those states

they could've campaigned there just to make it appear they "overcame great obstacles" etc.

according to articles i read about this topic, Trump's team privately didn't think he would win, only a 30% chance, but "threw a hail mary" by trying to turn out the "hidden" white working class vote in those states. at least that is what "they" would have us believe.

[LisaL]

77. One didn't need polls to know she wasn't doing all that well with rural white voters.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

35. I agree 100%

I'm in VA, and a number of my friends and colleagues said they didn't think they would vote because Hillary had it in the bag. I kept pushing that in the bag or not, there were two state constitutional amendments and House seats on the line, so they needed to vote on those. And once there, there's no point in NOT voting for President.

The fact that VA was closer than expected, while still comfortable, is an indicator of that behavior, IMO.

[cilla4progress]

18. Yes, but as the charts show

These polls were consistent. Do they all use the same data set?

[Exilednight]

22. First I would argue is that they weren't consistent.

Second, some polls do share data sets.

[FBaggins]

24. They do their own calling

But there's is some group-think that occurs.

The other polling from the state (Feingold vs. Johnson), showed a rapidly closing race (dangerously so).

There also wasn't much polling reported in the final days (note that the last day of sampling was 11/2 and that none of the big pollsters paid much attention to the state at all)

[Exilednight]

23. No they're not. They're a social science. There's no art involved.

[LisaL]

25. There is a lot of guessing involved.

You have to predict turnout and who will turn out. And if those who are polled are lying to you, you have no way of knowing that.

[Exilednight]

32. There's no guessing involved, but there is a margin of error.

The error rate is based upon historical data.

What changes is how people interpret the data.

[LisaL]

34. No guessing involved?

You have to guess the turnout and who is going to turnout.
Likely voters aren't necessarily actual voters.

[Exilednight]

39. Which is based off of data sets. It's not guess work. Polls showed that voter turnout was going to

be a record low. What pollsters assumed was that most of those people that wouldn't turnout were going to be from the Trump camp. Pollsters ignored, rather artfully I might add, was Hillary's likeability was upside down too. Polling data showed this, but pollsters ignored it.

[LisaL]

62. Polls don't actually show anything.

They are attempting to predict what will happen in the future.
So in order to be accurate, polls have to accurately predict who will turn out. If that's off, everything else is off to.
Also, pollsters have no way of knowing who is lying to them.
Potentially, a number of Trump supporters could have been lying about who they were going to vote for.

[FBaggins]

28. Sorry... that's self-contradictory

Ignoring the fact that most pollsters will tell you that there is as much art as science in what they do... "social science" includes art.

[Exilednight]

36. Social scence does include art, it just studies it. I've also never met a pollster that will tell

you that polling is an art. Any pollster that tells you that, is a pollster worth ignoring.

If they're taking an artful license, then they ignoring the principles of polling.

[FBaggins]

40. Really?

Never heard of Mark Penn? He was White House pollster for six years under Bill Clinton and teaches the subject at Harvard along with Stephen Ansolabehere. They say that polling is more art than science.

[Exilednight]

41. Did Mark Penn get this election right?

[FBaggins]

43. Lol... you don't realize the implication there... do you?

If it's all science... then they wouldn't get it wrong so often.

As for Penn? I don't think he did any polling this cycle, but he did publicly agree with Nate Silver's 65/35 odds just a couple days before the election while so many (HuffingtonPost, etc) were saying that was ridiculous.

[Exilednight]

44. I do realize it. The implication is that any pollster that says polling is an art is going to get

it wrong. If he agreed with Silver, then he got it wrong.

[FBaggins]

45. Um... so where are the "scientific" pollsters who got it right?

If he agreed with Silver, then he got it wrong.

You're kidding, right? Who was closer to calling the race correctly?

[Exilednight]

49. There are lists of people who broke down the same polls and came up with how this election would

turnout. People just ignored them.

[FBaggins]

53. And you're hiding from naming them now because...?

I'm still waiting to hear from this claimed vast majority of pollsters who claim that there's no art in what they do... and who called the election correctly.

There's more artistic license in your version of reality than you're likely to admit.

