My (Probably) Final Forecast, 3 Weeks Out: 16 Point Landslide for Hillary, which appears as 12% Polling lead in last weekend

I called Trump’s Primary Race as near-perfect as one can, missing one state in the count of how many states he would win. I made my forecast in January before any state had voted and when one third of the primary states had no polling; and managed to call the exact dates even when the top rivals would quit. I got Trump’s day of clinching and even had his total vote percent nearly spot-on. Don’t say I don’t have some insight into the US election system. I also called the 2012 election so well, I missed the states that Obama won, by one. That 5 point election ended up a blowout, that looked to most pundits to be tied, or by some, even that Romney was ahead up to election day. I’ve been able to understand well the fundamentals of what decide Presidential elections. Its partly because in my day job, I am a professional forecaster of another very volatile unpredictable business, mobile telecoms, In fact, I'm the most accurate forecaster of that industry.

So this November Trump loses by a landslide. Many are NOW starting to say that's possible. When did I tell you? I told you in MARCH that Trump will lose to Hillary so badly, he will not get more than 40% of the vote! Yes. Trump at 40% or under, was what I wrote on this blog, in a VERY long, detailed essay about all the fundamentals from fund-raising to battleground states to debate skills to campaign surrogates. And the Electoral College and the demographics. I said in March that Trump will lose and will not get over 40%. Bearing in mind that Trump has even LED Hillary in some polls and as recently as last week (even if we ignore that goofy LA Times nonsense ‘poll’) thats quite a bold forecast from March.

Then we did not anticipate a strong third party run, which turned in June into Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, taking currently about 10% of the total votes, and at their peak, their combined polling was about 15%. When the third party candidates appeared, I altered my forecast and said, Hillary will win by less than 20% because of the third party votes, but Trump is still doomed to less than 40% and every one of my forecasts said its a double-digit Hillary victory. A landslide. Since July when I revised my forecast for a 4-way race instead of 2-way race, I have issued two forecast updates, first lowering Hillary’s victory from 20% in the 2-way race to 18%, and then after we saw the summer of campaigning and the first debate, down to 13% which was up to today, my standing forecast.

We did see the ‘October Surprise’ in Trump’s videotape of his p’ussygrabbing. This came after my last revision to the forecast. Its a true seismic event that we knew immediately that it will alter the race, but there was no way to know exactly by how much. We now have enough polling data after p*ssygate, that I can revise my forecast. It is Tuesday 18, October, 2016. I am writing this exactly 3 weeks before Election Day, November 8. I am calling the election to be a 16 point landslide for Hillary. I make the forecast with only one caveat: pending any further October Surprise(s). I am making the forecast before the third debate, so certain that debate will again be easily won by Hillary but that it won’t materially alter the race (from how I forecast it to end).

TOMIAHONEN CONSULTING FORECAST 2016 ELECTION As of 18 October 2016
Hillary Clinton . . . . . . . . . . 53%
Donald Trump . . . . . . . . . . 37%
Gary Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . 6%
Jill Stein  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3%
Ewan McMullin & others . . . 1%
Forecast by TomiAhonen Consulting, 18 October 2016
This forecast may be freely shared

Hillary wins about 40 states including District of Columbia

Trump wins about 10 states

McMullin wins Utah

Electoral College 471 EV votes for Hillary, 61 for Trump, 6 for McMullin.

Hillary wins every battleground state Obama won in 2012, including Ohio and Iowa currently looking good or competitive for Trump. Hillary adds North Carolina.

Beyond 2012 battlegrounds, Hillary wins Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina, Montana, Alaska and yes Texas. These will not be close. They will be called by the news channels well before 90% of the votes in those states are counted.

The battleground this time will be in truly red states. Trump will win 7 states easily: Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Alabama, Idaho, North Dakota and Tennessee.

The actual long-counted ‘nailbiter’ elections which could go either way will be yes: Mississippi, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, South Dakota and Kentucky. I think Trump wins 3 and Hillary 5 of these 8 states that end up the close in the race.

Utah will also be close but because its a three-way race. McMullin will win his home state.

For EV nerds: Trump will not win the one EV vote out of Maine and Hillary will win the one EV vote out of Nebraska.

NOTE POLLING WILL NOT SAY THIS

I want to be very clear about this point. Currently RCP (Real Clear Politics) average of current polling has Hillary up by about 7 points in the 4-way polls. I am NOT saying that the current POLLING accurately describes what will happen. The current polling support definitely a big win for Hillary, but not a 16 point epic landslide. I have serious deep detailed analysis done over the past six months, reported on this blog many times, why I think the FINAL election result will be better for Hillary than the last polls will show.

To underline this point, I also predict that the polls released in the last 4 days before Election Day, so the Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday before Nov 8, the average of those polls (when undecided voters are allocated proportionately) suggest a 12% election landslide, not a 16% final result. If you want to know why I think this, I have all my analysis explained here below in this article. But I want to be clear. The current POLLING does not show HOW BIG the actual victory will be. The current polling is not able to accurately measure all the aspects that will be in play. I believe my forecast more accurately takes those into account and I am willing to stake my reputation on it.

