The idea that Trump will crush Hillary in a general election is delusional

@Shmiity:

Agreed , a Clinton/Sanders ticket would be unstoppable. ....I said that months ago, very true, no Republican matchup has a chance.

I'm not sure that's accurate, but I don't think Clinton has the guts to pull that trigger anyway. She's more into careful, calculated triangulation of the middle.

@JimB:

I was always a Hillary supporter from the beginning.....

But she has lost a lot of Lustre for me since 2008 when I supported her over Obama, I'm not as enthused about her anymore, it's not about the overblown Benghazi crap either. Still she was always my candidate from the beginning, and I'm sure she'll hold Pa.

I always liked Sanders but his ideas are too radical for Congress at this time, so they won't get passed....maybe someday. Hillary, on the other hand, is in line with Democrats and in the likely event there is a Democrat majority in Congress soon, positive things will happen if she wins.

As for Trump, I like his strong stance on illegal immigration, but I don't agree with deportation of 11 million. A wall would be nice along the border with Mexico, but Mexico isn't going to pay for it. Trump is woefully short in giving details about anything, I don't think he has any. His anti-Muslim stance is extreme, though I do agree we have to keep an eye on people with a shady past, and potential terrorists who pose as refugees.

Trump is terrible. Not presidential. but srsly, is hillary the best the dems can offer? I'd vote for anything other than that steaming piece of shit. Elizabeth Warrne, Joe Biden, Obama for 4 more years. Anyting. Hillarty is just plain terrible and evil. she's a tool of the MIC. She has 0 integrity and is a a embarassment for this nation and this world. Are you fucking daft to vote for her? Even Km Jung Il is a better choice. Even snooky. Even Vanilla Ice. even the homeless guy down the street. If hillary wins, belive the US should be destyoryed.

@br0kenrabbit: I will take that bet.

Cool. Nov 9th...

@sonicare:

Stay off Fox news, it warps the mind.

Seriously though you really trust Trump or Cruz? What is your big beef with Hillary. Don't bother with Benghazi, that's a Republican tool that gullible people buy into. The Republicans had their hearings and she ate them for dinner, all of them. They are desperate.

Probably all the different investigations she has, including the FBI investigation for her email scandal. The fact that one of the things she's trying to work on in her campaign is "trust" speaks volumes of her character.

You surprised coming from Drumpf supporters?

Because THAT makes so much sense. Vote for the guy who bashed your original guy and called him a communist, blaming him for the protests against Drumpf.

They just want somebody who's anti-establishment, no matter who that person is. These are the kind of people I like to call dumbfucks.

@n64dd:

Hillary hasn't lied any more than most anyone who has been president from FDR on....frickin social media magnifies everything. Prior to Bill Clinton it wasn't an issue.

She seems a decent person, no worse than anyone else who has been president, but Republican tools like to blow things out of proportion. Frickin social media.

Which are most of the experts. Early polling data are all but useless. They are rarely predict primary or general election outcome accurately. Both Giluliani and Clinton were ahead in the early polling in the 08 election.

You may be missing a piece of the picture here.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/33-percent-of-bernie-sanders-not-vote-hillary_b_9475626.html

"A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll indicates one third of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ supporters cannot see themselves voting for Hillary Clinton in November. This could spell trouble for Clinton who will likely need Sanders’ backers in order to win the White House."

So yes, some may vote for Trump, some may go for a third party (Green for instance), or they may feel disillusioned by the system and just not vote. We'll have to see if that 33 percent stands true or not, but that could be a troubling issue for Clinton come fall if she is the nominee.

I work as a network engineer/pen tester. If I did what she did at my job, i'd be fired and prosecuted.

