Whoops, I forgot you're still mad at me for posting a pic of some homemade guac I made. It was you who said it looked like vomit, wasn't it?

According to you guac is rank, along with pretty much everyother food popular in the US. Perhaps you should spend less time indulging in shitty sarcasm on the internet and more time working on your palate, it might lighten you up a bit

Mexican food. Now we're on common ground

Nope, it wasn't me. But there you go again, proving everyone's points.

I assumed you to be substantially older judging by your avatar, no offence

Genuinely, didn't know what your name was about till a few minutes ago

I was 34 when that was taken . 37 now. No skin of my nose, I looked 40 when I was 18, so it is what it is.

Nate Silver has put up his General Election forecast up

projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

It will be interesting to follow this model over time, especially as we go through the conventions and announce VP picks.

And interesting how so many of these anti-Clinton claims fall apart at the seams when confronted with actual facts.

I've bookmarked the site, and PDF'd the site as it stands today so I can refer back to it.


Biggest observation for me is this:
Popular Vote:
Hillary Clinton 49.1%
Donald Trump 41.8%
Gary Johnson 7.8%


So if Johnson drops out, they are neck and neck assuming 'most' of Johnson's vote goes to Trump. Maybe that's a bad assumption. Obviously if the 'protest' vote for Johnson either splits evenly or stays at home entirely, things will remain largely unchanged.

Meh, national popular vote is great for the media to keep saying "it's neck and neck" but otherwise pointless. How it translates into electoral college votes on a state by state basis is much more important and according to Nate's numbers much more telling.

Much like Obama v Romney which was "a tight race" wasn't really in the end.

So lets ignore 'popular' vote. How do we predict what happens if Johnson is not in the race?


ETA: take AZ, which shows blue on the site, meaning all their Electoral College votes go to Clinton. But if you look at the state breakdown of votes, Clinton has 45%, Trump 44%, and Johnson 8%. If Johnson drops out, and all his votes go to Trump, then Trump wins AZ and gets all the Electoral College vote. In that regard, the 'popular vote' (in the swing states) makes a big difference.

I'd be interested to know if Jill Stein's potential vote is factored in. I'm guessing she's likely to take far more votes away from Clinton than from Trump, but have no idea how many it would likely be and whether or not it would ultimately have any effect.

RCP averages when Johnson and Stein included:

Clinton: 42.6%
Trump: 37.0%
Johnson: 7.6%
Stein: 4.3%

RCP averages when Johnson included:
Clinton: 41.9%
Trump: 36.6%
Johnson: 7.9%

RCP averages just Trump vs. Clinton:
Clinton: 44.7%
Trump: 39.8%

Interesting numbers. There isn't much difference between the numbers for Clinton/Trump. I guess there is about 10-15% of people who will vote anyone else but them, or not vote at all.

He isn't going to drop out. The Libertarians can be counted on for having a candidate for president.

But Libertarians don't win that high of a percentage of a vote, either. Johnson was their candidate in 2012, and received 1% of the vote. While it's possible that Trump will bolster the percentage of defectors for this election, I wouldn't count on it.

I would expect many voters to choose between the lesser of two evils, and I would guess that the popular vote will end up being close while the electoral vote will be a landslide for Clinton. What would help the Dems most is if an above-average number of GOP and GOP-leaning voters opt to sit this one out; I would not expect an above-average percentage off of them to defect to a different party, Libertarian or otherwise.

Thanks for that - I think you're most likely right.

I'm concerned that everyone is underestimating the number of Sanders supporters who are very anti-Clinton.