Thats my ‘final’ forecast, three weeks before votes were counted. I will not alter it just because some poll comes out good or bad, or the debate goes a bit better or worse, or another wikileaks story breaks or another woman tells stories about Trump. The only reason this forecast would change, is if there is another true ‘October Surprise’ again, of the scale of the sex tape (on something other than Trump sexual assaults). A terrorist attack, a health episode, a war, or a really massive scandal relating to Trump, like that someone publishes proof that Putin is funding Trump. It would have to be the kind of story that dominates the news for a week to now qualify for a ‘Second October Surprise’.

Now, the big election is for President. I will also make my forecast that the Senate will be taken by the Democrats but the House will be a very tight race that I am expecting the Republicans will prevail and hold a slim majority of only a handful seats. Of course with the White House and Senate, it also means the Supreme Court will flip its balance once Hillary nominates and the Senate approves her first Justice. If you want to know WHY I make that forecast, read on. This is for political nerds...

WHY 16 POINT LANDSLIDE

This election will be known as the one that Trump threw away. The least prepared candidate who also was the most disliked candidate, running a bad campaign, badly. The broad consensus will be that Trump lost this election. And in that shadow, Hillary’s campaign will not be given its proper due, that it is one that would have crushed any rival that the Republicans had sent up against her. While Hillary is also highly disliked as a candidate, she balances that by being the most prepared candidate ever. And that merges with a perfect campaign which was run perfectly. Hillary’s campaign is even better than Obama of 2012, and run better than Obama of 2008. This year Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz or John Kasich or Scott Walker or Chris Christie would have been steamrollered by the Hillary machine, only they would have used different methods to destroy other candidates than what they did to Trump.

So before we dig more into Trump, we have to start where the real credit is due. Hillary’s campaign is a masterpiece. I wrote all about this in my first preview of this election. Remember when I wrote that? I wrote it in October 2014 - yes exactly two YEARS ago, when I said Hillary will win by double-digit landslide. It wasn’t even official that she would RUN, and we had no idea who would end up going against her. But two years ago I wrote that she knows how to run a highly disciplined data-based professional campaign. That she is a dogged campaigner who is a brilliant debater. I warned that she was wooden and uninspiring as a public speaker - but that she would have the biggest fund-raising machine ever assembled, and she would have an unprecedented surrogate army.

I predicted back in 2014 that yes, President Obama would endorse her, she would invite him to campaign for her, he would do it; and that Obama’s POPULARITY would be above water! All bold predictions. John McCain didn’t want W Bush to campaign with him; Al Gore didn’t want Bill Clinton to campaign for him; etc. And Obama’s popularity was under water then. Yes. And Michelle? I said FLOTUS would campaign for Hillary. That was not by any means obvious. And there has never been a former first lady as powerful and popular as a surrogate as Michelle Obama is now, the most popular politician in the country.

The skill of the Hillary Campaign machine, run by Robby Mook, is best seen in the video ads they produce. Mere minutes after the end of the debates, the campaign has released first video ads featuring Trump in his latest moronic statements. Interlaced with previous nonsense he’s said. And those ads go on Twitter and Facebook and are spread via emails and are tested for their YouTube views to find which versions work the best. And those, in turn, are then produced into TV ads. Trump was supposed to be the superstar of social media, yet after the Conventions, the Hillary Campaign has achieved a clear lead in the social media space. Part of it, is capitalizing on Trump’s regular mistakes and mocking him for those.

Talking about mocking. I personally have created over 3,500 original jokes about Trump and the Republicans of this season, and took the best of them into my first book of collected jokes. I call it TRUMP vs THE SEVENTH STEVE. It cost $4.99 and you can see sample pages of that, my 13th book overall, at this page:





Tomi Ahonen book
TRUMP vs THE SEVENTH STEVE

So we need to acknowledge that Trump ran into a chainsaw, the candidate and campaign most capable of ripping him to shreds. Bear in mind, Trump arrived to this point having faced ‘the dream team’ of the supposedly ‘very deep bench’ of Republican party talent. Maybe it wasn’t that deep after all, considering Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, Dr Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and the imagined monsters tormenting the inside of Carly Fiorina’s troubled mind.

GROWTH THROUGH SUBTRACTION

Hillary would have won anyway. She held all the cards. No candidate has ever had all the advantages before, but it was clear back in 2014, that Hillary would be the unstoppable force this November. Against that juggernaut came Donald Trump, political genius. He has campaigned on a suicidal, self-destructive campaign absurdly built on the principle of ‘growth through subtraction’. What any successful politician and campaign staffer knows, is that you grow political support, not shrink it. Trump has waged a war against voters from the first day he joined the race last year.

He started by repelling Hispanic voters. Mitt Romney had the worst Hispanic support of any Republican candidate ever measured in polling. Romney got to 27%. Trump is now polling at 14%. Then Trump started his war on women, with the attacks on Rosie O’Donnell and Megyn Kelly. He’s repeatedly angered ever more women. He now faces the worst gender gap ever measured in US Presidential elections at 20%. Trump did this knowing that his likely rival would be the first woman ever nominated for President from either party. And to answer that issue, Trump didn’t even bother to select a woman as his Vice President.

