Let's start the dissection - polls and their seeming inaccuracy

[Loren Pechtel]

Partially, so many people don't respond to pollsters these days. Even if they correct the demographics that doesn't mean they actually get a representative sample. When so many people won't talk to them you would not expect the ones that do to be representative.

Partially, the election was stolen by the fraud from the FBI. Unfortunately, nothing will be done about it. Even if there is an investigation Trump will put an end to it before anything is actually done about the wrongdoing.

Unfortunately, our legal system provides no meaningful solution to dirty deeds that leave the victim unable to get their day in court, nor to election day irregularities of any type.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgJmJ-0I6t0

Fantastic analysis by Steve Davies on what drove Trump voters. The man is very insightful.

 

[bilby]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/?ex_cid=2016-forecast

What would have happened if just 1 out of every 100 voters shifted from Trump to Clinton? That would have produced a net shift of 2 percentage points in Clinton’s direction.

...

If this had happened, the interpretation of the outcome would have been very different — something like this, I’d imagine:

• Republicans simply can’t appeal to enough voters to have a credible chance at the Electoral College. While states like Ohio and Iowa might be slipping away from Democrats, they’ll be more than made up for by the shift of Arizona, North Carolina and Florida into the blue column as demographic changes take hold. Democrats are the coalition of the ascendant.
• The United States was more than ready for the first woman president. And they elected her immediately after the first African-American president. With further victories for liberals over the past several years on issues ranging from gay rights to the minimum wage, the arc of progress is unmistakable.
• American political institutions are fairly robust. When a candidate like Trump undermines political norms and violates standards of decency, he’s punished by the voters.

In light of Trump’s narrow victory, these arguments sound extremely unconvincing. But they’re exactly what we would have been hearing if just 1 out of 100 voters had switched from Trump to Clinton.