Sunday, August 21, 2016

Playing With the Polling Numbers Mid-August 2016 Version

It's either this or writing three different science fiction short stories I can plug together to make an self-published anthology I can use to teach an e-publishing class at my library next month.

Anyway.

Going by Nate Silver's 538 polling forecasts as of August, which shows the likelihood one state is leaning between Hillary and Trump - so far, neither Johnson or Stein have enough percentages within each state - let's go with the states that are so clearly going for one candidate that they are basically locks this November, and convert that result into the 270towin.com mapping for better visualization:


Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

Look at that. These are the states already locked up. Hillary has THAT huge of an electoral lead. Granted, there's still a lot of states left to go.

Now, next let's add the states that are leaning either for Hillary or Trump but have enough of the "wiggle room" room crossing the dividing line to make them competitive. However, leave off the states where the current average - represented by a dot centered in that sliding bar - is closest to that line.

Let's start off with Trump-leaning states:


Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com


Okay, that adds in a lot of Red to the map. Let's add Hillary-leaning states now:


Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com


If we were just playing this as a game of numbers, it'd already be over. But this is just forecasting: the actual results won't matter until when people, you know, actually FREAKING VOTE.

And for the final touch, let's fill in the final states - Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina and Missouri - based on how their sliding bar of interest ekes across the middle of the numbers, and how the Dot of Averages specifically lines up:


Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com


It's not a huge Electoral beatdown - nothing like 1984 or 1964 - but it will be a bigger win than Obama's electoral numbers (and every likelihood of a Popular vote landslide victory), showing a nationwide track of Democratic dominance that the Republican Party can no longer ignore. And if Hillary can flip at least Georgia and South Carolina - which is possible if she campaigns aggressively in those states - she can shove a stake into the heart of the Southern Strategy monster that the Far Right had been counting on the last 40 years.

Granted, this is still August, and there's still the debates - if Trump deigns to show up - and anything can happen, and who knows what October Surprise is in store from the wingnuts... and this still all requires one thing:

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, DEMOCRATS! Show up at the ballot box, in spite of the GOP suppression efforts! DOOO EEEETTTTTTTTT!

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