10 November 2016
To The Winner….
Some whys and wherefores.
by J.R.Thomas
So… Congratulations, President-elect Trump. Commisserations, Mrs Clinton. Well done Mr Johnson. Hi to Bernie Sanders. To the opinion pollsters, a hug. To the media, a quick poke with a stick.
To those who have read this series of articles and are still with us, well done and much appreciated, we have had fascinating and useful comments and thoughts from a number of readers. It has indeed been a most extraordinary saga, and the sense that the whole thing has been a remake of “The West Wing” or a new series of “House of Cards” has at times become overwhelming, alleviated only by the thought that the directors of those estimable series would not have dared script anything so bizarre.
We will not attempt much analysis of the results here, there will be plenty of that in the press and on the screen in days to come. But we will stick our necks out by saying that this was not the unexpected result that the British, and part of the American, media are reporting; nor did the opinion pollsters get it wrong. We have leapt to the defence of opinion polls before and we do so once again. Polling the thoughts of the public on anything, from choice of President to choice of toothpaste, is a highly advanced science, and those who work in the industry (not your correspondent incidentally, in case you think this is personal) are aware of all the potential pitfalls and screw-ups of which they are so often accused. The results of the election were well within the margin of error to be expected, and as polling data takes a while to collect and collate and publish, it reflects, with considerable accuracy, what the public was thinking a few days ago. What the polls do not know is who might change their minds, who might feel so strongly they are determined at all cost to vote, or who are so uncertain in their feelings as not to bother to go out at all. Most of all, pollsters cannot apply a truth detector to each pollee, to see if they are fibbing, either through malice, or defence of privacy, or embarrassment at holding opinions vilified by their neighbours or in the media.
There can be no doubt that this last factor has become significant in modern times, when the social on-line community is a sort of virtual mob, and many magazines and newspapers are inclined to carry too many columnists peddling personal hobby horses but too few reporters; too much opinion, too little fact. How pollsters overcome the problem of the “shy respondent” is a problem yet to be solved – they cannot simply add a liar premium or discount, but may have to invent some sort of weighting which actually does just that. So we give a hug to the pollsters and a poke to the media who really should by now have learned not to report polls as if they were results.
Gary Johnson also we have to congratulate, at least for a clean and polite approach in asking for votes, though perhaps a bit of training in international politics might help in any future campaign. Under his leadership, the Libertarian Party won about 4% of the national vote, and its polling was greater than the margin between the two candidates in several key states, including Florida and Michigan – where Johnson/Weld drew 150,000 votes, and in New Hampshire, sort of Weld country, where the ticket got 30,257 votes. Hillary won here by 1,371 votes.
In fact the New Hampshire results are fascinating. Jill Stein for the Greens took 6,213 votes and an independent local persuaded 670 voters to support him. There has been comment already that in several states the Libertarian ticket gave The Donald the victory; but it is surely much more true to say that their strong (for an American minority party) performance narrowed his victory. Green voters would presumably stay at home or go for Hillary if there were no Green candidate; and equally Libertarian voters would be for Trump, or stay by their firesides. Only a Libertarian voter with a very subtle plan for the realignment of American politics would support a Democrat candidate. And whilst German federal politics has several rightist/green coalitions in power, a teaming up between the American Greens and the Republicans seems unlikely for a while yet.
New Hampshire has a history of voting Democrat for Presidents and Republican more locally, but the popularity of Bernie Sanders in neighbouring Vermont may be influencing things this time. The Democrats won both House seats, the Governorship has gone but only just to a Republican, and at the time of writing the Senate seat was still been recounted with the Democrat candidate 700 votes ahead which, if confirmed, will defeat the sitting Republican. In each race in which they ran, the Libertarians had around 30,000 votes and, one suspects, have cost the Republican Party a clean sweep of New Hampshire victories. The Libertarians have a long term strategy to encourage their supporters to move to New Hampshire in the hope that they will build momentum to control the state eventually (presumably then abolishing state government if pursuing their strict principles). It will be ironic if this makes New Hampshire a safe Democrat zone.
We might, whilst in New England, venture on a “what if?”. What if Bernie Sanders had been the Democrat candidate? Would he have done better than Hillary? Mrs C got very close to winning and no doubt the reasons she did not prevail will be debated for years. But the core reason is surely that the electorate had not warmed to her and did not trust her. They did not like Mr T either, but he had the advantage of pulling out voters whose turnout is usually low, compensating for his lack of core Republican support. But Bernie also attracted a new supporter group and has a reputation, built up over many years of holding political office, as honest, decent, open, and just nice. Could that have seen him through and overcome his self-proclaimed socialist principles in a country where this is normally a term of abuse? We suspect not. Apart from anything else, the Clinton campaign was hugely well funded, outspending the Trump campaign by up to three Clinton dollars for every Trump dollar – though we won’t see the final figures for a while yet. But Bernie would not have had that money to spend and without it, it is probable that it would have been difficult to get the vote out to the extent that the Clinton side did. And Mrs C is a supreme organiser; again it is hard to imagine a Sanders campaign run as well as that.
In the great cycle of American politics this election was due to be a Republican victory and voter dissatisfaction with the White House over Mr Obama’s last term would in the natural way of things have reinforced that. When all else is stripped away, a party trying to win a third term is on an uphill struggle – it can be done, as reference George H W Bush following on from the enormously popular Ronald Reagan, and Franklin Roosevelt who won four consecutive terms (and provoked a change of rules limiting residency in the White House to eight years), but it is unusual, to say the least.
The Trump presidency starts with what ought to be an enormous advantage. The Republicans continue to control the House of Representatives with a majority of (forecast, not all are in) 239 seats to 193. And in the Senate, which the Democrats hoped and expected to win, the Republicans look like keeping control with 52 seats to 48. There are some new boys and girls who may well be Trump supporters, and some of the existing seat holders in both places are, but Mr Trump is likely to find that he does not have control over either place if he wants to push through anything controversial. His ability to deliver his brave new world is likely to depend on good old fashioned charm… and arm twisting. Over to you, Donald.
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