So Kasich has bailed now too.

Was ardtho saying Trump wouldn't be the nominee or President?

-PB

yep, he came back from the dead

i use to think, that US having a power Equal, this would make the world a stable better world...it's simply not true

poll aggregates at this time of the year are generally pretty good predictors of the general election (as opposed to January Febuary polls which are weak predictors)
Poll aggregates seem to show that trump will be a disaster for the republican party

who is they
typically I have seen two types of analysis
"polls plus forecasts" which is really just peoples opinions
and polls only forecasts based on the predictivity of polls a certain time out from an election and the average of polls (often weighted by their historical accuracy)
the "polls plus forecasts" which are really just glorified opinions dominate early when polls only forecasts are unreliable. But peoples opinions aren't any better.

But polls only forecasts have always shown trump winning the primary and losing the general by a large margin.
It will be interesting to see how much Trump will hurt republicans down ballot

right but that was just peoples opinions

poll aggregates have always shown a strong showing from trump in the primary

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-gop-primary

general election looks good for hillary though

Trump got a lot of skeptism because he is a rare candidate disliked by the left are right establishment

some curve balls could always happen of course
a recession
a major terrorist attack just before the election
a third party running
but in the absence of anything like that I think Hillary is almost inevitable

So what happens now in the remaining primaries? There's just one name on the ticket lol?

Will the GOP still have some wankey ace up the sleeve @ the convention?

-PB

Absolutely zero chance of Sanders being his running mate, but he will pander to Sanders supporters as hard as he can. For one, Sanders just would not do it - Trump would have more chance of getting Clinton to agree to be his VP.

I think that he's going to name Kasich, even though Kasich has said that he doesn't want to be VP.

Trump/Kasich will still be enough to beat Clinton unless she names Sanders as her running mate (unlikely) and adopts a lot more of Sanders' platform.

W.H.Bush and W.Bush have said they will not vote at all

you guys talk about Bernie supports not voting for Clinton :lol:

These key Republican figures say they are voting for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump

http://www.vox.com/2016/5/4/11590356/stop-donald-trump-republicans-vote-hillary-clinton

the GOP is going to nominate for President a guy who reads the National Enquirer and thinks it's on the level. I'm with her.
Republican Sen. John McCain's top aide, Mark Salter

For the thick-headed: #NeverTrump means never ever ever ever ever under any circumstances as long as I have breath never Trump. Get it?
Tony Fratto, the deputy press secretary under former President George W. Bush

I am no longer a Republican
RedState blog's editor Ben Howe

I have officially de-registered as a Republican
Philip Klein, the managing editor of the conservative newspaper the Washington Examiner

:p

Edited by adrtho: 6/5/2016 07:34:51 AM

Poor adrtho will breakdown when trump becomes president.

the world might break down if he does...my goal is to make money and be safe when it does

What will be interesting to see is whether there is a realignment on the right, and a splintering of the Republican Primary. Or whether Trump is a singular candidate, and once he is gone normal service resumes...

Trump is not becoming President, any one who thinks he will is deluded. He has divided the Republican Party, a significant proportion hate him and will not vote for him. He will not get a lot of support publicly from fellow Republicans, he will struggle to appoint a reasonable VP running mate.

Clinton may not be a great candidate but she is much better than Trump.

the number of republicans who think hillary is better than trump is about 20 percent which is a huge number
the number of sanders supporters who will not vote for hillary is about 10 percent which is typical

we are probably looking at a landslide democrat win

Interestingly, Trump and Clinton are the 2 most unpopular presidential candidates in polling history:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-distaste-for-both-trump-and-clinton-is-record-breaking/

The Democratic primary will technically march on, but Hillary Clinton is almost certainly going to be her party’s nominee. Same with Donald Trump. And voters don’t appear thrilled at the prospect: Clinton and Trump are both more strongly disliked than any nominee at this point in the past 10 presidential cycles.

Normally, when we talk about candidate likability, we use favorability ratings, which combine “strongly favorable,” “somewhat favorable,” “somewhat unfavorable” and “strongly unfavorable.” But that didn’t work so well in the Republican primary, where Trump was able to win despite a relatively low net favorability rating because his “strongly favorable” rating with Republican primary voters was among the highest in the field. So let’s look at Trump and Clinton’s “strongly1 favorable” and “strongly unfavorable” ratings among general election voters.

These are people who don’t just like or dislike the candidates, they really like or dislike them.

No past candidate comes close to Clinton, and especially Trump, in terms of engendering strong dislike a little more than six months before the election.

