If the US Presidential Election Were Held Today

If the US presidential election were held today polls suggest Joe Biden would be elected.  Not only would it be a landslide popular vote victory but he would win a clear electoral college decision.  Right now the Economist gives  Joe Biden a 93% chance of winning.

            But the election is not today.  It is still nearly four months out.   Surveys or polls are not predictions, they are snapshots in time and are no guarantee of the future.  Additionally, national polls are worthless when it comes to presidential elections.  It is not that they are usually wrong—they did predict Hillary Clinton would win by about two percentage points in 2016 and she did.  But instead the road to the White House is through the electoral college and the only polls that really matter if at all are the ones in the critical swing states they will decide the election.  What happens in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin is a lot more important than what happens in California, New York, or Alabama.  Despite how much Democrats are salivating, realistically Georgia and Texas, while competitive, are not swing states. At best, forcing Trump to defend these states means less resources for the states really in play.  For Democrats, don’t repeat the mistakes of 2016 and campaign where there is no realistic prospect of winning. 

A lot can happen between now and election days, with it then either being November 3, 2020 (actual election day) or in the case of some states such as Minnesota, when as early as September 19, 2020 early voting  takes place.  Approximately 38 states allow some absentee or early voting, complicating predictions because ballots are being cast over a period of many days or weeks.

Political scientists develop models to predict presidential elections.  Central to the models are presidential approval and national economic performance several months before the election.  Based on these variables Donald Trump should lose.  But these models too are flawed in that they overlook the finery of the swing states and the electoral college and they also seem to ignore the fact that campaigns really matter.   Hillary Clinton should have won  four years ago but ran a lousy  campaign.  In 1988 Michael Dukakis at one time had a 17-point lead over George Bush but lost because of bad campaigning, complacency, and race-baiting  (remember Willie Horton) by the latter.

The point is that four months until November 3, is an eternity.  Four months ago, was mid-March, just before the pandemic  kicked in.  The US economy was at 4.4% unemployment for March, up from 3.5% in February.  Joe Biden was struggling to shake off Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party nomination and it still looked like Trump was favored to win re-election.  The major issue—beyond Trump himself—was the fallout from the Senate trial and failed impeachment.

Since then everything and nothing has changed.  By that, this election was always going to be about Trump.  Unlike in 2016 where the election was a referendum on Hillary Clinton and she lost because people did not like her, in 2018 and now in 2020 the election is a referendum on Trump.  The pandemic and the economy have and have not changed that.  Yes, they have changed  the election  in that they are now issues and voters are judging Trump on how he is handling both. Evidence suggests his mishandling of them are impacting some support among his base. But they have changed nothing in the sense they both issues are merely surrogates for how voters think or feel about  Trump.

Think about it.  It has taken double-digit unemployment, a record crash of the economy, and 3,500,000 infections and 138,000 deaths to change the political dynamics of the 2020 presidential election.  Without the pandemic and the collateral damage, it has impacted on the economy, Biden might have had little chance of winning. Even  now, while the models say Trump will certainly lose, variables such as  changes in the economy, a lull in the pandemic, a horrible Biden campaign, or a ramped-up on steroids racial appeal by Trump that makes Willie Horton look tame.  And Democratic Party control of the Senate is not certain.

It takes a lot to defeat a sitting president.  Bush lost in 1992 because of a three-way split in the vote with Ross Perot running as a strong third-party candidate.  Prior to that, Jimmy Carter in 1980 lost to Ronald Reagan and in 1976 Carter defeated Gerald Ford.  In both those cases sitting incumbents lost because of extraordinary circumstances (1980 it was  the Iran Hostage crisis and oil embargo and in 1976 the Watergate backlash the pardoning of Richard Nixon). Prior to that it was in 1932 the last time a sitting presidential lost in a general election and that was when the Great Depression brought down Herbert Hoover to Franklin Roosevelt.  Only five incumbents have failed to win a second term.

            Trump is highly vulnerable but this is an extraordinary election.  Partisanship or polarization is so high it is, as noted, taking a national emergency a catastrophe to even begin to melt his base.  Voting in the age of Covid-19 might produce  distorted results that could change the election.  Already the litigation and court fights over early voting or voting rights portend how fragile franchise rights are and how the Supreme Court may impact how the 2020 elections are held.

            If the 2020 presidential election were held today arguably Joe Biden would win.  But it is not being held today and if history tells  us anything, a lot can still change, especially at the electoral college level, between now and November 3.

Swing Counties and Why Clinton Really Lost? It Wasn't Sanders Fault...It was Hers

So why did Hillary Clinton lose to Donald Trump?  For many this is now a “Who cares?” and it is time to “move forward” as Bernie Sanders said Thursday on The Late Show.  Yet Clinton cannot.  In her forthcoming book she describes the attacks on her by Sanders as causing “lasting damage” damage to her campaign.  No doubt, Clinton’s new book will seek the causes of her defeat in outside forces–the Russians and Sanders for example–but the roots of her defeat also lie within her own control.  Much could be written about how all the mistakes she made and how she failed to learn from them eight years later.  Yet perhaps one way to capture her mistakes is simply to look at her general election campaign, especially in terms of where she campaigned and how often.
I am in the process of doing a second edition of Presidential Swing States.  In editing that book with Stacy Hunter Hecht I realized it is not simply swing states that make the difference in presidential elections, it is the swing voters within the swing counties in the swing states that are critical.  In this second edition I am doing a chapter on the swing counties.  Looking at county campaign activity tells one a lot about the mistakes made by Clinton in the 2016 general election.
There are 3,142 counties, parishes, or boroughs in the United States.  During the 2016 general election, Clinton/Kaine made a total of 152 campaign visits to 75 counties located in 14 different states.  Trump/Pence made a total of 248 campaign visits to 142 counties in 25 states.  Total, they  made 400 campaign visits to 167 counties located in 26 states.   Between the two campaigns, they only campaigned in 5.3% of the US counties.  For Clinton it was only 2.4% of all counties, for Trump it was 4.5%.  Trump/Pence not only made nearly 60% more campaign visits than Clinton/Kaine, but they visited nearly 90% more counties.  Simply put, they made more visits to more locations than Clinton/Kaine.  Alone that tells one something about why Clinton lost–she did not campaign as much or broadly as Trump–he simply out-hustled her on the campaign trail.
But what is also interesting to consider is where the Clinton and Trump campaigns chose to  visit.
Clinton and Trump demonstrated different tactics in terms of the counties they chose to visit. For Clinton, her most frequent visits were to Democratic Party strongholds located in big urban areas such as Philadelphia, Fort Lauderdale, and Detroit.  For Trump,   the focus seemed less on big Republican strongholds and more on visiting swing areas or counties such as Hillsborough County in New Hampshire or Mecklenberg County in North Carolina.
These contrasting strategies suggest  that Clinton’s focus was either on shoring up her party base or simply trying to maximize her turnout among the Democrats.  For Trump, the focus seemed more on swing voters, perhaps reflecting the fact that either he was sure he had his base or that he was trying to expand or shift it.  All these are possible scenarios.  Yet I would also argue that what the Trump campaign did was more strategic and realistic.  His campaign understood that the key to winning an election is not just holding and mobilizing a base, but it is also going after the s wing voters in swing areas who control the balance of power in presidential elections.
Yes it is possible that Clinton had to campaign in the Democratic Party strongholds to overcome the attacks inflicted upon her by Sanders.  But a stronger argument can be made is that she simply failed to make enough campaign visits in the critical swing countries among swing voters to ask them for their vote.  If that is the case, she violated a cardinal rule of politics once enunciated by Tip O’Neill–never take a vote for granted and always ask for it.  It appears Clinton just did not ask the swing voters in the swing states for their votes, and that is why is lost.


