Since I posted here on Election night that Clinton won I owe some explanation.
It was sent during a canvass near the VT border in NH – I got a couple of texts from Floridians from Hillsborough and Broward from former legal protection colleagues.
Tampa decides Florida. We won Tampa, and the Broward margin looked great.
I posted at 7:47.
No way we lose. I felt relieved – my precincts in NH were behind 2012 by a good margin.
But the suburbs of Tampa I missed. And it was there Florida, and the Presidency would be lost.
I wasn’t in any position to update – I left the vote canvass (ie the vote count) when completed and went immediately to Concord. And by the time I had finished the hour drive it had all gone to hell.
Pasco County. Just north of Hillsborough. The text came at 8:03. The people in the text chat I was in all knew what it meant: doom.
Here is why:
- Obama margin: -14k
- Clinton margin: -52
Clinton runs 9 points behind Obama. Turnout explodes.
As Steve Shale documents well, it presaged the collapse of the white vote in the exurbs. The pattern would be repeated.
Moments later Pinellas (St Pete) – which Kerry carried in 2004
Obama 2012: +26K
Clinton 2016: -6K
Polk County came 8:17
- Obama -17K
- -40K
Obama: 46%, Clinton 41%
Sarasota about 10 minutes later
- Obama -15
- Clinton -26
Clinton ran behind Obama by 10 points.
And finally Hernando, about 45 miles north of Tampa. Obama lost by only 7K, and won 45% of the vote. Clinton ran 11 points behind Obama, and lost the County by 27K
Total Change in Margin from the 5 counties surrounding Tampa: -122K
Total Florida margin: -114
There were other changes. On the other end of I-4 Clinton ran far behind Obama.
But the counties I mention are not rural counties, but not urban either. These are home to subdivisions. Sarasota is upscale and rich. Polk home to Lakeland – cracker country. But Obama had won 46% of it by piecing the African American and Hispanic communities together and holding his own elsewhere.
I have never been more hopeful about American politics as when I looked at Polk post 2012. In the hardcore redneck precincts a black man fought Romney to a near draw. These are places with gun racks in the back of the cab of the pickup. Obama didn’t win them – but he was competitive.
The future seemed obvious: increasing Hispanic vote would finish the tide begun in 2008
But for the dream to live the margin in places like Polk and Pasco had to be reasonable.
It was the that last part that collapsed. The decline in the margins in some precincts are frightening – as high as 20 points.
Steve Schale’s own analysis – he did targeting for Florida for Obama is here.
http://steveschale.squarespace.com/blog/2016/11/14/florida-2016-in-the-rearview-mirror.html
Holy smoke! That is some collapse. Any idea of the income decile in those suburbs? Connected to the foreclosures?
I did see some predictions of Haitians not going her way…
So a group with the Party is looking.
But it is kind of disturbingly widespread.
Downscale working class
Upper class retirees
Coupes with kids in the subdivisions
You see a 15 point, 20 point shift in these counties.
Incredible
This is why I loved Obama. He could fight in these counties better than Kerry or Gore. We had something positive to say.
Clinton’s entire strategy was Trump is a bad guy.
The collapse is so stunning it is hard to say anything.
Did you see the Huffington post article of her “ground game” in Wisconsin? Talk about hubris.
From a Sanders person it sounds like sour grapes.
Steve tries to note that the GOTV organization in the exurbs wasn’t there in Florida.
Just…
So fucked up. They struggled with volunteer enthusiasm but thought they could just hire people.
And none of the Sanders field staff would get hired.
Just…
I don’t understand what Brooklyn was thinking.
Yep same in Michigan — except they didn’t even dole out the money:
m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_582cacb0e4b058ce7aa8b861
I think she’d have lost in 2008 after reading shit like this. And I was sure she’d have won just as much (maybe slightly less) than Obama at the time.
So there is something called the VAN, that contains an updated list of registered voters, their party and a map with walking instructions.
By the last weekend in October you should only be knocking on known supporters and leaners, and everyone should have been contacted twice.
So your quote actually suggests there was no real effective organization in Michigan. The first step – making sure your VAN is accurate was not done.
It is an amazing and depressing quote.
Wonder how much from the mega-dollar HVF donations ended up in the MI state coffers? Or if MI was even one of the states that signed onto the deal?
