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Comment by vinhboy | Hacker News Reader

Politics aside. What does it say about his judgement to continue investing in something that is statistically on track to fail. Not only that, but its also a toxic brand to attach yourself to.

Or do we just put this in the "expensive new hobby" section and leave it at that.

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Update: I want to hijack my own comment to ponder something.

As someone with no money and no influence, I find it hard to think about how to use money to buy influence as part of a grand plan, like many of the comments here are suggesting.

As a layman, I think in simple terms like discrimination, racism, sexism, etc... and my belief in fighting against all those things.

Am I short-sighted? Is there some greater human social structure that I am not aware of that can only be achieved by making such calculated investments? Despite all the immediately negative rhetoric.

View on HN

Pretty much all of Thiel's investing thesis is to invest in things that are statistically on track to fail, but whose payoff if they succeed is greater than most people imagine. PayPal, Facebook - both of these were terrible ideas when they came out (along with a number of other ones that did, in fact, fail). His idea is that people consistently mis-price risk, and so investing in a portfolio where everyone else thinks it's a terrible idea but you have reason to believe it's a better idea than others suspect will give outsize returns. (Note: it doesn't actually have to be a good idea, it just has to be better than everyone else thinks it is.)

Supporting Trump fits perfectly into this: if he loses, he gets egg on his face (which most people will forget fairly soon) and may lose out on a little startup dealflow, but if he wins, he becomes the sole connection between the Presidential Administration and Silicon Valley. That's worth a lot more than $12.5M.

> That's worth a lot more than $12.5M.

Agreed. (Though FWIW $1.25M is the amount he invested)

I'm assuming 1/10 probability of Trump winning. Most poll aggregators are going 1/6; I actually suspect we'll see a bigger Clinton blowout than expected, but that's just MHO.

From the numbers so far coming out from early voting you should add +2 to the poll margin. The Clinton ground game is looking like being more formidable than the famed Obama one. And with RNC bailing on Trump and moving money to down ballot races expect to see there being a massive discrepancy in late minute advertising and GOTV operations.

The Princeton Election Consortium currently has Clinton's win probability as: random drift 95%, Bayesian 98%. [1]

[1] http://election.princeton.edu/

As an additional data point, 538 has Clinton at 85%: http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

That is one plausible interpretation but there are several layers to this. It is not a coincidence that RenTech and Thiel are supporting Trump.

I hesitate to be explicit about what I think is actually going on but if you've read my posts on the Stagnation Hypothesis or watched Peter Thiel's videos on Youtube (low view counts, so I know you're not watching them!) you'll know there is a rather disturbing big picture which most people are oblivious to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMpmfaE9bII

I am not sure what you are saying, and I really don't want to watch that video. Can you be explicit? I want to know what you are thinking.

No, I can't, sorry.

It's not something that can be both summarized and understood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMpmfaE9bII

Look this isn't really a temporary interest for me, I'm something of a 'Thiel-logist'. You know how there exist Kremlinlogists? Same thing as that. I watch every video and read every book he writes or reads. This is not some celebrity fetish, but to do with the rich vein of ideas.

This is because I am convinced something very very important is going on and I want to understand more. I think I understand about half of it and I had a holy fuck mind blown moment a few years ago. Remember how Thiel took out Gawker nearly a decade later. This is as nothing in comparison, this is the grand-daddy of all long games.

I am glad I am not the only watching those random Thiel conferences on Youtube. :-)

> It's not something that can be both summarized and understood.

Ah, so it's not real then.

Are you referring to his thesis that globalization without significant technological advance will lead to a Malthusian catastrophe?

I have considered this in wondering why he would support Trump.

Not interested in watching the video, but where are your posts?

> that RenTech and Thiel are supporting Trump.

RenTec is not supporting Trump.

Mercer is.

Simons, for what it's worth, is supporting Clinton. As, I'm almost sure, does the majority of employees. Mercer is the outlier.

You need to factor in the probability that Trump doesn't feel any obligation.

Actually if he loses, he becomes the first investor in a ultra conservative right-wing media empire, Trump Media, which appears to already have quite a large following.

I wonder if launching this media outlet is the real purpose of the campaign. It's at least more plausible than the Trump is throwing the election for Hillary conspiracy theory.

