US Presidential Candidates

Leaked Republican national committee strategy memo to Republican Senators up for reelection - if Trump is the nominee scenario. Similar memos exist for all other leading Republican presidential contenders but have not been leaked (yet).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/p ... taff/1898/

The first actual votes are due to take place Feb 1 in Iowa.

Iowa is a caucus state. For those outside the USA, in caucuses voters meet in person in 100s of homes or other small venues scattered throughout the state and discuss the candidates, then make their choice. Trump has a huge % of his Iowa support among people who have never caucused before. His campaign is spending $$$ on voter how to caucus sessions. We'll see if it pays off. Only about 20% of registered Republicans typically caucus(it may be more this year with heightened interest), so if Trump's get out the vote effort succeeds....

One interesting thing is that in open party states (where you don't have to be a Republican to vote) Trump is predicted to pick up extra votes from Democrats as he appears to in the process of commandeering the blue collar Democrat vote that has been ignored so long by national Democrats. Iowa is technically not open, however you can "re-register" as a Republican on site same day at the the caucus.

The invisible primary aka the money people seem to have shifted from Jeb Bush to Marco Rubio. Since their preferred candidate appears to be doing poorly they are backing one of their other choices. Basically of the leaders (Trump, Carson, Cruz, and Rubio) the money people like Rubio the best.

Well this should get interesting...

Cruz takes Iowa with Trump in second. Honestly not completely sure which of those winning would have been worse for the GOP but I'm going to say Cruz is probably the slightly less bad result out of the two. Be fun to see if Trump completely implodes or if he can handle taking a loss.


And it looks like it's going to be a wrestling match between Clinton and Sanders.

biochem wrote:The invisible primary aka the money people seem to have shifted from Jeb Bush to Marco Rubio. Since their preferred candidate appears to be doing poorly they are backing one of their other choices. Basically of the leaders (Trump, Carson, Cruz, and Rubio) the money people like Rubio the best.

The good news is that the money people are supported by fewer than half the electorate. Rubio might be getting financial support but he only got 25% of the caucus, while Cruz and Trump got about 53%. Not good news for powerbrokers. Coupled with the nearly 50% of the anti establishment Dem votes and this is crystalizing into a really bad election for the powers that be.

gcomeau wrote:Well this should get interesting...

Cruz takes Iowa with Trump in second. Honestly not completely sure which of those winning would have been worse for the GOP but I'm going to say Cruz is probably the slightly less bad result out of the two. Be fun to see if Trump completely implodes or if he can handle taking a loss.


And it looks like it's going to be a wrestling match between Clinton and Sanders.

With Cruz 28%, Trump 24% and Rubio 23%. It looks pretty close to a Trump/Rubio tie for 2nd to me. Also not good news for Trump.


Re Clinton/Sanders, well it wouldn't be a Clinton election without some sort of scandal. The latest appears to be magic coins. Apparently 6 precincts had an exact tie, Hilary won the coin flip in all 6. (probability of random chance being 1 in 64, so in the realm of possible but extremely unlikely).

PeterZ wrote:

biochem wrote:The invisible primary aka the money people seem to have shifted from Jeb Bush to Marco Rubio. Since their preferred candidate appears to be doing poorly they are backing one of their other choices. Basically of the leaders (Trump, Carson, Cruz, and Rubio) the money people like Rubio the best.

The good news is that the money people are supported by fewer than half the electorate. Rubio might be getting financial support but he only got 25% of the caucus, while Cruz and Trump got about 53%. Not good news for powerbrokers. Coupled with the nearly 50% of the anti establishment Dem votes and this is crystalizing into a really bad election for the powers that be.

It's even worse than that for them. Rubio isn't one of their favorite people either, to them he's just the best of a set of bad choices.

biochem wrote:Well this should get interesting...

[snip]

The latest appears to be magic coins. Apparently 6 precincts had an exact tie, Hilary won the coin flip in all 6. (probability of random chance being 1 in 64, so in the realm of possible but extremely unlikely).

Are you trying to insinuate Clinton had minions in 6 precincts who somehow cheated with the coin flips? And that with no one noticing?

Or if you aren't trying to insinuate such a thing - why did you write the above paragraph? Why? Really - the wording makes me wonder about your motives.

Btw: Sanders won 5 of the 6 reported coin flips.

And there were more coin flips than 6 - but only 7 (EDIT: 6) are reported because those precincts used a Microsoft reporting app that includes this info. Among the precincts that instead used traditional phone line reporting there is no report about the number of cases coins had to be flipped.

As Goebbels said, the bigger the lie the more likely it is to be believed.

Bruno Behrends wrote:Are you trying to insinuate Clinton had minions in 6 precincts who somehow cheated with the coin flips? And that with no one noticing?

Or if you aren't trying to insinuate such a thing - why did you write the above paragraph? Why? Really - the wording makes me wonder about your motives.

Btw: Sanders won 5 of the 6 reported coin flips.

And there were more coin flips than 6 - but only 7 (EDIT: 6) are reported because those precincts used a Microsoft reporting app that includes this info. Among the precincts that instead used traditional phone line reporting there is no report about the number of cases coins had to be flipped.

Do you have a link for the coin flip counts Bruno?

Not saying anything one way or the other but ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35473068

Seems to say differently. Rather far from the source but. Just curious. And ran across it after reading your post.

Have a good day,
T2M