Clinton Campaign Visits
State County Visits
Pennsylvania Philadelphia 8
Florida Broward 7
Florida Miami-Dade 7
Nevada Clark 6
Michigan Wayne 6
Ohio Cuyhoga 6
Pennsylvania Allegheny 5
North Carolina Wake 4
Iowa Polk 4
Florida Orange 3
Florida Palm Beach 3
Ohio Franklin 3
New Hampshire Hillsborough 3



Trump Campaign Visits
State County Visits
New Hampshire Hillsborough 7
Colorado El Paso 6
New Hampshire Rockingham 6
Nevada Clark 5
North Carolina Mecklenberg 5
Florida Miami-Dade 5
Nevada Washoe 5
North Carolina New Hanover 4
Arizona Maricopa 4
Ohio Cuyhoga 4

2016 and the Death of Ethics

2016 closes out apparently as the year of death.  For many it will be remembered as the year that saw Prince, Princess Leia, and many other royalty of Hollywood and music die.  It was the year that aging icons of the Baby Boom generation died and when all the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll did in many of the Baby Boomers themselves.  But another death occurred this year–the death of ethics.
For many 2016 was the year of the death of democracy in the USA and across the world.  Yes and no is the answer.  For good or bad Brexit and Trump point to the strength of populist of democracy and a sign that main stream politics cannot ignore certain voices.  For many, Brexit and Trump are only the tip of an iceberg at something more fundamentally wrong across the world
If one can define ethics to include terms such as justice, fairness, compassion, toleration, dignity, and fair play, ethics to a large extent took a major hit in 2016.   It is easy to point globally and in the United States to how Trump unleashed an ugly side of American politics.  He may not have caused it but he certainly helped enable, resurrect, and personify the ugly side of America that has been here since the days when we burned women as witches in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692-93.  It is that sense of fear and prejudice, ignorance, misogyny, that has always been part of the ugly underside of America that became perhaps mainstream and acceptable again.  It reared itself in the sexism confronting Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and of course in Trump’s where his comments about women, immigrants, Muslims, and just about everyone else not WASP failed to doom his campaign but instead seemed to strengthen himself at every juncture.  It’s not clear what is worse–what Trump dared to say and got away with it–or the fact for so many they said he had the courage to say what they had been thinking for so long.  Trumpism simply captured the underbelly prejudice and a lack of toleration and respect that still existed in our society.
But Trumpism is merely the name for a similar way sweeping the world that features Brexit in the UK, LePen in France, and Orban in Hungary, just to name a few countries.  It is about a intolerance for difference, for immigrants, and for outsiders of any shape.  But these political movements are also again about the lack of human compassion for the plight of Syrian refugees and others who seek a better life elsewhere.  But all of these movements are also about other forms of indifference.  In the USA and across much of the world people starve, the gap between the rich and poor grows, and many are marginalized.
In the US we have an opioid addiction problem which is merely a symptom for deeper issues of poverty, yet there seems to be little interest or will in addressing these issues by either party.  As some of my Democrat friends say, why should I care about these people, they voted Republican, whereas as some of my Republicans friends say, why should I care about gays, lesbians, the poor, and people of color, they vote Democrat. We cannot agree whether Black Lives Matter, Police Lives Matter, or All Lives Matter.  I saw too many people I know take leave of their political and ethical senses, intolerant of political disagreement and basic facts, guilty of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. I never knew human misery and compassion wore partisan clothes, but in a polarized world they seem to now.
The death of ethics is also about political ethics.  This was the year that the final vestiges of the post-Watergate reforms died.  Campaign finance reform and the efforts to limit the impact of money in politics are gone.  Obama helped kill it off in 2008 when he opted out of the presidential public financing system and this year neither Clinton nor Trump participated.  It was also about the power lack of candor if not sometimes lying by presidential candidates this year where it became clear we have entered a post-truth, post-fact, political world dominated by fake news and by a mainstream news so anxious to survive in a for-profit journalist world that it was willing to cover anything so long as it made a dollar.  Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal seem shrill in both their editorials and political coverage.
Yes there is a structural component to the collapse of political ethics in terms of how money biases the political system, but it is individualistic too.  Trump displays barely a modicum of respect for political ethics. His conflicts of interest test the limits of American politics.  For the Democrats, the collusion of Deborah Wasserman-Schultz, the DNC, the state parties, and the Clinton campaign raise questions about fairness.  Donna Brazile, working for CNN, leaked debate questions to Clinton, and displayed no remorse for her actions.  And in Minnesota, members of the Sports Facilities Authority and their partisan friends and guests were clueless regarding how the allocation of tickets  to the new Vikings stadium was wrong.  I
If fact, no one seems to want to say that the  bad behavior in 2016 was bad behavior.   For those who still believe in truth, goodness, and beauty, that facts matter, and that ethics are important, 2016 was an awful year.   Ethics seemed as if it were located long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
One can only hope we learn something from a horrible year and that 2017 is better.

Lessons Learned or Not from the 2016 Election

Perhaps the only thing more dreary and misinformed than the commentaries and emoting leading up

to the 2016 election are the commentaries and emoting that have taken place since.  It has been approximately one month since  November 8, I have given more than a dozen talks to various groups about the election and have listened to more than my fair share of partisan analysis and general emoting about what happened.  Nate Silver once did a book discussing the need to separate the signal from the noise if we want to make good predictions. What are some of the lessons learned or not since then?  In effect, what was and is still now the signal and noise regarding the election?

The Pollsters did not blow it.  Everyone wants to argue that the pollsters blew the election.  No, they did not.  The last national aggregate polls said Clinton had about a 2-3 point lead in the national popular vote.  Guess what?  The near final vote totals are showing her with a 2 or so point lead in the national popular vote.  But remember two things about polls.  First, polls are never pin-point accurate and will be expressed in terms of margins of error of +/- three or so points.  Clinton was within that margin or error.  Second, and more importantly, as I have repeatedly told people, national aggregate polls are worthless when it comes to presidential elections because we do not elect people by the popular vote–it is the electoral college that matters.  What was more critical to examine were the tracking polls in critical swing states and there we saw clear evidence in the last 72 hours or so that the undecided voters were tracking toward Trump.

But the pundits did blow it.  The NY Times at one point gave Clinton nearly a 92% chance of victory and Nate Silver had it up to the high 70s or 80s.  Almost every major media pundit and outlet  was convinced Clinton would win and simply could not see how she could lose to Trump.  ( For the record, I generally placed Clinton’s chances most of the election at about 55% but consistently saw many reasons why Trump would win and apparently I have been told by many people who attended many of my talks in the last year said that I predicted Trump would win).  There are many reasons why they blew it, much having to do with the intellectual or cultural bubbles they lived in, laziness,  or again accepting the same received wisdom of 2008 that said that Clinton was inevitable.

This election was typical in many ways.  In many ways this was a normal election that came down to some fundamentals and basics.  It was an election that was decided by a handful of swing voters n a few swing counties in a few swing states. These were the same states I wrote about in my book, plus Pennsylvania and Michigan.  No surprises here.  In addition, elections come down to candidates  and their narratives–Clinton lacked a clear and consistent reason to why she should be president, Trump had a narrative.  Despite all the hand wringing and speculation of a divided Republican Party, Trump did a better job mobilizing the GOP base and holding it than did Clinton.  Trump moved more of the swings in the critical swing states.  And true to form as with the most recent elections, it was a polarized election that was very close.  Finally, Tip O’Neill once said never assume people will vote for you–everyone wants to be asked.  Clinton lost in Michigan and Wisconsin because she did not campaign there ask for votes, Trump did.  The same almost happened in Minnesota.

