Live Presidential Forecast
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I'm especially worried because the developer job market is a lot worse outside the US than inside it. I genuinely don't know where to go (recession seems inevitable).
It won't happen, but it'd be hilarious if the Democrats planned to rig future elections by importing millions of immigrants to vote for them, and they instead end up emigrating by the millions to Canada thus swinging it in the opposite direction.
Perhaps rather than hoping for assassinations or voter fraud, those of us who identify as "progressive" could instead channel that mental energy into finding ways to better appeal to large groups of working class people who are imo justifiably angry at the state of things in this country.
Basically, for most of us here, the rest of our lives will have this election hanging over us, for the implications on the SCOTUS alone. As I said, people who can afford it are going to leave in droves.
Do you want President Trump? Because this is how you get President Trump.
If you think that your "I'd almost welcome" weasel wording makes what you're implying acceptable, you need to reconsider the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.
Yeeeaaaaah...
Trump is likely going to be very business friendly, and after the initial shock wears off the markets will recover and move on.
If not for nuclear detente, I'd be pretty concerned about WWIII right about now.
Yeeeaaaaah...
>Our final map has Clinton winning with 352 electoral votes. Compare your picks with ours.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trai...
As one of the hundreds of folks banned from DailyKos for being too liberal, I've been spending some time reading the Trump subreddit, and I have to say that Hillary has run perhaps the worst campaign in memory:
- Rigged the primaries against Bernie, disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters, and cheated during the debates.
- Spent 5x more on paid media advertising, and got all the social media sites to censor pro-Trump messages.
- Paid shills to attack anyone who disagrees with her policies on social media.
- It looks like there is a good chance her campaign was behind the attempt to frame Assange for pedophilia.
- Made gender her primary selling point with her #imwithher slogan. (Imagine if she had gone with something like #TheNextAmerica instead, to contrast with MAGA.)
- Accusing Trump of saying and doing tons of things he didn’t actually say or do.
- Characterizing Trump supporters as racists, bigots, deplorables, etc.
- Paying people to incite violence at Trump rallies
- Accusing Russia of hacking her campaign’s emails when in fact it was oedesta who gave out his password to a phishing site… twice… without two-factor enabled.
- Having Bill meet with Loretta Lynch during the email investigation. Then appointing Podesta's close friend to run the email investigation which resulted in a last minute FBI coup forcing Comey to make a statement.
I didn't vote for Trump, I don't support Trump, and I'm as horrified that he's going to be President as anyone else. But I have to say the actions of the DNC, Hillary, her campaign, and many of her supporters have been egregiously bad.
And now everything is super fucked.
edit: For everyone downvoting me, go turn on The Young Turks livestream and hear it from Cenk.
And remember! The blame for a Trump presidency lies with none other than Hillary Clinton. She's the one that cheated a popular opponent in the primaries, that strategized to promote Trump during the Republican debates, that infiltrated the media and turned journalists into self-admitted "hacks", and she's the one that interjected herself into the presidential race despite knowing that her "scandals" -- electoral corruption, mishandling of classified information, pay-for-play at the Clinton foundation, Bill's history of child rape, etc. -- all disqualify her as a viable opponent to Trump.
My hopes are that 1) the media will keep a better eye on Trump (going off the last 8 years, they'll ignore any atrocity as long as it's committed by the blue team), 2) that Trump is not as smart as Clinton, and therefore less able to deceptively achieve his goals and 3) that 4 years of Trump will mobilize Americans to fix their electoral system and seek out real alternatives to the Democrat / Republican duopoly.
If she really believed in her causes and not her career, she could have decided not to run and backed a promising successor a long time ago.
