Tuesday, July 12, 2016

"Meh."

Seems like the reaction in aggregate.


-- The 'pro' or Clinton argument, from Nate Silver's shop.

Roughly 1 in 5 Sanders supporters say they are going to vote for a third-party candidate. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein combined for 22 percent of the vote among Sanders’s supporters in a recent NBC/WSJ survey and 21 percent in a recent Suffolk University survey. Johnson won 17 percent of Sanders backers in a Pew Research Center poll (the poll did not test Stein). The average third-party support among Sanders’s voters in the three surveys, 20 percent, is significantly higher than the 13 percent of all voters who say they’d back Johnson or Stein. (Younger voters, who voted for Sanders in overwhelming numbers in the primary, are also far more likely to say they’d choose a third-party option or “someone else,” according to these surveys and a new poll from the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.)

Keep in mind that historically, third-party candidates -- even those down the ballot in Texas -- can poll well running up to Election Day, but then fear takes hold and they leak that support back to the majors.  So how this trend holds is one I'll be watching closely.  Harry Enten again at 538.com.

But it’s also possible (and, I would argue, probable) that because Clinton and Trump are two of the most disliked presidential candidates of all time, third-party candidates are going to do better than usual. Johnson looks especially likely to peel votes from Clinton and Trump because he will probably achieve ballot access in all 50 states, which is unusual for a non-major-party candidate.

That’s part of the reason why FiveThirtyEight is including Johnson’s chances in these projections. We aren’t explicitly projecting Stein’s vote, in part because polls include her less often than they include Johnson, and in part because she probably won’t be on the ballot in some states. You’ll notice, however, that the projected vote shares for Clinton, Trump and Johnson usually don’t add up to 100 percent. (In Missouri, for instance, they sum to 98.7 percent.) That’s because the model reserves a small share for “other” candidates, including Stein, in states where we expect at least one of them to appear on the ballot.

(This is what Charles did back here -- scroll to the bottom -- and is an acceptable rounding method among pollsters and political scientists.)

-- The 'con' argument: Trump, Johnson and Stein all took today as the start of the campaign to begin wooing Sandernistas to their side.  It's downhill for Clinton from here, in two interpretations; one good and one bad.  Can she ride her sled all the way down without getting upset?  It's up to her now.  No excuses.

-- The satire.

The Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign announced plans for bumper stickers and t-shirts emblazoned with their candidate’s new slogan, “Meh.”
The slogan change comes on the heels of Ms. Clinton winning the endorsement of her fiercest and most stalwart Democratic primary challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Several Clinton camp staffers have told the press the slogan is meant to capitalize on the general feeling of apathy that they hope Sanders supporters will now feel toward the election, and that it will inspire them to accept the status quo as a “perfectly acceptable alternative to substantive change,” one aide told a newspaper in New Jersey.
The campaign also considered, “She Could Be Worse” and “Frankly, She’s Not Trump” as well as “She’ll Disappoint You Just The Same As Obama Did.” Other slogans that could still be unveiled by Team Clinton are, “She’s Like Bernie, For Now, Until She’s Not,” and “I Like Triangulating, Cynical Politicians Like Hillary!” Focus groups reportedly also tested well with the slogan, “I’ll Vote For Another Clinton In 20 Years Because Change Is Hard!”
“We understand that familial political dynasties are kind of the exact opposite of what the Founders probably had in mind,” Helen Sussman, Chief Deputy Assistant Media Liaison for the Clinton campaign, told reporters this morning, “but well, YOLO! Also, we have to just keep reminding you, she’s not Trump. And any time you feel sad about being force fed a milquetoast status quo sellout tool of the One Percent, just remember — she’s not Trump.”

Don't forget to mention the words 'spoiler' or Supreme Court' a few times either, like Bernie has repeatedly.  'First woman president', 'Ralph Nader' and 'siphoning votes' also still work well on the shallowest of thinkers.

It's going to be a long, hot summer.

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