It would be a massive undertaking to audit the HVF distributions (and it can’t done without also tracking those distributions in the records of the state DP and DNC accounts).
OTOH, whatever the complaints of local and state DPs, it isn’t meaningful without information on what dollars and resources the GOP national, state, and local operations had to work with.
There’s a limit to how much enthusiasm dollars can buy.
bizarre. and what happened to all the $ she was raising, what did it go for? thanks for link!
TV adverts in Omaha and AZ. They were trying to buy a landslide win.
truly bizarre. still shocked at what a bad campaign she ran.
and why didn’t she run a better campaign? bizarre
Campaign reflect who the candidate is.
Some of the Wednesday-morning-critics are claiming that she should have adopted more of Bernie’s stump speeches for the general. I don’t think that would have helped because her heart wasn’t in that place and it would have added another layer to the preexisting impression that she wasn’t trustworthy or honest.
She was a weak candidate for this moment, but a billion dollars got her very, very close. In my imagination, a truly gifted and skilled politician would have made mincemeat out of Trump. Imaginary because I’ve never seen a truly gifted and skilled politician. (Bill Clinton seems to think he is and seemed to wish that he was the one going head-to-head against Trump. But his record doesn’t confirm that at all.)
I think you raise a great point. Monday morning quarterbacking says she should have campaigned more in the midwestern blue states. But its also possible that campaigning personally would have hurt her. If her rallies had drawn much fewer people than Trump rallies, you can be sure that Fox news would have autolooped a juxtaposition of the two.
Hillary obviously did something wrong to have lost to a person like Trump, but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about what exactly she should have done. Ultimately, it has to be something that fits her.
Ultimately, it has to be something that fits her.
Exactly. Kaine fit her. And probably made it easier for her to carry VA.
If as fladem and I suspect that guns were a silent issue, more campaigning in the parts of PA, OH, MI, and WI where she was weak could easily have cost her votes.
Schumer bragged several months ago that for every rural PA voter that Democrats lost, they’d pick up two or three Republicans in the suburbs. Objectively, if those Republicans are rational, they would align themselves with a Clinton party. Still operating under the assumption that if the Democratic Party is indistinguishable from the non-southern GOP of sixty years ago that Democrats have no other place to go. Doesn’t matter how often those Democrats demonstrate that they do have other places to go, they’re sticking with their illusion.
She had not theme. This is not unique to her – Democrats often has this problem. They have a list of proposals but struggle to nit it all together.
I saw her in person 3 times. She was very passionate and believable on women’s issues and on child/family issues.
The rest. Meh.
I think they needed much more of a positive message.
Good god typing on a phone makes me look stupid…
Of course she had a theme. Same one she had in ’08.
After nearly two decades, passionate speech on the same issue leaves people wanting to see list of accomplishments on the issue. On this one, she also has that demerit from her support of Bill’s welfare reform.
well yes. I think what happened started way back. surrounding themselves only by yes ppl, and furthermore, they’re ppl who make money off the campaign itself, so they’re sitting in catbird seat.
would have made a huge difference to make some personal appearances – restaurants, diners, like the candidates do in NH – around the country. no need for big crowds, would show interest in the region and it’s citizens.
no one was willing to give her a different perspective and she didn’t choose advisors who would.
She did that diner/etc. circuit at the minimal level required in IA and NH and she had many surrogates (including Bill and Chelsea) working that circuit on her behalf. That form of campaigning is viewed as the way a candidate build name recognition, the one thing she wasn’t short on.
Agree that what happened stated way back. Like 1993 way back.
mistake. she should have done it in midwest during the campaign if she was afraid she wouldn’t get a big crowd at rally.
Bill and Chelsea? you’re kidding me. with the anti- Hillary feeling out there, sending Bill of all ppl! voters would just chalk it up to more “couldn’t be bothered”. as far as Chelsea goes, I have no idea.
no, I’m saying if she’d made any effort at retail politicking to counter the highly negative perception of her that ppl had from before, it would have made a difference.
The main difference between the Sanders and Clinton campaigns. Volunteer enthusiasm vs a mountain of Wall Street cash.
White ghettos tend to be suburban. Priced out of the city.
