"It wasn’t just just black voters, either: Clinton dominated with Hispanics in #Texas." - Nate Silver
Success is the best revenge. I have been waiting for the 538 "blessing"... and although we must keep the BS campaign under our thumb, the blessing from Nate Silver and the polls-only and polls-plus methodology IS something I am more comfortable with considering how "polls are all over the place."
538 has helped hard core politicos this past year because Nate Silver is essentially a leading American statistician utilizing data science. As we approach the general election season (post #SuperTuesday), I would caution folks to cite credible sources. Too often I am seeing stories on my news feed that have not been vetted or researched properly, nor can political claims be substantiated.
I am the kind of individual who has to see data backed with charts, numbers, and polling because it can give you the direction of where we are going. (Sort of like tools brokers use in financial brokerage firms). If you read a story on the net, click on hyperlinks (if they can provide any) to see if it will lead back to a credible source our sources.
It is stupid to rely on one poll. Polls have different target markets and it is imperative to see both the polls plus and polls only charts to come to a decent conclusion.
Nate Silver is a notable individual because if you recall the 2012 elections (when GOP strategist Karl Rove called it for Mitt Romney) ... it was Nate who called it for Obama. Rove was on FOX news arguing with everyone and ended it up looking like a fat pompous fool when Obama won.
I'm an Independent voter, and I do not hold any loyalty to any Party boss, and I like my new freedom to call things the way I see it. I vote my conviction and nothing else. As a former long time GOPer, I was blinded by getting on the perception bandwagon ... the GOP works that way... they use media, PR, and all the other tools they can to convince a person to believe the way they want you to believe.
Perception (to me) is antiquated and a thing of the past. Math, facts, charts, data and credible sources is what matters to me. Previous administration economic records, polling, charts and past voting records matter to me -- not slogans one can acquire in a two-bit town.
Via FiveThirtyEight:
It wasn’t just just black voters, either: Clinton dominated with Hispanics in Texas. There had been some questions about how Hispanics voted in Nevada, but there was little doubt in Texas. The exit poll showed Clinton with a 42 percentage point win among Hispanics, about the margin she won in counties such as Hidalgo, where Hispanics make up 91 percent of the population. Those results bode well for Clinton in states such as Arizona, California, Florida and New Mexico.
The end result is that Clinton will now have a substantial delegate lead. When I wrote on Saturday that Clinton was on her way to winning the Democratic nomination, I projected that she would win 508 delegates on Tuesday. It will take a little while to get the exact delegate totals, but FiveThirtyEight contributor David Wasserman projects Clinton to win well over 500 delegates. That will give her a lead of around 200 pledged delegates, not counting her large lead among superdelegates.
This lead is pretty much insurmountable. Democrats award delegates proportionally, which means Sanders would need to win by big margins in the remaining states to catch up. He hasn’t seen those kinds of wins outside of his home state of Vermont and next-door New Hampshire. Consider the case of Massachusetts: My colleague Nate Silver’s model had Sanders winning the state by 11 percentage points if the race were tied nationally and by 3 points based on the FiveThirtyEight polling average last week. Instead, Sanders lost by nearly 2 percentage points.
Sanders needs a fundamental shift in the race. Unfortunately for him, it’s already a two-person affair — not like the Republican side, where we wonder how the race might change if one of the candidates dropped out. The votes on the Democratic side so far have been fairly predictable based on demographics; it just so happens that those demographics favor Clinton.