Then there are the blacks. Trump has his long history of racist behavior from not renting to blacks, to the Birtherism about Obama, but he added to this by palling around with the most racist Americans like Sheriff Arpaio and Governor LePage. He promised blacks he’d solve inner city crime by instituting ‘stop-and-frisk’ racist profiling. So Mitt Romney, a white man who ran against a black President, achieved 8% of the black vote in 2012. Trump running against a white woman, is currently polling at 4% of the black vote.

Trump has consistently and time after time, only offended ever more groups of voters. He’s insulted former war prisoners, the disabled, Muslims, Catholics, American Indians, Jews and surviving parents of fallen war heroes. And to only make matters worse, where a divided party will lose and a united party has a chance of winning, Trump has waged a prolonged war against his own party from the start. After repeated attempts to finally achieve peace or at least a ceasefire between the party and Trump, he has broken with that, and lunged into another petty feud with his own side. This may be interesting and entertaining. It is most definitely unorthodox campaigning. But it is 100% certain you do not win that way. It is like running the marathon. You can be a show-off and start the race instead of running but rather walking on your hands, but then you won’t win that race. Trump’s alleged campaign has achieved him a lot of attention but it is certain, you cannot win a national political race by subtraction. By eliminating ever more voter groups.

Note this is different from ‘strategic’ choice. You could, for example a racist could, design a campaign to appeal to ‘whites’ that SINGLES out some group to hate, say the blacks. You could get good contrast that way. A nice old-fashioned white racist campaign of hate, like say Pat Buchanan or Joe McCarthy. Or say old racist Apartheid South Africa. If there are enough whites and not enough blacks, that could work. But then don’t proceed to add Hispanics and American Indians and Jews and Catholics and Muslims and on and on and on (and women, the single largest voter group - there are more women alive, more women of voting age, more women registered and more women voting, than men. Have been for decades. This was BEFORE we consider how many women will vote this year because Hillary is on the ticket).

Trump has built a campaign of steel. His is a fortress. You can’t get in, you can’t get out. And nobody will ever join who is not already inside, and nobody will leave. The problem for the US election is, that his fortress was built to only fit 40%. He can never win. But he’ll always get near 40% of the vote. So just a little bit more on Trump and his Deplorables, his supporters. They are typically men, mostly white, mostly without university degrees. They are mostly rural or small town residents who have never moved outside their hometown. They tend to be older. They can be quite affluent (farm owning whites for example). Look at a Trump campaign event. I don’t mean the people who are positioned to sit behind him when he speaks. Wait until you see the audience shot, the camera panning a random audience sector. Freeze-frame the shot. Who do you see? I’ve done this a hundred times already, all through the season. Its the same story. 8 out of 10 are men. 19 out of 20 are whites. Trump is speaking essentially to a KKK rally audience that just left their hoods home. And if you doubt me for one moment, listen to any random TV interviews of his audiences. Gosh they are Nazis! Some of Trump’s supporters are true racists. They love it that Trump ‘says it like it is’ about the Jews or Muslims or Mexicans or blacks. Almost all other Trump supporters do not MIND the racists amongst themselves.

Another part of Trump’s supporters are sexists. Often older men who still think a woman’s place is in the kitchen and bedroom, and to be quiet when ‘the man’ speaks. And many of the women who support Trump are either racists or they agree with this type of treatment of women (or both). There are also very gullible, simpler-minded (often older) voters, the kinds who are perfect marks to fall for any internet scams. And there are the paranoid conspiracy nutters who think Obama is about to invade Texas to steal everybody’s guns just before his term expires. Plus a bunch of anti-government Tea Partiers who want to abolish everything. Most of these people had nobody really talking to them and the way Trump speaks, he seems to connect with them. They honestly believe he is ‘telling the truth’ when Trump is the most deceitful politician ever measured. Facts do not matter to these people. They are cultists.

A special faction is the Evangelicals, a particularly easily-led group of fanatical voters who seem to me, a fellow Christian, led by a junior Anti-Christ. Gosh, Trump is literally everything the Bible teaches us not to be. But the Evangelicals have at least partially signed a practical political pact ‘with the devil’ for their own political purposes. If Trump is the only Presidential candidate who can prevent Hillary appointing a Supreme Court Justice that protects the freedom of Choice (ie maintains lawful abortions) and doesn’t hate gays, they will be with Trump. I think at least some within their flock must feel distressed, in how ‘Christian’ Hillary Clinton is with all she says and does (not to mention Tim Kaine) but how ANTI-Christian that vile selfish man, Trump is....

The Trump voter coalition is a cult. They will not be dissuaded by facts. They are worth pretty close to exactly 40% of the electorate. When Trump said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose their support, I am sure Trump was joking when he said it; bu the events in the year that followed, prove that to be very close to perfectly true. Ever more contemptable rhetoric from Trump and his support remains loyally with him. In simplified terms, 40% of the electorate will vote for Trump, come what may. Its possible for that number to shrink modestly if the voter enthusiasm becomes depressed on their side. Most will show up to vote for Trump even under the worst conditions. They are a brainwashed cult.

But the rest of America sees that Trump is a clown. They have 3 plausible choices and will vote sensibly, ignoring the clown. Trump has now solidified his standing with the electorate. There are no votes outside his core 40%, that could vote for Trump in November. The only choice for the other 60% is, which of the other 3 (or in case of McMullin, other four) will they vote for. Hillary has nearly half of the nation simply because there are more Democrats than Republicans. So even if somehow the 3 junior party rivals manage a combined 15% (the peak of their combined support from early July) it means Hillary runs away with an easy victory of 45% to 40% against Trump.