He might very well have set up a "heads I win, tails I win more" gambit. If he wins the election, he's president. If he loses, he has 30 million or so passionate customers for his next business venture.

This is definitely the case...but he doesnt even need the new audience or the new venture. His entire empire is built on a name that is getting billions in free press.

The worst thing to happen to a famous brand is not bad press but rather becoming irrelevant and falling out of discussion.

Even if the Trump political brand crashes and burns, the broader trump brand of success and money just gets stronger...

This election was the ultimate win win for Trump.

This is why he can take all the risks he is taking, he has nothing to lose...which is the ultimate trump card!

Edit: spelling correction

I don't buy this. What was the cost--in brand, but also in actual revenue--to losing his role in The Apprentice, losing the Macy's sales, the Miss Universe thing, etc? I expect the backlash has had real consequences.

No doubt starting a cable network is a good fallback position, but I don't buy the idea that this is all according to plan.

More likely, some in his campaign know he's going to lose and are looking for an out, while others (maybe including the candidate) still think he may win.

I don't think you can make judgement calls from short term things like the examples you gave.

His brand recognition is way up throughout the world and my experience tells me that the negative view will not translate into his business brands once his political brand is not front and center.

His businesses are declining in foot traffic https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/how-the-trump-president...

Short term changes have little to do with long term brand recognition and value.

I've studied branding extensively and I think, if he loses, his presidential run will still be a net win for him and his brand once the political fallout falls out of the news cycle.

edit: changes nothing to little

This is spot on. He's building an audience with the presidential bid. After he loses, he'll cry fowl, start an alt-right online news network, and spend the next 4 years complaining of a stolen election. He's enough of a draw to pull talent from The Blaze (Tomi Lahren), Breitbart, Fox News, etc. $1.25M seems like a small gamble for what could be a pretty big payoff.

This is exactly what is happening.

You have the personalities in Trump and Giuliani etc. You have the news content courtesy of Brietbart. You have lifestyle content courtesy of his real estate assets e.g. golf/travel shows etc. And he already owns a TV production company that made the Apprentice.

And don't forget that Lachlan Murdoch is now firmly in charge of Fox News and has always talked about it being less alt-right and more centre-right. This will leave a massive opening for Trump in the alt-right space. The real question is whether Fox will allow it on their global cable platforms.

You also have Roger Ailes advising Trump, if he helps him to get anywhere near Fox News size of audience, they're both big winners.

Ultra-conservative? Not by a long shot. I was a Ted Cruz backer and Trump to me is as bad as Clinton.

Trump isn't conservative. He's a big government populist. Completely different despite him having an 'R' next to his name.

He is about as close to Cruz as Sanders was to Clinton (in terms of policy philosophy.)

By the way, I understand downvotes because I mentioned Cruz in a positive way, however let's keep in mind that we can disagree with economic philosophy and role of government and still be friends!

I want a flat tax and a repeal of FATCA and Cruz was the only candidate that supported that. If some Democrat comes along with that proposal, they'd get my vote too.

FATCA and it's unintended consequences have caused serious harm to many Americans overseas, so that was my primary issue this election.

The only reason I support the RNC this election is because they have FATCA repeal in the platform while the Democrat side both enacted FATCA as wel as expressed support for continuing it.

Here's an article that delves deeper into FATCA if anyone is interested: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21605911...

As a foreigner, FATCA seems to be a logical reaction to the US system of taxing citizens instead of residents.

If a candidate had proposed to switch to only taxing US residents, plus apply some international pressure to close down tax havens, then I could see the point of repealing FATCA.

> Ultra-conservative? Not by a long shot. I was a Ted Cruz backer and Trump to me is as bad as Clinton.

As bad as Trump is, at least he is not a theocrat.

1.25M, not 12.5M.

I don't think he's investing in the hopes that Trump will pull of a long shot. I think he has a different goal in mind. He said in his speech at the RNC that the country is broken and that Trump is the only one who can fix it. I have no doubt that he believes the first part - he's said as much for a long time - but I do doubt that he really thinks Trump is the man to fix anything. Thiel may be nutty according to some, but he's not an idiot and the only thing Trump has ever been good at is self-promotion and entertainment.

