This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Curmudgeon’s Corner: MST3King the Second Republican Debate

On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast, Sam and Ivan do it again, laying down a commentary track for the second Republican debate. Yes, the whole thing. All three hours of it. We kibitz as Trump and Carson and Bush and Cruz and Rubio and all the rest argue about the issues of the day. Oh, and of course, Fiorina. Ivan’s nemesis Fiorina. Ivan always has nice things to say about her. You’ve probably seen the debate, now listen to our take!

Click to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!

CCCover20141121-bigheads-2
Recorded 2015-09-18

Length this week – 3:13:32

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Show Details:

  • (0:00:10-1:01:04) Debate Segment I
    • Intro from Sam and Ivan
    • Candidate Self-Introductions
    • Trust Trump with Red Button?
    • Outsiders vs Insiders
    • Russia / Iran / China / Syria
    • Should Kim Davis follow the law?
    • Planned Parenthood and Government Shutdowns
    • Fiorina’s Face
  • (1:02:20-1:42:06) Debate Segment II
    • Immigration
    • Fiorina/Trump Business Records
    • Tax Plans and Budgets
    • Minimum Wage
    • Political Styles
  • (1:43:13-2:16:07) Debate Segment III
    • Trump knowing Foreign Policy
    • Would Jeb be a repeat of 41 and 43 on Foreign Policy?
    • Iraq / Syria / Afghanistan
    • Supreme Court / Abortion
  • (2:16:46-2:42:24) Debate Segment IV
    • Marijuana
    • Guns
    • Social Security
    • Climate Change
    • Vaccines and Autism
  • (2:43:02-3:03:32) Debate Segment V
    • Woman on the $10 bill
    • Secret Service Codenames
    • How will the world be different after your presidency?
  • (3:04:33-3:13:12) Wrap Up
    • Sam and Ivan predict the impact of the debate

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Shove my finger right through the screen

On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast, Sam and Ivan go all in on the latest Apple announcements, talking about the new iPad, iPhones, Apple TV, Apple Watch updates, and the options for purchasing the phones. With that out of the way, the show finishes off with a discussion of Election 2016, including Trump, Clinton, Bush, and more. Along the way you’ll hear some insights into the hosts’ kids as well.

Click to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!

CCCover20141121-bigheads-2
Recorded 2015-09-10

Length this week – 1:58:13

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Show Details:

  • (0:00:10-0:12:26) But First
    • Agenda
    • Diagnosis in Common
    • Kids Swearing
  • (0:13:15-0:58:53) Apple Event Part I
    • The Bullet Points
    • Apple Watch Updates
    • iPad Pro
    • Number of Product Lines
    • AppleTV
    • iPhones
  • (1:00:01-1:11:35) Apple Event Part II
    • Apple Lease vs Carrier Payment Plans vs Contracts
    • Online Ordering vs In-Store Purchase
    • Buying from Apple vs Buying from Carrier
  • (1:12:55-1:57:53) Election 2016
    • Trump making opening for Moderates?
    • Scott Adams on Trump
    • Trump Polling Update
    • Trump OODA Loops
    • Trump/Perot Comparisons
    • Economic Influence on Elections
    • Democratic Polls
    • Clinton Weakness
    • Clinton Email
    • Clinton Plan to be Spontaneous
    • Lessig and McAfee
    • Bush Troubles
    • Republican Splintering

Electoral College: Iowa average flips to Bush

Well, last time I noted the “First good news for Clinton in months!“. I mentioned then that one data point does not make a trend. And today, with the next change worth noting to the five best polled candidate combinations, we indeed don’t get more good news for Clinton. Instead, this time we get Iowa flipping to Bush:

chart-78

Only two of the last five polls in Iowa show a Bush lead, but they both show big leads. When averaged out, you have a 1.4% Bush margin… and a trend which has been moving away from Clinton since February. If the moves toward Hillary in New Hampshire mentioned in that last post were the start of any bottoming out for Clinton, there is no evidence of it here in Iowa. Indeed, if anything, the trend away from Clinton seems to be accelerating.

chart-79

In the national Bush vs Clinton view, Bush is now losing by 78 electoral votes in the “expected” case where each candidate wins every state where they lead the poll averages. Yes, this is still a loss, but it is better than Bush has done in this matchup since the start of polling for 2016.

chart-80

Looking at how Bush is doing compared to the rest of the best polled Republicans, Rubio is still doing better against Clinton, but Bush isn’t far behind. Huckabee, Paul and Walker’s margins against Clinton are significantly worse. In this particular view, they aren’t really gaining on Clinton at all. This doesn’t give the full picture though, as a quick look at the tipping point shows:

chart (58)

Bottom line, despite the move in her direction last time, the overall trends continue to be against Clinton. When and if this deterioration stops, and how that affects the primary races, is the big question of the campaign at the moment.