The election was atypical in many ways.  There were many ways this was an unusual election.  First both candidates were tremendously unpopular and that created volatility among some in the electorate undecided regarding whether to vote and for whom. Perversely, both candidates did better in the polls when they did not talk or were not covered by the media.  Second, this was the first presidential campaign in American history with a major party candidate featuring a woman.  Before  the election I estimated that approximately 30% of the electoral would never vote for a woman regardless of who she was.  My point was that sexism was a central problem in this election that most pundits and people largely ignored.  It played out in terms the preoccupation with Clinton’s pantsuits, speech patterns, demeanor, and Trump’s language, both verbal and body during the debates and campaign season.    Other factors that made the election unique were how the Democrats seem to have largely lost working class voters, the impact of the FBI director Comey letter, and the  near complete void in terms of issues as a factor in the race.  We should also not forget about the transformation of the made for television election and presidency into the made for social media election and presidency.  Finally, we should not ignore the important role fake news played and how bots and trolls potentially drove much of the election in the social media.

Politainment lives!  I have written extensively about the rise of politainment, or the convergence of the politics and entertainment (and pop culture) where candidates who master the art of generating clicks and views in a 24/7 for profit media cycle will do well.  Trump understood this, Clinton did not.  The mainstream media was so heavily dependent on Trump for dollars and viewers that it could never figure out how to cover him.  The same is true post-election.    Trump essentially owns the news establishment, preventing the media from being able to cover him in any way that is objective or reasonable.

But even beyond the aforementioned themes, there are several post-election reactions or statements that need to be addressed.

Trump will be the president.  Barring the unforeseen Trump will be president.  A lot of people are saying that “Trump is not my president.”  Like it or not he is.  Some see him as a sexist pig or worse  and cannot believe Clinton lost to him.  The reality is she did lose the electoral college to him.  Moreover, yes the sexism in our culture stinks and one can complain about it forever but that sexism is a reality and female candidates unfortunately have to learn how to campaign facing it.

Don’t blame the voters.  I have seen way too many articles or people blame Millennials, or third party voters, or women, or others for why Clinton lost.  Stop blaming the voters!  The fault is with Clinton.  Ralph Nader once said that no one owns a voter and as Tip O’Neill said, you have to ask and earn votes.  Clinton was not entitled to anyone’s vote and she had to earn it.  If people did not vote for her the fault rests with her so blame her and her campaign instead.

Demographics is not Destiny.  This was the Democratic Party mantra and Clinton strategy leading into this campaign.    Demographics matter but so does candidate quality and message.  Moreover, in many ways demographics did matter in this election–white working class are still a majority of the electorate and they still matter and they show up to vote.  Oh, and the electoral college still matters.

The election was not rigged.  There is little evidence to support this a currently understood.  We do not have much information regarding voter suppression yet.  There is little evidence of Russian hacking or the general hackability of US elections.  Moreover, there is no evidence that millions of illegal votes, especially in patterns that would have only voted for Clinton. No party has a monopoly on virtue and there is also no reason to think that the paltry cheating that occurred took place to the benefit of one party or candidate alone.   If we are talking about rigging in terms of the role of money in politics, election rules that hurt third party candidates, and the media bias, then yes it may have been rigged.

This may or may not have been a critical election.    There is some evidence that traditional voting patterns shifted in this election but it is not clear how much and how permanent.  The best explanatory variable predicting election returns this year seems to be educational level.  Areas on balance with people with more college degrees voted for Clinton and Democrats.  No this does not mean stupid people voted for Trump.  It instead suggests a new cultural divide that needs to be understood better in terms of how American elections move forward.

There are no tanks in the streets.  Calm down everyone.  Yes the campaign was awful in tone and  we saw an unleashing of a lot of bigotry.  Yet it started way before Trump and he may simply be the face of a new ugly era already emerging in politics.  Stories from the Southern Poverty Law Center report hundreds of hate incidents since the election but we have no idea how this fits into an existing trend line or in comparison to comparable recent periods.  There is constant hysteria about what will or will not happen with Trump as president.  Calm down.  For the same reason that the rigidity and stability of our political institutions (checks and balances, separation of powers, bicameralism, and federalism) make political change difficult, the same will also prevent any excesses over the next four years.  We should also simply ignore or shrugged off (as David Brooks recently said) the most recent tweets of Trump.

Overall, understand there is a lot of noise out there.  Ignore most of it.

Trump, Clinton, and the Crisis of the Democratic Party

To the surprise of many of many Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to become the next
president of the United States.  The reasons for Clinton’s loss are many, but the real issue is what’s next for America and the world under a Trump presidency?

Why Clinton lost?
There are many reasons why Hillary Clinton lost; some are self-inflicted, others a consequence of bad timing and luck.  Clinton was in the end a weak candidate.  She was a poor public speaker, she lacked a clear rational for why she wanted to be president, and she had a strategy that simply did not resonate with many voters, especially the white working class who voted for Trump.  She never had a good explanation about her e-mails and the use of a private server, or about her Wall Street speeches. She was someone that many voters did not feel passionate about, resulting in her holding less of her Democratic party base to vote for her than Trump did with his Republican party base.  Clinton also was unable to capture the swing or undecided voters in large percentages, and it was these voters who broke decisively in the last few days and went for Trump.
But Clinton was also a victim of circumstances.  Her greatest asset was her experience as a senator and Secretary of State, yet in a year where being a Washington insider was a liability it hurt her.  She ran as the status quo candidate who will continue Obama’s policies, but the mood of the country was for change. She was also a victim of sexism, facing unique problems as a woman that no previous major party presidential candidate faced in American history.  There was the unfortunate luck of the cost increases under the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, and she also became the fifth victim in American presidential history to be the winner of the popular vote but lose the electoral vote.

The Crisis of the Democratic Party
In addition, for those who wondered why the polls failed the answer is that they did not.  In the end the last polls said she was ahead by a percentage point or so and the final election totals confirmed that.  Clinton did win the popular vote but remember, it is the electoral college that decides the winner and not the national popular vote.  Clinton lost narrowly, it coming down to swing states.  In these states last minute voters broke against here, similar to what happened in 1980 when undecided voters at the last second voted against Carter and for Reagan.  Additionally, the voter turnout in 2016 was the lowest in 20 years–Trump and Clinton were candidates who turned off many voters, especially those who were occasional voters.  In 2008 and 2012 they went for Obama but Clinton could not convince them to vote for her.  Many of the 2008 Obama voters wanted change, Obama did not provide it and Clinton as the status quo president who would continue the Obama agenda too did not represent it.
In the end as Top O’Neill once said, no one owns a voter or vote and you have to ask for it and earn it.  Clinton and the Democrats failed to ask for the votes of many people and they did not earn it.  In fact, the real story of 2016 is the collapse of not the Republican but Democratic parties.  Obama and Clinton leave the Democratic Party far weaker today than they did in 2008.  It is a party  unable to speak to working class whites, rural, and suburban America.  A party that actually does  take for granted people of color and liberals whom they assume will vote for them because they have no other choices.  It is also a party that blew off young people–the Millennials–with repercussions  down the line.  No, contrary to what so many Clinton supporters are whining about, the Sanders and Trump people are not idiots and voting for Johnson and Stein did not cost Clinton the election.  Clinton and the Democrats lost it themselves; the voters were often rational in voting not their fears but their hopes.