Amazon and USPS just did a big deal and there is talk of suburban Walmartization as more upscale dept stores find bricks and mortar to be non-competitive. Wonder what another 4 yrs will do to these places?
There is a point there. I was going to go to Walmart one Friday to buy something that might be there. I don’t remember what. the weather was bad, torrential rain. My wife said, why don’t you look on Amazon. I found the item and ordered it (I belong to Amazon Prime). USPS delivered it Sunday morning! Sunday! No muss, no fuss. No (extra) delivery charge. Illinois tax taken out. Conveniently in my mail box. I remmber now. it was a cell phone battery. Turns out they did have it at Walmart. Same price. but much more convenient to walk down the driveway in my T-shirt to get it without burning gas or dressing up.
For those who are aghast that I deal with walmart and Amazon instead of a local hardware store charging twice as much – as General McAuliffe said “Nuts!”
Modern retail: Walmart versus Amazon.
As a child, I was taught to buy local as much as possible. Nationwide and regional chains existed and had their place, but a few pennies more (when pennies still had some value) for local meant more pennies remained local. On that measure, don’t know that there’s much difference between Walmart and Amazon.
“Local” has a different meaning at the edge of a giant city. I remember buying groceries at grocery stores rather than supermarkets. But there was no local clothing store nor hardware store so most non-food purchases were at Sears & Roebuck or Kresge’s or Woolworth’s. Not much difference between Sears and Walmart to me. Farm Country had the Sears & Ward’s catalogs, precursors to Amazon. For that special Christmas purchase one rode the bus or “El” to the Loop and shopped at Carson, Pirie, Scott or Marshall Field’s. Rich people shopped there all the time and sneered at Sears & Ward’s.
Back then practically all the merchandise sold by the nationals was made in the US. Perhaps by then some of the cheap stuff at Woolworth’s was imported from Japan. High retailers may have stocked more imports.
For clothing more Penney’s or homemade (local fabric store) when I young, by twelve when I began making and purchasing my own clothes, either local independents or the local department store. Local pharmacies and hardware stores. (I miss those old hardware stores — they really had everything.) It’s become nearly impossible to find cosmetics not made in China (which I refuse to buy). (My mother also sneered at Sears and Wards because they didn’t offer good value.)
Then the larger regionals began gobbling up the locals, then the larger regionals fought with the nationals in gobbling up the smaller regionals (a bloodbath in the department store business sector) until we have what left? Probably didn’t matter too much in the later stages because by then they all carried the same stuff. More efficient to have one buyer selecting the merchandise for a hundred stores than ten buyers selecting merchandise that fit with the image of the store and customers. We Americans pride ourselves on our individuality and we are perfectly satisfied to wear whatever everyone else wears.
Just checked my memory: Wikipedia List of defunct department stores.
Ah yes, Wieboldt’s and Goldblatt’s. A cut above Kresge and Woolworth. Clothes at Wieboldt’s, furnishings at GoldBlatt’s. All four of these within a block of each other and the CTA bus stop. An easy half mile walk from home.
Re imports. I do remember in High School buying my mother some German (or Danish?) crystal for Christmas at Marshall Field’s. IIRC, $16, twenty hours work at the lumber yard. It’s in a box in my basement now. It was always “Too good to use, only for show”. We only used it that Christmas morning.
LOL — It’s in a box in my basement now. It was always “Too good to use, only for show”. We only used it that Christmas morning.
Reminds me of the last time I visited my aunt Em. I arrived with a bouquet of flowers, and she immediately rushed up to the attic to get the vase I’d sent her for her fiftieth wedding anniversary. Might have been the only time she’d ever used it. It’s probably now sitting in her sister’s basement along with the never used vase I’d sent her and grandma’s silverware that nobody in the family wants to polish or to use to actually eat with.
These women couldn’t shake their Great Depression mentality–probably because it was so traumatic. For years my mother left on the clear wrapping encasing her lamp shades and always had a large throw on the sofa so it would be protected. Growing up, I heard how scarce food and clothing were. Luckily, my grandfather was a skilled hunter and fisherman so no one starved. My grandmother made mom’s clothes from flour sacks, too.