[Exilednight]

58. Montgomery and Hollenbech from Vox got it right.

The vast majority of pollsters do not call it art. I can't prove they don't call it art because I can not prove a negative.

That's like me asking you to prove that you never in your life stole a dollar from another persons wallet.

[FBaggins]

60. Now you're just grasping at straws

Vox's model isn't even about polls. Nor did they predict a Trump win. Their model predicted a win for a generic Republican but then they went on to point out that the "Trump tax" was blowing a perfectly winnable election for them.

Still waiting for a single authoritative pollster who takes your position re: art/science. Don't worry... not holding breath while waiting. The only one that comes close that I've found so far is Frank Luntz at Fox. Care to hold him up as the standard?

[Bob41213]

106. Yes, and?

Even assuming the data is 100% accurate, the polling still has a chance of being wrong (you could be polling all the wrong people).

First, there is a margin of error so you can usually add 3% to Trump and subtract 3% and be within the margin of error. If you combine all the polls, that number decreases of course. But even outside of that, the polls (with the margin of error) only give you a 95% confidence of being right. That's pretty good, but there is a 5% chance the results fall outside what they predict. That's statistics.

[Satch59]

3. Provisional and cross check?

Just saw Joy Reid do a segment on this...the panel said forget about hacking, it was about cross check and other voter suppression.

Will provisional ballots be checked during this recount? Will absentee ballots be looked at??

If WI somehow turns or serious amount of uncounted but acceptable ballots are found, the DOJ should really enter this effort?

[cilla4progress]

12. Excuse my ignorance - so...

There were provisional ballots cast and retained for voters who were later purged by Cross-check?

[Satch59]

27. I'm confused also...

The panel with Joy Reid were saying cross check got rid of voters but not sure if they were disqualified when registering or voting through provisional... Need to explore the answer. They were mostly in agreement that a huge amount were not counted for these reasons and said a lot of provisional are either thrown out or just not explored, so I wonder if the provisional that exist will be looked out?

[SickOfTheOnePct]

37. WI says they're looking

at all provisional and absentee ballots. Can't speak to the MI and PA.

Crosscheck, as I understand it, assists states in purging voter rolls, so it wouldn't affect registration, i.e., if Crosscheck kicks you out and you go to re-register, it would have no effect. If you don't know you were purged, and then go to vote, your provisional ballot would not be counted.

[forthemiddle]

85. Wisconsin has has same day registration

So purging wouldn't matter, because someone could just re register at the polls.
That happened to my sister this year during the primary because she hadn't voted in a decade. It was no problem for her to just re register.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

86. Got it

Then provisional ballots shouldn't be an issue in WI, except for those voting in the wrong precincts.

[KewlKat]

61. i recorded the show. let me play it back and see if i can clarify

[KewlKat]

70. Ok....here are my notes and quotes from the Joy Reid episode from this morning

Joy - My next guest has a lot to say how about votes may have been stolen but not in the way many of you think.
She reads some from Greg Palast's Rolling Stones article, Rolling stones, 24 Aug, Palast article, GOP’s Stealth War Against Voters

Conversation -

Crosscheck was in use in WI MI PA NC, state where Hillary Clinton seemed on track to win but lost.

Crosscheck’s childish methodology; Created by Kris Kobach, now up for a job in drumpf administration; In MI (50,000) and NC (huge, maybe 100,000 but at least 35,000) the wipe out of Black, Hispanic and young voters was massive, crosscheck vote wiped out was massive;

Palast -
Let’s get away from the hacking stuff. It’s not about Russians hacking; it’s not about playing games with the software; it’s about machines that were mis-calibrated; it’s about the fact that we have about a half million absentee ballots in America that were thrown out for highly technical and questionable reasons; it’s 2.7 million so called provisional ballots when especially African Americans go in and their name is missing from the voter roles and they’re given a provisional ballot and which is then thrown in the dumpster; it’s about ballots that are supposedly blank but in fact have a mark on them and they need to be reviewed; it’s about machines that are off by 100th of an inch and don’t read a mark on a ballot; it’s about 90% turnouts in rural trump areas which is just astonishing and unreal; it’s about blank ballots which may not be blank.