The Trump Presidency
Trump is now president and the question is what will he do?  He made lots of noise about building a fence along the US-Mexican border, wanting to renegotiate trade deals, and of perhaps  rethinking NATO and the US relationship with Russia and Putin?  How much of this will or can he actually do?
Domestically Trump has called for many changes but it is unclear what he can do on his own.  Historian Richard Neustadt once said that the power of the presidency is the power to persuade.  Presidents are not generals, business leaders, or monarchs and they cannot just order people around.  They need to persuade others, including Congress, the bureaucracy, the states, the media, and the public if they as presidents want to succeed.    Trump’s close victory in a divided America means he will be limited in terms of whom he can persuade.  His own Republican Party is divided and it is not sure he will get an easy path to success in Congress.  Because Trump ran a campaign largely devoid of policy he has no real clear policy agenda path.
In addition, presidents are constrained by a power bureaucracy, federalism, checks and balances, and separation of powers.  At the end of the day there will be no wall along the Mexican border, and mass deportations will not occur.  Trump will make America a less kinder and gentler place, but the extremism that some worry about will not occur.  US political institutions are not that fragile, I hope.
In the area of foreign policy often the best predictor of what a new president will do is to look at the previous president.  There is far more continuity across presidential foreign policy than there is divergence.  Obama made marginal changes from Bush.  The foreign policy establishment is power and it transcends political parties.  Trump may find he is captured more by this bureaucracy than he realizes.
Trump may try to force changes in trade deals but face retaliation from China and the European Union who will not passively sit by.  The same is true of the World Trade Organization.  Trump may think he knows Putin but after he gets burned by him a couple of times he may turn on him.  Trump wants to tear up the Iranian nuclear deal, but it is not clear what he has to replace it with and it is doubtful the rest of the world will go along.  Unilateral action in Syria and against ISIS or Dash is possible, but Trump seems not to have real alternatives.  And even his talk about NATO and its alternatives may be more talk than reality.  It just does not seem feasible that the US foreign and miliary policy establishment will let that happen.  Yes, perhaps a new global order needs to emerge, but te US in 2017 is not in the same position to force this change as it was in 1946, or even at the end of the Cold War.
In short, Trump may simply misunderstand or not appreciate how little power he actually has.  He is potentially clumsy, undiplomatic, unskilled, and clueless about world politics, but it is doubtful he will have the ability to affect the scope of changes that he blustered about during his campaign.

Electoral College Do Your Job: Make Clinton President

You’re heard the news stories over the past two days that the electors in the Electoral College could still swing this election back to Hillary Clinton when they meet across the country to cast the ballots for their states on December 19. You’ve heard there is a petition with hundreds of thousands of signatures encouraging just that.

Constitutionally they have the power to do that, and if they care about democracy and the will of the people, that is the right answer.

First,  I did not support or vote for Hillary Clinton.

Having said that, I believe that because Hillary Clinton did win a majority of the popular vote, she should be our next President.

That would be the case if the President were selected directly by the people. Majority rule by the people through elections is central to almost everyone’s conception of what a modern representative government is, and in democracies around the world, the people select their leaders that way.

Not so, currently, in the United States. Instead, the President is selected by the Electoral College.

That should not happen in this day and age. The Electoral College model of electing a leader is an outdated, anti-democratic institution.

In 1787, when those who framed our government deliberated the drafting of the Constitution, the Electoral College was selected as the mechanism to pick the President for three reasons.

First, it was a by-product of a compromise of a conflict between the big versus small states. Sparsely populated states feared they would be ignored if population were the basis of Presidential selection.

Second, southern states feared that if population were a basis to pick a President the populous northern states would outlaw slavery. It was this same fear of slavery being banned that led to the famous “three-fifths compromise” that counted slaves as only partial humans for the purposes of taxes and representation.

Third, the framers of the Constitution and our government simply feared common persons, seeing them not as competent to select a position so powerful and important as the President.

Alexander Hamilton, writing in defense of the Electoral College in Federalist Paper 68, declared of the President “the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided.” Yet, he declared that such a choice should be entrusted to a small group of people consisting of “men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station. . .[and who] will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.”  In his Notes of the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, James Madison quotes several of the constitutional framers who opposed directed popular selection of the President, such as Elbridge Gerry, who saw the people as “uninformed, and would be misled by a few designing people.” And in Max Farrand’s definitive The Records of the Federal Convention of 1987, Roger Sherman said that the people will “never be sufficiently informed.”  Moreover in his classic defense of the Electoral College, historian Martin Diamond saw the institution as a means to protect minority rights, guarding the country against regionalism, sectionalism.

The Electoral College was the product of slavery, racism, and distrust of the people to make their own choices. It is part of a Constitution silent on the right to vote, and to this day there remains no constitutional right for the people to vote for President. The Constitution ignores the popular vote, and delegates to the states the power to select the Presidential electors. It is merely by the grace of state laws that we are permitted to go to the polls to chose the electors who eventually chose the President.

With this election, we will now have experienced five elections where the winner of the popular vote was selected as President but where that winner was not allowed to serve as President. Hope that the Electoral College would protect small states from being ignored or that the Electoral College model would prevent only a few states or regions of the country from determining the presidency have not lived up to the founders’ intent.

As I pointed out in Presidential Swing States: Why Only Ten Matter, the Presidential election process has fallen into a predictable pattern where only a handful of swing voters in a few swing counties in a few swing states ultimately decide the election. It happened again in 2016.  This is hardly democratic, producing a system where the voices of only a few are heard and the majority are ignored or disenfranchised in many states.

The Electoral College is simply outdated, it distorts the views of the majority in the ways the constitutional framers never would have envisioned, and it operates with a view of democracy and of the people that is
inconsistent with contemporary conceptions of what a representative democracy should be–which is that the people have a constitutional right through free elections to let the majority pick their President.

So what is to be done? A 2011 Gallup poll indicated that 62% of the public supports amending the Constitution to allow for direct popular vote of the President. However, amending the Constitution is near impossible, and doing so would not change the outcome of this election in favor of the candidate who was selected by popular vote.

There is another option that can be exercised, and I urge our electors to truly consider it. Come December 19, when the electors of the different states convene across the country, they should simply exercise their legally-viable independent judgment that the constitutional framers envisioned and do what Alexander Hamilton declared is in the best “sense of the people”–and cast their vote for Hillary Clinton for President.

It need not even be all the electors who do that. Simply having some of the electors in the close swing states of Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin split evenly to reflect the popular votes in those states would be sufficient to ensure the people’s choice is made, that the people’s are heard and valued, to show the people—each one of us—should and do count.

 It would not be unprecedented for electors to cast their votes independently. Over time there have been 157 “faithless electors,” as they are called, members of the Electoral College who did not vote for their party designated candidate who won the state. The most recent was in 2004 when an anonymous elector in Minnesota voted not for John Kerry but John Edwards for President.

The Electoral College may be a broken model-yes, but it’s our existing model-yes again, so why should the electors not do what can and should be done, which is legal and ethical within the framework of the existing model, and vote for the popular candidate?

In voting independently, an elector would be doing exactly what the constitutional framers intended; the electors would be using their positions to vote in line with the sense of the people–in this case, following what the majority voted this past November, which is to make Hillary Clinton the next President of the United States. 

Don’t count on Congress to settle a close US presidential election

Today's blog originally appeared in The Hill.

