Why Republicans have an Electoral College problem

[IceSpear]

Well the Dem trend in CO, NC, and VA are what's killing Republicans and of course you have to win Ohio. The last President to win the election without Ohio was JFK in 1960. I don't think NV is off the board for the Republicans. I read on Latino Decisions the more NV Latino's educated in terms of schooling and income(the more money they make) the more R they vote.

Florida trending Republican is shocking.

Of the Republican trending states that are now in the Dem Column only PA is within near  reach.

Ohio, Wisconsin, Idaho, New Hampshire, DC, and Nebraska all moved with the national average from 2000-2012. The electorate swung 3-4 points Dem from 2000-2012.

I don't think Florida is trending Republican. If one wants to compare state vs. national margins, go ahead. Since 1996, the state has been within five percentage points from the national number. And since 1928, the state has carried for every winner except in the Democratic pickup elections of 1960 and 1992. It was within five percentage points from the national in 1960. It was about 7-or-so more Republican in part because George Bush had an inflated margin with carriage of the state in 1988 and, with being unseated in 1992, he managed to hold by nearly two points in Florida while he lost the U.S. Popular Vote by more than five.

In 2000, Florida was just even with the U.S. Popular Vote. In 2004, it was about 2.50 percentage points more Republican. In 2008, it was about 4.50 points more Republican. In 2012, it was about 3 percentage points more Republican. It's not locked in to being routinely a special number. But it shades at least a couple points more Republican while performing within five percentage points from the national result. This keeps Florida, with having carried in 20 of the last 22 presidential elections, in the bellwether category.

I think that if Hillary is the nominee, the Republicans will have to fight even harder for Florida because she will appeal to more white, old folks there.

Exatly. I don't get why they would even try to win Florida. They should instead try to avoid a landslide loss like in 1936.

Because if they conceded Florida, they'd essentially concede the election.

[IceSpear]

You know Republicans are in bad shape when they have to resort to 1944 comparisons, back when the pollsters only contacted old rich whites.

[IceSpear]

You know Republicans are in bad shape when they have to resort to 1944 comparisons, back when the pollsters only contacted old rich whites.

Um... what? You realize they had a quota and had to talk to blacks, women, and different income brackets, right?

Do you know ANYTHING about public opinion polls?

You seem to have missed the point. I was obviously referring to the infamous Literary Digest "Alf Landon will win in a landslide" poll. The point is, polling was awful back then.

[IceSpear]

You know Republicans are in bad shape when they have to resort to 1944 comparisons, back when the pollsters only contacted old rich whites.

Um... what? You realize they had a quota and had to talk to blacks, women, and different income brackets, right?

Do you know ANYTHING about public opinion polls?

You seem to have missed the point. I was obviously referring to the infamous Literary Digest "Alf Landon will win in a landslide" poll. The point is, polling was awful back then.

1. The Literary Digest poll was in 1936. Thomas Dewey was in 1948, 12 years later.
2. The polls in 1948 were the Gallup polls, the same system we use today. The Literary Digest used a completely different system that has no relation to the system we use today in Presidential Polling.
3. That poll didn't just contact "rich people", the problem was that the people who were more likely to send it back were Republicans, who obviously would care more about the election. The "rich guys" myth has been debunked by every study. Nice try.
4. Polling was not "terrible" back then in 1948. They used literally the same exact system we use today.
5. The hilarious thing is, they actually got it right in 1936, 1940, 1944, 1952 and every election after that. So I actually have no idea what you are talking about. 1948 was weird because they DIDN'T get it right.

Just admit you were wrong and move on.

1) Obviously. But back then, polling was sparse. It's not like we had dozens of organizations doing it like we do today. That was true in 1936 as well as 1948.
2) Who still thinks Gallup is the gold standard? They completely bombed the last 3 election cycles.
3) Yes, they were more likely to be Republicans, and also more likely to be wealthy. Please link to these supposed studies, because every single article I've ever read on the subject states that the sample was much wealthier than the general population. That also lines up with common sense considering the fact that they got their sample from telephone directories and magazine subscribers, which would obviously exclude many low income voters.
4) As stated in #1, polling is a lot less reliable when you have to rely on only a couple organizations to do it.
5) Mitt Romney sure wishes that Gallup got it right every time after 1948.

The only thing I got "wrong" was that I wrote 1944 instead of 1948 in my initial post.

[IceSpear]

You know Republicans are in bad shape when they have to resort to 1944 comparisons, back when the pollsters only contacted old rich whites.

