Trail Mix

Despite calming words from Hillary Clinton and President Obama, many anti-Trump Americans aren’t smoking the peace pipe.

New York Times: “Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Manhattan on Wednesday night and converged on Trump Tower in Midtown to protest the election of Donald J. Trump as president. Similar protests happened in several cities across the country, including Boston, Chicago, Seattle and Washington, and at college campuses in California, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.”

Hillary: “Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”

Obama: “We are all rooting now for his success in uniting and leading the country.”

There it is. For many, unthinkable. But for most, doable. That’s Democracy, majority rules.

Trump’s victory demonstrates how poorly we understood the fear and loathing out there, the abandonment of working folks, the arrogance of media elites and the assumptions of special interests.

The losers might blame what they see as the ignorant misogynist masses, and label Trump a demagogue, which only reaffirms this result for those who chose it.

Let this be a lesson, not a call to arms. If Washington, and the Democratic Party in particular, don’t take on some of the blame for this and stop belittling voters who want change, it happens again, just like it did in the 2014 midterms and again last night.

For mournful Hillary supporters I know your pain. I had chosen another Democrat to work for, and had to accept in the end that what he offered wasn’t selling. When the voters don’t see what you see it hurts.

Accepting what voters choose is what Democracy is all about.

Tracey Ullman once did a skit featuring a woman on a boat in choppy waters who sees a giant head of lettuce ahead and shouts, “Oh No, It’s Iceberg!”

This might not be a Titanic night for Hillary Clinton but it certainly is not the night many of us expected.

Donald Trump clearly has turned out voters who weren’t reached by pollsters, perhaps millions of disaffected Americans who don’t usually show up.

Win or lose, Trump gets bragging rights (not that he needs a justification to brag). Win or lose, it’s a stunning blow to the Clinton camp’s confidence.

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Slate breaks the traditional information embargo on election coverage with estimated results throughout the day.

By WhyskyJack, a Trail Mix Contributor

It is why the Cubbies are no longer the lovable losers and why my Royals won last year.

It is at the heart of the Clinton campaign decision making.

And in a controversial move Slate is going to use it to give us real time estimates on who is winning throughout the day.

From Slate:

Here’s a longer description of how this whole thing works. The project can be broken down into two phases: what happens before Tuesday, and what happens on the day itself. In the lead-up to Election Day, VoteCastr conducted large-sample surveys in eight battleground states. Unlike a typical media poll that might ask hundreds of respondents dozens of questions, these surveys presented thousands of people with just a handful of queries each. The results were then run through predictive models to determine the probabilities of each voter in each of the eight states casting a ballot for Clinton, Trump, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein. (VoteCastr did not include Evan McMullin in its models. The independent candidate is only on the ballot in two states we are tracking, Colorado and Iowa.)

The other piece of the pre–Election Day puzzle is early voting, which now accounts for an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the general election vote. Local officials collect and report information about who voted early in each state in advance of the election, and VoteCastr then compares that public info with its own private voter files. To understand how this works in practice, consider my early ballot, which I cast in Iowa City last week. Though VoteCastr doesn’t know who I voted for, it can make an educated guess based on the things it does know about me: my age, race, and party registration. Our friends at VoteCastr tell me the model believes there’s a 97 percent chance I voted for Clinton. When my name shows up on the list of people who voted early in the Hawkeye State, VoteCastr will use that number to fill in the blank. These voter preference estimates allow VoteCastr to make more specific forecasts about the early voting split than most other modelers, which simply sort returned ballots by party registration.

Slate is taking a lot of criticism for doing this while the polls are still open, but if they go ahead with it and it works (a risk in itself) then the flood gates are open.

Is it good? Is it bad?

Eh, I don’t know but I really don’t see how anyone can stop it.

Slate’s Votecastr page:
slate.com/votecastr

More Posts by WhskyJack

VoteCastr Estimates (4:40pm ET)