The Constitution ultimately vests in Congress the authority to resolve challenges regarding the counting of electoral votes by the individual states in presidential elections. Yet if the 2016 presidential election melts down or if there are major challenges to the electoral votes in any state, don’t necessarily count on Congress to be able to resolve the problem. The reason is that the law that empowers Congress to resolve electoral vote disputes may be unconstitutional.

Given the recent comments that Donald Trump has made about not necessarily accepting the results of the election, or that a disagreement about the election in some state emerges again as it did in Florida in 2000, it is possible that Congress may be called on to resolve any electoral vote disputes. This would not be the first time Congress had to do that.

Congress did it the first time in 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr supposedly ran as a president-vice-president ticket, but a flaw in the Constitution led them to receive an equal number of electoral votes, thereby forcing the House of Representatives to select the president and to eventually amend the Constitution.

Then there was the election of 1876 between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden received the most popular votes, but the House of Representatives eventually picked Hayes as the president after disputed elections occurred in Florida, South Carolina, and Oregon.

With no other method to turn to, Congress established a partisan Electoral Commission to award an Electoral College majority to Hayes, and agonized over the creation of a procedural framework for resolving disputed elections for a decade — finally passing the Electoral Count Act in 1887.

The Act prescribed a method of appointing state electors, the form in which votes were to be submitted to Congress, and most importantly, a number of restrictive procedures that both Houses of Congress were required to follow in counting the results.

Among these procedures, one provision requires the House and Senate to meet together to resolve disputes, but fails to specify whether this requirement creates a unique and distinct body or if the two bodies are acting separately.

The Electoral Count Act was consigned to the dustbin of history by everyone except the most astute election law scholars until our country again faced a razor-thin presidential contest in 2000. While scrutiny of the Act by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore largely centered on the timing of certification of state election procedures for it to receive safe harbor deference for its election results, the numerous procedural objections raised by members of Congress during the Electoral College count in Congress in January 2001 gave rise to a number of serious constitutional questions that have somehow evaded lawyers over the past fifteen years.

Among these issues are whether the actual rules that dictate how the votes will be counted by the House and Senate together are themselves constitutional. It may well be that these rules violate other constitutional provisions that make the House of Representatives and Senate the ultimate judge of their own internal procedural rules.

It is possible that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 violates this constitutional provision by forcing the two bodies to act as one and give up their own power to control these rules. 

And even if not unconstitutional, deep partisan disputes and jealousy between the House and Senate could lead to a stalemate during the counting of the votes. Assume for the sake of argument that the Republicans keep the House and the Democrats take the Senate — objections raised by Republican Members of the House might be perfunctorily overruled by Democratic President of the Senate (Vice President) Joe Biden, leading to the Republican House asserting that Vice President Biden’s power to rule on their objections is unconstitutional.

At that point, in a political era of intense partisanship, a mess greater than that experienced in 2000 would be faced by our federal courts. If the Electoral Count Act were constitutionally challenged it could potentially leave Congress without a viable means of resolving a heavily partisan and disputed controversy.

This would send resolution of the 2016 race into uncharted political and constitutional waters that could well take months if not longer to address, much like it did in 1876. 

In an era of division and discord, we can all agree that the rules of the game for presidential elections must be fair, agreed to by all, and most importantly, constitutional.

Quick action should be taken to ensure that our history of disputed results, hanging chads, and uncertain procedures does not continue to linger over this country in future presidential elections.

Schultz and Land are the authors of a recent journal article on this topic entitled “On the Unenforceability of the Electoral Count Act” published in the Rutgers Journal of Law & Public Policy. Schultz is a Professor of Political Science at Hamline University and Land is Deputy Legislative Counsel of the Nevada Legislature.

Trump is right: The election is rigged — but in his favor

Today’s blog originally appeared in the Hill.

October 19, 2016, 10:48 am
Trump is right: The election is rigged — but in his favor
By David A. Schultz, contributor

Donald Trump is right that the election is rigged, but he’s right for all the wrong reasons. It’s rigged by race, class, and gender in ways that favor individuals such as Trump.


Doug Chapin and Lawrence R. Jacobs recently argued correctly in a Contributors piece in The Hill that election administration is fair and for the most part its administrators are competent and impartial. The days are gone when Lyndon Johnson won his 1948 Texas state election by having the dead vote for him in alphabetical order. This is not where elections are rigged now.
If elections can be rigged, either party can do it. The secretary of state (or commonwealth) is the chief election officer in each state and they would have the ability to manipulate the election system to the benefit of their favored candidate.


Of the 50 states, 28 are Republican. Among the 11 swing states that are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina,  Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, only three, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, are controlled by Democrats.

Republicans control nearly two-thirds of the secretaries of state in the critical swing states and presumably would not have an incentive to rig the election in favor of Clinton.

Look at who votes, runs for office, and give political contributions. All skew toward older affluent white males — a profile not much different from Trump. The major interest groups and political action committees active in campaigns tend to be composed of these types of people, supporting interests more favorable to them than the poor or people of color.

Back in the 1960s political scientist E.E. Schattschneider described a bias in the American political process that favors a democracy for only a subset of the entire population, that observation remains largely if not more firmly true today.

People of color are less likely to register or actually vote than Caucasians. Historically, lynchings and racially discriminatory laws such as poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather laws prevented African-Americans from voting.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act banned these practices and increased voter turnout among all people of color, but the Supreme Court in 2013 gutted the VRA in Holder v. Shelby County, embolden almost immediately  a new round of laws to suppress voting that may impact the 2016 elections.

A new disenfranchisement is afoot. False claims of voter fraud have led to numerous laws impacting the voting rights of the poor, students, and people of color. Many of these are groups whom if they vote it will not be for Trump. Cutting back on early voting or closing or moving voting locations produces longer lines to  vote.

Seldom are these polls closed in neighborhoods with poor people or people of color. There are stories of purged voter lists, complex rules to register, or in the case of voter id laws, costs associated with securing the documents required to obtain  the ids necessary to vote. They are the new poll tax.

According to the Sentencing Project, more than six million individuals cannot vote because of felon disenfranchisement laws. Some of these bans are for life. These laws disproportionately impact racial minorities with one in thirteen African-American adults unable to vote due to these laws. In Florida and Virginia, two critical presidential swing states, more than 20% of African-American adults cannot vote because of these laws.

Only a very small percent of the population expends money for political purposes. The Sunlight Foundation documents that the richest 0.01 percent of the population accounted for 42% of all the 2012 political contributions. The 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United  decision has pumped more corporate money into elections.

The cost of running for office all but excludes the poor and middle class as candidates, and because women are still confront glass ceilings in business, many face additional difficulties compared to men like Trump in locating  donors and money to run for office. None of this includes the sexist double standards women face as candidates, or the reality that there is still a percentage of the population which will not vote for any female candidate.

In many states the poor cannot take time off from work to attend a caucus or vote in a primary or general election because it means forgoing a pay check. Restrictive ballot access laws make it difficult for third party or independent candidates to run for office.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has adopted restrictive laws regarding who can participate  such that no third party candidate will probably ever again be invited unless he or she is as rich as Ross Perot was in 1992 when he was able to buy his way in as a serious contender.

What little money is left in the nearly bankrupt and broken presidential public financing system goes to a third party too late to help it in the present election. But for the rest of the congressional and most state and local races, there is no public financing, creating a wealth primary that excludes all but a few from even running for office.

