US Presidential election 2016

EC1 said:
don't check with him if its anything to do with winning friends or influencing people though..he's not too hot in that area..how he does business with anyone is a real mystery..must be an act on here:)
Click to expand...

You aim to get business off people with resources, assets, intelligence and prospects

That is not going to found amongst a bunch of smelly billynomates
 
Anyone looking into this thread would probably be interested in the Obama 4 part documentary on the BBC. I believe the third episode is next Tuesday but the first two episodes are available on the I player.
 
I'm trying to have a small speculative punt on Rudi Giuliani at decent odds in the Republican Vice Presidential market, but no-one except PaddyPower are offering any odds .................. and Paddy's price on him is ridiculously low.
Neither Betfair nor Ladbrokes have him listed ................ and they have the likes of Clint Eastwood priced up, ffs.

Anyone know if he is priced up anywhere besides with Paddy?
 
No idea

I do know that every time I play around with the RCP delegate predictor I seem to hit 1175ish for Trump which isn't enough, albeit its also something of a nightmare result for the GOP as it puts Trump close enough for him to demand the nomination and forces the GOP into denying the base their choice

A couple of weeks ago I thought I detected he was wobbling a bit after the Detroit debate, but then he got a bounce off the back of the Chicago protests. This allowed him to take Missouri where I think he might otherwise have lost (well I'm sure he would because it was that close). Despite taking Michigan and Illinois too, he didn't do so convincingly given how well the demographic should have helped him. I think there is a clue there that he isn't doing anywhere like as well in the rust belt as people imagined

Since then we've seen some new polling that confirms this

Everyone keeps telling me that Wisconsin is a perfect fit for him, and that its essentially a northern red neck state without the racism. Well he lost some of the western districts of Michigan that border it, and he also lost neighbouring Minnesota. In fact Trump has a bit of a Canadian border issue which no one seems to have latched onto. I think Wisconsin is definitely in play to a Cruz/ Kasich tag team, and it could become the latest #nottrump stand given its WTA. The most recent poll has him 1pt behind Cruz, with Kasich still taking out 19% that could migrate. Trump seems to have a problem on Lake Superior and Michigan

Pennsylvania is another where he's struggled to get going, here he has a 3pts over Kasich. Polling has shown that Cruz supporters tend to divide 50/50 between Trump and Kasich, but the tactical voter could easily swing this for Kasich, and going forward there'd be no reason to think that Indiana might not go a similar way.

His vote in New York by contrast is holding up remarkably well and looks bomb proof at the moment. There's be no good reason to think that New Jersey, and Conneticuit won't similar fall for him on smaller majorities. He looks solid in West Virginia and should carry the state with a similar mragin to New York. Delaware and Maryland should also go for Trump in tighter races, the latter particularly

Trump is also getting traction in the west. He's carried Nevada and now Arizona which argurs well for California. The latest poll has him 11pts ahead there which is the sort of margin he's proven able to defend. Oregon and Washington I don't really know much about. I'm starting to think he can win New Mexico too (how many Mexicans living there are registered Republicans?) my guess is there's more white worried voters

The plains states of Montana, Nebraska and the Dakota's look locked up for Cruz though

In short Wisconsin looks vital as that's WTA. If Arizona was snookers equivalent to a 'shot to nothing' to stop him, Wisconsin on the 5th looks like a good pottable chance

Trump still looks good for a plurality but you have to suspect that the RNC is then going to deny him at a brokered convention, but with whom?

I honestly don't think Trump should be odds on. Every time I've run this delegate allocation tool I've never once managed to get Trump past 1237
 
icebreaker said:
and Paddy's price on him is ridiculously low.
Click to expand...

Right just picking up on a sweep through the news overnight from this soap opera and it would appear that Trump might have played the Cruz has had five extra marital affairs card (as you do).

