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[Abounder]

In results that narrow, Clinton’s loss could be attributed to any number of factors — FBI Director Jim Comey’s letter shifting late deciders, the lack of a compelling economic message, the apparent Russian hacking. But heartbroken and frustrated in-state battleground operatives worry that a lesson being missed is a simple one: Get the basics of campaigning right.

Clinton never even stopped by a United Auto Workers union hall in Michigan, though a person involved with the campaign noted bitterly that the UAW flaked on GOTV commitments in the final days, and that AFSCME never even made any, despite months of appeals.
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Most importantly, multiple operatives said, the Clinton campaign dismissed what’s known as in-person “persuasion” — no one was knocking on doors trying to drum up support for the Democratic nominee, which also meant no one was hearing directly from voters aside from voters they’d already assumed were likely Clinton voters, no one tracking how feelings about the race and the candidates were evolving. This left no information to check the polling models against — which might have, for example, showed the campaign that some of the white male union members they had expected to be likely Clinton voters actually veering toward Trump — and no early warning system that the race was turning against them in ways that their daily tracking polls weren’t picking up.

People involved in the Michigan campaign still can’t understand why Brooklyn stayed so sure of the numbers in a state that it also had projected Clinton would win in the primary.

“Especially given what happened in the primary,” said Michigan Democratic Party chairman Brandon Dillon. “We knew that there was going to have to be more attention.”

Hillary and Co. were so stupid and lazy, they didn't even put forth basic effort to do campaigning 101 even after the Michigan primary's results. That shit is unprecedented, almost like they imagined themselves as if they were the politics version of 'moneyball'.

 

[perfectchaos007]

I don't think she blew the election at all.

Then how did she lose to the most unpopular and inexperienced man or woman to ever run for president?

 

[whyamihere]

Because her models had proven demonstrably wrong in the primaries, and Democratic models of the 2014 congressional elections had also proven to be wrong.

Perhaps you don't completely structure late-run campaign strategies around broken data models.

Her model was extremely accurate in the primary though, besides a shock win in Michigan.

 

[diablos991]

Hillary and Co. were so stupid and lazy, they didn't even put forth basic effort to do campaigning 101. That shit is unprecedented.

Now imagine that team running the country. We dodged a bullet.

 

[fantomena]

There should have popped up a red flag in the Clinton campaign when Bernie won Michigan.

I think Moore said on the on the primaries election day in Michigan, Clinton was about +20 in the polls higher than Bernie and she lost, 12 hours later.

 

[whyamihere]

We all know what, what exactly is your basis for that statement, exit polls have been very accurate for the past 3 general elections.

No, they haven't been. Literally, they haven't been. Everyone knows this about exit polls!

 

[equippedwithtowel]

I swear I feel like some of you were born yesterday and this is your first election. Why would she waste her resources in a state where is she is leading by 5 points? Why would you?

A real campaign would be able to compare their polls with data being relayed back from their own campaign as well congressional and state races to check the polls against.

The whole post-ground game futurist approach is total short-sighted hubris.

 

[Principate]

She actually lost the election by an incredibly small margin. That's not to say that there weren't huge mistakes made or it shouldn't have been that close, but if we're going to learn from this, we have to be accurate about what happened.

That's the fucking point. overreliance on polls leaves you susceptible to such losses. Polls do not save you from small unexpected losses, which is why basing your entire campaign on them leaves you vulnerable to upsets like this. Which is exactly what Obama raked her over coals for.

 

[Super_Cobra]

Yea she ran a horrible campaign. Another thing reason was that trump was on the news 24/7. Literary everything he said was in the news.
Hillary was a weak candidate.

 

[whyamihere]

That's the fucking point. overreliance on polls leaves you susceptible to such losses. Polls do not save you from small unexpected losses, which is why basing your entire campaign on them leaves you vulnerable to upsets like this. Which is exactly what Obama raked her over coals for.

I don't understand the point you're making versus what you said.

Exit polls are not as accurate as normal polls, and the normal polls showed Brexit to be a close race, that people ignored and decided to say afterwards it was a "shock" win.

What are you talking about and what point are you actually attempting to make?

 

[Neoweee]

Premise is bullshit. Clinton could have won Michigan and Wisconsin and still lost. It was Penn. that mattered, and she went hard there and still lost.

I agree. People are putting in their blinders to focus on something that, objectively, not something that would have changed a loss to a win.

She campaigned hard in NC, PA, and FL, and lost all three. There's a shocking narrative bias to portray the entire race as being about MI, WI, and PA.