It is easy from the position of being white, male, and affluent to say that the American election system is fair and legitimate. The reality is that for millions it is not. It is a system that is actually rigged in favor of individuals such as Donald Trump who has benefitted from a political and economic system that more likely favors people like him.

Why political science falls short in predicting elections

My latest blog originally appeared in The Hill on October 5, 2016.

October 05, 2016, 12:55 pm
Why political science falls short in predicting elections
By David Schultz, contributor


Candidates, campaigns and strategies don’t seem to matter in U.S. presidential elections. At least that is the impression often left by mainstream political scientists and their election forecast models. Yet the 2016 presidential election suggests that who the candidates are, what they say, and how they campaign does matter.

A hallmark of modern political science is the scientific aspect of it. It is an effort to create mathematically objective and accurate models that can predict political behavior and events such as elections. Define a list of variables, plug them into an equation, and presto: months before the actual election we can predict a winner.

The leading political science prediction models consider variables that include economic growth, (incumbent) presidential popularity, and how long the current party has been in power. Oddly, many of the best prediction models downplay or ignore political variables such as the impact of presidential debates, the quality of candidates, the role of money in politics and even policy positions — the factors that candidates, their managers, and strategists often discuss and emphasize as critical to electoral success.

The best models for political scientists seem to be the ones that are deployed far in advance of elections, so as not to be tainted by actual politics or the campaigns themselves. Even less statistically driven models seem to assume elections are over before they start. I too am guilty of that, and have argued that because of the Electoral College and partisan alignments, the 2016 election was largely over two years ago except in a handful of 10-12 swing states such as Ohio, or that only about 15 counties will matter this election cycle. Political science models describe how firm partisan and demographic factors such as race and gender are in determining whether and how individuals will vote.

Listen to political scientists and one will think that debates, who the vice presidential candidate is, and even lawn signs do not matter. It seems nothing — especially anything any of us would consider political — really matters. Politics and elections seem to be on autopilot. Theodore White’s classic “The Making of the President” series, while informative, is superfluous in terms of explaining presidential elections. We might as well simply run the models every four years and let them and political scientists pick the next president.

The reality is that politics does matter in campaigns and elections. The very craft of political science in its effort to be scientific often misses that. It misses the subtle shifts in public opinion that occur as a result of a debate. It ignores, especially this year, how candidate character — or lack thereof, as measured by the high disapprovals for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — might affect voting behavior.

The models miss how anti-establishment feelings, whether a voter feels like they could have a cup of coffee with the candidate, potential terrorist attacks, fear of immigration, emails, and a potential massive WikiLeaks dump could shape elections. And these models overlook the impact that get-out-the-vote campaigns, voter ID laws and racism or sexism have on elections.

Perhaps these affects are variables too subtle to measure, or instead they are structural forces that simply escape standard political science models because, oftentimes, these are unpredictable or escape easy quantifying. These are the factors that political operatives consider important — this is real politics.

Real politics is sloppy and dominated by conventional wisdom that it often wrong. It is rumor-fed and hunch- or gut-driven. It’s not scientific.

In real politics voters matter, and they need to show up for candidates to win. Yes, real politics could learn a lot from political science. But political science could learn even more about real politics if it paid more attention to what is happening in politics. Too many of my political scientist colleagues are perplexed this year by the success of Trump, the struggles of Clinton, and why this election is so close. But to really understand and explain the 2016 election cycle, one needs to move beyond macro-statistical models that fail to appreciate how campaigns and elections are affected by micro, subtle and structure forces that take place within an election cycle and are not simply determined well before campaigns even start.

Why is Trump Afraid of Vaginas?

When Donald Trump was a little kid did a vagina spook him?  Did one fall out of tree and hit him on the head?  Did he trip and fall into one?  Or did one jump out of a dark alley with hedge clippers and seek to cut off his penis (because as Freud said, women have penis envy and therefore seek to emasculate men by castrating them in all types of ways)?   After observing Trump’s Monday debate performance against Hillary Clinton and now his lashing out against former Ms. Universe Alicia Machado, it appears that he is scared to death of vaginas and that he must have had a traumatic childhood experience with one.

There is no question Trump hates women.  They are pigs, slobs, and dogs a Clinton reminded us Monday when she recounted Trump’s adjectives about them.  He hates Rosie O’Donnell, Megyn Kelly, Carly Fiorina, Hillary Clinton, and now Alicia Macado.  If he cannot objectify and dominate them such as in beauty contests they are threats to his masculinity and therefore objects of ridicule.  After Clinton beat him in the first presidential debate on Monday Trump could have been gracious such as when Obama acknowledged in 2012 that Romney beat him in the first debate.

Instead, he got beaten by a girl, nothing is worse than that.  Thus, Trump blames everyone except himself.  The debate was unfair, the moderator unfair, the questions unfair, and he himself was a gentleman and did not go far enough in raising the question of Bill Clinton’s marital infidelity and a 20 year old story about Monica Lewinsky.  Insult Clinton’s vagina by waving another in her face.  Appeal to her insecurities and that of women across the country by claiming you are not good feminists or women because their husbands had affairs.  It was your vagina’s fault. And of course he lost because Ms. Machado is fat.  All perfectly good reasons to explain his debate performance.

The 2016 presidential debate was the first to have a gender dynamics where there was a woman featured as a presidential candidate.  It was Trump’s first one-on-one presidential debate with a woman.  Throughout the Republican primaries he out-testosteroned the other male candidates.  It was classic Freudian right down to the debate featuring discussion of his penis size.  Why he did not whip it and a ruler out like adolescent males do is beyond me, but he effectively did that, more or less declaring he was the best candidate to make America great again because he had the biggest penis.  But when it came to Fiorina he froze, criticized her face, or otherwise seemed tout his superiority because he had a penis and she did not.

But with Clinton on Monday it was the first time he had to directly confront a strong vagina on stage  He was eye-to-eye with a vagina and he blinked.   It was mano o mano–rather mano o vagina on stage–and he lost.  It was humiliating to his manhood, castrated in front of 84 million viewers.  So of course the only thing he could do was to call a former Ms. Universe fat.  Yes, that evened the score with Clinton and women everywhere.  For Trump, if you cannot dominate a vagina insult it instead.  Clinton’s finest moment on Monday was when she finally became comfortable with gender, laughing off Trump’s insult that she could be blamed for everything.  It was at that moment she won the debate, putting Trump down in the worst possible way by being a vagina that beat him.

Clinton won the First Debate But did it Matter?