The early breaking news has seen it sweep through the socialmediasphere which of course is where you'd expect to see it first, and the reaction has been typically OTT. It seemingly has its origins with the National Enquirer. OK, everybody laughs at the NE, but then they've hit the bullseye before with Gary Hart, Tiger Woods, and John Edwards (in fact it appears to be the same journo he broke the Edwards revelation)

It also appears that one of the women who Cruz has been sharing his christian values with was a former staffer hired by Trump in November. Carly Fiorina hired one of the others, and Cruz did make that mysterious $500,000 donation to her SuperPAC or similar type of arrangement (details from memory so I might be slightly off the mark)

There's a few journalists taking to Twitter saying that the story is true, but its difficult to sift the attention seekers from the heavy hitters. It's easy to get swept along with something like this, as it is a crazy rollercoaster, so its probably a case of watch this space. It's difficult to think Cruz could recover if its true, and once again there'll be a lot of party establishment figures humiliated for their endorsement of him

Clearly I've got no way of knowing if this has legs or not, so its just a question of strap yourself in I guess
 
Last edited:
SlimChance said:
Anyone looking into this thread would probably be interested in the Obama 4 part documentary on the BBC. I believe the third episode is next Tuesday but the first two episodes are available on the I player.
Click to expand...
Also, Ch4 is showing "Donald Trump: Can He Be President" next Wednesday at 9:00 pm.
 
Whereas I'm struggling to believe that Ted Cruz can be particularly concerned about anything posted on a UK racing forum (he's got much bigger things to worry about right now) it would appear that this story probably has got legs, even if the mainstream media are doing their level best to sweep it under the carpet.

Trump isn't mentioning anything right now and is seemingly happy to sit back and let third parties do his bidding for him (all he has to do is retweet something just once, and that will be enough). Just about all the Reddit threads are being deleted as fast as they're being created, apart from the Trump supporting subs who are adopting a sue us if you dare approach. Twitter continues to mock, and one of the women identified has 'liked' tweets containing the hashtag #cruzsexscandal. This is the person who now works for Trump and is well known talking head on the networks

A jounro attached to the Washington Times has confirmed the identity of two of the women, albeit he's stopped short of attaching the paper's name to the confirmation

There are reports of unnamed Texas Republican apparatchiks also confirming that the story is true (but aren't there always in these types of things?)

The $500,000 cash transfer from the Cruz SuperPAC to the Fiorina campaign is known to have happened. This has been investigated already. The speculation now is that they are some how linked. One of the women identified as being one of Ted's conquests, was one of Carly's campaign managers.

It would appear that the Rubio team had the evidence which was cryptically referred to as #thething throughout mid March. You can see a Twitter trail amongst journos and staffers accordingly with each asking each other to publish #thething ahead of super Tuesday2. Having said that, #thething could be anything, but the context of the conversations do lend themselves to believing it was something of a disclosoure of some sort. Rubio is the one high profile candidate who people felt should have endorsed Cruz, who hasn't done. Any reason why?

One network allegedly came close to publishing but had the story spiked on the editorial floor by the Cruz supporting ownership. Did they? Well frankly I don't know

Three of the five women have now been named. One of them is a Cruz spokesperson and prolific tweeter who has gone MIA for 24 hours now

The final two are believed to be private citizens and as such have a higher level of protection

The only thing I suspect we can say with any level of confidence is that if Donald Trump is involved, it won't go away. This is man who ran with the whole 'birther' conspiracy. At the moment he stands to be the biggest beneficiary, so even if things do look like they might start to blow out if the mainstream media presents a wall of silence, I'm sure the Donald will find a method to bring this back into the public domain
 
Last edited:
Three of the women have been named, (albeit not officially) and there are oblique references to suggest a fourth might be a politico

So far Cruz has gone dead quiet. His silence is deafening. So too has his arch tweeter who is one of the named women.

The most convincing defence I've seen so far comes from the idea that five attractive women couldn't possibly want to sleep with someone like Cruz

Looks like the Sun have broken ranks a bit though

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepag...0160325-_-Politics-_-408280422-_-Imageandlink

I like the way someone cleverly unpicked the pixalated photo of the ex staffer who now works for CNN to identify her. Theres no hiding place these days!!!

