US Presidential election 2016

SlimChance said:
Scott Walker is endorsing Ted Cruz.
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I think this is increasingly a double edged sword. Cruz has tried to pedal this line that he's some sort of anti establishment pariah and now they're all trying to support him. So far the endorsement from establishment figures has been a kiss of death, albeit Nate Silver will also tell you that historically its been the best predictor (largely because sycophants tend to endorse once they work out who the winner is and try and ingratiate themselves)

This little bit is quite amusing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW2B7Ky-0dk

Not great optics for Cruz as Fiorina dives in to take his questions for him
 
Everything I read yesterday said Kasich was cutting his spend in Wisconsin to save the cash for states where he had a better chance. This would be some upset if he pulled it off.
 
Meanwhile Joe Bilden keeps ticking down in price to be the next president. He is currently 75-80 on Betfair. Are we about to hear news of the FBI investigation or is this speculators?
 
Interesting theory. This is a transcript between a blogger and an insider from a telephone call made today and subsequently blogged concerning the 'CubanMistressCrisis' surrounding Ted Cruz

The facts presented to the best of my limited knowledge at least, appear to be true. They can all be checked out anyway. Ted Cruz's aborted run for AG. Sarah Isgur Flores marriage in 2011. That Flores ended up working for Fiorina, and that a Cruz supporting SuperPAC donated $500,000 to Carly's campaign. The hiring of Jeff Rowe etc

The explanation behind the facts, well? that's what you'll need to decide yourself, but then in fairness the informant makes no attempt to pretend that they're anything other than 'his theory' at this point

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/03/breaking-political-operative-speaks-cuban-mistress-crisis/

Actually...... it's worth reading this transcript and then rewatching that youtube link of how Cruz and Fiorina handled a direct question today that put Cruz on the spot, to a specific question that required a yes/ no answer.

Remember Cruz is a dominionist and I can't lie with God as a witness. What this has taught him however is to be incredibly weasley with the truth. When it's put to him as a direct question, Fiorina dives in and answers (she's not even in the race anymore, nothing to do with her, but she seeks to take the heat for him. She can of course lie). That whole thing looks very pre planned. I mean, who seriously butts in on a senator and candidate for POTUS when someone directs a question at him. Could you imagine Christie doing that to Trump. Note the body language of the two also when the other is speaking

When the journo finally gets a second bite at Cruz he ducks it by saying that the story in the NE is complete trash. Yes it probably is Ted, because it contains other peoples names who aren't involved, one of whom (Katrina Pierson) now works for Donald Trump, and this allows you to link Trump to its placement in an attempt to smear him. This would be consistent with a managed response (aka Jeff Rowe). The other is Amanda Carpenter, a Cruz loyalist and someone who'll take one for the team in the interest of generating smoke

At the end of the exchange, Cruz has avoided answering the specific question, but managed to diss the story as reported by the NE
 
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Betfair asking for 1.43 Cruz in Wisconsin. That's obviously factoring in the latest poll. Tough times for Trump. He needs to clean up his message.
 
The Marquette Poll due out later today has apparently been leaked and is showing Cruz 40, Trump 30, and kasich 21 (TBC)

Basically American polling is absolutely mental!!! Just look at the swings they generate on a daily basis
 
It's funny how the GOP are managing the description. For years its been known as a 'brokered convention', but that sounded a bit sleazy and open to private deals being struck etc (not very democratic). Then they started calling it 'contested', but with Trump calling for riots, it dawned them that perhaps this wasn't a good idea either. The new politically correct phrase is 'open convention' as in the process is transparent, and everyone has the freedom to choose the GOP's preferred candidate

I've been thinking it's a brokered convention for the last month ever since I've failed to make this RCP delegate predictor add up to 1237. I still can't do it. Trumpsters assure me though that a 50%+ win in New York means their man will win the nomination. I honestly don't understand it. I can only assume it has something to do with how congressional districts are allocated

I think you can probably say that Trump will win New York, Conneticuit, West Virginia, New Jersey, and probably Rhode Island
He has the edge in Maryland and Delaware

After that though its open season

Cruz will win Nebraska, Montana, and I'm guessing Oregon too

New Mexico, Washington and California are toss up states

I don't see Trump winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Indiana now

I don't actually understand the confidence behind the Trumpsters to be honest, I can only assume there's some devil in the detail of the delegate count that I'm not understanding and fully legislating for

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features...-republican-nomination-before-the-convention/
 
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A brokered and contested convention are different things. Betfair has two separate markets.

It is also worth pointing out that, contrary to popular belief, brokered and contested conventions are actually two different things; the former actually refers to backroom deals and negotiations involving senior party figures, while the latter entails delegates voting at the convention.
 
