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Trump runs for POTUS/ Trumped Up! Part VII

I actually kind of respect Lindsey Graham. He knows his party is insane.

He, Ben Sasse and Jeff Flake did well in recognizing Donald's character and bailing immediately. Personal integrity is a rare thing in the Republican party.
 
He, Ben Sasse and Jeff Flake did well in recognizing Donald's character and bailing immediately. Personal integrity is a rare thing in the Republican party.

He hates Ted Cruz too though he probably would have begrudgingly supported him if he was the nominee.
 
Aren't the networks prohibited from calling the election until the polls close on the West Coast which is, I presume, 9:00PM PDST. So I guess the announcement of the projected winner will be at...oh about 9:00:30PM PDST? ;)

No. Networks are not prohibited from announcing East Coast results before West Coast polls close. It has been only a tacit agreement that none would do it.

Plus, it may have no effect on West Coast presidential voting:
Ballots get counted very fast these days.They are going to call a lot of states within minutes of the polls closing. The question is how close will Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nevada will be. If Florida and Pennsylvania and Ohio are called early for Hillary they may jump the gun because no one is going to get the west coast wrong.
 
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Aren't the networks prohibited from calling the election until the polls close on the West Coast which is, I presume, 9:00PM PDST. So I guess the announcement of the projected winner will be at...oh about 9:00:30PM PDST? ;)

To amplify on the last post on the subject.....

Networks aren't prohibited from announcing anything, because we have a free press. They can project whatever they want, and announce it when they want to.

What has been true since 1980 is that the major networks have all agreed that they will not make projections for any state until the polls have closed in that state, and they will not make any official projection of the final outcome until one candidate has had projections totaling 270 electoral votes.

In practice, in anything except an incredible rout, the Democratic candidate can't get to 270 without California, so no Democrat will be called before polls close in California. In 2008, it was obvious that Barack Obama was going to win, but they waited until the minute the polls closed in California to make the California projection, and therefore the overall election.

Meanwhile, in anything except an incredible Republican landslide, it would take a while to get a clear winner confirmed in Ohio, Florida, and maybe some of the western battlegrounds. At least a couple of those states would be too close to call for a few hours after the polls close, so it isn't likely that 270 Republican votes would come in before the polls close in California.

So, in anything except a landslide, the practical effect is that the networks won't make an official projection until after the west coast polls close. And of course, the projection is only "official" in the sense that it is that network's news department's recorded prediction. It's not like it carries any real weight.
 
To amplify on the last post on the subject.....

Networks aren't prohibited from announcing anything, because we have a free press. They can project whatever they want, and announce it when they want to.

What has been true since 1980 is that the major networks have all agreed that they will not make projections for any state until the polls have closed in that state, and they will not make any official projection of the final outcome until one candidate has had projections totaling 270 electoral votes.

In practice, in anything except an incredible rout, the Democratic candidate can't get to 270 without California, so no Democrat will be called before polls close in California. In 2008, it was obvious that Barack Obama was going to win, but they waited until the minute the polls closed in California to make the California projection, and therefore the overall election.

Meanwhile, in anything except an incredible Republican landslide, it would take a while to get a clear winner confirmed in Ohio, Florida, and maybe some of the western battlegrounds. At least a couple of those states would be too close to call for a few hours after the polls close, so it isn't likely that 270 Republican votes would come in before the polls close in California.

So, in anything except a landslide, the practical effect is that the networks won't make an official projection until after the west coast polls close. And of course, the projection is only "official" in the sense that it is that network's news department's recorded prediction. It's not like it carries any real weight.
Obama would have won in 2012 and 2008 even if he lost California.
 
Also, there is a political analysis firm that hopes to call the election by 7:00 EST. VoteCastr has been developing prediction software similar to that used by the parties. VoteCastr plans to use a formula to weigh results from certain key precincts and then call each state early.
 
Ballots get counted very fast these days.They are going to call a lot of states within minutes of the polls closing. The question is how close will Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nevada will be. If Florida and Pennsylvania and Ohio are called early for Hillary they may jump the gun because no one is going to get the west coast wrong.

The networks don't even really rely on counted ballots. They rely primarily on exit polls, and mathematical models based on them.

If their exit polls show a blowout in some state, usually like Montana for the Republicans and Massachusetts for the Democrats, they don't wait until anyone counts a ballot. If their exit polls are close, they wait for some ballots to come in, and they start comparing their exit poll results with real, counted results, and based on some model they wait until they are confident that the two sources of information give them enough confidence to believe that they won't make a mistake.

In all my years of watching elections, they've only gotten one state wrong using that method, and that was Florida 2000, of course. Their exit polling there predicted a win for Gore, but there was enough ballot failures in Palm Beach County and Gadsden County to throw off their models.
 