Clinton’s average “strongly unfavorable” rating in probability sample polls from late March to late April, 37 percent, is about 5 percentage points higher than the previous high between 19803 and 2012. Trump, though, is on another planet. Trump’s average “strongly unfavorable” rating, 53 percent, is 20 percentage points higher than every candidate’s rating besides Clinton’s. Trump is less disliked than David Duke was when Duke ran for the presidency in 1992, but Duke never came close to winning the nomination. In fact, I’ve seen never anything like Trump’s numbers heading into a general election for someone who is supposed to be competitive.4

Part of the negativity voters feel toward Clinton and Trump probably has something to do with growing political polarization in our country. But polarization doesn’t explain everything. If Trump and Clinton’s strongly unfavorable ratings were simply a byproduct of polarized politics, you’d expect them to have high “strongly favorable” ratings too. They don’t. You can see this in their net strong favorability ratings (the “strongly favorable” rating minus the “strongly unfavorable” rating):

No major party nominee before Clinton or Trump had a double-digit net negative “strong favorability” rating. Clinton’s would be the lowest ever, except for Trump.

In previous cycles, the nominees of each party almost always had a strongly favorable and unfavorable rating within 10 percentage points of each other. The only exception was Michael Dukakis in 1988; only 19 percent of Americans felt strongly about Dukakis, either favorably or unfavorably. Over 50 percent of Americans give Clinton and Trump either a “strongly favorable” or “strongly unfavorable” rating, and most of that feeling is negative.

The good news for both candidates is that we’re still six months from the election. Dukakis was clearly more strongly liked than George H.W. Bush in 1988 at this point in the campaign, and it was Bush who went on to win the election. George W. Bush, in 2000, was also more strongly liked than Al Gore at this point, and the 2000 election ended up being really close. That is, there is time for these impressions to change.

Of course, we’ve never had two nominees like this, about whom so many voters had already made up their minds — emphatically. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. Voters see this campaign, for now, as truly a choice between the lesser of two evils.

Trump will be president, no doubt about it.

As if you wouldn't run with Trump. 90% of these politicians just want more money and power, if they think Trump has a shot they will be queuing up.
Also just because Trump is a republican people still veiw him as an outsider. He will get some Democrat voters backing him on that premise alone.

Definitive statements are ridiculous.

On current polling Trump is far more unpopular than Clinton, but they are both very unpopular.

We won't know anything until we start getting consistent polling on the Trump v Clinton match up.

But if you were going to be money this far out, Clinton would be favourite by a long way.

The split within the republicans over Trump is a far far far bigger issue than any potential Sanders supporters not backing Clinton.

I dont really see that as an issue. Many people dislike Obama and feel betrayed. Clinton is just seen as an extension of his reign. I think people will go out to vote "not for Clinton".

Trump will win.

Edited by scott21: 6/5/2016 03:29:31 PM

trumps performance in debates improves his standing amongst half the republican party but hurts him amongst independents and liberals

a primary is very different to a general

most votes are already locked in by this stage unless an external shock happens

there are hundreds of head to head match ups that have allready been done
the average of these shows a consistent very strong hillary lead

that not true...bookies had Trump leading from after 1st vote....it was always about Trump getting 1237, if Trump didn't get 1237 the GOP would have fuck him

is Trump going to call her little women ...talk about her little pens size

no there not....Reagan was Governor of California, and Trump been just Governor of his butlers

They are both extreme candidates but in very different ways. Regan was extreme in a conservative direction whereas trump is more extreme in a racist directio and moderate in other ways. But that's where the similarities stop
even in primaries there is very little similarity
democrats in the last primary made up 5 percent of republican primary voters
Reagan smashed the primary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_presidential_primaries,_1980
He was winning plenty of races by much more than 50% very early and had a relatively united republican party. Carter despite being an incumbent received a primary challenge - a very rare thing for a sitting president and generally gifts the opposition a win. Regan also got an external shock - the iranian hostage crisis along with stagflation. Those external shocks are rare and pretty good luck.

Trump so far has probably resembled Goldwater with a very high percentage of republican votes saying they won't vote for him in the general. A typical number of people voting against their own party is 10% or lower. 14% means you are going to get smashed. At the moment 20 % of republican voters are saying they are voting against trump

May 6, 2016, 5:29 AM

Commentary: Are polls underestimating Trump's support?

Virtually every piece of data we have indicates that Hillary Clinton will likely be the next president. Donald Trump is perhaps the single most unpopular presumptive party nominee in American history. He trails her nationally by roughly 10 points. She beats him in swing states; she beats him in deep-red states like Utah. To borrow a phrase from Ted Cruz, should these numbers hold we really could be looking a "Mondale-level bloodbath."

So President Hillary is a rather safe bet. At the same time, it's still silly to think Trump is doomed. It's rare for a presidential candidate to overcome that kind of polling deficit, but not unprecedented. And when we look at Trump's poll numbers versus his actual results in the past few contests, one could make the case that the polls are underestimating his support.