I think he thinks the country is broken and _someone_ has to fix it. He's supporting Trump and investing in his campaign even at this late, seemingly forgone stage, in order to build credibility with Trump's base and conservatives in general. If he wasn't an immigrant I would think he might be aiming for the presidency himself, but he probably just wants to be an influencer or power broker.

Considering how divisive Trump is even among the conservative base, and especially in the RNC, seems weird to support this particular candidate if what he wants is to assert himself in the republican base and party.

Maybe the point is to signal his willingness as a backer to other potential candidates.

Though I find even that a bit odd. Would people not take a pledge seriously without having seen his demonstrated willingness to lose large sums of money?

When (as seems likely) Trump loses this election, a weird new space in the Republican party. The "establishment" (whatever that is) will still be the enemy, but the rejection of any one more serious than Trump will have to go.

This will be opportune world for all kinds of right-wingers whose ideas are too extreme or too kooky to have been taken seriously before, but who are more toughtful than Trump.

In very different ways, Paul Ryan and Peter Thiel are positioning themselves for that world. As are a lot of others.

Here is an interesting take on this matter:

> Famously, the only reason he went to seek fortune in the Silicon Valley was because he was denied a highly prestigious clerk position for a Supreme Court justice.

> It seems to me that Thiel originally wished to become a politician, and only stopped pursuing that path to seek his fortune in the Silicon Valley when he hit his first setback when applying to clerk for the Supreme Court.

Source: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Peter-Thiel-supporting-Donald-T...

I doubt it. Thiel's personality - in all his public appearances - has been hyper-rational, not exactly the sort who would hold onto a childhood dream for 20 years. And he's talked about how falling off that track was the best thing that ever happened to him - so much so that he now wants to help other talented college kids fall off the established track.

Also, he's not U.S. born, which disqualifies him from being president anyway. He could potentially seek some other office...but I really doubt that he would want any position that makes him just like 99 other or 434 other people.

Perfect quote from Paul Graham here:

Others may be reassured to hear Trump has only a 15% chance of winning, but it terrifies me. In Silicon Valley 15% is a good chance.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/786801011830628352

When it comes to a company 15% isn't too bad as you have a long time to test and figure out whether you make it. It's never just about one exact moment.

With an election it can usually be summed to important event: the vote. So that's why it doesn't terrify me at all. There's enough evidence now and in previous elections to show me he's not going to win the election. If the situation were say closer to Gore/Bush or even Romney/Obama pre-vote polling numbers, then maybe I'd be scared.

It matters who has the most chance of winning.

If there are 10 competitors and they all have between 5-10% chance of winning you have 15%. Compared to a 15%/85% split.

You're assuming Thiel is acting rationally. But more likely, he's blinded by political ideology.

Trump isn't nearly as far behind as you may think: http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/

Yes, this poll is an outlier because their methodology is very different than most other polls.

Yes, Nate Silver has a very different outlook on the election, but Nate Silver was also not very reliable during the primary season (although that is, by his admission, because primaries don't have very good polling).

If I had to make a[n extremely uneducated guess], it's because most polling is done over the phone, and I don't think "people who answer their phone when they don't recognize the number" is a very good random sampling of voters in the US.

I don't think this race is nearly as over as most people seem to believe, which is why, if you want to beat Trump, it is REALLY IMPORTANT (all caps!) that you get out and vote!

You've just selected the national poll that is the most favorable to Trump. An average over polls >> any individual poll. Note that I am not saying that poll should be thrown out. But picking one poll in isolation is almost useless.

Looking at this specific poll in isolation is fine as long as you understand that you are looking at it in isolation.

I say so because of its polling methodology, which is unique.

If you're a politics/polling nerd, this poll is interesting. If you're not, then yes, you are probably better off either just reading 538, or looking at the RCP polling average.

https://news.usc.edu/109339/why-the-usc-dornsifel-a-times-pr...

Most politics/polling nerds look at aggregations of polls. Not sure where you get this idea that they are interested in a poll like USC which is such an outlier.

The fact that it's an outlier doesn't interest you? Maybe we have different definitions of "nerd".

The fact that it's an outlier means, statistically, that it is more likely to be wrong.

Yes, it's more likely to be wrong.