Operationalizing the Strategy Pied Piper Candidates
There are two ways to approach the strategies mentioned above. The first is to use the field as a whole to inflict damage on itself similar to what happened to Mitt Romney in 2012. The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more “Pied Piper” candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party. Pied Piper candidates include, but aren’t limited to:
• Ted Cruz
• Donald Trump
• Ben Carson
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/1120 (Read the PDF attached)
Furthermore, who else could have rallied the masses to vote so thoroughly? A Jeb vs Hillary election would have been very dull, almost depressingly so, meanwhile a Cruz vs Hillary election would have bordered on hopelessly disinteresting.
I can think of a few other more local (to Australia) events that seem to make sense when you factor in this bubbling discontentment.
The American left took its eyes off of what's important, namely the working class, and instead spent its time and political capital on frivolous[0] causes. This is a wake-up call to refocus.
[0] Lots of things some might consider important are frivolous when you're living paycheck-to-paycheck.
It went so far that people who would vote for Trump lied in polls just so that they don't receive strange looks or something worse. That is the fear above mentioned "establishment" instilled into people. And it's not just US...
The meltdown of the "media" and shock is just pure funny.
Let's forget about all the controversy around Clinton family. I will just leave this[0] here.
[0]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1582795/Hillary-Cl...
It's strange, as an outside observe I see hate spewed against giant swaths of the population (the 'establishment', the 'leftists', the muslims, the hispanics, the blacks or whatever) from Trump supporters. But those same people keep complaining about the hate they perceive from the left or whatever.
It's bizarre. Are people supposed to embrace the racism, sexism and bigotry?
Then someone openly flouting this "PC ideology" you've been getting increasingly frustrated by comes along they look quite appealing.
> Then someone openly flouting this "PC ideology" you've been getting increasingly frustrated by comes along they look quite appealing.
Oh, my, yes! Especially after we've had such opportunity to observe, firsthand and in detail, what progressivism actually does to all but a PR-vetted, camera-ready token few of those on whose behalf its adherents claim to act - to say nothing of those whom it explicitly discards.
We know well what it's like to be trod upon in no more noble cause than advancing someone else's bid for power. We should do - they've been doing it to us for decades. And, more and more, we are realizing that there is nothing in it for us. More and more, we're no longer willing to serve as the compliant little political puppets that people like ant6n and M_Grey demand we be, because obviously they know better than we do what's good for us. "Too stupid and easily manipulated to be helped," I believe it was, and of course we're too ignorant to recognize the difference between being helped, and letting ourselves be co-opted and fucked over time after time after time.
"Too stupid and easily manipulated," eh? In fairness I have to give him that second one - we've certainly let progressives lead us by the nose against our own best interests often enough over the last few decades. But that's changing, and doing so faster than I'd have imagined possible only a few years -- only a few hours! -- ago. If they're really too blind to appreciate the arrogance and the sheer unmitigated gall of simultaneously holding us in such contempt and demanding we lick their palms and show our bellies and do as we are told, that's their lookout, not ours. And if they're really too bound up in their damnable ideology and the wreckage of their quest for power to recognize how gravely they've gone wrong, then to hell with them.
But you know, it's not just a matter of flouting "pc ideology". It's not just words. Trump is actually openly racist and sexist not only in words, but also in actions.
The whole time I thought - if I were American, I would have had to vote Hillary because Trump seems dangerous, but after reading the following I'm actually not sure anymore. It makes me understand today's result somewhat. The Clinton campaign more and more seems like an entire season of House of Cards.
http://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-t...
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/facebook-caught-manipulatin...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-19/hillary-clinton-lin...
http://www.inquisitr.com/3495608/julian-assange-makes-claims...
A lot of things can be misinterpreted if you already have your mind in the specific drawer.
You remember when Trump said that Putin is strong leader and afterwards that if he is the president US won't be weak anymore? Well, he actually meant that Obama is weak and not that Putin is strong. But most of the media and people interpreted that as a thumbs up for Putin. Actually it was thumbs down - as in - it won't be so easy with me.
The only thing that could possibly help it is a pluralist democracy, but I guess that would be too boring, and just wouldn't advance the joyful hate of the binary system.
