There are, in fact, 3 different maps I have, and I will be showing why each makes sense.
First, Common Sense:
Common sense tells us that an openly racist candidate, who openly admits to abusing their own power (grab her by the pussy), who tells lies at every rally, and who is a warmonger, should do very poorly.
Instead, most Republicans hate Clinton because they think *she* is someone who abuses her own power, tells lies at every rally, and is a warmonger.
It boggles the mind and makes little sense, hence the above projection. What's notable is that every election until now in the US could be easily explained by common sense. There have been a few elections in Europe that were unexplainable using common sense, Poland's most recent election is one of them, and the simple level of support the far-right parties get is another issue.
It seems in the past few years all around the world, common sense has gone out the window, and has been replaced with hatred and racism.
As such, the above, will not happen.
So what will happen?
One of two things.
First, Trump may win:
How could this happen? Well to answer that, and why common sense makes no sense, we need to look at who is voting for Trump, and who we are.
Who is "we"? Well I am Teddy. I'm 32, and I spend, in an average day, at least 14 hours online. I do most of my socializing online, get most of my entertainment online, and get most of my news from online sources. I am 'very' connected to the internet. I am a progressive, who is very socially tolerant. I also live in poverty.
Who are you? Well I don't know for sure, I don't have specific demographics of my readers, but I do have a guess. You are 28. You are male, and live in the Greater Toronto area. You make less than $40,000 a year, but more than $20,000 a year. You spend at least 6 hours every day online, and get the plurality of your news, socializing, and entertainment online as well. You, like me, are very socially tolerant, and are likely more left-wing than I am.
While no one specific reader will hit all those marks, my general guess is that you are not too far off from this person.
You and I have a few things in common.
1 - Due to our age, neither of us are heads of our own large families.
2 - Due to our income levels, neither of us tend to socialize with those who make many times more than we do
3 - Due to our interests (the internet) we have a very high tendency to meet others who are equally connected to the online world.
So what does all of this mean?
In short, there is a group of people who we are disconnected with. They are older, at least 40, white men, who have children, are married, are conservative, and are likely religious. They are concerned about immigration (in large part because they don't know any immigrants personally, and any they see professionally, are almost certainly in the lower part of the working class, and as such, much less likely to be fluent in english) and these are people who, when all is said and done, are less educated than 'our' group.
They are, to boil it down to (perhaps offensive and) simple terms, old men who are afraid of change.
The problem (for our group) is that there are a lot of people like this out there, and they live a life that's almost as different from ours as is possible within the same culture.
In past elections, this has not been a huge issue. These people, and their concerns, split them among the candidates. Sure they were always going to favour the right-wing candidate, but that was always taken into account. The problem, it seems, is that rather than splitting 2-3, or 3-5, they are going overwhelmingly for the same candidate. They are also bringing their friends along; social groups they are not fully in, but are connected to.
Due to their nature of being offline folk, their arguments never get to us, and ours never get to them.
These are the 'uneducated working class whites' we've heard so much about.
There is a real possibility that due to their previous candidate splitting and low turnout, that we are not properly counting them in the polls.
The final possibility is that these people are not as split as we think. In short, the venom spewed at Clinton is so great, that it's suppressing her real numbers; and the polls somewhat agree with this as odd as it sounds. As such, our final possibility is a Clinton win:
The exact margin is still unclear. Nevada, North Carolina, and Florida are all very close contests. New Hampshire, Maine's 2nd district, Ohio, Iowa, and Arizona are all much more safe. Utah is also somewhat safe, having swung back to Trump as voters started to weigh McMullin, Trump, and Clinton, and consider it a 3-party race.
This scenario bears out what we've been seeing in early voting. A much higher turnout among hispanics, and a strong turnout among registered Democrats. Unlike the groups that back Trump, groups that back Clinton are far more likely to be completely disconnected from pollsters, neither having a landline telephone, nor being a heavy user of the english speaking internet.
This projection basically assumes the polls are right. As a base assumption that's not always such a bad guess.
Clinton has lead in the poll averages for just about the entire election, and was expected to win far in advance of the election itself. The Republican Party is divided against itself, and the Republicans in the Senate have already started planning for a possible Clinton Presidency.
This projection is much easier to explain because it makes more sense. It's even possible that if the polls are over-estimating Trump, that we could see victories in places like Georgia, South Carolina, Nebraska's 2nd district, and Texas; this is, however, unlikely.
Lastly you may have noticed I've left lots of space for recording electoral votes for people who may not even be on the ballot. This is because I fully expect post-election absurdity, as that many electors may try to single-handedly change the result of the election itself. If nobody wins a majority of electoral votes, this would force the vote to the new House and new Senate, and in the latter, the Democrats may have a majority.
It's also possible that with two candidates who are, or are almost 70, that one or both of them may pass away between the popular vote tomorrow and the casting of electoral ballots on December 19th.
Or, something else could happen between then and the counting of the ballots on January 6th.
As such, this map is designed to help get us through that period of time should something unexpected happen.
Tomorrow morning at 7:30am, I will post which of these I feel is the most likely, and why.
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