The election COULD have been a nailbiter if Johnson had caught fire, like Ross Perot did in 1992, and Johnson had qualified into the TV debates. He could have made this a competitive race. Now he’s toast. He has peaked long ago, and with his Aleppo moments, he seems to signal to his own voters, don’t vote for me. So on the election forecast. We start with this bizarre ‘winning by subtraction’ strategy of Donald Trump: Political Genius. He peaked at 41.5% in the 4-way polling. He has come down and is now at 39.1% by the RCP average today. In the last weeks of any campaign, when undecided voters start to make up their minds, they go to BOTH candidates (or all candidates if more than 2). Trump is, thanks to his lunatic ‘strategy’ even failing that. While Hillary keeps picking up more support, Trump support is DECLINING while undecided voters are making up their minds. He has an ironclad ceiling he cannot penetrate. But he can leak support with his continous stupidity. That gets us to the approximate and the real. Trump has lived in that 35% to 41% band of support for the full duration of the 4-way polling. He has peaked. He is going down. He is not even CAMPAIGNING in a way to try to attract voters, rather to eject them.

Trump currently sits at 39.1%. There are 5.7% undecided voters. In any normal year you’d have to allocate some fraction of the 5.7% undecideds to BOTH (or all) of the major candidates. This year is the exception. But I don’t see analysts saying this is so. They have never seen this happen so they cannot imagine that is what will occur. Let me show you by simple math what this means. Lets say the race is now 46, 39, 6, 3, with 6 undecided. So its Hillary, Trump, Johnson, Stein. Then lets assign the undecided 6 only between Trump and Hillary, proportionately, and to simplify the math, we round off to even numbers. So both get 3 points. The race would end up as 49 Hillary, 42 Trump, 6 Johnson, 3 Stein. A 7 point race now, would end up a 7 point also in the end. This is roughly the way most elections end, as the undecided are distributed.

Now consider the steel ceiling. What if NOBODY goes to Trump? And there are 6 points of undecided voters. Lets say 5 to Hillary and 1 to Johnson, to keep it simple math again. Now the SAME polling from today, becomes 51 Hillary to 39 Trump to 7 Johnson to 3 Stein. The poll that showed a 7 point race, turned into a 12 point rout on election day! You understand this situation? This is why 2016 is a unique year and it will not repeat. This is total absolute madness. We have ALL the math and facts and polls to see, Trump will not gain. He will bleed support in these last 3 weeks, not gain. And that means whatever you measure today, there will be some undecideds - and they will only help Hillary (plus a few will go to Johnson and Stein).

That means, that if you SEE this, you KNOW there is a Tsunami-wave already approaching. You KNOW the devastation it will create. But the pollsters who only look at the water level in the harbor, see no tsunami-wave on the horizon, fast approaching. There is also a fear of talking about Trump’s polling ceilings, because he has pierced past those in his PRIMARY race. I was guilty of that, writing several times that I thought Trump had a ceiling he could not pierce, until he shot past it. That was mostly because Trump ran such a stupid campaign all through the Primaries (to win his nomination) which would then ultimately but totally doom his chances into the general election. And to make matters worse for the Republicans, Trump’s run also tarnished their brand for decades to come. They may need to start a new party beyond this one, to recover from the stench of Trump.

If there are more women than men, then in a two-party system, you cannot win by alienating the women. Thats just as dumb as trying to defy gravity or to try to breathe under water. And if 30% of the nation is not white, its a dangerous strategy to try to campaign as being against those in that big a minority. If just a third of the whites are against racism, the math dooms this racist path (and obviously, luckily, far less than two thirds of whites in America are racists or willing to tolerate racism). As we are now witnessing in this campaign. Trump cannot win.

But because the pundit class was made a fool several times in a row, talking about Trump polling ceilings, they now are wary of mentioning this fact. So we have a particular ‘building block’ to the election forecast that is solid and essentially certain. The polling now after the ‘p*ssygate’ videotape shows that still now, Trump maintains a 39% support level. It may decline in the last 3 weeks, but very very likely not even by one full percentage point. And it won’t climb. A single poll may have Trump above 40% but the average of polls will now report his support in the 39% range till Election day.

Where is the rest? Johnson has peaked. He is around 7% now. He’s come down from his peak polling of 12%. Aleppo killed his chances but he was already dead when he failed to qualify for the debates. There are undecideds who will end up with Johnson rather than Hillary. Stein is at 2.5% and I think she’ll land at 3%. McMullin’s stealth campaign will matter only in Utah but he will end up with something near 1% nationally, at least when the other candidate numbers are added. So how do I think Johnson ends? I think his last polling will show him at 6%. So if Johnson 6 + Stein 3 + McMullin 1 = 10%, and Trump has 39%, it means on the even of Election day Hillary will be at 51%. Note, there are likely to be 2% to 3% or so undecideds in those polls, those undecideds have to be accounted for (by the above rules, so not going to Trump).