It’s a technical process. Forget the hacking stuff, forget the conspiracy stuff, forget Russians, this recount, this review of the ballots and decision about which ballots are being thrown out and disqualified by the tens of thousands swamps trumps plurality in several states. This is the secret, the hidden secret of American democracy, we don’t count millions of votes.

Joy -

Could the throwing out of absentee ballots combined with the knocking people off the voter roles and combined with not counting provisional ballots account for the difference (from the exit polls and votes tallied)?

Palast -

Yes. They ask if you vote, but you don’t know if your vote counted.

Disqualified ballots is the real purpose of this recount.


Joy -

It's not the Russians, look at the republicans.

[Satch59]

84. Wow great report!

This all sounds kind of feasible if they can show this tampering??

[KewlKat]

87. Palast warned us in August about the crosscheck purge but none of us screamed loud enough

or got it stopped. He said NC was the hardest hit in the purge. So in his opinion, much of our loss stemmed from voter suppression in one of these manners. Makes sense. He also doesn't think the recount efforts will flip any EC votes but will hopefully show how many votes are being disqualified, rightfully or not.

Before the midterms we MUST undo some of this crap.

[3catwoman3]

88. I would not be at all surprised if there are uncounted...

...ballots stashed away in the trunk of some car with WI license plates. it has happened before.

[Coyotl]

4. Same in other battleground states, same rigorous, accurate polling in all of them.

[center]

The exit polls and the pre-election polling are in close agreement in the battleground, where the very best polling was done.



And the same extreme red shift in the election count exactly where needed to swing the outcome of Senate races also:

[Zambero]

9. CrossCheat

This piece of work eminating From Sam Brownback's Kansas experiment can be manipulated to selectively exclude ballots while staying under the radar. Provisional ballots are one thing -- they can be validated or otherwise. But a computer-driven manipulation selectively applied to targeted precincts can proceed without voters even knowing that their votes have been swindled.
The results, contrary to exit polling date, seem to speak for themselves.

[cilla4progress]

13. How likely is it to find this

On an audit?

[Zambero]

29. I'm wondering the same

Perhaps a recount that indicates previously uncounted paper or electronic ballots that were not included in the earlier vote tallies, provided they are not purged or destroyed, or still subject to the earlier filtering mechanism.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

42. I'm pretty sure that Crossscheck

isn't run against day-of votes. It's not very accurate, but it's used to provide info to states prior to the election so that they can use the admittedly shoddy information to purge their voter rolls.

[LisaL]

14. Polls don't win elections.

They are not exact science and could be wrong.
Claiming election is in the bag is a bad strategy. Some people think the election is safe so they don't have to vote. Or they can write in their favorite cartoon character for president.

[Zambero]

31. However...

A consistent departure from pre-election and exit polls does raise a lot of suspicion, particularly in an era of outright voter suppression and arbitrary filtering mechanisms such as Crosscheck.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

74. But Crosscheck doesn't filter votes

it filters registrations before the vote, correct?

[anamnua]

30. I think it's now blindingly obvious that

people were embarrassed about openly admitting to supporting Trump -- including opinion poll respondents -- and simply lied to the pollsters.

[Zambero]

33. Not evidenced by thousands of Trump yard signs

These people did not seem to be bashful about their support. Indeed, Hillary supporters appeared to be more inclined to keep their allegiance under wraps.

[BlueProgressive]

102. I wanted to put on a Hillary bumper sticker, but

didn't want to deal with any possible fallout from it coming from rabid deplorables...

[cilla4progress]

38. I do not believe that for a second

Their responses were essentially anonymous!

Would they do it to fuck with the system? I think this is more likely.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

71. I don't know about that.

I was polled once.

Cool! I thought. It was a poll from Gallup. Finally someone is polling ME!!

Until they started asking about sexual relationships, income etc. It sure didn't feel anonymous.

Won't do that again.

[Stargleamer]

51. This idea might have some merit, however

in California, The Field poll actually overestimated Trump's support (predicted 33%, actual result 32.4%), so I am not sure why Californians would be any less embarrassed to admit supporting Trump than Americans elsewhere.