They're underestimating the racists in the Republican base and how they're more likely than liberals to go out and vote. Also, I get a feeling that much of the energetic and enthusiasm in the liberal base is going to be disillusioned with Hillary being the front runner in the Democratic ticket, because it's coming at the expense of her making slanderous and unfair attacks against Bernie, as well as the party itself and the media all but doing numerous hatchetjobs on him. Not to mention, the super-delegates handpicked by the party, with Hillary's campaign co-chair at the head, to give her the winning edge. In many ways Bernie supporters have been waging an uphill battle in their own base because the power players are playing dirty. And if that's how Hillary gets the nomination, **** her is what many will be saying. So, it isn't as lock up an election as you think. That lack of enthusiasm which still might get her elected won't elect the necessary House and Senate members either.

I really dislike how her and Obama are handling ISIS, we're still arming the anti-Assad movement which is basically ISIS indirectly because ISIS just seizes control of resources or they're handed over or sold. We don't back up the Kurds who are getting fucked over by Turkey, our ally, but their neutral (or proactively in support of ISIS), letting them travel through their country, selling the oil. And out of all the trouble in Syria, we haven't begun on our side to talk about how Turkey has caused a lot of problems cutting off water access to Syrians creating a lot of devastation to their country and contributing to the unrest and their civil conflict. If anything, we should be putting Turkey under the spotlight and seeing what needs to be done there. They're ethnically murdering Kurds there and nobody bats an eye. Their fucking nuts too. Anyhow... screw attacking Hillary on Benghazi, if they hammered her on how they've handled Syria that's a winning fight any Republican opposition can take on (not that they'd be better), but it's ammo nonetheless.

I know polling is pretty non-predictive very early on, but Trump's lead was so steady (and was steady not just in national polls, but in state polls as well). After a certain point, ignoring Trump's numbers was willful ignorance simply predicated upon not wanting to believe it could be possible that Trump could be the nominee of a major party.

When he first announced, I totally wrote him off, but when his support remained strong, I changed my tune.

I was just talking about Bernie voters that are going for Trump.

I'm not overly concerned that a third of Bernie's voters will not vote for Hillary, though I won't say it's not a problem at all (Clinton has many problems, just not as many as Trump; I think she would have lost to Rubio). I'd be way more concerned if 33% of DEMOCRATS said they wouldn't vote for Clinton.

The point is early polling data is no guarantee of result one way or the other. If we extend that logic to the general election, one simply can't trust the polls at this point to predict for sure a Clinton victory.

I'm not predicting a sure Clinton victory though. And this thread's focus are not the head to head polls, but the underlying demographic data and what not. I'm simply arguing that Trump goes into the election with severe weaknesses that will make it difficult for him to win.

Trump will have a HUGE problem appealing to anybody but his xenophobic base. However, as a politician, Hilary is awful. She flip flops constantly, she has gaffes that a child could avoid, and she says things all the time that make her seem like she has a superiority complex, as if she is the matriarch, and we are the plebians. Who knows, with her lack of political skill, scary.

And that's the same kind of reasoning that drove a lot of political experts to the conclusion about Trump and his chances in the primary. lol feel like we going around in circles.

That is not true at all. Political experts that wrote him off did not do so based on data. They did so based on punditry. Their arguments were things like "doesn't have the temperament to win" or "the party will stop him" or "people won't vote for him because he's Donald Trump. Can you imagine him giving a State of the Union?" or "his voters won't turn out because they're too low info." They did not make data-based argument whereas my argument is based upon looking at his fundamentals. I'm going off of data, not my gut and intuition, which is what the political experts did. Also, his demographic weaknesses absolutely matter more in a general election than a primary election because the Republican base has a tiny amount of minorities. Their importance in a general election is magnified tenfold, thus it is not unreasonable to assume that his weaknesses with minority voters will be more of a factor.

The general election and primaries have vastly different sets of conditions. To ignore that and simply say "He won the primary when nobody expected him to, so he can win a general because nobody expects him to" ignores these different sets of conditions.

To be fair, they could have done that fairly early on but didn't think it was necessary, and they could still do so at the convention.

I will admit that Hillary tone deafness as a politician legitimately concerns me.