To the extent that American presidential debates sway public opinion, help swing voters decide, or persuade observers that someone is fit to lead the United States, Hillary Clinton won the first debate.  While she may have not done much to help her cause, Donald Trump did nearly  nothing to his benefit.
It is questionable  how much presidential debates really shift public opinion.  Since first televised in1960, they remain the most watched event during the presidential  campaign.  While in the past famous scenes–such as how Kennedy won the 1960 debate over Nixon by looking more presidential, or when in 1992 George H.W. Bush looked at his watch and looked out of touch when he debated Bill Clinton seemed decisive, the best political science evidence is that the debates only shift a small number of voters. This year in a highly polarized electorate where there are few undecided or swing voters, the same can be said.  Trump supporters will say he won, Clinton’s allies the same.  Thus, for the few undecided voters the question is who won their vote, if either?
With the presidential race essentially tied, Trump and Clinton needed to do two things. First they needed to play to their political bases and get them excited to vote.  Both candidates did that.  Trump was aggressive and continued his rhetorical style that suited well during the Republican debates.  He raised questions about Clinton’s honesty, stamina, and her views on some policy issues such as Iraq.  Clinton sought to question Trump’s temperament, display her policy skills, and show she was more prepared to be president.  Thus their political bases were pleased.
But if the issue was moving the swing voter in the critical swing states, Clinton did a better job.  The swing voters–women, people of color, and those under the age of 30– found more to like with Clinton.  She talked more policy, she appeared calmer, and she seemed prepared.  Trump lacked focus, seemed to ramble, and he barely could string together a coherent  argument.  Moreover, Clinton simply was prepared and gave thoughtful answers even if you disagreed, whereas Trump gave troubling responses.  He had no plan for ISIS or terrorism, his remarks about NATO left it member countries wondering if the USA would protect them, and his refusal to renounce first strikes with nuclear weapons did little to convince critical swing voters that he could be trusted as commander-in-chief.  On merits, Clinton generally answered the questions, Trump avoided them or blustered.
Clinton also came out more truthful.  Yes she had questionable answers about her denial in supporting free trade, but generally most fact checks gave Clinton the edge.  Trump was not truthful regarding his stances on his support for the Iraq war and he was wrong on issues such as China and currency devaluation.  Whether he lied or simply was uninformed is a matter of debate.
Finally, in terms of style, Trump did little to convince people he had the right temperament to be president.  He f ought with the moderator, he shouted down Clinton.  He simply displayed a style that did not win him any new friends.  Clinton navigated the gender double-standards, generally avoiding looking too aggressive or passive.  Whether she navigated the fashion police I leave to others to address.
Overall, Clinton should be judged the winner but whether it matters is yet to be seen.

Why Nate Silver is Wrong: The Limits of Political Money Ball and Why Trump may Win

It’s time to admit it–Trump may win.
Increasing and begrudgingly the establishment politicians, pundits, and analysts are beginning to realize that Trump may actually win the presidency. Nate Silver, whom too many people put too much political stock in, is now saying that Clinton is favored 60-40% to win, down from dramatically larger percentages even just a couple of weeks ago.  It’s nice to see that Silver finally is getting closer to my assessment which has said Clinton has a 55-60% chance of winning.  But even then, I may be exaggerating her chances and would put it at 50%+–barely break even.
Nate Silver came to fame with applying the logic of money ball to politics–successfully using his algorithms to call 99 of 100 states in the last two presidential elections.  Silver is smart, but it would not have taken an Einstein to call at least 90 of the 100 states.  This is what the logic of my book Presidential Swing States is all about–showing how because of the Electoral College, partisan voting, and party alignments, the elections were over before they started in all but ten states.  Moreover, in the last two election cycles, one could have also eliminated a couple of other states from the swing state category, giving one about 94 states that would have been easy to predict.   Throw in the relative stability of polling and getting to 99 is not so hard.
Why is all this worth mentioning in connection with Trump and the 2016 elections?  First,  despite 2016 being a unique election year there are still many forces that make it a relatively normal election that again is reducing the election to only a handful of swing states.  Still in play are the core ten that have consistently been in play for the last seven election cycles, such as Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Iowa, but additionally a few others such as Michigan and Pennsylvania may now be  flip-able.  There is evidence that partisanship is still a factor driving how people vote with few real swing voters moving from party to party.  Voters are coalescing around Clinton to some degree but more so for Trump, thereby producing a normal election pattern that suggests is it still a few swing voters in a few swing counties in a few swing states that will determine who gets to 270 electoral votes and wins the presidency.  All this bodes well for the Nate Silvers of the world.
Additionally when one looks at Trump versus Clinton traditional wisdom hands it to Clinton.  Until recently ahead in the polls, she has a better run campaign, more money, and has insulted far few people than Trump.    Yet this is where the uniqueness of 2016 kicks in, and where the limits of political money ball appear.
First, there is no such thing as an electoral college lock for the Democrats who think demographics is destiny.  Statistically voters may be presupposed to vote a certain way but you need to get them to vote.  Trump supporters are passionate and will show up, Clinton’s are not.  She relies on many voters who are mercurial at best when it comes to vote and she has done little to address the lack of enthusiasm many have for her.  She has yet to seal the deal with the Sanders people and liberals, simply assuming that running to the center as a Republican much like here husband did will result in these people having no where else to go and therefore they will vote for her.  2016 and the Millennials are very different from 1992 and the Baby Boomers.  Even African-Americans who loved  Obama in 2008 and 2012 may not come out the same way in 2016.
Second, polling is more complicated now than before. Cell phone technology, polling costs,  defining likely voter, and other issues all complicate this years predictions.  Many media outlets are cutting costs on polls.  Take for example the September 18, 2016 Star Tribune poll  with results from 625 respondents and landlines constituting 69%.  A good poll should have at least 1,000 respondents and nearly 70% cell phone.  This is a flawed  poll.  Silver’s predictions are only as good as the polls and he has blown several predictions this year, consistently over-estimating Clinton’s strengths.  Face it, Clinton often polls better than she performs, Trump performs better than polls.
Third, what political money ball misses are three important factors–candidate quality, mood of a country, and the politainment quality of American politics.  No matter how good a campaign some candidates are simply not good.  Clinton is a weak candidate and does not resonate well.  Factors such as likeablity are missed in political money ball.  Yes, Trump too is a weak candidate, but he has the benefit of it being an anti-establishment year at a time when Clinton is the poster child for the establishment.  And Trump understands the politainment aspect of contemporary politics that is increasing post-truth (candidates do not tell the truth and the public does not expect it), post-rational, post-issues, and simply pop culture sound-bite driven.  Image is everything, content is nothing.
Put this altogether and the traditional political pundits, politicians, analysts, and Nate Silvers of the world are missing a tremendous amount about politics in 2016.    They and traditional political scientists also miss the importance of how politics is moving marginal numbers of swing voters in a few swing counties in a few swing states and therefore the issue is not how Trump or Clinton appeal to large numbers of people but only to move a few people.  Aggregate analysis misses subtle shifts.
Right now logic dictates Clinton still should win but the reality may be that the public should prepare for a Trump presidency because there are many reasons to think they he will win.

Postscript:  The Star Tribune poll is flawed along the lines of its previous polls that predicted a Dayton blowout over Emmer in the 2010 gubernatorial race.  Notwithstanding the poll's problems there is no doubt the race for president in Minnesota is closer than some think.  Trump plays well in an Iron Range ready to flip to the GOP and I can see it electing Mills or Nolan.  The same  could affect the first district race Waltz v Hagedorn and even Craig v. Lewis and the control for the MN House and Senate.  Clinton's weaknesses have potential down ballot issues and the DFL's effort to go to court last week to get Trump off the ballot may have given new resolve to Republicans.  Add to that the ISIL connection to the St Cloud attack and how the public sees in some polls security and law and order as a Trump issue and one can see Minnesota as potentially competitive at the presidential level.  While possibly not yet a swing state, I see many reasons based on the conclusions of my recent book why Minnesota is becoming a swing state, perhaps even as early as 2016.

A Close 2016 Presidential Election that Favors...