Um... what? You realize they had a quota and had to talk to blacks, women, and different income brackets, right?

Do you know ANYTHING about public opinion polls?

You seem to have missed the point. I was obviously referring to the infamous Literary Digest "Alf Landon will win in a landslide" poll. The point is, polling was awful back then.

1. The Literary Digest poll was in 1936. Thomas Dewey was in 1948, 12 years later.
2. The polls in 1948 were the Gallup polls, the same system we use today. The Literary Digest used a completely different system that has no relation to the system we use today in Presidential Polling.
3. That poll didn't just contact "rich people", the problem was that the people who were more likely to send it back were Republicans, who obviously would care more about the election. The "rich guys" myth has been debunked by every study. Nice try.
4. Polling was not "terrible" back then in 1948. They used literally the same exact system we use today.
5. The hilarious thing is, they actually got it right in 1936, 1940, 1944, 1952 and every election after that. So I actually have no idea what you are talking about. 1948 was weird because they DIDN'T get it right.

Just admit you were wrong and move on.

1) Obviously. But back then, polling was sparse. It's not like we had dozens of organizations doing it like we do today. That was true in 1936 as well as 1948.
2) Who still thinks Gallup is the gold standard? They completely bombed the last 3 election cycles.
3) Yes, they were more likely to be Republicans, and also more likely to be wealthy. Please link to these supposed studies, because every single article I've ever read on the subject states that the sample was much wealthier than the general population. That also lines up with common sense considering the fact that they got their sample from telephone directories and magazine subscribers, which would obviously exclude many low income voters.
4) As stated in #1, polling is a lot less reliable when you have to rely on only a couple organizations to do it.
5) Mitt Romney sure wishes that Gallup got it right every time after 1948.

The only thing I got "wrong" was that I wrote 1944 instead of 1948 in my initial post.

1) I focused on one main poll.
2) Only taking Presidential.
3) The second problem with the Literary Digest poll was that out of the 10 million people whose names were on the original mailing list, only about 2.4 million responded to the survey. Thus, the size of the sample was about one-fourth of what was originally intended. People who respond to surveys are different from people who don't, not only in the obvious way (their attitude toward surveys) but also in more subtle and significant ways. When the response rate is low (as it was in this case, 0.24), a survey is said to suffer from nonresponse bias. This is a special type of selection bias where reluctant and nonresponsive people are excluded from the sample.

http://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case1.html

4) See #1
5) What? Gallup has Romney losing with registered voting lol. That's what I'm referring to.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/158519/romney-obama-gallup-final-election-survey.aspx


Basically, people should be worried about calling Clinton "inevitable" when Dewey was also considered inevitable for a time.

1) Yes, but considering this entire discussion was because of a reference to Hillary's "inevitability", the fact that Hillary has led in dozens of polls by many different pollsters in the past 2 years makes it much more reliable data than if just a single organization was saying it.
2) Still, Gallup's reputation has taken quite a hit in the past few years.
3) You're correct that was also a flaw on their poll. But per that very article, selection bias was also a problem due to the lack of low income respondents.
5) Gallup had Obama ahead with RVs, but almost everybody looks at LVs near the end of the election cycle. Just look at the RCP database, where every single poll listed towards the end was among LVs: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html

As for Hillary being "inevitable", I've never said she was in the general election, only in the primary. But she's beatable because of very different reasons, most obviously and blatantly being that polls, events, political climate, etc. can all change in two years, not because of some historical example of a single organization having a polling error back in 1948. In fact, the only way the "Dewey was inevitable too" thing would have any relevance would be if we were in November 2016 right now, and Republicans were trying to build up hope that the "polls are skewed". As it stands in January 2015, the comparison is completely irrelevant and meaningless. A much better example would be: "Dukakis led Bush in 1988!"

[IceSpear]

http://manythingsconsidered.com/?p=5797

Read this article. 

It is absolutely hilarious.

All about

I N E V I T A B I L I T Y

This basically re-iterates exactly what I just said. Of course Hillary's not inevitable in the general election. But again, for reasons I already stated, the comparison isn't very good. I highly suggest "Dukakis led Bush in the summer of 1988", "Carter was crushing Reagan in early 1980", and "Bush led Gore by double digits in the summer of 2000" as replacements. Of course, the intense polarization that has occured in the past 6 years probably makes it much less likely that we're going to see these kind of wild poll swings as often, but that's a discussion for another day.