It's going to become more important as we close in, and I'm certainly struggling to understand the whole thing. It's simply something I never considered in December, and just felt who ever got the most votes would win, although I now understand that in the previous ten contested/ brokered conventions (the last was 1948 incidentally) the person with the most votes by way of plurality lost on 7 occasions

It's pure theatre, but it looks like going to the wire.

There's this issue of those who are sent unbound to get round yet, you could theoretically have places like the US Virgin Islands deciding outcome! There might be enough unbound delegates capable fo being picked between the final primary and the convention. The conventional wisdom seems to be that Trump would be capable of getting about 30% of these through contacts and deals etc He recently hired a team of GOP influencers to start working them, so despite all his protestions to the contrary that he wins outright, he's not banking on it. The general feeling however is that Cruz is well ahead of him in this field

Just watched the Ch4 programme incidentally. I thought it was a pretty average mash up, but then it's been put together on the hoof to a large extent. I thought Trump quoting his favourite passages from the Bible was hillarious (how much more obvious could it be that he doesn't know anything about it!), as too was the convincing answer he gave to whether he preferred the Old Testament to the New Testament

Oh and ..... 'Duck Hunters for Cruz'

I tell you what, he's even more batshit crazy than Trump
 
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The general consensus now is that's it's 50/50 he gets to 1,237. Could we be in the midst of a market panic on Trump? Paul Ryan and John Kasich have both shortened up considerably (obviously Cruz has too) while Trump is out to 4/7 for the nomination. Nothing has fundamentally changed in the race bar Wisconsin which we were tentatively calling for Cruz last Friday. The market is now factoring in the the contested convention more when your posts outlined all this last week. As we move into a Trump friendly period I'm guessing we see Trump harden up again unless something fundamental has happened that we're not factoring in.
 
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SlimChance said:
Nothing has fundamentally changed in the race bar Wisconsin which we were tentatively calling for Trump last Friday. The market is now factoring in the the contested convention more when your posts outlined all this last week. As we move into a Trump friendly period I'm guessing we see Trump harden up again unless something fundamental has happened that we're not factoring in.
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It's getting harder and harder to work out. Fascinating, but harder

The whole mid west isn't performing like most pundits expected it to. Then neither did the deep south which Trump swept. I think I typed this out the other day but the post got lost along with some others yesterday when i expect Col must have been doing something

The general consensus was that the mid west, and the rust belt in particular would find Trumps protectionist message attractive. Sanders is on a similar message and he's doing well there

In truth, I'm never completely sure just what the mid west is (I think different definitions exist) but so far we've seen Rubio (Minnesota) Kasich (Ohio) Cruz (Iowa) and Trump (Missouri, Michigan & Illinois) win there. I thought things were starting to turn against Trump there, but then the Chicago protest happened just before voting and this seems to have got him over the line in Missouri, and probably fluffed his support in Michigan and Illinois a bit.

I think we can probably say that he's lost Wisconsin now, and isn't sitting that pretty in Pennsylvania either. The one state where no polling exists and is real guesswork now is Indiana. I've read perfectly well reasoned accounts of how all three could expect to win it! We simply know next to nothing about it, other than its the odd one out in upper mid west demographic.

This particular part of America has proven the hottest to handle, and no one really knows how the west coast will play yet

The problem Trump's starting to run into is that its becoming more and more apparent that he's really struggling with the intellectual challenge. I recall about 8 months ago Rush Limbaugh (I think it was) exposed some alarming gaps in his knowledge. Trump basically tried to reassure folk that he's a fast learner and when he's up to speed he'll destory everyone with his superior knowledge and command of the issues. Well put bluntly, he hasn't. Time and time again he's having to walk back policy positions and try and pretend he's never said things and then have another go

The other major issue he has is organisational. He's got the smallest team and it really functions as an obidient court with him as an absolute monarch handing out his proclamations. He simply hasn't got the ground game (hence why he lost so many caucuses). The absence of teams on the ground and a large machine is hurting him in these tighter races. He's seemingly relying on his media appearances to open up leads of 10pts+. If he can achieve these he's tending to hold onto his margins, but if he's only got a lead of about 6pts a week before polling he's getting over turned by better organised campaigns with more staff. I'm not sure he's a lock in Maryland or even Delaware. Having said that I'm told by a few folk in Washington (state not DC) that they expect they'll end going for Trump in a tight race
 
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And sure enough Trump starts trying to walk back his latest gaff

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...b0597b15f4e7f7#block-56fc3db5e4b0597b15f4e7f7

It's just further evidence of the fact that he's really out of his depth on policy. If he were up to speed he'd know this argument inside out. Only 6 weeks ago he was presenting himself as the only conservative that held a planned parenthood position. Now you suspect he's looked at the recent polls, panicked a bit, and decided he needs to say something conservative. The thing is, he's not thinking again. He needs to get over 50% in New York (coming after Wisconsin) and has the likes of Rhode Island, Conneticuit and Maryland coming up soon. He might just about get away with versions of this idea in evangelical states but not there
 
You would think his advisors would start advising him. He would blow this if Cruz was equally unelectable.
 