I can't account for these Wisconsin numbers except to wonder if the 2nd Comey announcement just flipped Wisconsin. Or there was just bad polling methodology in Wisconsin.

[LisaL]

59. Each state is different.

[uponit7771]

47. Polsters response: "...well, that's a rational question...but fuck you ok? go fuck off k? " /sarcasm

Cause that's about what we're hearing from these polsters ... a buncha fuck you America... please believe us next time type of responses

[ucrdem]

50. LOL. Remember 2004?

They know the score but one hint in print or on the air and poof, they're gone.

[uponit7771]

54. Yeap... these fuckers are either in on it or stupid beyond belief

[RandySF]

55. Yet Trump was leading Iowa.

That was overlooked by pollsters.

[uponit7771]

56. That's not what RCP reported IIRC

[radius777]

64. IA/OH are swing states, WI/MI are not. /nt

[LisaL]

73. Obviously WI and MI are swing states because they swung republican this election.

[radius777]

100. I think they were stolen.

RandySF's point (i think) was that since Iowa went for Trump, other midwestern states like WI and MI (and MN, which was close) should go similar. My point was that IA is more conservative than those other states, and can't be a metric for the upper midwest.

[triron]

101. They were stolen

Both poll data averages and exit polls say this was very likely (that election screwed with).

[davidn3600]

66. Polls were off. They were overestimating turnout and were missing people.

When you look at 2012 to 2016, the theme everywhere as returns were coming in was that Hillary was underperforming Obama. Black vote was lower. Trump got more Latinos than expected. And he got more white women then expected. Plus, the overall turnout was lower for Democrats than expected and the Republicans were higher than expected.

Polls misjudged the enthusiasm.

Some pollsters also admitted before the election that there may be a hidden Trump vote out there. So-called "Reagan Democrats" in the midwest may flip back to the GOP and give Trump a win the way they did with Reagan. The polls were assuming they were not going to flip back.

[radius777]

67. initial exits were wrong regarding Latinos

Don’t believe those exit polls saying 25 percent of Latinos voted for Trump
There was a lot of talk about this being the year the Latino vote would sway the election. It didn’t quite happen, but the outcome shouldn’t distract us from the strides made in turnout and democratic engagement in that population.

That turnout has been severely understated by the National Election Pool exit polls, on which many post-election reports are drawing: Those suggest that fully 25 percent of Latinos supported Trump.

But that’s just wrong. The severe limitations of traditional exit polls to properly capture the Latino electorate have long been obvious to scholars. Improper precinct selection, for example, leads to non-representative samples that inflate support for Republicans.

The more nuanced surveys by Latino Decisions, the firm where I work, found that Trump received the lowest level of support among Latino voters on record for any presidential candidate: a mere 18 percent.

I think other exits were wrong as well, and Hillary did as good with black voters as any white Democrat (Gore, Kerry) in the modern era (Obama was the first black president, can't expect anyone else to get similar black turnout).

She likely underperformed with white college and white women, undecideds and young people, who likely broke late for Trump or stayed home due to Comey/FBI's unprecedented meddling in an election with just 11 days to go.

[davidn3600]

69. The enthusiasm that was there for Obama just simply was not there for her

Hillary was underperforming all over the place in the swing states. You go to the Democratic areas and the margin of victory was smaller or the overall vote total was lower than Obama. That was a common theme in literally every single swing state. Heck, Trump was even doing way better than expected in Minnesota. So it's unlikely any one type of voter suppression or rigging was to blame here for the loss. Outside of NY, MA, CA, and Maryland....Hillary struggled with turnout in key areas needed to win swing states. That's why many are blaming the loss on identity politics.

The reality is that a number of Democrats that voted in 2012 just decided to sit this one out. I know that sounds stupid but not really that hard to believe. Most of Hillary's rallies were lacking energy. Compared to Obama who could fill a football stadium on his own, Hillary had to rely on celebrities to break 10k. The Democratic party just simply was not that excited about its candidate. It's truly that simple.

[LisaL]

72. Us democrats, we need to be excited in order to vote.

Republicans just come out and vote. Which is why we lose.

[radius777]

99. True, but every candidate has flaws, and she was more than good enough

to win.

