For whatever reason there has been little polling of late for the Blunt-Kander race, but the most recent one I believe had Kander ahead and most observers are calling the race a toss-up... I don't want to make a prediction on MO or any particular Senate race, but I think it is now very likely D's will control the Senate. The big worry for down-ticket R's is being swept away in a wave of an energized opposition (with Independents solidly in their camp) and a demoralized Republican base... Trump is drowning and if it's clear on election day that it'll be a landslide the Republican turn-out likely will be depressed compared to a normal presidential year.shimmy wrote:Blunt is still up in the polls. In New Hampshire the Republican Ayotte went from down 10 to up 2 in the past few months even as New Hampshire goes more for Hillary. Clinton is going to win but I think liberals hoping for a Democrat landslide down ballot because of Trump are going to be sorely disappointed.
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Ken Bone was just on Kimmel via satellite with downtown STL/Arch backdrop.. best pr we've gotten in a long time!
Along with The Atlantic's "How American Politics Went Insane", this articled from Cracked (left wing source) is probably the best thing I've read this election cycle. Ditches the red state/blue state divide and really tackles the urban/rural divide upfront as the reason for Trump's rise.
Cracked.com
David Wong
"How Half of America Lost Its F**king Mind"
"It really does feel like the worst of both worlds: all the ravages of poverty, but none of the sympathy. 'Blacks burn police cars, and those liberal elites say it's not their fault because they're poor. My son gets jailed and fired over a baggie of meth, and those same elites make jokes about his missing teeth!' You're everyone's punching bag, one of society's last remaining safe comedy targets...
The rural folk with the Trump signs in their yards say their way of life is dying, and you smirk and say what they really mean is that blacks and gays are finally getting equal rights and they hate it. But I'm telling you, they say their way of life is dying because their way of life is dying. It's not their imagination. No movie about the future portrays it as being full of traditional families, hunters, and coal mines. Well, except for Hunger Games, and that was depicted as an apocalypse."
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-t ... lks-about/
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A more coherent version of the rural resentment angle is presented here:
So how does a politician harness this rural resentment? In an April column, Cramer pointed to how Walker appealed to rural voters by talking about getting their roads fixed, as opposed to spending on high-speed rail between big cities. Walker also ran against government and public employees in Wisconsin. Those workers often were higher-income than their peers, and with more generous benefits, so for non-public sector workers in rural communities, that was another source of resentment.
I think the comparison to Walker is completely off. The rural/urban split isn't anything new, as pretty much every Republican running for a statewide office can attest to. The phenomenon this election is the rural vote going for someone like Trump, who is this antithesis of Walker, the guy that gave his Kohl's Cash stump speech verbatim at every stop, in every conceivable way. They're not going for Trump because he's championing their policies. They're going for Trump because he's a giant FU to the urban elite.
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Well, as the article says,
Trump is championing policies like anti-immigration and trade obstacles that appeal to these folks.Trump's rhetoric may similarly appeal to America's rural populations.
"The resources, the people, the respect seem to be going somewhere else, or to other types of people, and here comes someone who says 'You're right, you're not getting your fair share. It's going to people who aren't deserving, and you vote me in and we're going to make America great again," she said.
It doesn't help that rural areas are in decline, thanks to cities. Many older rural Americans have watched as their children got college diplomas and moved to cities, making for dwindling populations. Trump's nonspecific promise to bring America back to some nonspecific point when it was "great" works because it can mean anything to any voter — and to people in rural communities, it may signal a promise to go back to a time when their communities were thriving more.
Rural resentment is an interesting angle, but I would wager that not even half of Trump's supporters live in rural areas and thus this offers an incomplete picture of why Trump has done so well among the Republican base. I'd guess Trump will do best in white flight suburbs and exurbs with white men with high school degrees while bleeding support with nearly every other group. Trump's current support in the polls indicates that he has not attracted a single new voter to the GOP coalition that has not had to replace a college educated white voter leaving for the Democrats. His large crowds are mostly composed of those that were already certain to vote Republican in November, and sure they are enthusiastic, but enthusiasm only matter so much when there are fewer of them. Maybe the coalition that has formed around Trump could have won elections in cycles past, but there is near zero possibility of it winning the electoral college today.
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I think suburban and rural republicans are sick of the rapid change to politically correctness, the poor economy, loss of manufacturing jobs, and rapidly rising health care costs which they blame Obamacare. They also think human's role in global warming is insignificant. that's just my observation.
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Over near Ted Drewe's, there's a yard with a Donna Baringer (D) for state rep sign alongside an Eric Greitens (R) for governor sign. That seems a bit strange.
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There's a number of reasons why Trump is the R's candidate instead of somebody else, but we can't avoid the fact that a lot of it is due to the significant raw racial and cultural resentment of the Republican base. w/o Trump's strong birther credentials, mexican rapists/build the wall shtick and let's attack women, including Megan Kelly, etc. etc., we likely would have a more traditional fire-breather (like Cruz) representing the Republican ticket.
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When I look at MO primary results, I don't see any clear patterns. Rural Douglas County went Trump+16, but adjacent Webster County went Cruz+14.Ebsy wrote:Rural resentment is an interesting angle, but I would wager that not even half of Trump's supporters live in rural areas and thus this offers an incomplete picture of why Trump has done so well among the Republican base.
http://www.politico.com/2016-election/p ... /missouri/
More of a reflection of how well liked Donna Baringer among those in the 16th Ward.Northside Neighbor wrote:Over near Ted Drewe's, there's a yard with a Donna Baringer (D) for state rep sign alongside an Eric Greitens (R) for governor sign. That seems a bit strange.