In New York, Trump's RealClearPolitics polling average going into the Republican primary was 53 percent. He eventually won 60 percent of the vote. A week later, he beat his polling average in Pennsylvania by 10 points, his average in Rhode Island by 11 points, his average in Connecticut by 5 points, and his average in Maryland by 9 points. In Indiana on Tuesday, he again beat his average, this time by 11 points.

This isn't unheard of in politics -- far from it, in fact -- and may just show undecided voters breaking for Trump at the last minute. At some point the "ceiling" of 35 percent or so that pundits thought would doom had simply fallen apart, and Trump was just reaping the rewards.

But let us for a moment consider a different theory: what if some people just don't like admitting that they support Trump, but then go and pull the lever for him in the privacy of a voting booth?

It's no secret that, in much of the country, confessing that you're a Trump supporter can be a risky proposition. Even the groups backing him admit as much: "Sure, I get some grief when I say I'm voting for Donald Trump," says the star of one pro-Trump super PAC ad. He is, after all, the most divisive presidential candidate in modern times, one frequently associated with racism and misogyny. And many of Trump's detractors tend to see this election as a moral referendum -- that his supporters aren't just misguided, they're bad people, and dumb to boot.

This is not to say suggest most Trump supporters are keeping quiet about it; some people, the ones who go to his rallies decked out in Trump swag and the like, are out-and-proud backers. But it's not a stretch to imagine that some people, and particularly those in more left-leaning areas of the country, would rather avoid the grief that comes with backing Trump.

The classic theory of voters lying to pollsters en masse is known as the Bradley effect. It's named after Tom Bradley who, as mayor of Los Angeles, ran to become the first African American governor of California in 1982. He lost, despite leading in the polls, leading some political scientists to speculate that voters had said they supported him due to social desirability bias: the tendency of people to give answers they think will be viewed favorably by others.

So what we might -- might -- be seeing with Trump is sort of an inverse Bradley effect: When asked by pollsters if they support Trump, a non-negligible number of people say they won't vote for him due to social desirability bias, and then do so anyway. It's a bit like the "Shy Tory" phenomenon in Britain, where some voters refuse to admit to pollsters that they were voting Conservative due to the social stigma. Perhaps it stands to reason that America could have a rather significant population of -- and please forgive the expression -- Shy Trumpies.

The question of whether social desirability bias might be skewing Trump's polling averages came up late last year. In poll after poll, it seemed, Trump performed markedly better when respondents didn't have to tell an actual human being that they supported him. The polling company Morning Consult wondered why this was, and decided to try an experiment.

The company polled 2,397 potential Republican voters using three different and randomly assigned methods: live interviews via phone, an online survey, and a technique wherein people were called and asked recorded questions that they then answer by pressing numbers on their phone.

Sure enough, the experiment found "that Trump performs about six percentage points better online than via live telephone interviewing" -- 10 points better among respondents with college degrees when they were given an online survey, and more than 10 points better in the online survey among those with some college education. The likely culprit for this breakdown? You guessed it: social desirability bias.

Granted, there are a number of caveats we should consider before we go assuming that polls are underestimating Trump's support. For one thing, the Morning Consult survey wasn't conclusive on whether social desirability bias was affecting Trump's polling numbers. For another, even if social desirability bias played a role among Republican primary voters, it's not certain that the larger electorate would mirror that behaviour.

And while Trump outperformed his polling averages in recent contests, that hasn't always been the case, and he actually slightly underperformed them in a number of races before New York. Besides, polling is, as we are often reminded, just a "snapshot in time," and the fact that Trump finished a little higher than he polled may just be telling us that polls aren't perfect gauges of popular support.

Still, it makes sense on an intuitive level that some people just don't want to admit they're supporting Trump, and that this could affect his polling averages. When I asked one veteran Republican strategist whether he thought social desirability bias was causing pollsters to underestimate Trump's support, he replied, somewhat to my surprise, "absolutely." (This strategist, I should add, will not be voting for Trump.)

The idea that an inverse Bradley effect is at play shouldn't be taken as an article of faith -- but it probably shouldn't be dismissed, either. We've seen that opinions of Trump improve in online surveys that are anonymous, and also that it's clear that saying out loud that you like Trump can elicit swift and unpleasant reactions. So, should Trump again outperform his polling among the broader population in November, it could be a sign that those "shy Trumpies" who preferred to keep their support for him a secret were the ones who made the difference.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-are-polls-underestimating-trumps-support/

that article is silly
there were just as many races where polls overestimated trumps support
that is pretty typical in a primary

this is right, some state poll overrestimating Trump.....there was far less state by state poling then National....it very hard for such a 8pt margin to be wrong

58% of all votes will be women, so Trump must win the women vote to win

[youtube]XXWhlRDd21o[/youtube]

There is going to be so much egg on face with people who threaten to leave