Clinton liked to suck vagina cigars, Bush went toward on a lie and created Isis, Obama showed the world a fake birth certificate God knows who he really is?? and now you want lying bitch Hilary "Email" Clinton who should have been jailed for gross negligence running the most powerful country in the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOjX-o9axmw

Fear will win the election for Trump, Every time Isis hit the news he and his ideas on how to handle the problem are aired he becomes more popular
 
Warbler said:
The problem Trump's starting to run into is that its becoming more and more apparent that he's really struggling with the intellectual challenge. I recall about 8 months ago Rush Limbaugh (I think it was) exposed some alarming gaps in his knowledge. Trump basically tried to reassure folk that he's a fast learner and when he's up to speed he'll destory everyone with his superior knowledge and command of the issues.
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I'm grateful to a Redditor who from my sketchy memory and description of the exchange identified the radio host as Hugh Hewitt (not Limbaugh) and the conversation took place on Sept 3rd, 2015. If you dare read the transcript it's here (the one where Trump inadvertantly admits he's never heard of al Baghdadi)

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/4/9260463/donald-trump-foreign-policy-hugh-hewitt

Here's the bit I remembered, I'll leave it up to you to decide if Trump is on track with his knowledge target

HH: That's interesting. I just disagree with that. I kind of figured that...
DT: All right, I think it's ridiculous. I'll have, I'm a delegator. I find great people. I find absolutely great people, and I'll find them in our armed services, and I find absolutely great people. And now on the bigger picture, like the fact that our Kurds are being treated so poorly, and would really is the one group that really would be out there fighting for us, I think, and fighting for themselves, maybe more importantly to them, I understand that. But when you start throwing around names of people and where they live and give me their address, I think it's ridiculous, and I think it's totally worthless.
HH: Well, I wouldn't do that. That's crazy. I agree.
DT: Well, and by the way, the names you just mentioned, they probably won't even be there in six months or a year.
HH: I don't know. Nasrallah's got such staying power.
DT: Well, let's see what happens.
HH: And so I think the difference...
DT: And you know what? In that case, first day in office, or before then, right at the day after the election, I'll know more about it than you will ever know. That I can tell you.
HH: Oh, I hope so. Last question, so the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas does not matter to you yet, but it will?
DT: It will when it's appropriate. I will know more about it than you know, and believe me, it won't take me long.
HH: All right, that, I believe.
DT: But right now, right now, I think it's just something that, and you know what, if you ask these candidates, nobody's going to be able to give you an answer. I mean, there may be one that studied it because they're expecting a fresh question from you. But believe me, it won't matter. I will know far more than you know within 24 hours after I get the job.
HH: Donald Trump, congratulations on taking the pledge today. Your numbers are going to go up as a result of that.
DT: Well, let's see what happens. I mean, I'm not sure that that's true. I think my numbers are very high now. But I'm not really sure that that's true, but I know you feel that. I hope you're right. I mean, let's see what happens.
HH: Donald Trump, thank you, always a pleasure.
DT: Thank you very much.
 
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I think voters could somewhat buy the notion of him putting the right team in place but his latest foreign policy release in The New York Times disturbed many. On the flip side his (scripted) speech to Aipac was a barn burner.
 
I've just read a suggestion that he's now hinted at refusing to rule out nuclear wepaons strikes against Europe! (haven't seen it reported anywhere else yet, or what the context was) but it sounds as if he's having a mental breakdown tonight
 
SlimChance said:
I think voters could somewhat buy the notion of him putting the right team in place but his latest foreign policy release in The New York Times disturbed many. On the flip side his (scripted) speech to Aipac was a barn burner.
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Was this blaming the Geneva Conventions ("rules and regulations") for deterring Americans from fighting?
 
Warbler,

This might be something to consider. This was put to me my David Malinsky on Pregane.com when discussing that Trump's price is getting to the value range.

Here is why the calculations become so difficult, if it ends up being a race all the way through California. Most polling models want to look at "likely voters", and just how in the hell do you calculate that when -

How many Californians will turn out remains hard to predict because the state has not seen a fully contested June Republican primary since 1964.

A great little gem from the Los Angeles Times this week, but something else that the shrewd handicapper might be able to find an edge at by staying on top of things.
 
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