Without Comey (which shifted the race at least 4 points, IMO) she wins easily, even if the polls were off slightly wrt to white working class support for Trump. She won all three debates and was in complete command of the race, with large polling leads nationally and consistent/steady leads in the swing states. Most of the prediction gurus and the prediction markets were very steady in their belief she would win easily.

The GOP voter suppression movement has occurred all over the country, and is worse than 2012.

She did overperform in TX, AZ and GA, most likely due to increased Latino turnout in these states.

[jodymarie aimee]

79. WE are a blue state

Wisconsin has been a blue state forever. However, the Devil himself got elected Gov here 6 years ago. I have not trusted one election since. He always brags he is a R Gov where Obama won both elections. Setting this shit up for the big cheat. Our local Gannett press, which has protected Walker since he got in....said SURPRISE FOLKS MADE UP THEIR MINDS AT THE LAST MINUTE ..yeah...that's it. Walker and the Kochs scam has worked here for years, so they decided to take it bigtime this year.

I truly madly deeply hope this recount exposes all the corruption they have done behind the scenes.

[FBaggins]

83. You aren't blue any more

Feingold couldn't win his seat back?... Republicans controlling 2/3 of the state house and nearly 2/3 of the state senate?... state supreme court?... five of eight representatives to the US House?... Walker three times this decade? Do I have to say "Trump"???

If Trump doesn't tick people off enough in the next two years, I'm worried that Tammy Baldwin will have trouble holding on in an off-year election.

That's not a blue state at this point. If things don't correct soon, it isn't even a swing state.

[ucrdem]

103. Thank you, never doubted it

Please keep us posted!

[SickOfTheOnePct]

82. Post convention

How many times did Hillary campaign in WI and how many times did Trump campaign there?

[ucrdem]

91. They don't have TV, radio, print and social media?

I've never shaken hands with Hillary either but that didn't stop me from voting for her.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

92. I understand that

I've never met her and I voted for her too. But if actually campaigning on the ground didn't yield results, politicians wouldn't do it. Hillary didn't campaign in Wisconsin, and Trump did. Is he disingenuous? Of course he is, but Wisconsin voters saw that he came to them, not just via TV and radio, but in person. Conversely, they saw that Hillary didn't. It's certainly conceivable that they viewed her as taking their votes for granted.

Was that the difference in her winning and losing? Probably not the only reason, but I don't doubt that it was a contributing factor.

[ucrdem]

93. Hillary was there in March and April and Bill, Chelsea, Tim Kaine and Joe Biden

all campaigned in Wisconsin from August through November. Now I have shaken hands with Bill and it was a memorable event but I'd already voted for him several times. In other words I really don't think Hillary being there in the flesh made a breath of difference. She clearly did not ignore the state as some have claimed.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

94. Sending surrogates

no matter how great they are, is not the same as the candidate at the top of the ticket going.

Trump campaigned in Wisconsin 5 or 6 times after his convention. Hillary didn't go once after hers.

For you or for me or for many voters, it doesn't make a difference. But if you're the rural voter who already feels ignored by your government, I believe it most certainly can make the difference.

[ucrdem]

95. How would they even know?

Unless they woke up each morning and scanned HFA to find out how many days had passed since she was there in March-April? I really think this kind of excuse-making is for the birds. Per the RCP polls Comey's letters didn't make a dent so I doubt if one more or less speech at one more or less greasy spoon have would have made any difference either.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

96. Seriously?

You think they don't turn on the radio, hear that Trump is there? You think they never realized that Hillary wasn't there?

I'm not claiming that they knew the exact number of days since she was there, but if a candidate is there 6 times in 4 months, they're going to notice it. And they're going to realize that the other candidate wasn't there in a long time, even if they don't know exactly how long.

You're free of course to believe whatever you choose, but the bottom line is that Trump went, Hillary didn't. Trump won the state, Hillary didn't.

[ucrdem]

97. Seriously. She WAS there, for several days. As to who won the state, that remains to be seen.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

98. Yeah, she was there 7 months before the election

If a candidate going to a state makes no difference, why do they do it?


And we know who won the state...some of us can just accept it better than others.