 

[gutter_trash]

Premise is bullshit. Clinton could have won Michigan and Wisconsin and still lost. It was Penn. that mattered, and she went hard there and still lost.

she went too hard in Philly but not hard at all in the rest of the state Trump went to

 

[whyamihere]

she went too hard in Philly but not hard at all in the rest of the state Trump went to

That's the real takeaway.

 

[phanphare]

This quote will be a little long, but it is important. I'll try to bold most of the important parts.





This was a PRESIDENTIAL campaign by a seasoned Politician. Holy shit.

holy shit, indeed. it's almost like they did everything they could to lose.

 

[Cesare Borgia]

I swear I feel like some of you were born yesterday and this is your first election. Why would she waste her resources in a state where is she is leading by 5 points? Why would you?

While on one hand you're right, the campaign had more than enough resources to further strengthen the blue wall instead of branching out to...Arizona. It looked to me like they were simply creating a facade of interest in semi vulnerable red states like Arizona and Georgia, which is a good strategy; forcing Trump to play defense with limited resources made sense. But the campaign then moved to actually try to win those states in late September/early October, which made no sense to me.

I'd rather run up the score on ground that I know I'm going to win. Doing that in MI/WI/PA, attempting to carry more House races, etc would have been the better choice and perhaps won the election for her.

At the end of the day you have to actually campaign for president. Especially when you're very unpopular. Hillary Clinton's problem has always been that while people might like her during a neutral (non campaign) period, the minute the attacks/silly season starts they begin to dislike her. That problem is part of the reason Obama beat her, and it's why Trump beat her. You can't let your opponent define you and then refuse to campaign outside of urban areas in certain states. Go to the people, hold an event, etc.

 

[Crimson-Death]

Now imagine that team running the country. We dodged a bullet.

 

[therealist]

Hindsight 20/20, it's easy to look back and identify all of the mistakes that were made after the election is over. I mean it's not like anybody on GAF was screaming that Hillary was in danger of losing or that there was some sort of polling error. Matter of fact precisely the opposite happened. Any questioning of Hillary's chances were thoroughly mocked and dismissed.

Trump was genuinely shocked that he had won too.

The only true lesson to be gained from this is to not trust polling. If Hillary had different polling info, she would have done things differently.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Not surprised considering how the rest of her campaign was run. The Hillary campaign didn't even go into certain states at all just because they thought they would win by default, even the states that were swing states and showed clear warning signs.

 

[jfkgoblue]

Right, but the margins in PA, WI and MI are small enough, with many of those voters having gone for Obama twice before, that I don't think they can be written off for completely. Hell, even Ohio might be salvageable (I agree that Iowa is likely a lost cause now).

The reason I highlight Florida as the biggest problem child is there's no more room left to grow there.

The thing is, a candidate like Obama is a once in a generation type candidate, you can't rely on getting lucky with your candidate to consistently win elections. Yes the margins were small, but they are the result of a more broad trend that has been moving to the right for some time. The Democrats turning their back on the white working class is what gave us this, these were reliable Democrats for a long time, but they feel that Democrats stopped caring about them. We are in the midst of a big political realignment and Trump simply accelerated it. So while the margins were small, I feel like we gotta look at the trend and that suggests that these states are unlikely to switch back soon.

On the flip side of that, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona are on the trend blue, this happens every 40-50 years or so with 1980 being the culmination of the last shift, with the "Solid South" firmly switched from Democratic to Republican.

Some prognosticators are already starting to call this the "Seventh Political system"

 

[whyamihere]

Hindsight 20/20, it's easy to look back and identify all of the mistakes that were made after the election is over. I mean it's not like anybody on GAF was screaming that Hillary was in danger of losing or that there was some sort of polling error. Matter of fact precisely the opposite happened. Any questioning of Hillary's chances were thoroughly mocked and dismissed.

Trump was genuinely shocked that he had won too.

The only true lesson to be gained from this is to not trust polling. If Hillary had different polling info, she would have done things differently.

That too. Their data showed they were winning Wisconsin. What would be the point of going there versus trying to put money elsewhere in, say, FL or NC, to give you more options?

 

[Regulus Tera]

This quote will be a little long, but it is important. I'll try to bold most of the important parts.





This was a PRESIDENTIAL campaign by a seasoned Politician. Holy shit.

H U B R I S
U
B
R
I
S

 

[Dash_Riprock]

We dodged a bullet.

And fell onto a knife.

 

[fantomena]

Not surprised considering how the rest of her campaign was run. The Hillary campaign didn't even go into certain states at all just because they thought they would win by default, even the states that were swing states and showed clear warning signs.