I do respect not being wasteful and being protective of what little one has been able to acquire. But walk into any upper-middle and lower-upper class home and there’s the china cabinet stuffed with the “good stuff” that may be used once year. However, they pass on furniture protective throw covers and simply redecorate and buy all new every few years. I’ve lost count as to what number sofa my sis is now on and none of them ever looked as good or were as comfortable as my one and only.
Is that why Mom put those Fingerhut clear plastic seat covers on the ’63 Impala, only new car she ever had?
Could have been an “in thing” at that time.
RE, inheritance taxes should not be a big issue for the white ghettos.
OT, but remember the other day we were talking about the importance of rhetoric and communication? Thought you would find this article interesting:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/clinton-campaign-politics_us_5833866de4b030997bc10520
very interesting, thanks for link.
Obama had the advantage in ’08 of running after a two-term GOP administration that should have resulted in the GOP nominee not breaking 40%, add in the financial meltdown that struck and couldn’t be hidden in mid-September, and a GOP VP nominee that was scary. Obama rode the existing hope and change wave. ’12 a majority prefers to give an incumbent a second chance unless he has proved to be wanting and the other candidate looks like a reasonable alternative.
Obama does get credit for riding that wave, and while not as big of a wave, Dukakis didn’t.
wow! some numbers!
Numerical stories from the battlegorund states are fascinating.
But what is the probability of election fraud in the collapsing precincts?
Zero. The Democratic Legal Protection is the Tampa area is massive. All early voting sites are monitored by at least one lawyer – this accounts for 70 percent of all vote cast. Day of thousands of lawyers all across Florida monitor voting sites.
Moreover in many of these counties the Counter Board of Elections are run by Democrats.
IT. DIDN”T. HAPPEN.
Thanks for this. I hope someone is doing a similar analysis for the Rio Grande counties in TX and the marginal counties to the minority-majority counties across the South that flipped Repubican.
It’s still not done here because of a challenge trying to keep Pat McCrory in. One precinct in my county had to go to manual lookup of registration. GOP wants to validate votes at that precinct and recount others. Meanwhile Roy Cooper’s count in counties not yet certified keeps widening his margin. Hope for best. Would give us Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General–rest GOP. GOP majority General Assembly in both houses.
Something I think about Hispanic growth in redneck counties maybe?
We WON a lot of votes in the last 2 cycles that just have flipped.
Right now I don’t have a good explanation.
But man, the flips are huge
I’m reading that Southwestern Hispanics went significantly more for Trump than Romney. Surprising.
But Texas Hispanics are small business men to teh bone. Maybe that is bleeding west?
California? Have not read of that happening there.
Here’s a recap of the USC/LATimes ’16 tracking polls
Generally, tracking polls produce more accurate snapshots; so, during the general election I did frequently glance at the this one. It continuously looked like an outlier from the plethora of “random sample” polls. Sometimes by a point or two, and sometimes by a seemingly large number. Almost always with Trump in the lead. This perplexed me, but how could one pollster be getting it right when the aggregate of the other pollsters were checking in with a far higher number of voters?
Recommending that others review this isn’t so much because USC/Times came closer to the mark but because many of my perceptions at particular points during the campaign were off. Keep in mind when looking at this that the lag time between event and public response is longer than that of the instant snapshot polling.
For example, while we here at the pond had a good laugh over the nearly ridiculous RNC convention, Trump got a healthy bounce from it. Is it possible that the DP, OMG Melania cribbed from Michelle’s speech go too far? Nobody believed believed or expected that Melania actually wrote the thing; so, perhaps people had empathy for her being held accountable for what the hack speechwriter had done?
The First Graph
Clinton’s 9/11 collapse hurt her a lot. But was that based on the event or how her campaign publicly addressed it with various and some conflicting statements in an effort to dismiss it as no big deal? As if people had no personal experience of medical events (either their own or those they’ve seen) and could be dissuaded from reading it as more than a minor fainting episode.
Trump maintained his lead after the first debate. What did I miss or misread in that event? Or did he just get points for showing up? A downside for a candidate like Clinton is that it doesn’t escape the notice of the public that she’s had years of debate training/coaching and blocked out several days to prepare for this one. Did that make her look inauthentic? Scripted and therefore, as much of a blank slate as Trump?