That being said, Trump can barely debate and has less policy knowledge that some laypeople. So far, he's used the crowded debates and bravado to counteract this, but I don't see how that tactic will work in a general election debate. If he performs the same way he's performed so far in a general election debate, the contrast will be painful. For all Hillary's problems, she's an excellent debater that seems very Presidential when she talks about policy and issues.

True, but the pundits that wrote Trump off assumed that the GOP would stop him immediately (which turned out to be faulty assumption). After all, if they had attacked him early, this race would have played out somewhat differently. The media likes to argue that Trump doesn't take damage from political attacks, but that's sensationalism. No candidate is teflon. The fact that Trump consistently does poorly with late deciders is fairly strong evidence that the attacks have been working, but that they were badly timed. The GOP, by not attacking Trump early, allowed his support to harden. Even if he has a lowish ceiling (and the jury is still out on that one), the GOP ensured that he has a high floor.

Oh, I agree. I think that faulty assumption is fascinating, and I'm just pointing it out. Is it not amazing that the pundits assumed that the other candidates would attack him (ensuring him a swift exit) and the candidates, meanwhile, assumed that they didn't have to attack him because he'd collapse on his own (and they didn't want to sully their hands by being the one to attack his supporters)? Maybe it's just me, but it seems like that's a key to how this entire thing unfolded. It seems like if either the other candidates had attacked or the media still held some sway in the Republican base it never would have gotten this far.

I think it's a fascinating part of how he has gotten this far.

Let's think about how the races changes when it goes to the general.

• Trump no longer benefits from a crowded field. While Trump's ability to turn out his supporters and widely appeal to Republicans is impressive, there is absolutely no doubt that a huge key to Trump's success has been taking advantage of the divided field in order to win through pluralities of the vote. Trump has only managed to break 50% in a single state. That cannot be ignored.
• It becomes much harder for succeed in transcending his weakness as a candidate when he doesn't have a 35% floor of true believers that will give him plurality wins no matter what nonsense or filth comes out of his mouth.
• Trump faces an entirely different electorate in the general. His demographic performance in the primary has been fairly strong in that he appeals to many different types of Republican voter, but he has not had to contend with his historically unprecedented weaknesses among minority voters. To argue that he can win in the general because he won in the primary is a fallacy simply because the electorate is so much different. In order to convincingly argue that Trump will be strong in the general, you have to essentially argue that Trump will a) do much better with minorities than polling suggests or b) win white men by 70%. Neither of these are impossible, but is there any evidence to indicate that a) and b) will happen?
• The Democrats will not need to restrain themselves in launching a blistering assault against him.
• It's not entirely certain that Trump will be able to succeed in the general without a strong ground game (which he currently does not have). Trump has not needed a ground game in the primary because of a divided field and because of his high floor. His high floor will not give him victories in the general. He will need to appeal to a much more diverse and potentially much less receptive population of voters. Even if these voters give him some consideration, can he turn them out without a robust political apparatus?
• This is more of a punditry argument, but I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say that Trump simply can't perform so poorly in debates when it's one on one with Hillary. It would look awful.

On a related note, the idea that polls related to the general election are meaningless is only accurate in the sense that conditions can change or the underlying fundamentals of the election don't become apparent until the general election is underway. This is why some early polls showing that Cater would beat Reagan were so non-predictive. But to think that this is true for Trump, you'd have to argue that the general election conditions favor him. But what data supports such an assertion?

Right because none of the political experts in any of the GOP candidates camp are capable of "going off of data" instead of their gut and intuition since no one took him as a serious contender until it was too late. And even you admitted that you dismissed his chances initially.

Are you deliberately trying to misunderstand my points?

I didn't say that they are not capable of going off of data. They are. However, even if they are capable, their arguments were not data-based. If you can provide an example of a pundit making a data-based argument that Trump cannot win the Republican nomination, I will reconsider my argument.

That I dismissed his chances initially proves my point. I didn't take him seriously because my political intuition and gut feeling said he was too unserious to win. But once the data went against my political intuition and gut feelings, I began to take him seriously.

I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm making a very simple point and I'm not sure why you're not getting it. Also, I feel like you're completely ignoring pertinent parts of my argument.