But this poll performed well in 2012[1] with the same methodology. As a polling nerd, wouldn't you be interested in why it is producing unusual results this year and what implications that might have for polling in general?

[1] http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-poll-faq-20161006-...

Regarding that poll specifically: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/how-one-19-year-...

Their response: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-daybreak-poll-ques...

Where they eliminated that one 19 year old, and saw very little effect on the poll.

> Where they eliminated that one 19 year old, and saw very little effect on the poll.

How is that a compelling answer?

It's like if a news investigation found that a company had poor quality control and features a photo of a defective product in their writeup and the company's response was "we issued a refund for the product the news team purchased."

All I can say is that you sound an awful lot like the 2012 talking heads who were convinced Romney would win despite all the polling pointing to the contrary. For the record, Nate Silver's biggest mistake in the primaries was not listening to the polls enough. For him (and every other data-driven forecaster) to be getting the general wrong they'd have to be making the exact opposite mistake as before.

I'd be happy to give you 10:1 odds on Trump losing. And I'm biased here: a few months ago, I was convinced Trump would win.

I haven't seen the crosstabs on the USC polls, but my gut feeling is that you're right; the kind of very fine demographic reweighting they're doing isn't common, because (A) it's a pain in the ass and of dubious real-world value; and (B) it's vulnerable to magnifying sample-size and selection problems, of which the skewed Trump support amongst young African-Americans is one example. So while I'll be interested to do a retrospective on the poll's accuracy and precision after the election, I'm personally not putting much faith in it for now.

That's not true, they saw the same affect as upshot, which is to say nearly 1 percentage point movement by removing him.

1 responder should not move a 2500 person poll by 1%

> Of the poll’s 14 weeks so far, there were three times when removing that weight switched the result from a Trump lead to a Clinton lead. Generally, the shift was between one and two percentage points...Some people have ignored the margin of error in order to make a political point, but there’s not much we can do about that.

That seems highly disingenuous a response.

I heard about this poll, but I haven't paid attention to it. You got me reading up on it.

Now I can't sleep...

It is the height of stupidity to believe in any one poll. Especially that one which has had major issues with sampling:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/how-one-19-year-old...

There are plenty of aggregation sites which are far better at smoothing out any issues:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-...

They all show Trump losing in a landslide with Clinton getting around 330 EC votes.

USC's response to this: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-daybreak-poll-ques...

This is exactly why you should never blindly trust a single poll.

We don't know who is right/wrong until after the election so it is better to assume that a range of different polls taken at different times with different methodologies is likely to be more accurate.

You've cherry-picked the one outlier.

It's, of course, very possible that "this time it's different" as they say every time. He is certainly an unconventional candidate. However, I'll throw my lot in every time with the MANY polls who are trying to account for this, and the MANY poll aggregators who are trying to make sense out of this madness.

I think 538 was actually quite reliable during the primary season. Pretty much bang on, in fact.

Everything they said anti-trump was basically opinion and they have been roundly chastised (as deserved) for treating punditry as fact.

There was a good documentary on polling on BBC Radio 4 in light of their very weak performance in IndyRef and the UK General Election. One pollster said that he actually has a high regard for outliers which statistical aggregations do not capture. In cases where the majority of pollsters got it horribly wrong, there have been outliers at some significant distance from the herd that have been on the money but ridiculed at the time.

The reasoning is that pollsters have herd behaviours - they believe publishing an outlier they will lose them credibility so they suppress inconvenient results and will rework methodologies and weightings to avoid it. For many, election polling is a loss leader - its publicity to get their name out there for commercial services. The credibility of the outlier is increased because it has escaped the herd pressure despite the incentives.

I think problem is deeper. If one predicts heads as result of coin toss and other predicts tails, than one of them will be right. It says nothing about their abilities to predict. We always can find some outlier who predicts results different from majority of pollsters. The keyword is 'always': if such a possibility always exists (probability of existence P=1), then we can't extract any information from it (-log_2 P == 0).

To extract information we need to carefully revise methodology behind outlier predictions, and such an activity is a complex task for skilled data analyst.

If you look at the pictures of the number of people in attendance at their respective events one would conclude Trump is ahead.

Do we have any evidence that number of people at campaigning events correlates to more votes? If not, why would we conclude that?