I actually kind of respect Lindsey Graham. He knows his party is insane.

I probably don't agree with him on much of anything, but he is an intelligent, responsible public servant. If he had been nominated with a decent running mate -- maybe Nikki Haley -- I think he would be beating Hillary.
 
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No. Networks are not prohibited from announcing East Coast results before West Coast polls close. It has been only a tacit agreement that none would do it.

Plus, it may have no effect on West Coast presidential voting:

California closes at 8 pm. All the networks, including Fox had called '12 within twenty minutes of that closing. The Karl Meltdown commenced at 9:18.

Voters are smart enough to do the math themselves. All three west coast states are going to Clinton this year. Alaska's going to Trump, Hawaii's going to Clinton, but the last states that count are at 8:00, and that's just the confirmation. In 2012, the Karl Meltdown was because Ohio was so tight. That's probably not going to happen this time. She could lose Ohio and even Florida and still win. In fact, she could win WITHOUT Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, or Nevada. She's going to take 2 of 3 in Maine, all of the count in New Hampshire, and that's enough. Her bellwether states were PA and VA and they are locked in.

I disagree with showing the exit polls during the voting day. Proven or not, there's still a big chance that people are influenced.... some might want to jump on a bandwagon, some might be pouting that their guy is losing... Being not proven, breaking with tradition, "because we can" doesn't seem right. You can't stop the news coverage of states that have closed from reaching those later states, so it's not a huge effect, but it could still move votes and that's not a good thing.
 
I probably don't agree with him on much of anything, but he is an intelligent, responsible public servant. If he had been nominated with a decent running mate -- maybe Nikki Haley -- I think he would be beating Hillary.
There were 16 other choices that would have been better in the Republican primary. Kasich and Jeb! would have done the best but they could not have made a worse choice for candidate.
 
Obama would have won in 2012 and 2008 even if he lost California.

True, but not using states that were callable before the times the polls closed in California. In 2012, if he hadn't gotten California, he needed Oregon and Washington, which closed at the same time as California, and Ohio, which was too close to call for some time after the polls closed.

Even in 2008, there was California and Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii left, and North Carolina was too close to call. All together, that left him short of 270 until the polls closed in California.

There wasn't exactly a lot of suspense in 2008, but they stuck to that form.
 
The networks don't even really rely on counted ballots. They rely primarily on exit polls, and mathematical models based on them.

If their exit polls show a blowout in some state, usually like Montana for the Republicans and Massachusetts for the Democrats, they don't wait until anyone counts a ballot. If their exit polls are close, they wait for some ballots to come in, and they start comparing their exit poll results with real, counted results, and based on some model they wait until they are confident that the two sources of information give them enough confidence to believe that they won't make a mistake.

In all my years of watching elections, they've only gotten one state wrong using that method, and that was Florida 2000, of course. Their exit polling there predicted a win for Gore, but there was enough ballot failures in Palm Beach County and Gadsden County to throw off their models.

Indeed. The best evidence that something in Florida was messed up was that the results were so far off the exit polls. Clearly, people didn't end up voting for who they thought they did.
 
There were 16 other choices that would have been better in the Republican primary. Kasich and Jeb! would have done the best but they could not have made a worse choice for candidate.

Let's not go too far. Would Carson, Cruz, Christie, Jindal, Santorum, Huckabee, Fiorina etc. really have been better than Trump? Different, sure, but better? Even Kasich had a reputation in Congress as a right-wing loon. Pataki might have made the best president of the bunch, but he was too mainstream for the Repub base.
 
Let's not go too far. Would Carson, Cruz, Christie, Jindal, Santorum, Huckabee, Fiorina etc. really have been better than Trump? Different, sure, but better? Even Kasich had a reputation in Congress as a right-wing loon. Pataki might have made the best president of the bunch, but he was too mainstream for the Repub base.

Well, it depends on what "better" means. Several of those, with the relentless negative drip drip drip against Hillary might have actually won. I think the two leaders at the end (Trump and Cruz) were/are very beatable. I think Jeb, Kasich, Christie, Walker could have appeared moderate but dog-whistled the far right and could have beaten her (20/20 hindsight). I don't think the others were ever in the game.

In retrospect, the killer was that Walker and his Koch money bowed out so soon. Instead of learning from Iowa, he quit. Jeb? His heart just wasn't in it. I know you can't make a bowl of oatmeal exciting but he just plain always looked like he wanted to be somewhere else.
 
At this point I wonder if Donald does not want to take as many downticket Republicans down with him as possible...as revenge for not supporting him enough.
 
At this point I wonder if Donald does not want to take as many downticket Republicans down with him as possible...as revenge for not supporting him enough.

It would be hilarious if Donald tells his followers not to vote for say Paul Ryan, they obey and he loses.
 

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