Guest Post: President Trump

Peter Sage:  In this comment below frequent guest poster Thad Guyer reviews the evidence that Donald Trump is very electable in a general election, citing a well respected election model.   Are Thad's sources correct?   I don't know.   Click on the links and reflect on your own instincts.

My own sources are my own eyes and ears.    My goal in this blog has been to inform myself--and others--about the campaign by seeing things myself, up close.  Here is what I think I observed as an eyewitness in my trip to the Miami area, where I saw Rubio, Cruz, and Trump live and up close:

1.  Rubio's upward momentum is gone.   He went back to his political home of Cuban American Hialeah to say he would fight on.  People I spoke to in Florida in English are looking elsewhere.  It was a small crowd with few non-Hispanics.  Rubio is done.

2.  There is much bigger anti-immigrant sentiment in the Republican electorate than I had understood.   Rubio's past attempt to find middle ground on the issue is a disaster for him because it is understood as a compromise with the devil.  This is a litmus test issue for many voters.  Trump has credibility on the issue.  People i spoke with were bursting with anecdotes about problems relating to immigration: crime, gangs, laziness, gaming the system, taking jobs, their feeling "entitled.

3.  Hillary unifies the Republicans.  Republican I talked with believe Hillary is utterly  dishonest and untrustworthy.   The established media is fact-checking Trump and constantly saying "pants on fire!" but it does not matter.  Their gut impression is locked in: Trump may be undisciplined but he says some things that were high time to say (i.e. truth teller) and that Hillary Clinton is a dishonest, conniving, untrustworthy and morally flexible person.   Trump wins that comparison.

Pounding Music, Helicopter Entrance.

4.  Trump's message is simple and clear and Hillary is complicated and boring.  The problems and solutions posited by Trump are memorable--build the wall; foreigners take advantage of us; don't take lobbyist money; America for Americans;  win win win win.   Hillary lists policies and disadvantaged groupsand legislative solutions that will be slow and difficult.  Trump is a better salesman and showman.      He made the grandest of Grand Entrances.   All hail the great man.  It was show biz great theater and it worked, because it was very good show biz and very good theater.

Below, Here is Thad Guyer's comment.

Guest Comment by Thad Guyer:

Thad Guyer, Guest Comment

Liberal Media Suppresses Trump (or Hitler) Victory Statistical Model 

UpClose is right that Trump supporters don’t trust the media. Very few people believe they do, although experts tell us we delude ourselves with that belief. Just like media on the right, we would be naïve to think that the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, etc. don’t use very deliberate strategies for influencing what the left believes. The term “propaganda” is not a pejorative to political and social scientists, and it is not to me. It is simply a fact of American media culture. See, “Media's Use of Propaganda to Persuade People's Attitude, Beliefs and Behaviors” (Stanford, 2013) http://goo.gl/t0UD7u, and “A Virtuous Circle: The News Media and Democracy (Harvard, 2000)”, http://goo.gl/QIXZMO. 

Media propaganda is based both on how certain events are reported, and just as importantly, on how certain events are suppressed. Editorial boards decide that some facts are too dangerous for voters because of the risk they will give undue emphasis to those facts. In short, the media decides when voters can be trusted with certain facts. The empirical evidence that Trump will gain strength with a large cross section of the electorate is considered such a dangerous fact.
 
With small pockets of notable dissent, liberal mainstream media increasingly projects a belief that Donald Trump is an American Hitler. Whether the media actually believes this is debatable, for as part of the establishment, there are many more mundane reasons that industrial, political and media elites don’t want Trump disfiguring the status quo. But the conclusion that mainstream media on the left and right is intent on defeating Trump is not debatable. 

To me, one of the most fascinating recent examples of media suppression is the non-reporting of Professor Helmut Norpoth’s election model forecasting that if Donald Trump wins the necessary delegates for the Republican nomination, there is little statistical chance that Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders could win. See, www.primarymodel.com.


In past elections, the NYT touted Norpoth as one of its forecast consultants, and the WP featured his forecasts regularly in 2012 and before. Thus, in “Most models say Obama will win”, Washington Post (Aug 31, 2012) https://goo.gl/3NZre2, it said of Norpoth: “The model forecasts Obama will get 53.2 percent of the two-party vote and Romney will get 46.8 percent.” The actual results were 51.1% 47.2%, Wikipedia https://goo.gl/iACNWK. 

In “The Magic Ingredient: Party Unity”, Washington Post (May 8, 2008) http://goo.gl/uzWjDy, it was reported that Norpoth’s model would “correctly identify the winner of the popular vote in every election since 1952”, the exception being Kennedy's narrow win over Nixon in 1960.” As for the NYT, in “How the Poll of Iowa Voters Was Conducted”, NTY (Jan 26, 2000) http://goo.gl/00Vsp6, it noted “Prof. Helmut Norpoth *** is helping The Times in its Election Day polling analysis.” Then in “And the Winner Is Gore” http://goo.gl/HJYjZD, NYT (Sept 4, 2000), it featured Norpoth projecting Gore winning the popular vote over Bush, which he did 48.4% to 47.9%. See Wikipedia, https://goo.gl/HpFFZZ. 

The NYT, WP and LATimes now have a blackout on Norpoth’s 2016 projections with only lesser liberal media publishing the results. See, “Trump Near-Certain to Defeat Democrat”, Huffington Post (Mar 7, 2016) http://goo.gl/QCNJEM, and “Trump Will Become President, Says Extremely Accurate Statistician”, US News & World Report, (Feb 26, 2016) http://goo.gl/BZUUtp, noting Norpoth’s “statistical model has only ever been wrong once in 104 years”. Media on the right is also publishing Norpoth’s projections. See “Political Science Professor: 97-99% Chance That Trump Will Be President”, FoxNews (Feb 26, 2016) http://goo.gl/zgOZWs.

This is a new era in American liberal media. It is now in a desperate race against time to convince America that Trump is our Hitler.