This! This! This all day long. Without comment

[Awsi Dooger]

65. Hillary repeated Gore's mistakes and added a devastating one of her own

Pursuing North Carolina was lunacy. That state is only going to tumble our way when all the meaningful ones are already secure. I would argue that Obama narrowly carrying North Carolina in 2008 was one of the worst things to happen in Democratic politics in my lifetime, and certainly in regard to the 2016 campaign. It provided a false sense of optimism in that state and totally obscured the meaningful numbers: North Carolina has 43% self-identified conservatives, as revealed in the 2016 exit poll. That means we have virtually no margin for error. The state is 43% conservatives, 22% liberals and 35% moderates. The moderates do tend to vote Democratic more dependably than in other Southern states, so a moderate can be elected like in the governor's race, but that 43-22 split is such disadvantage when compared to the national numbers of 35-26. It simply isn't a true swing state.

These are not independent events, as others have already emphasized. Only a bonehead math specialist wouldn't understand as much. The thread indeed makes this site look very foolish. One of the reasons Nate Silver had Hillary's advantage so comparatively low was that his model identified the potential for widespread small shifts in all the vital states, and if that happened then Trump could pull out an unlikely escape. Check Nate's summaries leading toward election day, especially when he mocked all the 90-99% assertions. He wrote point blank that the polls could be off by a few points, and if so then it likely would be in the same direction everywhere. I had to learn and research that type of thing when I started betting politics heavily and seriously in 1996. It's hardly like sporting events where a theoretical 4 to 1 edge in a game at Denver is not related at all to a theoretical 3 to 1 edge in a simultaneous game in Dallas.

I thought Trump had a 1 in 4 chance on election day. Naturally you don't expect a 1 in 4 to happen. I was relatively relaxed and confident that afternoon, doing some gardening while chatting with my neighbor, a fellow Hillary supporter. Then within hours I was stunned and that neighbor was banging on my door, asking what the hell was going on. I told him it was already over.

2016 was an extremely rare combo. Right wingers are paranoid and distrusting of media and the process to begin with. So it makes sense they won't respond to pollsters in similar dependability as moderates and liberals. We're talking a few percent, not a chunk. Just enough to jeopardize the polling. Since the candidate was such a lowlife with that bus video out there, some of Trump's supporters were embarrassed to advertise that they were still going to vote for him. That applied to family members and trusted friends, not merely to pollsters. Heck, I had it happen within my family and also my circle of friends. Several started chirping that they had voted for Trump, after he won, while either denying the preference or being all but silent in the weeks/months leading to November 8.

Make no mistake, this was an unforced error. Hillary didn't sense the degree of unrest and fear among working class whites so her messaging wasn't loud or effective enough, and consequently she took the midwestern states for granted as if they weren't swing states as all. One of the few non-lies that Trump has told in years is that Hillary campaigned in the wrong states.