By those rules, if Trump is unable to gain support from now till election day, and stays at 39%, then the race is essentially for about 1% of Johnson supporters switching to McMullin instead. Hillary has in fact a 12 point lead now, hidden in a 7 point polling outcome with 6% undecided. And to be perfectly clear, NEVER before have polls been interpreted this way, because never before was a candidate attempting the suicidal strategy of growth through subtraction.

A WAVE AND A SURGE

As you see, I keep talking about what will be shown in polls before election night. The reason to stress that point, is that this election will see a phenomenon almost impossble to measure, plus a phenomenon only once measured before. In 2012, the Obama vs Romney election was by almost every pollster measured to be a nail-biter close election of less than one percent advantage to Obama, by RCP average and by a few polls, yes Romney held the lead going into Election Day. It ended up being a crushing 5 point victory for Obama. What happened? The Big Data machine is what happened. Narwhal, is what happened. Get-out-the-vote (GOTV) is what happened.

Both sides had a GOTV project, the best either side had ever built. Romney’s team superceded what John McCain’s campaign had managed in 2008, and Romney saw an INCREASE in Republican turnout powered by their data-driven GOTV machine. This is why Karl Rove had his epic meltdown on Fox on election night, trying to insist that the election count had to be wrong. The Republican turnout, driven by Romney’s data machine and army of 34,000 volunteers, had indeed INCREASED the Republican turnout, quite significantly in several battleground states.

The only problem was, that they could not measure how much better the brand new, supercharged Obama GOTV machine was, the first ever built for an election using the high tech ‘Big Data’ systems. Both machines boosted turnout. Only Obama’s machine was 4.5 TIMES STRONGER than Romney’s! Not 45% stronger. 4.5 TIMES stronger! 350% stronger!!! Not twice as powerful, four and a half times as powerful !! Lets have a race. You ride a bicycle. You can do what, say 20 km per hour if you have a good fast bike and are in good shape and its a flat clear road. I race against you. I drive a CAR. I do 90 km per hour, in perfect leisure, inside the air-conditioned car and I drive 4.5 times faster than you. You had no chance!

The Republican autopsy, authored by Reince Priebus, of Romney’s loss identified four areas to focus on. Women, Minorities, Youth voters, and Big Data. I have the most authoritative analysis of that data machines race of 2012, Romney vs Obama, on this blog. I wrote a series of articles about it. It is referenced in a dozen published books already. And the key lesson is summarized by the Campaign Manager for Ted Cruz’s campaign, this summer. A Campaign that builds it data systems the modern way like Obama did, will outperform a Campaign that doesn’t use such a system in the final vote count, by from 2% to 5% final result. I measured it at 4% on this blog from 2012. Hillary Clinton’s Campaign took Obama’s machine that cost 100 million dollars to build, that was built by 120 data scientists in 2012, over 18 months, and devoted 60 more data scientists to it, and added 60 million dollars more of development work into it. That is the modern version of the Obama 2012 machine that powers Hillary’s GOTV effort on November 8.

Donald Trump said he doesn’t believe in data.

Trump doesn’t have a data operation. He has outsourced his email targeting etc to a web services company. He barely does any internal polling even for the very most rudimentary inputs into such a system. Yes, in 2012, Obama achieved a 5% victory when he was supposed by ALL polls, to be in a tight race of 1%. That was powered by his GOTV machine, and a revoutionary data-mining technology called Big Data. His was the first national political campaign to use this method, in 2012. Even the 2008 Obama Campaign did not yet use this radical new revolutionary datamining methodology. So when I say, the final election-day result will be BETTER for Hillary than the polls show, this is why. We saw this once, in 2012.

It was this SAME machine, that Hillary now has. And idiot Trump, while the Republican Autopsy insisted that they have to build a rival system - and Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Ted Cruz all tried - Trump never bothered to invest in this. Its like the age of the steamship, and you try to maintain a shipping fleet powered by sailships. Sorry, grandpa, sailships are nice for leisure yachting but for commercial shipping, you gotsta buy one of those Wartsila Diesel engines into your ‘boat’ or it ain’t gonna be competitive in this day and age... So thats one thing. I say thats the wave hitting those election results. It means Hillary will outperform on November 8 compared to the last polling.

But wait, there is also a surge. So we all know obviously Hillary has a big gender GAP. She’s the woman against a man, more women will vote for her. Her issues are designed to appeal more for women and the Democrats are the party more of and for women, while Trump appeals to men, and the Republicans are the party of men and for men. Yes, women will vote more for Hillary than for Trump. And the gender gap will be the biggest ever measured. But apart from the SPLIT in women, going more for Hillary than Trump, there will be a rare occurance. One voter group will SURGE some year, for whatever reason. In 2008, there was a surge of black voters, because of.. duh, Obama the first black candidate by a major party.

This is another aspect that is difficult to measure. If you dig into the polling data, almost all pollsters tend to treat male/female voter BALANCE in the polling SAMPLE as roughly even, usually a few points more of women than men voting. That would be consistent with any recent election. And its certainly possible that is how this year turns out too. Except I am CERTAIN it won’t. This year there will be a SURGE of only women, who normally would not bother to vote, who will be of any race and age and region and educational background and religion. There will be no surge to vote ‘against’ Hillary. There ‘against Hillary’ vote is standard Republican loyal voters who will vote anyway. There MAY be a surge of anti-Trump voters, yes.