Opinions from the subsequent two debates can’t be teased apart from the Clinton campaign’s attacks on Trump’s past boorish behaviors towards women. This period hurt Trump and helped Clinton. But the trendlines began moving in favor of Trump and During this period Trump was hurt and Clinton was fading BEFORE Comey’s announcement and continued moving in the same direction after it.
Age through gender graphs are consistent with the others polls. Careful and thoughtful review of these might reveal some interesting things. Note that Trump led by a healthy margin with all income groups above $34,999. Below $35,000 was a near mirror image the $35-75,000 graph.
Who Do You Think Will Win may be the most interesting of all. The majority, and only three times a plurality, in this tracking poll accepted the presumed wisdom of all conventional sources of information that Clinton as POTUS was inevitable. All of those below 50% Clinton dips are consistent with the ups and downs as to “who will you vote for.” A RNC convention bounce for Trump, Clinton’s health event dip, and Trump’s 1st debate bounce. Guess a lot of people aren’t so good at predicting what other people will do.
It appears they were not catching the flips in the two lowest economic deciles, either.
The only flip by income group was among those =/>$75,000 and with some back and forth until it settled down for Trump by mid-late September.
They use a 5 day rolling average. They did catch movement in the debate, but not until their sample was six days out.
This is something to watch in polling – frequently it is 3-4 days behind the present.
I will take a look.
Here is the consolidated chart. Mine is a 5 day moving average – so its more volatile than other charts you will see (I do that intentionally)
Last 2 weeks – a slow and steady decline.
Political Guerriilla Theater
Not without some risk, but imagining arrival terminals all over place with waiting greeters holding the same sign everyday for months on end. Could drive US official security nuts chasing a phantom.
With their claim that the Orlando shootings were not a straight-cut case of the child of Muslim immigrants targeting gays for terrorism because Islam considers homosexuality to be a sin punishable by death, Obama and Loretta Lynch forced me to start reading right-wing blongs. From one of those, I learned this about how the election was going in Florida:
Current Vote Trends Show Trump Will Carry Florida By Close To Ten Points 55-45… (10/25)
That blog post sounded plausible to me when I read it, so I decided that Florida would go to Trump at that point. (OK, that author said that Trump would have a 10% margin, whereas he ended up winning Florida by only 1%, but still, the blogger got the basic idea right, I think.)
Disagree. His/her argument that FL was “TrumpLand” was way off base. I had FL in Trump’s column for months because it was a close ’08 and very close ’12 blue state, ’16 was inherently a change election year (like ’60 and ’00), and N/E liberal (by reputation) is weaker as a D nominee in that state. Each of those not-D factors were weak enough that I expected a very close election result, under 3%.
That blogger would have been closer to hitting the mark if she/he had argued that IA or OH was TrumpLand (neither by 10% but at 9.6% and 8.6% I wouldn’t quibble). However, she/he would still have to explain why both flipped so dramatically.
Florida is always close, and because of the diverse number of factors very hard to predict.
But it is always close. The Governor’s races in 2010 and 2014 were dog fights.
Michael McDonald at FSU added all the votes up from ’96 to now in Presidential races, and found a 30K difference in nearly 50 million votes.
Even after the collapse on either end of I-4 we lost by less than a point.
It is very complicated and a little bit of a push you pull me animal. Go too far right and you pump up the Panhandle, but will pay for it in the SouthEast.
I am going to look at the 5 counties around Tampa with census data to see if I can find out what went wrong.
will be interested to see that. worked on GOTV there in 2004. we thought Kerry had won based on our door to door. not so.
Losing FL by 5 was quote a shock.
I worked legal protection and went door to door in 2004.
I thought we had it won.
Team captain for our group knew FL very well. It was from him that I thought our GOTV results indicated a win. lots of early voting where we went. is there any chance there was any funny business with the count or was it a harbinger of things to come [in 2016]?
David Wasserman’s popular vote total spreadsheet is an excellent reference. The others seem not to be keeping their tallies up to date as more ballots are counted.
Visually, it highlights the swings from ’12 to ’14. Many are massive and far outside historical precedents except when it was detected in multiple ways before election day. Quite stunning in a number of states that were already so red that there wouldn’t seem to be any more GOP voters that could be found.