What I do find really interesting (by way of theatre) is the way the whole world is now waiting on the Donald. He really does have them eating out of his palm. Yesterday Cruz was calling him a "snivelling coward" and trying to do the stand by my woman routine, acting the big hard man. Today Cruz is nowhere to be seen. Trump by contrast is just sitting there waiting and reminding folks that he's just won a libel battle in the last 24 hours as well as tweeting this

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 18h18 hours ago
I didn't start the fight with Lyin'Ted Cruz over the GQ cover pic of Melania, he did. He knew the PAC was putting it out - hence, Lyin' Ted!
 
Cruz has finally responded on Twitter as the hashtag #cruzsexscandal heads towards 450k uses

I want to be crystal clear: these attacks are garbage: Donald Trump’s consistently disgraceful behavior is beneath the office we are seeking and we are not going to follow

Smoke, smoke and more smoke. Where's the truth? Who knows? The story has legs of sorts, but it's only skirted the mainstream with just the one call out on CNN. The mainstream networks have been too scared you suspect to run it, which normally means they either haven't got proof to the required burden of evidence, or that they're under editorial instruction. I haven't seen anything that I what call substantive yet, just a lot of heresay and rumour, but then again the experience of Gary Hart, Tiger Woods, and John Edwards all took over a week to roll out, as did Bill Cosby and Al Gores divorce. The NE is undoubtedly a national joke, but they have had a few results in the past when they've been prepared to go where no one else dare.

We just don't know. This is pure guesswork now

If I were speculating a bit on a conspiracy theory, it could be that its all spinning around the Wisconsin primary on April 5th. Recent polling there has been very flakey for Trump (against a lot of expectation). There is another poll this morning that has him 5pts behind Cruz. Now this was conducted pre Brussels and pre CubanMistressCrisis, but if he can keep this sort of thing in the news feed for another 10 days (even if it remains unproven) it could swing this crucial state back towards Trump
 
Last edited:
This is an actual Ted Cruz quote from a press conference today:
"Let me be clear: Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him."

If there's anyone in the Trump camp incidentally, then I think there's a rick in the VP book (literally). My suspicion is that Trump will be directed by who will deliver him key states. His most important swing state is Florida. Although he might back himself to take it, and ask John Kasich to deliver Ohio, this does depend on Kasich agreeing. He might equally try to persuade Kasich to take the finance job which he is argubaly better suited for anyway

So at 25/1, Florida Governor, Rick Scott is an obvious choice. Scott is also a Trump endorser (eventually). He should be much shorter if you believe Trump is the nominee. Hell, he even introduced some temporary freeze on immigration into Florida I think?
 
Last edited:
So the Cruz sex scandal starts to receed with neither side really having distingushed themselves but no damage done. It trended for about 24 hours and was up to about 750,000 tweets last I looked. What it did do is knock Cruz's 'stand by my wife' narrative, which was playing out quite well, out of the news cycle. Cruz accussed Trump of being behind it, and it isn't difficult to imagine that a lot of Americans will believe this. As it transpires a few news outlets have subsequently crept forward to say they were offered the same story and evidence (Cruz leaving restaurants with female other than his wife) and that it was Rubio supporters who were supplying the information and trying to elicit the publication. It looks as if it does resolve to the this hashtag #thething that Rubio supporters tried to get going between Super Tuesday and the Florida primary

So with this seemingly put to bed, I thought I'd attempt a prediction at the GOP primary using the RCP delegate tool and have come to the following

Trump = 1104 to 1155
Cruz = 740 to 736 (don't ask I don't know how I generated a spread this tight?)
Kasich = 327 to 280

121 delegates are unallocated according to Colorado, North Dakota, Wyoming, The US Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa

I suspect my high end prediction has over estimated support for Kasich, as the likelihood is that he'll tank, especially on the west coast, as the process goes into May and it becomes a de facto two horse race. I also gave Kasich both Pennsylvania and Indiana on his high end.

The likelihood is that my high end Cruz prediction should have about 50 more delegates as a result of this decline in Kasich support

I don't know enough about the unallocated delegates and how they work, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that they'll be controlled by the party and that a massive proportion of them, if not all, will be used to support Cruz, and that his final count will be nearer to 860
 
Last edited:
Warbler said:
This is an actual Ted Cruz quote from a press conference today:
"Let me be clear: Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him."