Oh good. It's not just me, there are others who want Trump to win just for the lulz. I don't care for his presidency, but Clinton belongs behind bars right now. I hope Trump wins and then does something to land him behind bars too. That would be my preferred outcome. The media has to change too, but I don't think a Trump presidency would be capable of bringing that about.
Hi there.
I swear to God, it's like coming out all over again. That this should be true of any political stance is utterly absurd, but, hey, here we are.
They gauges moving around is definitely random.
The updates are done with a "president.json" file, fetched every 15 seconds, but the timestamp in the json data only changes every 30-180 seconds.
So all of the movement is just random jitter to make it engaging.
Maybe a bit disingenuous.
(Note: I first thought they might be using websockets, but no WS connection is made on the page. Only a ajax fetch of president.json)
That's what I checked first. ;)
The estimates below include an estimate of uncertainty. We expect the uncertainty around these estimates to narrow, especially after races are called.
I don't see any reason why we'd expect the uncertainty to be updated more than every 30-180 seconds or why any of this is the least bit "disingenuous".
No one want's to look at a static page fore more than a few seconds, once you have taken in the information.
And I guarantee you that there are plenty of visitors on that page right now, staring at the gauges with fascination.
It's also a hint that the page isn't static.
So in showing wrong uncertainty, they are being even more disingenuous.
Of course they aren't going to get it fixed tonight if that is what you are thinking.
It's only misleading developers, who will think that data is being streamed rather than fetched once. Other than that it's a clever (and yes, entertaining) way of displaying margins of error.
Can I offer that, of all the things in news and dataviz to shit on, this isn't one of them? I mean, really, an "abuse of our attention" - what?
Only a dev would think about the possibility of a statistical model updated with a second(s) granularity.
And be disappointed (I was) that it's actually just updated every few minutes with a fetched JSON file, rather than some fancy instant updates pushed down via a websocket connection. :D
In this case, a better solution would be a blurred needle.
It is well known that multi-tasking and context switching has a cost. The same applies to movements on visualizations.
One can convey mean and standard deviation without animation.
When something moves, the way it moves catches the eye. Arbitrary movement is wasted movement when it comes to conveying real information.
Take electron orbital clouds [1]. They are a nice way to show uncertainty with a static image and without animation. Indeed, an animation of an electron moving around would not the tell the story as effectively. A blurred probability cloud is a better way to do it to tell the story of probability.
Also, a blurred cloud is useful precisely because it does not imply that electrons follow predictable paths.
[1]: http://www.scottsmithonline.com/interests/medicalschool/biol...
No dispute that it's clever and entertaining. These are undesirable qualities in a reliable source of information.
Can you imagine reading a scientific journal in which the data narrative was deliberately engineered to keep you guessing until the conclusion? You would be right to raise eyebrows at a publication that is investing in your attention rather than its own accuracy.
There's no dire consequence here, it's just slightly dystopian that US presidential elections are unapologetically leveraged as a vehicle for mass entertainment by the press itself.
HN is so incredibly cynical sometimes. How are "clever and entertaining" undesirable qualities in reliable source of information? The only requirement in a reliable source of information is reliability. "Entertaining" is very much a desirable quality if you actually want people to care about said reliable information.
My argument is that jitter doesn't make it unreliable as it's simply a visualization of the uncertainty. So if it gets people interested and doesn't do it inaccurately, that's a win in my book.
You would be right to raise eyebrows at a publication that is investing in your attention rather than its own accuracy
Por que no los dos? One doesn't conflict with the other.
> unapologetically leveraged as a vehicle for mass entertainment
Sorry America, you turned those elections into mass entertainment all by yourself ;)
You can see similar issues with most purely mechanical dials to one degree or another when they are responding to a rapid change.
require('forecast/jitter').get = function(){return 0;}Did you just dig through the code or are you a NYT dev?
require('forecast/jitter').get = function(){return Math.random()*10;} require('forecast/jitter').get = function(){return new Date().getSeconds()-30;}Periodic real updates with something more expressive than a spinner, which have never been convincing enough to keep me from mashing reload.