But there will CERTAINLY be a surge of ‘lets go vote for the first woman President’. That will happen. Will that be 3% of the total vote of 5% or 10%, who knows. This year will see a LOPSIDED voter turnout, where the ‘normal’ amount of men will vote, but a SURGE in women will vote. That means the difference in female voters will be unusually large. And those bonus voters will all vote for female candidates. Most for Hillary, some for Stein. None for Trump. This surge in female voters will be worth at least 2% for Hillary. But it is partly covered in the GOTV effort, that effort will SPECIFICALLY function to activate these types of voters. With those elements, I am certain, that whatever is the final polling measured just before election day, ie I expect that to be 12% for Hillary, will then be boosted in the GOTV effort and the female voter surge, to result in a far stronger final result, a 16% election rout for Hillary against Trump. That is Walter Mondale type of disaster (he lost by 18%).

So as I said, I expect the actual final election result to be: 53% Hillary Clinton 37% Donald Trump 6% Gary Johnson 3% Jill Stein 1% Ewan McMullin & others A 16% election landslide exhilirating victory for Hillary, and crushing devastating loss for Trump. This forecast includes the effects of the sex tapes, and this is my ‘final’ election forecast barring another ‘October Surprise’.

With it I say Hillary wins 40 states including DC, and McMullin wins Utah, and Trump only wins 10 states. Texas yes, goes blue. In the Senate races, the above dynamic helps strongly the Democrats who will have at least a 3 seat majority. This also means the Supreme Court will flip from Conservative balance to Liberal balance, a rare change, the last time that happened was four decades ago. Its rare for a President to be able to flip that balance (in his or her favor, obviously).

In the House races, however, it won’t be the same. The third party phenomenon means that Hillary’s 16% victory in the Presidential race will not mean the same in the House races. And the House races are often ‘Gerrymandered’ to protect the party in power, mostly the Republicans but there are also Democrat party gerrymandered seats. The Democrats are behind by 30 seats and will definitely pick up more than 20 but I think they will fall short. The reason is, that those Republicans who cannot vote for Trump, will often be voting for Johnson (or McMullin) and will then vote for Republicans down-ticket. Hillary’s 16 point advantage turns only into a 9 point advantage when Johnson & McMullin votes are added to Trump votes for House seats.

Now the GOTV machine ends up damaging the House race overall. The Democrats GOTV machine is an OPTIMIZATION system. It helps OPTIMIZE campaign efforts for maximum election outcome. It helps direct resources to those races that matter. So it focuses efforst so as to win one race clearly rather than lose three races each by a thin margin. Which is why Hillary has recently put BIG effort into Arizona, rather than small efforts in each of Arizona, Georgia, Missouri and Indiana. The GOTV machine is excellent at identifying where the effort is worth it - and how much effort is then needed to get that given victory. I drew a picture of it for my last blog about this forecast:




So in those states where the GOTV machine is deployed, the vote is increased, by 4% but in other states, where it is NOT deployed, the corresponding vote is slightly down, by 2%. This is very much my educated guess, the reality won’t be known until long after the election. But the rough principle holds. And the battleground states only account for a third of the total vote. This means that the machine that was built to help Obama/Hillary win their Presidential Election, will only help down-ticket candidates in those states where it is deployed, the battleground states - while damaging (slightly) the chances in the ‘non competitive’ states. It doesn’t matter if Hillary loses a few votes in California. She’ll win it easily. So whether California is 18% or 16% doesn’t matter. She will win it ANYWAY. And in a normal year, there is no chance to pick up a red state like say Texas, so who cares if Hillary loses Texas by 7% or 9%, it was lost anyway.

This year it matters because suddenly the contest is deep in red states. And now, for those down-ticket races, a NON-OPTIMIZED campaign would have been better. Florida, Virginia, Colorado, typical battleground states will not be anywhere near close. Thus the ‘extra effort’ put into those states, is time and money that was denied the competitive red states (and also taken from a given competitive House race in a blue state like New York). There is a measurement that the current gerrymandering causes a 7% imbalance in the national vote, that favors the Republicans. So in the House races, they have a tilted playing field, that is 7% to their favor. If Hillary’s actual national effect was 9%, she could just overcome that. Except that the GOTV machine means, that in a few states, yes, instead of 9% she’ll do 13% but in most of the other states, instead of 9% she’ll only do 7% and those seats will not flip. It will be a CLOSE CLOSE race, it could go either way, and the margin is likely to be less than 2% either way. I think they’ll fall less than 5 seats short. I hope they don’t, because it would mean 2 more years of gridlock in Congress, but I am afraid, that while Hillary has a monster election night, winning by 16%, and taking back the Senate, and taking back far more than 20 seats in the House, she won’t recapture the House. Not in 2016. That they have to try again in 2018.

Thats my election forecast. My final forecast. Unless there is another October Surprise so big, it will dominate a week of discussion, I won’t be changing this forecast. And I will wait to see, if the last weeks turn out to be like this. Now, if you would rather laugh at Trump than do the math of his polling, I have my brand new joke book TRUMP vs THE SEVENTH STEVE. 1001 jokes for you. I am going to show 10% of the pages for free, one day every day until election day. Its a 219 page ebook so yes, I’ll show 22 pages. The first page is already up. Enjoy.