The liberal bubble, as Moore calls it. He went to the rust belt, spoke to people face to face and saw what the Clinton campaign didn't see. And wrote this piece: http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

He even said he is part of Trumps demographic, angry white males.

 

[hydragonwarrior]

Dems keep banking on a demographic shift to save them that might still be a decade or more away.

Which may still not even happen. Those in the Red and rural states are having kids who are being taught values that come straight from the old hardcore Republicans. Those values are not going to die out when there's no outreach to even bother with them from the Dem side saying they're a lost cause.

 

[whyamihere]

The liberal bubble, as Moore calls it. He went to the rust belt, spoke to people face to face and saw what the Clinton campaign didn't see.

Okay, so, liberals, let's not slob on Moore's dick for 4 years just because we lost.

 

[kirblar]

The thing is, a candidate like Obama is a once in a generation type candidate, you can't rely on getting lucky with your candidate to consistently win elections. Yes the margins were small, but they are the result of a more broad trend that has been moving to the right for some time. The Democrats turning their back on the white working class is what gave us this, these were reliable Democrats for a long time, but they feel that Democrats stopped caring about them. We are in the midst of a big political realignment and Trump simply accelerated it. So while the margins were small, I feel like we gotta look at the trend and that suggests that these states are unlikely to switch back soon.

On the flip side of that, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona are on the trend blue, this happens every 40-50 years or so with 1980 being the culmination of the last shift, with the "Solid South" firmly switched from Democratic to Republican.

This is why the top-down data approach was a problem (to the degree they relied on it) - they were underrestimating just how big a deal Obama himself was.

Clinton barely lost without getting these fundamentals right, i.e., she probably wins if she does- which is good for whoever runs in 2020. If we can actually keep the 50-state strategy in place it should fix a lot of these issues on its own by making sure we're operating everywhere to begin with.

 

[KingV]

Now imagine that team running the country. We dodged a bullet.

Unfortunately we dodged a bullet by jumping in front of a freight train .

 

[fantomena]

Okay, so, liberals, let's not slob on Moore's dick for 4 years just because we lost.

Well, Moore nailed the election, so I would rather listen to him than PoliGAF or HillGAF.

 

[Ryzaki009]

Now imagine that team running the country. We dodged a bullet.

Instead we hit a grenade.

How is that better?

 

[whyamihere]

Well, Moore nailed the election, so I would rathe rlsiten to him than PoliGAF or HillGAF.

Brave post.

 

[trembli0s]

Hubris, plain and simple.

 

[jfkgoblue]

Which may still not even happen. Those in the Red and rural states are having kids who are being taught values that come straight from the old hardcore Republicans. Those values are not going to die out when there's no outreach to even bother with them from the Dem side saying they're a lost cause.

I read somewhere that this huge demographic shift that Dems keep hoping for is unlikely to happen before 2050 at the earliest.

 

[fantomena]

Brave post.

It's not a brave post, it's a normal post. PoliGAF told me Hilldawg would crush Orange Hitler.

 

[Trojita]

I agree. People are putting in their blinders to focus on something that, objectively, not something that would have changed a loss to a win.

She campaigned hard in NC, PA, and FL, and lost all three. There's a shocking narrative bias to portray the entire race as being about MI, WI, and PA.

Again: Outside of a few cities, PA was relatively ignored.

Florida has always been a wild card you can never. If the article is correct, the campaign spent, according to one internal estimate, about 3 percent as much in Michigan and Wisconsin as it spent in Florida, Ohio and North Carolina,

Florida is a huge wildcard.

 

[KingV]

Which may still not even happen. Those in the Red and rural states are having kids who are being taught values that come straight from the old hardcore Republicans. Those values are not going to die out when there's no outreach to even bother with them from the Dem side saying they're a lost cause.

Any plan that relies on you getting 80+% of PoC votes forever into the future is going to be incredibly tenuous.

 

[whyamihere]

I read somewhere that this huge demographic shift that Dems keep hoping for is unlikely to happen before 2050 at the earliest.

No? It's already coming, just not soon enough for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

 

[Principate]

I don't understand the point you're making versus what you said.

Exit polls are not as accurate as normal polls, and the normal polls showed Brexit to be a close race, that people ignored and decided to say afterwards it was a "shock" win.

What are you talking about and what point are you actually attempting to make?

Your use of normal polls doesn't mean anything and ignores the process of polling. What makes you believe the "random" sample in any of these states were representative of actual voter intention and why do thus consider the 5 points and safe and thus a valid reason not to bother with when that was clearly not the case. And if your going to claim exist polls are less representative how about back that with a few peer reviewed papers specifically of British polling

 

[yanipheonu]

Clinton 2016: Grasping Defeat from the Jaws of Victory.