428.1 days until the first general election polls close.

Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Until I Hit That Wall

On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast, Sam and Ivan’s main topics are the tension between locked down and open computing device philosophies, the European refugee crisis, and Election 2016. In the Lightning Round we talk about social media, the Iran deal, the new Google logo, Kanye for President, Kermit and Miss Piggy, and much much more!

Click to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!

CCCover20141121-bigheads-2
Recorded 2015-09-03

Length this week – 1:42:54

1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
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Show Details:

  • (0:00:10-0:13:13) But First
    • Where Sam has Lived
    • Agenda
    • Cracked Phone
    • Raleigh-Durham Airport
  • (0:13:56-0:28:06) Computing Philosophies
    • Apple hates Kevin Drum
    • Customization vs Supportability
    • Market for Both
  • (0:28:45-0:42:56) Refugees
    • Fleeing to Europe
    • Drowned Syrian Boy
    • What do you do?
  • (0:44:05-1:13:03) Election 2016
    • Mt. McKinley to Denali
    • Ben Carson Surge
    • This Week’s Trump Talk
    • Bush Advertising
    • Tribalism on Issues
    • Republican Loyalty Oath
    • Clinton falling apart?
    • Biden run?
    • Fun scenarios
  • (1:14:23-1:42:34) Lightning Round
    • Facebook Hits a Billion
    • Orkut
    • Iran Deal done
    • Friendster
    • Book: The Scarlatti Inheritance
    • MySpace
    • Kanye West 2020
    • Kermit and Miss Piggy
    • GeoCities
    • Google Logo
    • Kim Davis and Gay Marriage
    • Classmates
    • Compuserve
    • Market Update
    • Putin Workout
    • Interstitial Ads

Electoral College: First good news for Clinton in months!

I’ve mentioned a number of times at this point that Clinton has had a long streak of bad news. The last time one of my updates was unambiguously positive for Clinton was back in May! That streak ends today, with movement in New Hampshire prompted by a new PPP poll.

Three of the top five best polled candidate combinations flipped from “Weak Republican” to “Weak Clinton” because of this update:

chart-75

chart-76

chart-77

So for Rubio, Paul and Walker, New Hampshire flips back to blue (although not by much). Clinton vs Bush just narrowly avoided doing the same thing, as Bush’s margin declined from 1.6% to 0.2%, but didn’t quite pass over the line.

New Hampshire is a little state. Only 4 electoral votes. If you look at the “expected cases” this just makes a small move for each of these three candidates:

chart (57)

As a move, this isn’t all that much. And Clinton is significantly ahead on this metric against all five Republicans. So New Hampshire’s electoral votes aren’t determining the outcome here.

But after three months solid of posts where I’ve been talking about how the Republican position is getting stronger, and Clinton’s position was getting weaker, is there significance to a move, any move, actually going in Clinton’s direction? Well, maybe. But one point does not make a trend.

This could be an indicator that Clinton has bottomed for now and we’re not going to see further declines for the time being. Or, just as easily, perhaps these PPP results are a significant outlier, and not representative of an actual change of mood in New Hampshire, in which case the next New Hampshire polls may pull the state back into the red zone.

As usual, we will just have to wait and see. In the meantime though, Clinton’s losing streak has been broken.

493.0 days until polls start closing.

Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.

Electoral College: Clinton slips in Michigan too

The streak continues. More bad news for Clinton. This time in Michigan.

With the addition of Michigan polls from Mitchell and EPIC-MRA, Michigan moves from Strong Clinton to Weak Clinton:

chart-73

This pattern, a hockey stick type movement away from Clinton and toward various Republicans, has now shown up on the charts for quite a few different states, across a wide variety of Republicans. One or two of these in isolation look like outliers, but together they look like a real movement. Over the last few months Clinton has been weakening, and weakening quickly and dramatically.