It is better than what we do, informally. We all use models (of some sort) when we process information; e.g. I discount certain publications and value others. But few people actually make their models explicit and ask others to critique them.
Making a model public and explicit is a great first step. Building more models on top is a good thing, not a bad thing.
The Trump transition team, in rented office space in Washington, just became very important. They're Trump's HR department, and have to recruit the several thousand people the President gets to appoint. Because Trump isn't tightly connected to the "Republican establishment", the usual suspects aren't in line for those jobs. So where do they come from? Business?
Will Peter Thiel go to Washington? Secretary of Commerce, perhaps?
I kind of understand the house and senate being more regional representation, but the president kind of represents all Americans, no?
Furthermore, it's not even clear what the question is. Why it's not elected by the US populous? Because it's the President of the United States being elected, not the President of the people of the United States. Why is it not a direct vote? In part, to make the system resilient to the tyranny of majority which was feared by Founding Fathers.
There is extensive literature on that topic by the designers of the system itself and one cannot summarize it in a HN comment. So if the the Americans the parent was referring to are indeed puzzled by that question there are answers to be found.
However, my interpretation of the original question was that of "why are they still in existence?".
There are political and historical reasons for having the system work this way, much like how the ordering of primaries is a contentious and complicated arrangement.
Condorcet is a rank system so Arrow's Impossibility Theorem applies. Also, being a rank system, there will always be arguments about interpretation where people can hand-wring over how the outcome would be different with Borda or IRV or another way to determine the results of a rank-vote election. Finally, Condorcet always supports tyranny-of-the-majority rather than consensus. A polarizing candidate with 51% support and 49% strong disapproval will always win any rank vote, while a consenus candidate everyone likes can win a score or approval vote.
Effectively, score is range is approval, same basic idea, and ONLY that idea is simple, clear, zero argument about interpreting results and none of the pathologies of rank voting. And no, rank voting is NOT able to elect consensus candidates over polarizing ones in the way score voting does.
The point is, first-past-the-post has almost every possible flaw you can have in a voting system.
Sure, first-past-the-post is horrid, but if you expend political will, time, power, energy, money to reform the voting system, it's a tragedy to replace a horrible system with a bad one when we actually know of a good one. We will not get infinite, costless resources and chances for voting reform.
60% of a state may be for one candidate, but if only 80% of them go out to vote, the other candidate will win.
That's what we're seeing here today.
I know in Canada they have a media blackout for each timezone until polls close (or are almost closed). The assumption is people will change their vote based on early counts.
However, that may have changed with the internet since you can't stop anyone from getting early results.
Edit: yup, looks like Canada stopped that back in 2014 [1]
[1]http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/election-reforms-include-end...
I think the most likely problem is not votes being swayed by popularity -- probaly moreso is turnout being impacted by a large lead.
1) Neither candidate gets 270, McMullin gets at least 1, either from Utah or a faithless elector. The "never trump" republicans in the House elect McMullin over Trump. End result: Evan McMullin as president
2) Same as 1), but with Gary Johnson
3) Majority in electoral vote, but some faithless electors withhold their vote. I'd actually very much like to see this happen, as it would be far more interesting to see the House have to decide on this.
4) Tie, deadlock in House and Senate. End result: Paul Ryan as president
Jokes aside, you're overstating the difficulty to vote. You couldn't vote today because you couldn't pick the building to vote at?
Not everywhere.
I just tuned in to CNN: I think the way they cover the results is ridiculous.
They just babble off random, pointless numbers without pause, with their fancy interactive maps in the background.
They announce small changes with a sensationalism that's almost pathetic (KEY RACE ALERT! ALL OFF A SUDDEN Clinton takes the lead in Florida!! (by 20k votes... with a vote count of 30%).
Very little actual, substantive discussion of key results to watch out for, of key states, ...
