Donald Trump has clinched the Republican nomination for President. This will become official in Cleveland in early July when the Republicans hold their convention.
Hilary Clinton has won the Democratic nomination, although it is still being reported as contested.
In 2008, Obama won the nomination after North Carolina voted on May 6, 2008. Those of us that who performed well in the Pennsylvania primary campaign for him that ended late April were sent to North Carolina to partner with campaign staffers in key areas. Theoretically, we should have been beating the crap out of the HRC campaign, but days before the vote we received a conference call from a semi-panicked state chairperson telling us that we were behind and something to the effect of "would regret it for the rest of our lives." This kind of panic was rampant in response to last minute, outlier polls that really didn't show what was happening in the bigger picture. We went on to win NC handily, followed by HRC refusing to drop out of the race until the last state had voted. A vindictive part of me is glad that Sanders is doing the same thing to her.
There's an important lesson to learn from that North Carolina poll and panicked call from a senior campaign staffer: You really, really have to put polls in context. The same situation famously happened in 2012, when right before the general election we were being told that Romney was going to beat Obama because of things like tightening national polls, and high profile reporters seeing many lawn signs for Romney in New York. That election was never going to be close, and Obama won by nearly historic amounts.
When you hear a poll, particularly one that says Trump is beating HRC, please remember the following:
- The national percentage of support for each candidate means absolutely nothing. Each state is allocated a number of votes (called Electoral College votes) for President based on their proportion of the population from the last census. The total number of votes needed to win is 270 of the 538 total.
- Electoral College votes are largely winner take all for each state. Nebraska and Maine use slightly different rules.
- If there is a tie, things can get very very very weird. Not going to get into that today.
- Right now you can say with near 100% certainty that HRC can not possibly get less than 217 votes, and Trump can't get less than 191. http://www.270towin.com/
- This leaves 130 electoral votes up for grabs, with HRC needing 53.
- Here are the states that are not allocated above:
- State Name, Number of electoral college votes, current party registration breakdown
- Florida (29), D38.8-R35.0
- Ohio (18), R42-D41
- North Carolina (15), D41.7-R30.4
- Virginia (13), R42-D40
- Wisconsin (10), D43-R41
- Colorado (9), R32.9-D30.9
- Nevada (6) D39.7-R34.6
- Iowa (6), R32-D31.1
- New Hampshire (4) , R30.1 D 27.2
And this analysis doesn't begin to consider questions like: Will non-white voters vote for Trump? How will that impact states with high percentages of non-white voters (eg: Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida...let alone the names currently allocated to the Repbulicand like Arizona). What percentage of women are going to vote for Trump (everywhere)? What about college educated (Virginia)?
News media are going to default to stories about this election being close. They are going to make Trump seem like a rational presidential candidate by telling a story like Trump accusing HRC of participating in killing a drug dealer in the 90s alongside stories of HRC campaign rally, ideas and missteps as if they were equivalent statements.
The email issue continues to be the main unknown in this race: If the DONALD can frame her as a criminal, then perhaps he can swing some states his direction. Otherwise, this race is already over and HRC has won.
*shoutout to any GoT fans. Heartbreaking story about Hodor.
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