So far, none of the Republicans are leading overall, but the best cases from Rubio and Bush both now include winning, and with Michigan now on the potential list for Bush as well, he improves his best case further:

chart-74

Bush’s best case, where he wins all of the states where he leads, plus all the states where Clinton is ahead by less than 5%, now is Clinton 237, Bush 301, a 64 electoral vote win for Bush. The expected case is still a 90 electoral vote loss for Bush, but he’s only a handful of close states away from a win. If the drumbeat against Clinton continues, do not be surprised if some of those states start to flip.

Clinton can’t be happy here. She is now below 50% in the Real Clear Politics national view of the Democratic nomination race, and her position in the general election has been slipping fast against the major Republican contenders. No wonder we’re getting all the Biden buzz, and people keep looking at Sanders. Right now she is showing weakness. The question is if she hits a floor, or keeps falling. And if she does keep falling, who takes advantage of it?

441.7 days until the polls start closing.

Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.

Electoral College: Bush joins Rubio in the “might beat Clinton” club, Clinton margins shrink

A bunch of changes today prompted by the latest Quinnipiac Swing State Poll. The TL;DR is that Clinton’s situation continues to deteriorate.

The Republicans are gaining on her, despite any talk myself or others have been doing about the Trump phenomenon hurting Republicans more generically. If that is going to happen, there is no good evidence of it yet, at least in state level general election polling.

Specifically, Rubio and Bush are nipping at Clinton’s heels. In today’s update, Bush’s best case moves into winning territory, Rubio’s already winning best case gets even better, both candidates improve their “expected” results and the tipping points are getting very close.

To actually win at this point, Rubio only needs to hold the states he already leads and flip North Carolina (Clinton +0.4%) and Pennsylvania (Clinton +2.4%). Bush has to flip a few states that are already leaning Rubio as well, but at this point he has his tipping point down to only a 3.8% Clinton lead. Easily within the reach of a campaign that goes his way.

Now the details for those who want them.

Clinton vs Rubio

Rubio moves states into better categories for him in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. A quick look at all three charts:

chart (44)

chart (45)

chart (46)

Now, an argument could be made that some of these new data points look like outliers. But we don’t know until we have follow up polls, and that is why we use poll averages and not single polls anyway, so we include the polls in the average and just see what that does.

Florida (29 ev) flips from Weak Clinton to Weak Rubio, improving Rubio’s expected result to Clinton 299 to Rubio 239. This is still a 60 point electoral point loss, but this is the best “expected case” we have seen on any Republican with a significant amount of state level polling against Clinton.

Meanwhile, with both Pennsylvania (20 ev) and Ohio (18 ev) moving from Strong Clinton to Weak Clinton, a very large chunk of electoral votes gets added into the “possible pick up” category for Rubio’s best case, which is now Clinton 227, Rubio 311… an 84 electoral vote WIN for Rubio. This is also the best “best case” we have seen for any significantly polled Republican so far.

This is what Rubio’s “bubble” looks like now:

chart (47)

Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio are huge electoral prizes. They make a massive difference on these charts. With a Republican in the lead in Florida, and competitive in Pennsylvania and Ohio, it really is a whole different ball game.

chart (48)

This is the Clinton vs Rubio map right now. With a map like this, Clinton still wins, but it is very very close, and the slightest issue would give the election to Rubio.

Clinton vs Bush

Looking at the Bush charts in FL/PA/OH:

chart (49)

chart (50)

chart (51)

Bush also flips Florida. This improves Bush’s expected case to Clinton 314, Bush 224. This is a 90 electoral vote loss, but better than Bush has looked since late 2013.

And Bush also moves Ohio from Strong Clinton to Weak Clinton. Unlike Rubio though, he does not quite bring Pennsylvania into this category. The trend is there. Pennsylvania has been moving toward Bush all year. But Clinton’s lead is still over 5%. Perhaps that will change with the next poll. But Ohio by itself is enough to improve Bush’s best case to Clinton 253, Bush 285, which is a 32 electoral vote Bush WIN.

So we get Bush’s new bubble:

chart (52)

And his new map:

chart (53)

At this point, Clinton vs Bush and Clinton vs Rubio are the only two of the five best polled candidate pairs where the Republicans have a winning best case. But are the trends heading there for anybody else? Lets take a quick look.