Is it not (in absence of any evidence) equally plausible that the type of voter that will vote for Trump is more predisposed to attend a campaign event than other voters?

Which is why thats an awful gauge of the electorate. The vast majority of voters do not attend political events, and "attendees at events" is really just an uncorrelated measure of "enthusiasm for a candidate amongst their base". If 40% of the country loved him so much that they all showed up at every single rally, yet the other 60% hate him, and will vote for HRC despite not really loving her, then you see a rally filled to the brim with Trump supporters, and nobody at hers, yet his chances are zip. Rally attendance is a meaningless metric.

It might not be great, but I trust it more than these dishonest polls

Bernie is a good counter-example. Huge rallies, way behind in votes.

have you not read wikileaks? the DNC/Hillary rigged it against him from day one, he never stood a chance

Clearly you haven't read those emails: they show nothing of the sort, which is why you couldn't provide any evidence to back that claim.

You can find signs that people in the establishment personally favored the establishment candidate – the least surprising revelation in political history – but there's no evidence that lead to any concrete action. That's why the only claims of rigging have been intentional misrepresentation based on the knowledge that some people like you would repeat those claims without checking the sources.

When you have Donna Brazile feeding the Clinton campaign townhall questions so that she can prepare the answers. Threats for super delegates switching to Bernie and Debbie Wasserman Shultz stepping down. It's clear evidence of a rigged election. Who knows what was happening that is not in the emails.

Try citing specific ptimsry sources for events which actually happened. There's plenty of hyperventilating and outright propaganda on right-wing blogs but there's a reason why nobody with credibility is claiming the primary was rigged.

Hint: it's the same reason why the alleged victim is going around telling his supporters to vote for Hillary. If you trusted his judgement enough to think he should be president, why not trust his analysis now?

There's a reason why nobody with credibility is claiming the primary was rigged

And that reason is elementary game theory. The only people with incentives to claim that the Democratic primaries were rigged are those who will be left with no political influence if the Democrats fare poorly.

When the Republicans do well, it's because they value party unity over literally everything else. One of HRC's strengths is that she brings the same thinking to the Democrats. For anyone within the party, working against her carries no conceivable upside. And as we've seen in DWS's case, working for HRC means you'll be well taken care of, no matter what.

Basically, if Sanders or anyone else on the left has beef with the DNC, they will be much better off if they wait to bring it up until after the election. And maybe not even then.

Except Bernie's rallies were full of young people, who are always up for a rally but who can seldom be bothered to vote. Meanwhile, Trump's rallies are full of old people who have nothing else to do but vote.

I'm sorry, but offhandedly dismissing "these dishonest polls", when, frankly,

1. They're the best data we have

2. We have no reason to believe they're incorrect

3. There is REALLY no reason to believe they're dishonest

Is 100% intellectually dishonest.

This is exactly what happened 4 years ago, and apparently some people have not learned from their tremendous mistake.

If you want to know why "turnout at a campaign event" is a crappier metric than "real actual scientific data", I don't know how else to help, other than to point to other instances in which it has failed:

"Mitt drawing larger crowds" http://www.politico.com/story/2012/10/mitt-drawing-larger-cr...

"Donald Trump continues to draw YUGE crowds. That matters less than he thinks." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/28/do...

"Trump brags about crowd size but will it turn into votes?" http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d74fbd472f7a420a90737e55cfb20...

I do not know or care who you support in the Presidential election. However, I suggest you get realistic about your metrics, as you're way off in fantasyland at the moment, as far as I can tell.

If you turn out to be incorrect, I hope you learn from this experience. I know I will, if the data turns out to be wrong.

I'm in fantasy land? If you think the polls aren't manipulated for political advantage you are in fantasy land. You're appeal to 'real scientific data' is childish, since the data can be easy manipulated.

And yet, Trump supporters never had any trouble believing the polls when they showed their candidate leading during the primaries. Every single time, Trump would open his rallies with "have you seen the latest polls?".

When the polls show him to be ahead, it's evidence that the voters love him. When he's behind, it's evidence that the polling is rigged.

Hillary Lead Over Trump Surges After Reuters "Tweaks" Poll http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-30/clinton-lead-over-t...

All of my comments stand.