One of the biggest news channels in the world should be able to do a bit better than that, IMO.
Even Fox does it better. (As unbelievable as that is...)
There's a reason I picked on CNN specifically.
They would spend riddiculous amount of time on hearsay or drama, then just switch to some kind of "news" stripped of any context one could use to actually get some information
I hope there's a solid statistical model behind it too though.
If the jitter was an actual uncertainty measure or something... or less fast...
I think it says that these prediction markets aren't so good at actually predicting anything: all they really do is sort of act as a barometer of how media narratives influence popular thought on certain subjects. I do expect that they will correlate with outcomes better than 50/50... but not so much so that the "wisdom of crowds" line is really justified.
As to why so early, they have enough confidence in exit polls and other previous polls to say that, for example, Hillary is not going to win Oklahoma.
Those making a call will typically check how well the results for the counties that reported results so far correlate with the polls and historical results, guesstimate what that would mean for the other counties, and call it when they think the result is clear (hopefully, they employ statisticians to make the call, but even then, it remains an inexact science)
For example, if a state has had over 90% votes for party P in all its counties in the past ten elections, the polls say that won't change, results of ten percent of counties nicely distributed over the state in terms of city/countryside, rich/poor, race, etc. show it hasn't changed, making the call that P will win is easy. Everybody would take that bet.
For an example of 'calling it' going wrong, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman.
Trump is the new President!
Have a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald to see what kind of people voted for Trump. MAGA!
Edit: Downvote all you want doesn't change the outcome :)
Probably he gets some initiatives through and rest is politics. Likely D & R try to block his drain the swamp initiatives. In 'Art of the Deal' Trump outlines the way he negotiates. Taking extreme position and coming down.
"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto."
-Thomas Jefferson
When manufacturing and other jobs are outsourced who are going to buy the goods when your citizens can't afford them? You have people out of jobs instead of them producing stuff and creating more business.
> When manufacturing and other jobs are outsourced
shrug if we were competitive, we would get those jobs. POTUS and the legislature should focus on keeping the roads maintained, streets safe, police in check. Leave business to the invisible hand of the marketplace.
I just don't think we can trust this candidate. His only allegiance is to himself. "We will have to leave borders behind," [1] "Hillary Clinton will 'go down at a minimum as a great senator" [2]. "His grandmother in Kenya said he was born in Kenya and she was there and witnessed the birth, okay?" [3]
[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/22/business/opinion-donald-tr...
[2] http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/19/politics/trump-ny1-clintons/
[3] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/...
The problem with manufacturing is it is not really outsourced, but automated. Unions helped to push out the jobs that were left by making it hard to compete wage wise. It's why you see plants opening in the south where there are no unions.
Some people are fit to manual jobs rather than programming. There has to be some kind of solution.
Favorite Reddit comments so far.
"There is still California, there's always money in the banana stand."
"CNN, now is not the time to be playing an advert for The Man In The High Castle".
Even NYTIMES gives Trump +95% change to win.
Am now wizard.
It's 04:13 here but this is too funny not to stay up for.
- President: Democrats (72%), - Senate (76%) and House (>95%): Republicans
Is this a good outcome for a democracy? And if so, why? Wouldn't this mean that the system is effectively gridlocked?
I like to consider all the compromises in the antebellum United States. They show up in the history books as great legislative successes, but in the end, a half century of dispute came down to a war.
Gridlock in the US government is a feature, not a bug, if for no other reason than it forces polarized, mutually opposed interests to compromise their principles and self-interest to get anything done.
(I assume their will be a post discussing the result...)
I complained recently that political discussions are too easily suppressed on HN, and dang's response was that they inevitably veer into flame wars, and that preemptively flagging political threads is necessary / ok. I hope this thread continues to disprove that, since HN is an important place for political discussion to be happening.
I rather enjoy that the mods apparently want to keep those topics a bit out of the limelight and focus on technical subjects.