 

[bangbang i'm a timpani]

I swear I feel like some of you were born yesterday and this is your first election. Why would she waste her resources in a state where is she is leading by 5 points? Why would you?

her models were shit?

 

[kirblar]

Your use of normal polls doesn't mean anything and ignores the process of polling. What makes you believe the "random" sample in any of these states were representative of actual voter intention and why do thus consider the 5 points and safe and thus a valid reason not to bother with when that was clearly not the case. And if your going to claim exist polls are less representative how about back that with a few peer reviewed papers specifically of British polling

We know exit polls aren't good. We know this because we know their methedology- and it isn't good, they systemically undercount minority groups and doesn't provide good insight into them.

 

[whyamihere]

It's not a brave post, it's a normal post. PoliGAF told me Hilldawg would crush Orange Hitler.

Almost everyone told you that Hillary would crush Trump because that's what the polling said. This wasn't people saying, THERE'S NO WAY HE COULD WIN!, this was everyone saying that Trump would win because that's what the data said. It wasn't people putting their blinders on because there wasn't really anything to say the opposite.

Moore is a liberal huckster who got lucky. Great. Let's not suck his dick for 4 years, because he's awful.

 

[Principate]

We know exit polls aren't good. We know this because we know their methedology- and it isn't good, they systemically undercount minority groups and doesn't provide good insight into them.

Your not giving me any specifics here.

 

[Neoweee]

Hindsight 20/20, it's easy to look back and identify all of the mistakes that were made after the election is over. I mean it's not like anybody on GAF was screaming that Hillary was in danger of losing or that there was some sort of polling error. Matter of fact precisely the opposite happened. Any questioning of Hillary's chances were thoroughly mocked and dismissed.

Trump was genuinely shocked that he had won too.

The only true lesson to be gained from this is to not trust polling. If Hillary had different polling info, she would have done things differently.

They had data to justify their decisions It is hard to respond when you completely collapse in the last 10 days of the race. Too many fires arose at the last minute to respond to effectively.

If anyone can look at the 75 consecutive MI polls showing Hillary in the lead, and think they could make a convincing argument to put resources there rather than PA/FL/CO/VA/NH, then you should be directing your skills to actually making a damn difference rather than posting on a gaming forum how dumb they were for not seeing the "signs". The superiority complex by some is just pure hindsight bias and anti-Hillary BS.

 

[whyamihere]

Your use of normal polls doesn't mean anything and ignores the process of polling. What makes you believe the "random" sample in any of these states were representative of actual voter intention and why do thus consider the 5 points and safe and thus a valid reason not to bother with when that was clearly not the case. And if your going to claim exist polls are less representative how about back that with a few peer reviewed papers specifically of British polling

I literally don't know what's happening in this post. It's entirely incorrect from top to bottom on how polling works.

No real pollsters think that exit polls are more accurate than regular polling. Stop arguing the opposite.

 

[fantomena]

Moore is a liberal huckster who got lucky. Great. Let's not suck his dick for 4 years, because he's awful.

I disagree.

And no, he did not get lucky, he nailed the election point by point and PoliGAF told me he was a delusional nut.

 

[SolidSnakex]

Moore is a liberal huckster who got lucky. Great. Let's not suck his dick for 4 years, because he's awful.

He got lucky by not only telling people that Trump would win but describing exactly how he would win and where he would win? That's a lot fucking luck.

 

[CrocMother]

the Democrat’s models

Found the problem

 

[Neoweee]

Your not giving me any specifics here.

Yes, he is. Do some basic research in the accuracy of exit polls. They suck. Over and over, for multiple reasons.

 

[Principate]

I literally don't know what's happening in this post. It's entirely incorrect from top to bottom on how polling works.

No real pollsters think that exit polls are more accurate than regular polling. Stop arguing the opposite.

And I'm asking you why out of genuine interest.

 

[Manmademan]

I agree. People are putting in their blinders to focus on something that, objectively, not something that would have changed a loss to a win.

She campaigned hard in NC, PA, and FL, and lost all three. There's a shocking narrative bias to portray the entire race as being about MI, WI, and PA.

No, she didn't.

Speaking of PA specifically her plan was to camp out in urban and suburban neighborhoods of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to drive turnout there while ignoring the rest of the state entirely.

This was EXPLICITLY something that both Bill Clinton AND Ed Rendell warned her against.

This is not "campaigning hard". This is camping out in the friendliest areas possible to you, while avoiding red parts of the state where you'll hit criticism like the plague.