Campaigns also conduct their own internal polling which may or may not have biases, but they're not released; they're used for the campaign. So it only benefits them to know what's actually going on. Trump's is one of the few campaigns that seems only interested in good news, and in not learning from what their internal polling tells them.

That said, of course all campaigns will selectively brag about the polls that make them look good, and quietly ignore those that don't.

Again, the polls are extremely reliable in this country. If you can't see that, you're unlikely to be swayed by yet another data point when this election is complete.

By that logic, Bernie Sanders would be the Democratic nominee.

> I don't think this race is nearly as over as most people seem to believe

This feels a lot like the atmosphere over here (in Britain) just before the Brexit vote.

Many people thought it was a guaranteed Remain vote, and woke up to a terrible fright on that Friday morning.

The polls showed Brexit winning.

They didn't:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United...

4% in national polls (that's the number averaging across the polls) is a huge difference given the strong alignment of so much of the electorate. And it isn't even the interesting way to analyze the election, winning the national popular vote isn't what wins the race.

If you look at states that are contested, things look bad for Trump, even in the ones where demographics favor him he is not getting polling results that point to a win (an example would be Pennsylvania).

Nate silver personally hasn't had a good record of making predictions in the primary this year, but his model had trump winning through most of the primary season. He just didn't believe his own model.

I think it's very difficult to find truly unbiased statistics on this. Every current well-known analyst has been repeatedly egregiously wrong on the matter throughout this election cycle.

On matters of opinion, ABSOLUTELY. On matters of polling, absolutely false. Even Brexit was predicted by the polls, it just didn't happen until a week before the vote. (It's worth noting, of course, the same could happen here. And that's probably what Thiel is counting on).

Exactly there is a big myth going around that polls never predicted Brexit when in fact they absolutely did. People just didn't want to believe them.

Polls are objective not subjective.

Can you provide some links about the Brexit polls? I was following the betting markets and the prediction markets and they were dramatically wrong, even the day of the vote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/upshot/why-the-surprise-ov...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36648769

>Polls are objective not subjective.

I get what you're trying to say, and most polling seems to be pretty objective, but you can absolutely do subjective polling. You just have to target the right demo and you can make any poll say anything you want.

This is different.

Just say you were going to vote for Trump. Someone stops you on the street, or call you up; would you admit it?

I wouldn't.

The guy is an absolute joke of a person on so many levels. He's stupid. He's just aweful.

But there's a tiny bit of Trump in a lot of us buried deep in that ID.

Personally, I do think we need to get much more vigilant on immigration, even though Obama has sent more illegials home than any other president. Would I admit this in public--hell no.

And I have never believed in Globilization. Would I admit this at work--hell no.

I really think a lot of people will vote for Trump in the privacy of that booth.

I won't because I won't vote for a president this year, or will I?

>>even though Obama has sent more illegials home than any other president

Where can I find the source for this? I may need it when arguing with people...

Well, we know that net migration flows to Mexico (and possibly all of central america?) are positive. They turned from inflows to outflows during the recession. Perhaps this is where someone came up with "Obama sending illegals home".

Of course, I'm more than open to being wrong; certain classes of illegal immigrants have been given defacto amnesty, and Obama's spoken in their favor, but no doubt others continue to be persecuted.

"The Deportation Machine Obama Built for President Trump"

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-deportation-machine-ob...

> I really think a lot of people will vote for Trump in the privacy of that booth.

I think so too. There is an interesting phenomenon there. Just guessing but suspect on the surface it is a very accepting, liberal place, perhaps one which encourages and celebrates diversity.

>And I have never believed in Globilization

Sorry to tell you, data is in, and it's helping to pull billions out of abject poverty around the globe.

Depends on whether you care about the billions of people around the world or the millions in your own corner of it. I'm not sure most people are really ready to take in that expansive view of who their tribe is yet.

With Brexit the reporting of what was going on was dodgy, even the leader of UKIP thought he'd failed. The bookies had Remain at something like .90 probability.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-23/bookies-pl...

Where do you see the Brexit predicted by the polls?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United...

Seems to not support that claim.

I'm not betting on a Trump presidency, but I'm fascinated at what the electorate is going to look like in the general. We've been basing so much of the polling on projections over 2012/2008 turnout. I would not be surprised if the final margin is within 2 points.