Yes, it is definitely fascinating. And honestly, I think the GOP and their candidates thought he would simply implode because they vastly underestimated how much of a tolerance (and even admiration in some cases) that their base has for his troubling rhetoric. However, it seems they should have been able to see it because they spent the last eight years trying to anger their base through the same kind of rhetoric (only in their case, this rhetoric was more coded).

By data do you mean the early polling data? Because I thought we went over that...

@bmanva

Another point I want to make is that it's hard to make the case that polls don't mean shit when the clearest indication that Trump was going to perform well in spite of conventional wisdom was the polling. The polls indicated for months that he would win. His dominance in the polls was remarkably steady. To act like polls all of a sudden become meaningless in general election match ups pretty much requires one to argue, "Yes, the polls predicted Trump winning months before the primaries, but when show him losing months before the general election, they're wrong." That polls picked up on the Trump phenomenon when pundits couldn't shows that they do have predictive power, even months out.

Polling data showed Trump winning nationally and state-wide several months before the primaries. He started dominating polls almost immediately after he announced. If early polling accurately predicted Trump's rise, on what basis are you so confident in dismissing their predictive power several months out from an election?

But when I asked for an argument from a pundit that used data to predict he wouldn't win the nomination, I was expecting a link or source. As far as I know, the pundits who were predicting Trump's demise were arguing AGAINST the polls and claiming they would be wrong. What I don't think you realize is that your arguments have more in common with the pundits who argued against Trump's polling and my arguments have more in common with the people who had faith in the poling.

That's looking back with 20/20 vision. But of course the evidences all pointed to lack of WMD in Iraq and so on.

The fact that in the past elections none of the early polling data are reliable indicators as to who the victors would be. Again we been through this... We are going no where, if you want to believe Trump has no chance of winning the general, that's cool. I'm just not as optimistic.

This is not even remotely true. In some elections, the early polling was indeed accurate. Remember 2012? Polls had Obama leading the entire time and he easily won the election. In terms of primaries, George W. Bush was the early polling favorite in the 2000 Republican primary and easily won the nomination. Yes, sometimes early polls are off, but this is simply because the dynamics of the race change. Once the dynamics of the race change, the polls change as well with the exception of cases in which polls systematically fail (which is fairly rare, but it does happen; see Michigan).

I never once argued that Trump has no chance, so please stop resorting to strawmen. I simply argued that his fundamentals are weak and if these demographic patterns hold, it will be extremely difficult for him to win. I would never argue that the Republican nominee has "no chance" no matter how weak the candidate is. Simply getting through the primaries bumps up one's chances of winning substantially from "none."

It's fine to not be optimistic. Too much optimism can lead to disastrous complacency. But you're making arguments that don't a) logically hold together and b) are simply not true.

The only reason we are going nowhere is because you're stubbornly sticking to faulty premises e.g: polls don't mean anything. That's simply not true.

There are plenty of examples to be found below:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-front-runner-fallacy/413173/

http://commonwealthmagazine.org/politics/presidential-polling-largely-useless-now/

Even if I am looking back with 20/20 vision, that doesn't change the fact that the polling was accurate (and has been accurate in the past) and that candidates with abysmal numbers with minorities tend to struggle in general elections.

I think your argument would be stronger if you used data instead of tenuous analogies with WMDs and Iraq.

It don't see why you're waging war with data when it was anti-data arguments that blinded everyone to Trump's rise.

You can argue that the polls can be wrong because things can change. That is a valid argument. But in order to make this argument work on a non-theoretical, you have to argue that the demographic data will change or be wrong. What reason do we have to believe this? Yes, it can happen, but it is likely? If so, why?

You are cherry picking the data to affirm a foregone conclusion. I'm not "waging war [against] data" but the accuracy of the data is in question here. You can't point to the half of the data that turned out to be right and ignore the other half that are wrong.