If there's anyone in the Trump camp incidentally, then I think there's a rick in the VP book (literally). My suspicion is that Trump will be directed by who will deliver him key states. His most important swing state is Florida. Although he might back himself to take it, and ask John Kasich to deliver Ohio, this does depend on Kasich agreeing. He might equally try to persuade Kasich to take the finance job which he is argubaly better suited for anyway

So at 25/1, Florida Governor, Rick Scott is an obvious choice. Scott is also a Trump endorser (eventually). He should be much shorter if you believe Trump is the nominee. Hell, he even introduced some temporary freeze on immigration into Florida I think?
Click to expand...

Someone continues to love Ben Carson on Betfair in this market.
 
I think Carson has let it be known that he's kind of done a deal that gives him a job in a Trump administration, but I've never seen anything to suggest its a significant one. The rumour mill seems to indicate that it involves education (which is scary) given that Carson has been advising some extreme religious groups on reading materials that basically teach creationism as fact

Trump needs two things from his VP

1: Someone who brings a swing state
2: Someone who can navigate the corridors, knows their way around the DC set up, and can secure the passage of a programme

Scott (Florida) and Kasich (Ohio) do both, albeit they're both governors rather than senators. Carson does neither. His nomination is completely counter intuitive, and Trump despite some of the things he says, isn't completely stupid.

Trump's big weakness is with female voters, but I don't see any obvious candidates there. Sarah Palin is a standing joke and basically 'a loser'. Trump doesn't like losers. Nikki Haley has endorsed Rubio, then switched into Cruz, and has aspirations of her own. She wouldn't join a Trump ticket any more than he'd offer it
 
The Mitt Romney documentary on Netflix is quite an eye opener to the strains of running for president.
 
I think he's got an eye on the job, but backed off when Jeb emerged. Whether he can salvage something from a brokered convention remains to be seen. It's no timpossible, but its unlikely

His most recent rhetoric sounds like someone who is eyeing up Secretary of State to me
 
Warbler said:
Definitely worth having a rattle at Kasich at 16/1 with Betfred to win Wisconsin
Click to expand...

10/1 now, which i still think has some value to it

Trump has won 10 of the 11 open primaries (the only one he's lost I think was Texas, Cruz's homestate)
Cruz hasn't won a primary east of the Mississippi (his only success was a strange closed caucus in Maine)

A stats backer would be heavily laying Cruz for Wisconsin, and backing Trump. Yet something strange is happening in the rust belt area (which Wisconsin is kind of on the fringes of). The accepted orthodoxy was that Trump's messaging would appeal in the upper mid west with his emphasis on job protection. It hasn't really happened though. He might have won Michigan and Illinois but he possibly did so on the strength of the Chicago protests. He only polled in the high 30's when realistically he should have been in the mid 40's. I've just got a hunch he isn't going down as well here as people realise and that the commentating class haven't really picked up on it yet

There was a poll out last week that had Trump trailing Cruz by 1pt and Kasich on 19%, which saw him given a quote of 25/1. It seemed like value then, but you needed to see some evidence that he could breakout from here and get some momentum going. I'm struggling to believe that there can really be any great love for Cruz in Wisconsin, and Trump's never ever really got the sort of traction there that you feel he needs. Indeed, this poll had him 35% which is highest mark recorded

It's difficult to know if the state trends Michigan to the east, or Minnesota to the west.

Anyway, a poll came out last night that had Trump on 29, Kasich 27, and Cruz 25, on a sample of 6,182 respondents (the one which BetFred presumably responded to this morning)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwpQSOvk_aoAMDQ1TmJUeW13OTQ/view

The 18% undecideds however are showing a preference for Kasich, Trump then Cruz

There has been a pattern throughout the cycle for Trump to make early gains and then lose the late deciders and day of the vote, voters. A 2% gap is bridgeable for Kasich under these circumstances, and one can only suspect that those who've been supporting Cruz grudgingly as a stop Trump candidate will waste no time switching into a candidate is perhaps better aligns. Kasich has also taken a lead in Pennsylvania which might help stoke things a bit further, and potentially puts Indiana in play later
 
Back
Top