I would be more surprised if the margins are huge. I have come to expect team politics to give us close margins. I would be surprised, in either a very happy or very sad way, if instead the margins are big.

True; I wonder what impact a 9 point poll-implied spread turning into 1-2 points in the ballot booth could have on future political activities by "alt right" candidates. It feels like many are treating this as a "beat Trump and save the world" situation without realizing that the underlying movement isn't likely going away. If Trump brings in a large enough group of non-voters, that will have long lasting impacts (people that start voting tend to keep voting).

It can still be "save the world" situation even when understanding this. Long-term, it would be nice to have a SCOTUS that would be more of a check on someone like Trump, and less of a rubberstamp.

I'd be happy with a SCOTUS that checks the executive branch in general. We're already in full-on rubber stamp mode and have been for 16 years, if not longer.

I wouldn't call the current court a rubber stamp. There have been some very unfortunate decisions, sure, but there were also quite a few decisions that prevented either the states or the feds from running wild.

The real problem with being a true check is partisanship on the court. By now, it seems to be essentially accepted that there are "liberal judges" and "conservative judges", and that they will rule accordingly. I cringe every time I hear that, because SCOTUS, like any other court, is supposed to rule on what the law is, not on what it should be; and one's political affiliation should not affect the former. In practice, of course, it does matter these days, and it is a really bad thing, especially in an institution that is 1) so small, and 2) not providing any mechanism to hold them responsible.

Super Tuesday voter turnout in 2008: 8,228,763 for Democrats, 5,025,685 for Republicans. 2016: 5,557,243 Democrats, 8,307,884 Republicans If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on Trump. I think it will be close. That said, I also believe electoral fraud could decide the election.

That doesn't make much sense. Super Tuesday primaries included all likely Republican voters. But Trump only has the support of about 40% of them and nothing he has done to date indicates that number is changing.

And there is no evidence that electoral fraud is likely to decide the election. In fact it's looking like efforts to prevent it e.g. in Indiana are far more likely to influence the election.

The record-breaking Republican turnout was due to Trump, and I think it is reasonable to believe that the vast majority of Republicans will vote Trump over Hillary, or 3rd party. At the same time, many independents and Bernie supporters will vote Trump as well. In my mind, Trump is the Republican Obama, and will benefit from many first-time voters, and a large turnout in general. It does not seem to me that Hillary has the same draw. I don't mean to argue with you, only to clarify.

You're confused again. Trump had record breaking PRIMARY turnout. All polls taken so far have him only getting about 40% of Republicans. And there is no evidence what so ever that he is drawing in independents or Bernie supporters at any significant rate.

He is down by on average 7 points nationally for a reason.

Correction: 75% of Republicans, 40% overall. He seems to have a fairly hard ceiling. His support among Republicans is shockingly low, but likely to rebound a bit to keep it from being a total blowout.

You're off by 2X. Well over 80% of GOP is voting Trump.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/for-many-gop-women-party...

where are you getting 40%? last I heard 87% of republicans are backing Trump (regardless of the elitists jumping ship)

Depends what you mean by electoral fraud. In the US, the only electoral fraud that has a significant impact is one where groups of voters are prohibited/prevented from voting. Pennsylvania is particularly vulnerable to that one due to very broad rules that allow people to question the legality of other people to vote. It's why Trump has been calling PA supports to do exactly that.

Other types of fraud (ballot stuffing, voting multiple times, voting when you're not allowed to etc.) are exceedingly rare, and it would have to happen at a massive scale for it to make an actual impact.

That's just not going to happen, especially with it being a felony.

george soros affiliate produces the voting machines in 16 states...

You're down-voted because you're right.

that's usually how things go :)

At least one presidential election has been decided by a margin so close that a few hundred votes made the difference. That's not so massive a scale that it couldn't happen.

Yes. And far more than hanging chads, that election was primarily decided by thousands of potential voters being incorrectly purged from the voting lists.

Because the greatest threat to a hegemony of the wealthy is democracy.

And a candidacy that threatens opponents with prison, encourages voter intimidation, enlists foreign powers for cyberwarfare, intimates that any result will be rigged, distroys the norms critical to government functioning and a dozen other things, is the best investment someone who hates public control of policy could make win or loose.

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