Comments

[paul]

I say 19% landslide for Hillary (that it Tomi's prediction + 3 %)!

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Thanks paul

and as they say, from your lips to God's ears haha. I wish you are right and I am wrong, because a 19% landslide would flip the House too... We'll see in 3 weeks. I honestly do hope you are right!

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Dave Barnes]

Tomi,
You have grande cojones.
I look forward to reading your post-election writing.
,dave

[cornelius]

1. This election is unlike any other. It is very, very polarizing. That means that in general blue states go bluer and red states go redder (with the exception of Arizona and Georgia, mostly due to minorities). For this reason, a landslide victory for Clinton in the popular vote will not necessarily translate into proportional electoral votes. Even a 16% landslide won't flip Texas nor South Carolina. In a normal election they would flip. Not this year.
2. Clinton has already started allocating resources to Congress races. That means that she chose to not run up her numbers in order to get a friendly Congress. This may blunt her momentum. She will still win, but her chances of a landslide are decreasing.
3. We still have one more debate. If Trump performs reasonably well, like during the last debate and he doesn't do anything stupid (that's a big if) and no major event occurs, Clinton's numbers will slowly decline in time. It's only three weeks left, so the decline won't be enough for Trump to have a chance. But Clinton will play cautiously, will try to conserve her lead and won't be aggressive. So her numbers won't stay as high as they are now. Maybe a 16% landslide would occur if the election day was today. But in three weeks her numbers will slightly drop.
4. I think you overestimate the women vote not in terms of split but in terms of volume.

So my forecast at the moment is 7% victory for Clinton. Trump will win Ohio, Arizona and Iowa. Clinton will win North Carolina, Nevada and Florida. Clinton will get 322 electoral votes. The Democratic Party will get the majority in Senate.

[Winter]

@cornelius
Hillary is over prepared and over planned. So, I expect that she still has some October surprises up her sleeves.

She might decide to play it save during the debate. But the campaign could plant stories when needed.

[cornelius]

@Winter

I agree. I think Hillary has several aces up her sleeve, similar to Alicia Machado. She was probably prepared to use them but she chose not to, in order not to overlap the sex tape scandal.

In unrelated news, if you want to get a glimpse of Trump's behavior after the election, check his tweetstorm after the 2012 election.

"We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!"
"More reports of voting machines switching Romney votes to Obama. Pay close attention to the machines, don't let your vote be stolen"
"Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us."
"This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!"

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/donald-trump-rigged-vote-twitter-2012/

[Halibut_ter]

I agree with most of your diagnosis but don't believe the house will go blue till at least 18 and maybe 20. Hard shell R's still hold the gerrymander reins so it will be a slow go till the 20 census

[Winter]

We will see how it really was:

Of Course Michael Moore Has Been Making A Secret Film About Trump This Whole Time
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/of-course-michael-moore-has-been-making-a-secret-film-about-trump-this-whole-time_us_58065b12e4b0180a36e6a121?section=

[cornelius]

@Winter
I can't wait to watch all the documentaries of this election. Any documentary would have to be like a whole series with tens of episodes in order to cover every detail of this crazy election.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

cornelius

Me too. But you know what? WE here on this blog have had a front-row seat, and we've had a deeper discussion of the full race than most political blogs. Those documentaries, while they will have stuff we'll learn, mostly the secret stuff, but the MAIN story, they will seem to us to be quite shallow and at times misleading - because we've seen the full story here. Its a bit like reading a Nokia or iPhone article haha. We can see immediately that gosh, that writer missed a major piece of the story. I betcha thats how we will feel with those documentaries. Some good tidbits but many things we will feel, that guy didn't catch the proper story haha...

Seriously, of the full race, the stuff we've done here in the comments is one of the best records of the race anywhere, much because of what you guys have brought in from your various vantage points and the links...

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Oh PS cornelius

About the documentaries. A few weeks ago Steve Schmidt, the guy who came to rescue John McCain's collapsed campaign got him to recover, win the nomination and then ran it against Obama, he was on some news show, with the woman who worked with him (I forget her name, she's also a frequent pundit). Anyway, they are rarely on the same show but were this time. And they got to talking about their time with McCain. And I had always wondered exactly how accurate was that docudrama 'Game Change' that was about the Sarah Palin gambit for McCain. I think a great political movie, but I wondered how much of it was fictionalized and how much of it was real. They talked about the 'May I call you Joe' part and one of the most memorable items from the movie - that Sarah Palin was unable to remember to call Joe Biden 'Joe Biden'. She would instinctively call him Joe O'Biden. And the debate prep team got very worried because she'd look like the fool obviously. Its Joe Biden, not Joe O'Biden. And she's be told, and she'd be like a lost puppy and a few minutes later she'd again say Joe O'Biden.

So.. it seemed like too goofy to really be true. Well, haha, Steve Schmidt just confirmed that yes that part was true. Sarah Palin had that problem and they were worried she'd mess up in the debate. But nobody prepped her for the idea to then walk onto the stage and ASK Joe, 'Can I call you Joe'. And this in turn then messed up inside Joe Biden's head, what is this mind-game. But now Sarah Palin had all by herself just figured out an easy way out of never having to try to remember to say Joe BIDEN, not Joe O'Biden...

