We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21196261 and marked it off-topic.

How is it off topic? The person I replied to said this:

>I hope the next president is even more hardline against China than Trump.

And I asked if any other presidential candidates expressed a hardline stance against China. I don't see how that is off topic

The parent comment mentioned Trump's name, but "Trump easily has 4 more years" expanded that into a provocative statement that couldn't possibly go anywhere other than partisan flamewar. If your comment had been just the first and third sentences, it would have been fine.

> Easily 4 more years.

What planet do you live on?

The same planet the people who thought he'd win in the first place were on.

Read up on mean reversion and the fact that he won a 3 million fewer votes.

If he even finishes* his term that is..

Yes, and he had a 2% chance of winning his first term. Are you going to trust the polls again? I'm not.

538, admittedly at the end, gave him a 29% chance of victory.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gav...

Yes, I'm talking about the beginning of election day. I'm not claiming malice on the part of any pollsters, simply a tactic their models didn't account for.

538 consistently gave Trump a realistic shot at winning.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

You can see their chance of winning history in a line graph. October has a significant dip, to be sure, but it had recovered by November back to the ~30% it ultimately stayed at. Their 'polls plus' model also never dipped quite as far as the polls only model.

Regardless, the initial comment was he 'easily' has 4 more years in him. Except now he's facing impeachment, has Republican allies breaking ranks, a long list of unfulfilled campaign promises, big name televangelists saying he's in danger of losing "the mandate of heaven", more and more evidence coming out about Russian interference in the election, and facing a party that knows it must focus on states that it largely ignored. Trump won in several states with fewer votes than Romney lost with - the Democrats aren't going to ignore those states again. The Russians are unlikely to be as effective again.

I'm not saying he's going to lose - I could very well see him winning - but acting as if it is an easy thing is absolutely nuts. In a lot of ways it is a significantly worse landscape for him, with lots more room for it to get even worse.

The polls got his popular vote margin correct. They also got the Democratic generic ballot correct in 2018.

Yes, but they completely missed the point of the data. Popular vote is relatively easy to predict, but Trump's campaign reached really deep into quiet conservatives who wouldn't vote otherwise.

Those people are still not going to respond to polls, and since they live in low-population areas, they won't affect the popular vote much, but they hit the electoral college hard.

The Dem voters in the primaries are a predictable population, and polling for primaries is relatively easier.

This is something I've seen very few people actually remark on or take into consideration: the people who wouldn't have come to the election polls in the first race certainly won't be responding to the straw polls being conducted now and the models can't really reflect that. Or at least they don't currently seem to.

They have roughly accurately predicted other elections in the middle of which there have been literally hundreds.

But, as said upthread, they predicted downballot elections in 2016 pretty well too. So unless there's been an improvement in downballot predictions - not just good absolute performance - why should we expect any difference in 2020?

>but Trump's campaign reached really deep into quiet conservatives who wouldn't vote otherwise.

There's really not any evidence of this. In the rust belt states he won that turned the tide of the election, there was less turnout on both sides than previous elections. It's just that Democrat voting turnout was down even more than Republican voting turnout.

You know the polls also accurately predicted the gubernatorial elections (and other statewide elections) in Wisconsin (D+1), Pennsylvania (D+19), and Michigan (D+8.5) right?

To be fair, almost everyone thought Trump was going to lose first election.

I would personally (and have) put my monry on Trump winning against Warren or Sanders (Though he’s probably gonna drop out). Against Biden maybe 60/40 against Trump.

Myself, the planet where a president with a stronger stock market and unemployment than when he entered ~always gets re-elected.

Downvoted for facts. Sorry, man

Maybe, you know, look at the stock market to see if that's true, instead of just believing Trump's tweets about it...

You should probably look yourself. From what I've been reading from financial postings, the Trump administration has done many good things for the stock market (for the people however is a different story)

Usually whoever keeps the economy going and doesn't harm it in anyway gets re-elected for a second term.

Please.. just go look.

Since his inauguration, the S&P500 is up 27.37%. At this point during Obama's first term, the S&P500 was up 65.19%. Apples and oranges, true. Let's look at the preceding 46 months before Trump's inauguration. Over that time, the market rose 26.69%.

Anyone pretending the market under Trump is anything but "normal" is participating in partisan hackery. Don't do it.

The market hasn't gone anywhere in the last year. The first 1-2 years was helped by massive tax cuts implemented by Trump which juiced corporate earnings.

You’re mental if you think that this is normal. We’ve been on a huge bull market since 2008. It’s not due to Obama or Trump but Obama got credit and got re-elected and the same will happen with Trump.

What’s the average annual return of the DOW since its inception? What’s the average annual return been since Trump’s inauguration?

Bernie Sanders has.

Elizabeth Warren has.