Comparisons

Sometimes the national charts can give good comparative insight, but this time since we’ve been concentrating on FL/PA/OH, lets just look at those comparisons for now.

chart (54)

chart (55)

chart (56)

So just at a glance, in Ohio and Pennsylvania all or most Republicans are improving against Clinton. They almost seem to be moving as a bunch. (Except maybe Huckabee.)

But it looks different in Florida. In Florida, Rubio and Bush have separated themselves from the rest of the crowd. They are the only two of these five making Florida competitive. The others are just wandering around in Strong Clinton territory, with no clear trend between them.

It is very hard to map a Republican win without Florida. Possible maybe, but very hard. The trends are clearly going toward the Republicans in many states. For Rubio and Bush, Florida is doing the same. If the general trend against Clinton continues, we should start seeing other candidates gain ground in Florida too, but it isn’t in evidence yet.

But overall, Clinton is losing ground, and the race is getting closer.

445.1 days until polls start to close.

Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Sickness and Politics

This week on the Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast Sam discusses his fever addled trip home from last week’s vacation, then Sam and Ivan settle in to discuss Election 2016, first the Democrats, then the Republicans. We cover everything from Larry Lessig and Al Gore, to Clinton emails, Bush on Iraq, birthright citizenship and what happens if Trump actually wins.

CCCover20141121-bigheads-2
Recorded 2015-08-21

Length this week – 1:30:58

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Show Details:

  • 0:00:10 – 0:24:53: But First
    • Some Walking
    • Positive Buzz
    • Sick Traveler
  • 0:25:55 – 0:54:40: Election 2016 – Democrats
    • Larry Lessig PR Stunt
    • Al Gore trial balloon
    • Clinton drops below 50%!
    • Will Joe Biden run?
    • Clinton email again
  • 0:55:25 – 1:30:39: Election 2016- Republicans
    • Paul Staffer Legal Trouble
    • Bush Foreign Policy Speech
    • Birthright citizenship / Immigration
    • Trump driving away potential Republican voters?
    • Trump vs Klum
    • Other Republicans sucking up to Trump?
    • Trump Base Expanding?
    • Scenarios where Trump wins the nomination
    • Bush money drying up?

Electoral College: Rubio takes lead in Iowa, Missouri slips out of Clinton’s reach

Two sets of changes worth noting today triggered by new PPP polls in Iowa and Missouri. The streak of changes going against Clinton and in favor of the various Republicans continues. As I mentioned before, the last time one of my updates was unequivocally good news for Clinton was in May!

Iowa

chart (39)

The July Qunnipiac Poll showing Rubio with an 8% is looking kind of like an outlier, and without it we wouldn’t be quite there yet, but there has been a clear trend toward Rubio in the average going back a year. With the newest poll (plus that possible outlier) the average moves from “Weak Clinton” to “Weak Rubio”. This changes the “expected” result in this matchup:

chart (40)

The expected result is now Clinton 328 to Rubio 210, which is a 118 electoral point loss by Rubio. Now, while this is still of course a significant loss, it is significant because it beats Romney’s 126 electoral vote loss against Obama in 2012. The last time one of the five best polled candidate combinations had the Republican outperforming Romney was back in June when Bush had pulled his expected loss down to only 98 electoral votes.

chart (41)

While there has been a general drumbeat of bad news for Clinton in my updates for the last three months, this particular chart doesn’t yet show an clear and indisputable breakout move beyond the range where these candidates have been bouncing around. If you only look at the changes since June, it starts to look like a trend though, and given the movement in other metrics, it is still reasonable to interpret this as a bad trend for Clinton.

The question though will be if the Republicans can start an actual breakout move where instead of talking about how it looks like they might beat Romney, we start talking about how it looks like they might beat Clinton. We aren’t close to that yet.

One thing people have been speculating about has been if the prominence of Trump on the Republican side right now is actually harming the party overall, specifically in terms of the ability of the other candidates to compete against Clinton. So far, there is no evidence for that at all in the numbers we track here.