To the dismiss of many Democrats and political pundits, the presidential race is again tightening up.  For weeks Clinton enjoyed a near double-digit lead in national polls and solid leads in the critical swing states.  Yet recent polls suggest nationally the race is closer, with at least one poll–CNN putting Trump ahead (although with a margin of error that might question that)–and a recent NY Times article suggesting a closer race but one with Clinton still leading.  The Washington Post still sees a decisive lead for Clinton in the critical swing states, but again polling suggests even in the swings a tighter race.  The point is that for the last three or so weeks partisans and pundits have committed one if not many of the seven deadly sins of punditry that I recently described.
The point is that the presidential race is close and may be so right to the wire.  Nate Silver gives Clinton (as of September 9) a 69.5% chance to win, I place it closer to 60-65% chance.  Early voting will start soon, more FBI Clinton e-mails will be released, Wikileaks will release some, and then there are the debates.  Many variables can still affect the election and there is no guarantee that  Clinton can cinch an easy path to 270 electoral votes, especially when her disapprovals are as high  as Trump’s and this is an anti-establishment year and she is the face of the status quo.
Over the last few weeks I have given several talks to various groups about the election, with three questions or issues repeatedly surfacing.  Let’s consider these issues.

Popular Vote v Electoral Vote
Remember presidents are elected by the electoral vote which is a 51 state race (50 states plus District of Columbia) to reach 270 electoral votes.  One can win the popular vote as Al Gore did in 2000 yet lose in the electoral college.  I see this split again as a real possibility.  One scenario: Clinton racks up large popular vote majorities in Democratic-leaning states but loses in the swing states.  Alternatively, Clinton wins the swing states but huge anti-Clinton voters overall give Trump a popular (if we can say popular this year?) vote victory.

Sexism
Clinton has many self-inflicted wounds and is a flawed candidate but she is also a victim of horrible sexism.  I have been doing a quiz this year in my talks asking the audience what percentage of the voting population will not vote for a woman regardless of who it is?  I think it is approximately 30%.  This means Clinton starts off with nearly one-third of the voters who will not  vote for her.  What do you think?  Is the percentage higher or lower than 30%?

Turnout
Everyone wants to know what turnout will be this fall.  This is hard to predict.  I can see a scenario where turnout is depressed because no one likes the two major presidential candidates or a scenario where we see high turnout as voters come out to vote against Trump or Clinton.  Both are  plausible scenarios.  With that I am asked who is advantaged with high or low turnout?  Traditionally  I would argue Democrats would be favored with high turnout but this election high turnout could  favor Trump.

Third Parties
Since nearly 60% of voters say they do not like Trump or Clinton, will third parties benefit this year?  I am skeptical.  Partisan attitudes have hardened and it seems unlikely that many voters will beak to a third party, especially with a lingering but false belief that Nader cost Gore the 2000 election.   Instead I see it more likely that some voters stay home or not vote for the presidential candidates.  This non-voting may not make a difference in many states but in some swing states it could tip a race.

How will voters break?
I was in graduate school at Rutgers University during the 1980 race between Carter and Reagan.  The race was very close until about 72 hours out.  Polling then indicated that the undecided  voters were breaking strongly for Reagan, deciding that they did not like the status quo.  I see a scenario like that repeating itself.  Yes early voting many complicate this but undecided voters will not vote until November 8.  I could see a close race until about November 5, and then a major shift in voting as undecideds make up their mind.  Whether those numbers will be enough to offset any candidate advantages from early voting is not clear but I could see one candidate winning the early  voting and another winning on election day.  Right now my guess is that a last minute break by voters favors Trump over Clinton in a year that favors the anti-establishment.

What happens after the election?
Stalemate.  See almost no scenario where the next to years produces a real break from the current deadlock we see.  No one party will win sufficiently commanding majorities in Congress plus the presidency to break current impasses and since neither Clinton nor Trump really are running with serious or significant narratives (they are arguing they should be elected because the other person is worse) their mandates will be weak.
But assume Clinton is elected, what then?  Two predictions.  First, Congress will do everything it can (the Republican-controlled House) to shut her agenda down.  Second, the House sometime before the 2018 elections will impeach Clinton in a straight party-line vote.  This will then  give the Republicans the bragging rights to claiming they impeached both Clintons.

As Scranton Goes So Goes the Nation: or Why Nineteen Counties Will Decide the 2016 Presidential Race

Today's blog appeared originally in the Philadelphia Inquirer under the title of   As Scranton Goes So

Goes the Nation: or Why Nineteen Counties Will Decide the 2016 Presidential Race




It’s not simply a handful of swing states that will decide the 2016 presidential election.  The swing voters in the swing counties of the swing states will decide it.  And if my calculations are correct, it is perhaps no more than 19 counties in 11 states–less than 500,000 voters–who truly matter.  That’s why Scranton, Pennsylvania seems to be so important this year.
From 1988 to 2012 the balance of power in US presidential races has centered on ten states.  Republicans were likely to win 23 states totally 191 electoral votes and  the Democrats winning 18 states and the District of Columbia totally 232 electoral votes.  Then there are ten swing states–Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin–totaling 115 electoral votes.  As I described in  my Presidential Swing States: Why Ten Only Matter, these are the states where the presidential candidates campaign and visit after the conventions.  They are the bellwether states, the battleground states, they are those most likely to flip from one party to another, and the margin of election victory in each state is generally close, but with some, such as Florida and Ohio, even more decisive than others in terms of their presidential selection influence.
These are still the crucial swing states in the 2016 election.  Trump’s candidacy, both its strengths in appealing to white working class voters which may open up Pennsylvania  as a swing state, or its weaknesses such as its racial overtures in possibly making Utah and Georgia possible Democrat pickups, might change the electoral map slightly.  But the Electoral College and the way states allocate their electoral votes, along with the rise of political polarization and the declining number of swing voters to perhaps 5% of the electorate,  mean that even this year  in approximately 40 states the presidential race is largely already over.
But while pundits write about the swing states, more fascinating is how within them there are only a handful of counties that are decisive.  They are the swing counties where the candidates actually campaign and where if they can win them they win the state.   Since  1988 there have been a handful of swing counties.  In Colorado it is Jefferson County that is key to winning that state.   For  New Hampshire, it is Hillsborough County, North Carolina it is Wake County, Virginia it is Prince William.  In Florida it is Hillsborough, and in Ohio it is Hamilton County.   Win Hamilton you win Ohio, win Ohio you win the presidency.
In 2012 there were 15 counties in the ten swing states that were critical to Obama’s victory.  There were a total of 3,883,000 votes cast and Obama won 53.2%.  He out-polled Romney by less  than 350,000 votes.  It is not clear whether Romney could have persuaded them to switch and vote for him or whether he needed to mobilize other voters, but the reality is that across those 15 counties in ten states, a switch of 350,000 or so votes would now have Mitt Romney running for his second term.
Assume these are the same swing counties and states in 2016.   Perhaps now the number of swing voters in these states is up to 500,000 with population growths. Now add to that Pennsylvania, a state that has voted solidly for the Democratic presidential candidate since 1988.  Trump needs to flip it to win.  There are four counties in there–Bucks, Chester, Luzerne, and Lackawanna–that  may be key to the state.  Lackawanna County–where Scranton is located–seems to be the center of  Pennsylvania’s political universe this year.  Both Trump and Clinton have made recent visits there, expect more by November.  In 2012 almost 97,000 voted in Lackawanna Country with Obama winning nearly 63%.  Flipping that country seems like a tall order.  Yet these four counties had a total of 790,000 voters in 2012, and Obama won them with less than 52%–about a 26,000 spread.  Conceivably Trump could flip them but given that Obama won the state by more than 300,000 votes in 2012, Pennsylvania is a long shot.
Even with Pennsylvania thrown in, there are only about 19 swing counties in this year’s presidential contest that seem to matter.  The number of swing voters there may be less than 500,000.  The key to the 2016 election is moving these few swing voters in these swing counties in the swing states.  The rest of us should vote, but the reality is that the next president will be selected by these few voters in a few counties.