What I think people don't get is that Trump did not win the primary based on strength with rural or suburban voters. He won with wide demographic support across the GOP. Sure, in some states he did better with rural voters and in some he did better with suburban voters, but at the end of the day, he was broadly acceptable to the base and the vast majority of those that identify as Republicans enthusiastically support him. In other words, their is no "other" Republican Party waiting in the wings to take over once Trump loses on November 8th. The Party is over, and Trump seems intent on causing some type of civil war by spreading outright lies that the rabid Republican base eats up without question.MarkHaversham wrote:When I look at MO primary results, I don't see any clear patterns. Rural Douglas County went Trump+16, but adjacent Webster County went Cruz+14.Ebsy wrote:Rural resentment is an interesting angle, but I would wager that not even half of Trump's supporters live in rural areas and thus this offers an incomplete picture of why Trump has done so well among the Republican base.
http://www.politico.com/2016-election/p ... /missouri/
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Trump rarely won more than 40% of any state's vote in the primary and is driving Republican turnout to record lows, so I guess it depends how you define "broadly acceptable".
If you look at the final contests (New York, Pennsylvania/Maryland/Delaware/Rhode Island/Connecticut and Indiana) Trump got massive majorities of the vote against Cruz and Kasich who were ostensibly still waging active campaigns. The base found Trump acceptable then and finds him acceptable now. Of course, the base doesn't encompass all GOP voters, but it can't be said that we got here because no one went out and vote; quite to the contrary, we are here because a great many people went and and voted for Trump.MarkHaversham wrote:Trump rarely won more than 40% of any state's vote in the primary and is driving Republican turnout to record lows, so I guess it depends how you define "broadly acceptable".
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Hmm. I thought it might be more a reflection of the area's unique brand of the Democrat party.More of a reflection of how well liked Donna Baringer among those in the 16th Ward.
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Well, there's some contradiction in saying he's broadly popular to the small GOP base. The amount of people complaining about "no good choices this election" suggests that Trump is the least-appealing candidate the GOP has had in a long time. The religious base has taken an attitude of "God can use anybody". I mean, yeah, you aren't seeing 80% of the GOP defect or anything, but that sort of thing just doesn't happen.Ebsy wrote:If you look at the final contests (New York, Pennsylvania/Maryland/Delaware/Rhode Island/Connecticut and Indiana) Trump got massive majorities of the vote against Cruz and Kasich who were ostensibly still waging active campaigns. The base found Trump acceptable then and finds him acceptable now. Of course, the base doesn't encompass all GOP voters, but it can't be said that we got here because no one went out and vote; quite to the contrary, we are here because a great many people went and and voted for Trump.MarkHaversham wrote:Trump rarely won more than 40% of any state's vote in the primary and is driving Republican turnout to record lows, so I guess it depends how you define "broadly acceptable".
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This is mostly due to the presence of a dubious Google Consumer Survey poll.STLrainbow wrote:Nate Silver has Missouri leaning Kander
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/201 ... /missouri/
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of all the 2012 polls....Ebsy wrote:This is mostly due to the presence of a dubious Google Consumer Survey poll.STLrainbow wrote:Nate Silver has Missouri leaning Kander
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/201 ... /missouri/
Nate Silver, of the New York Times' FiveThirtyEight blog, concluded that Google Consumer Surveys was the #1 most accurate poll online and the #2 most accurate poll overall
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It is weird that the google poll results are so much different then other poll results in a lot of states. They have Clinton up 11 in Missouri, up 19 in Kansas! They may be right I just am skeptical of huge outliers like that that show such a dramatic shift from previous polls.dbInSouthCity wrote:of all the 2012 polls....Ebsy wrote:This is mostly due to the presence of a dubious Google Consumer Survey poll.STLrainbow wrote:Nate Silver has Missouri leaning Kander
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/201 ... /missouri/Nate Silver, of the New York Times' FiveThirtyEight blog, concluded that Google Consumer Surveys was the #1 most accurate poll online and the #2 most accurate poll overall
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They grade each poll and assign a weight based on reliability and recency. His methodology is actually very sound, statistically speaking.Ebsy wrote:This is mostly due to the presence of a dubious Google Consumer Survey poll.STLrainbow wrote:Nate Silver has Missouri leaning Kander
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/201 ... /missouri/
Google Consumer Surveys is a very bad pollster that regularly finds ridiculous results. The reason that their Kansas and Missouri results are so far off is that many IPs not actually from Kansas/Missouri end up here. This means a significant number of people taking the GCS polls in Kansas and Missouri aren't actually from the state.
Also, Nate Silver is a discredited fraud and his methodology is not really all that sound. Anyone with a calculator can average polls together, but what Silver is doing now is unskewing polls to match what he thinks the actual numbers are. Always a risky business, and one that usually ends up in disaster on election night. Now, Clinton will probably win by a wide enough margin on election night for it to not matter for Silver this cycle, but there are much better election statisticians then Silver.
Also, Nate Silver is a discredited fraud and his methodology is not really all that sound. Anyone with a calculator can average polls together, but what Silver is doing now is unskewing polls to match what he thinks the actual numbers are. Always a risky business, and one that usually ends up in disaster on election night. Now, Clinton will probably win by a wide enough margin on election night for it to not matter for Silver this cycle, but there are much better election statisticians then Silver.