Missouri

When I officially launched the election tracking site and posted my first analysis for 2016 I mentioned that if you looked at the average results for the last five general elections… the data I used to “seed” the analysis before there were actual state polls… there were only SIX states where the average margin in these five elections was less than 5%. They were Nevada (Dem+2.8%), Ohio (Dem+1.7%), Florida (Dem+0.9%), Colorado (Rep+0.0%), Virginia (Rep+1.6%) and Missouri (Rep+2.8%). All of these states were polled long ago, some many times… except Missouri. Today’s PPP poll is the first 2016 polling for Missouri that I am aware of. So finally, we get a current view of the state.

Missouri was basically on this “Close State” list because Bill Clinton won the state by 6.3% in 1996, the oldest of the five elections I used for the initial average. Since then the Republicans won by 3.3%, 7.2%, 0.1%, and 9.4%. OK, that 0.1% in 2008 was really close. And the 3.3% in 2000 wasn’t a complete blow out. But in general it seems like the trend has been redder in Missouri.

The new poll tested Clinton against 11 different Republicans. She lost by between 7% and 15% depending on which Republican you looked at. (They also tested Sanders against 4 Republicans with similar results.)

Bottom line, looks like 2016 is looking a lot more like 2012 or 2004 than 2008 or 2000. That is, a pretty strongly Republican state. Now, it is just one poll, but the results are strong enough that the state immediately moved from “Weak Republican” to “Strong Republican” for all five of the best polled candidate combinations. (And actually for all the rest of the combinations they polled too.)

The chart of this isn’t actually all that interesting on a state level. But Missouri no longer being a close state means that Clinton’s “best case” against all five Republicans weakens a little bit, so lets have a quick look at that graph:

chart (42)

You don’t see a lot of volatility in this chart, simply because there are a lot fewer polls of the states that make a difference here. You see a lot of polls around the tipping point, and around the states that are really close, because they give insight into if the Republicans are catching up. Given the current state of Clinton’s lead, polling of the states Republicans are generally already ahead in only gives insight into how much extra Clinton could win by if everything possible went her way, which is fundamentally less interesting.

Never the less, with Missouri’s 10 electoral votes out of play at the moment, Clinton’s best case margin drops by 20 electoral votes against all these candidates. In the case where she wins all the states she is ahead in, plus all the states where the Republican currently leads by less than 5%, she now beats Paul by 204 electoral votes. Rubio, Bush, Huckabee and Walker get beaten by a more modest 156 electoral votes. These are of course pretty good margins in today’s polarized electorate. But to get to these kinds of numbers, just about everything would have to go Clinton’s way… which is not the trend today.

But of course, we have 454.2 days until the election. Lots can change in 454.2 days. :-)

Best Polled List

I should also mention that the “best polled” list got shuffled a bit with the latest updates. Clinton vs Paul once again grabs the “best polled” spot and becomes the default view on election2016.abulsme.com. Meanwhile Clinton vs Christie drops to 6th place and out of the group we highlight here, replaced by Clinton vs Huckabee returning to the top five after a short absence. Clinton vs Huckabee is just barely out of the top 5, but any other candidate combinations are far behind in terms of the volume and breadth of available polling on the state level at the moment. We’re currently giving the most attention here to Clinton vs Paul, Rubio, Bush, Huckabee and Walker.

Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Sam and Ivan MST3K the Republican Debate!

On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast Sam and Ivan throw the usual format out the window and instead give the MST3K treatment to the Republican Debate. If you don’t know what that means, what happened is we played the debate, and recorded our thoughts and reactions to it in real time. So if you didn’t watch the straight up debate already, or even if you did, listen to our commentary now! Oh yeah, and at the beginning we talked a bit about a couple of recent robberies too.

CCCover20141121-bigheads-2
Recorded 2015-08-07

Length this week – 2:24:50

1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
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Show Details:

  • Break-ins and Robberies
  • Republican Debate Segment 1
    • Intros
    • Support Nominee?
    • Electibility
    • Immigration
  • Republican Debate Segment 2
    • Immigration
    • Terror and National Security
    • Obamacare and role of Federal Government
  • Republican Debate Segment 3
    • Hillary Clinton
    • Economy, Jobs and Money
    • Iran Deal
  • Republican Debate Segment 4
    • Social Issues
  • Republican Debate Segment 5
    • Foreign Policy
  • Republican Debate Segment 6
    • God
    • Closing Statements
  • Wrap Up Analysis