I'm wondering if you're actually reading your own links because these articles are offering exactly the type of analyses that so badly interpreted the data when it came to Trump. Yes, early polling can turn out to be wrong. This is partly because certain candidates fundamentals were weaker than national polls suggest. But that doesn't mean those polls were meaningless. They accurately picked up on those candidates' surges, but the problem was that the candidates didn't manage to sustain their leads. You can argue that circumstances change and so do polls. But to argue that those polls are without meaning is a fallacy. Also, your own articles contradicts your assertion that "none of the early polling are reliable indicators of who the victor will be" because they specifically point out instances in which the polls were correct. Finally, even if you put aside head to head polling between Trump and Clinton, the demographic polls still exist. On what basis can you dismiss the fact that Trump has historically bad numbers with Hispanics and women, especially when that data lines up with the fact that Trump has said extremely inflammatory things about both demographics?

There is no reason to assume that the polls that turned out to not accurately predict the victors were "wrong." There's a difference between the data being faulty (an example of this was the Democrats Michigan primary epic polling fail this year) and those candidates that held leads not managing to sustain them. For instance, in the 2012 election, Rick Perry was leading the polls at a certain point. The polls were picking up on a legitimate interest in Perry at that point in time. The problem was that Perry's flamed out once he committed a fatal debate gaffe that raised questions about his intelligence.

Again, Trump can possibly beat Hillary despite the polling, but that doesn't mean that polling showing him trailing her is meaningless. It actually is a very good way to gauge his weakness and strengths in a general election. The reason that Republicans are freaking the **** out right now is because they know the polling data is not meaningless.

All this arguing over polls and such is hilarious because polls are based on a normal election. This is NOT a normal election.

Hillary Clinton will win this election and put this whole thing to rest. If she's smart she will have Sanders (or at least ask him) as her running mate, thus blocking Sanders voters from voting for Trump.

If by some extraordinary feat Trump were to eek out a victory, he will get assassinated (or attempted) during his term. I'm predicting Chris Christie will be his running mate, and finish Trumps term as president. But I'd give a 5% chance Trump beats Hillary. She will own the northeast (including Ohio and Illinois), southeast, and west coast.

This is the kind of weaksauce argument that people who nothing about politics make.

This may be an unconventional election, but that doesn't mean that it is completely immune from political gravity. Some things about this election have been abnormal but others have not.

Also, how do you account for the Democratic race being fairly conventional? Why do you think the general election has to follow the weirdness of the Republican race? It's possible that the weirdness that you see in the Republican race is a result of an inter-party realignment rather than an indicator of a shift in the overall electorate that favors Trump. You're simply assuming that the general election will look like the Republican race because you want to Trump to win. If you're so confident that Trump will win because this election is not normal, why don't you provide a substantiated argument as to why Trump's demographic issues will shift so radically once the general election is underway?

Also, in 1964, the Republicans nominated an unconventional candidate that the establishment hated and which resulted in a conventional floor fight (if not an actual brokered convention). I am referring to Barry Goldwater, who the establishment saw as being unelectable. They were right. Goldwater lost in a landslide.

The idea that this election cannot at all be explained through conventional political wisdom is a myth.

I didn't even read your reply. Polls have been vastly wrong this election. Have nothing more to say. You arguing elegantly doesn't change the reality of things.

lol. If you didn't read my reply, how do you know I'm arguing elegantly?

Also, polls have not been vastly wrong at all. They've been largely accurate. If you had been paying attention to my posts, you'd know that it was polling that accurately predicted Trump's dominance in the election. How does it make sense to say that polls have been vastly wrong when it was polls that picked up on the weirdness of this election? You're undermining your own argument in the most hilarious way possible. It's like you're purposefully tripping yourself.

I know you have nothing more to say, but not because reality is on your side. You have nothing more to say because you are too ignorant on this subject to debate me. Just like your hero Trump dodged a debate with Cruz because he doesn't know what he's talking about, you're dodging a debate with me because you don't know what you're talking about. The supporters don't fall far from the tree I guess.

The wall just got 10 feet higher.

Are you talking about the wall between your brain and facts?

Personal insults are the first sign in losing a debate.