general election

One week after Donald Trump made the surprising announcement that he hired former Goldman Sachs partner and Soros employee, Steve Mnuchin as his national finance chairman as he begins to roll out his presidential fundraising operation (Mnuchin has said he hopes to raise as much as $1 billion), Trump announced moments ago that he has picked Chris Christie to lead his transition team, which would prepare the political neophyte turned presumptive GOP nominee for the White House if he wins in the general election.

A Labour councillor thwarted attempts of potential election fraud during local elections in Oxfordshire recently. Duncan Enright says he had initially lost his seat due to the fact that a bundle of votes were hidden under a pile for his Conservative rival. The Witney candidate luckily rectified the situation upon discovering the pile of ‘misplaced’ votes and won his seat. Independent.co.uk reports: He posted: “Lost by 70 votes or so. Thanks for the opportunity to serve. The fight goes on.” He soon after followed up by announcing: “Miscount in Witney East, result now in, I win by 70!

Almost half the American voters are going to vote “against” rather than “for,” in order to ensure that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump doesn’t win the presidential election, according to a poll released this week. RT reports: Nearly half the supporters of Republican candidate Donald Trump plan to vote for him out of fear that Democrat Hillary Clinton might become president. And it’s the same, vice versa, for those who plan to vote for Hillary. “This phenomenon is called negative partisanship,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told Reuters.

Authored by Doug Casey via InternationalMan.com,

(Doug Casey updates readers about his take on the current crop of would-be presidents… and why he believes most Americans will vote for Trump. It was originally published on April 14th.)

It appears there are two candidates running from the left wing of the Demopublican Party (Hillary and Bernie), and two and a half from the right wing (Trump, Cruz, and Kasich). Note: The media identifies the Lefties by their first names, a friendly and personal thing, unlike the Righties.

Submitted by Salil Mehta Of Statistical Ideas

The Flip-Flopping Pollster

How poor have the election forecasters been this year?  It is a topic many are discussing given the large number of upsets we've had during the Primaries.  For example, statistician Nate Silver (who started the campaign season proclaiming Trump had <2% chance of being nominated) by March 1 predicted with 94% probability that Trump would win Alaska (he lost).