That kind of details - GOSH I want to hear EVERYTHING from inside the Trump Campaign. Can you imagine the infighting and bickering and second-guessing with the Lewandowski - Manafort - Conway / Bannon and possibly the interviewed but not hired replacement to Conway haha... Any sane competent politico inside Trump Team must be suicidal...

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[grogxd]

I want someone to write a book about the election in a epic fantasy fashion.

[taiey]

Hmm. You had Bush staying in, missed Kasich's zombie campaign, and of course had the race going on until June 7 when it actually ended at Indiana. On the other side, well, Sanders was never *really* a threat, but it was a race, and it was more than a few states.
So trying to adjust for that leaves me exactly where I was. I think she'll win, and win well. I agree she'll pick up some points vs final polling on ground game. I don't think she'll crack +10, but high singles hopefully.

@cornelius, you're dead wrong. 2012 blue states have on average shifted .5 to Trump; 2012's red states have moved 8.5 to Clinton, and the swingers are 1.9 toward Clinton. It's a flattening plus movement towards Clinton, not polarisation within the pre-existing factions. [ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-clintons-texas-opportunity-and-her-texas-problem/ ]

[grouch]

Tomi:

"Seriously, of the full race, the stuff we've done here in the comments is one of the best records of the race anywhere, much because of what you guys have brought in from your various vantage points and the links..."

I heartily agree. This has been the center for me. Without all the links posted here and the analysis of the articles, I'd be mostly in the dark and starving for information.

(Your number crunching and predictions I take mostly on faith, based on your past. My biggest brush with statistics was during a quantitative analysis course in chemistry. We never got very friendly).

[grouch]

How Trump's Casino Bankruptcies Screwed His Workers out of Millions in Retirement Savings
Trump made out like a bandit, but his employees paid the price.

Patrick Caldwell

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/donald-trump-atlantic-city-bankruptcy

[Winter]

Nothing the Donald does looks ever the same again:

SEE IT: Donald Trump kisses girl during Wisconsin rally
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/donald-trump-kisses-underage-girl-wisconsin-rally-article-1.2834472

[Winter]

The elections are rigged, indeed. But we knew that already.

Indiana officials investigating possible voter registration tampering
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/indiana-voter-registration-investigation/

For Indiana voters who may have been affected by the registration confusion, the secretary of state's office said they may still be eligible to vote on November 8 but can only do so through the county election offices or the state voting website.

[Winter]

Kelly Conway says it like it is:

Trump Campaign Manager Accidentally Calls Barack Obama A ‘Very Popular President’
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/10/18/trump-campaign-manager-accidentally-calls-barack-obama-very-popular-president.html

[Winter]

Trump's future. He might be weeping all the way to the bank (to get new loans?)

Get ready for Donald Trump’s 4th Act
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/get-ready-for-donald-trumps-4th-act-141755247.html

Donald J. Trump’s Television Future
He may lose the election. But how will Trump capitalize on his political celebrity? Here are four possibilities.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/donald-j-trumps-television-future/504500/

Let’s Say Trump Really Does Want a TV Network. Here’s What He’d Have to Do.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2016/10/what_donald_trump_would_have_to_do_to_make_trump_tv.html

The price could be right, but Trump TV isn't likely to happen
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/18/the-price-could-be-right-but-trump-tv-isnt-likely-to-happen.html
A show:
"Most big brand advertisers would avoid it like the plague.
"Advertisers are not interested in paying a premium to reach that audience,

A TV channel
"For the middle to lower tier of cable networks right now, it probably wouldn't take $500 million.
Still, a TV channel is a massive infrastructure with costs that include equipment, studio spaces and employees,

Digital:
If Trump decides to lean toward digital distribution, he can start his own networks for a fraction of the cost,
"It seems unTrump to go out and spend an enormously huge amount on distribution when he can have digital distribution,

But:
"[Trump] is connecting with a lot of blue-collar conservatives in rural America who are unemployed or minimally employed. How much discretionary income do they have to go out of their way to pay another $10 every month to hear the same message over and over again?"

[Winter]

Trump has some help on social media:

New report shows a third of pro-Trump tweets are generated by bots
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/10/19/twitters-political-robots-are-mostly-pro-trump/21586478/
(note, a fifth of pro-Hillary tweets are from bots)

[Warning: Scientific Paper]
Bots and Automation over Twitter during the First U.S. Presiden
tial Debate
http://politicalbots.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Data-Memo-First-Presidential-Debate.pdf

[
ABSTRACT
Bots are social media accounts that automate interaction with other users, and political bots have been particularly active on public policy issues, political crises, and elections. We collected data on bot activity using the major hashtags related to the U.S. Presidential debate. In this brief analysis we find that (1) Twitter traffic on pro-Trump hashtags was roughly double that of the pro-Clinton hashtags, (2) about one third of the pro-Trump twitter traffic was driven by bots and highly automated accounts, compared to one fifth of the pro-Clinton twitter traffic, (3) the significant rise of Twitter traffic around debate time is mostly from real users who generate original tweets using the more neutral hashtags. In short, Twitter is much more actively pro-Trump than pro-Clinton and more of the pro-Trump twitter traffic is driven by bots, but a significant number of (human) users still use Twitter for relatively neutral political expression in critical moments.
]