The most valuable resource for tracking the U.S. elections is Nate Silver’s 538.
538 weights and averages inputs from a variety of sources, a sound statistical principle we’ve discussed many times here at Econbrowser. They’ve also come up with some ingenious graphics for visualizing the implications of the U.S. Electoral College system.
Source: Fivethirtyeight.com
538 also covers the Senate races.
Source: Fivethirtyeight.com
538 updates these calculations daily. The graphs I’ve reproduced above do not include any reaction to the latest scandal, but you will find ones that do at 538 next week. For now, here is conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg’s assessment:
Donald Trump is a fundamentally dishonorable and dishonest person– and has been his whole adult life. The evidence has been in front of those willing to see it all along. And there’s more to find. And there’s more in the Clinton stockpile….
And he will humiliate and debase his defenders so long as they feel the need to defend this indefensible man.
Here’s a link to the reactions of some other prominent Republicans.
I would say Trump is pragmatic like Bill Clinton. However, the Republicans are running scared from the avalanche of negative broadcast and print media, the powerful Hillary machine, and the rest of the insider establishment, which has been snowballing for months. So, it’s more of an uphill battle for Trump, as he becomes more targeted and isolated whenever his poll numbers improve.
There are some important differences between Bubba and The Donald that you don’t seem to understand. For one thing, both men may like to imagine themselves as pragmatic, but only one of them is actually any good at it. And it ain’t The Donald. Bubba was hardly a paragon of moral virtue, but at least he was smart, intellectually curious and willing to listen to expert advice. And he did actually have a morally defensible vision. The Donald is a completely amoral person…or maybe “amoral creature” would be a better choice of words because I’m not quite sure he’s entirely human. When Hillary Clinton lies, dissembles or otherwise stretches the truth, it’s entirely obvious. She has a normal human reaction. She wants to change the subject. She squirms. She’s uncomfortable. When The Donald tells his whoppers he does so without the slightest hint of guilt or shame. It’s a the reaction of a sociopath who doesn’t seem to have any genuinely felt connections. He objectifies everyone, not just hot chicks. This was obvious from day one. The only mystery is why it took so many people so long to recognize it.
The really sad part about this whole affair is that it took some personal scandals to derail the Trump Train. His policies were just as perverted as his personal behavior. This is a man who fancies himself a business genius, but cannot outperform the S&P 500. This is a man who thinks it’s a mark of genius to lose almost a billion dollars. This is a man who doesn’t seem to understand the difference between business taxes and personal taxes. This is man whose various fiscal plans fluctuate by several trillion dollars with each iteration. This is a man who doesn’t understand the first thing about military science but is quite convinced he knows more than the generals. Well, I know a fair number of generals and he might have a point there; but he clearly doesn’t know more than career field grade officers. This latest scandal tells us a lot about those GOP primary voters who supported Trump’s ignorant, xenophobic and racist policy pronouncements. Will we get an apology from them? I won’t hold my breath.
2slugbaits, sounds like most politicians.
And, I can guess what your expectations of Reagan were.
No need to guess; I’ll tell you. During his first six years my expectation was that Reagan was a clueless old man. Those expectations were confirmed. His fiscal policies resulted in huge structural deficits and mostly mediocre economic growth. Reagan wasn’t even responsible for the development and initial fielding of “Force Mod” weapon systems, for which the typical layperson gives him credit. And people forget that a lot of the successful deregulation that often gets credited to Reagan was actually done by Carter.
I do give Reagan kudos for some major accomplishments in his last two years; e.g., the 1986 tax reform that effectively reversed most of the junk in his 1981 tax plan. Of course, St. Ronnie initially opposed it until he got hoodwinked into believing it was his own idea.
And no, Trump does not sound like most politicians. Most politicians equivocate, obfuscate, triangulate and regurgitate. But most of them are at least able to recognize when they’re behaving that way and to feel guilt or shame when caught. Trump is different.
I agree, Carter was a better President than perceived. He appointed Volcker and was a fiscal conservative. However, Reagan gave the country optimism, the longest peacetime expansion, with strong per capita real growth, and the peace dividend. Reagan, later in his term, raised taxes to slow the expansion to a sustainable rate. Trump is honest – he says what he means, although it’s often wrong. He’s not politically correct or a weasel and acts like a real man, in this feminized country. He’s successful – worth billions of dollars, actually employs people, and created real value. Right, Trump is not like most politicians.
“Trump is honest – he says what he means, although it’s often wrong.”
an honest idiot?! not a characteristic wanted in a president.
“He’s not politically correct or a weasel and acts like a real man, in this feminized country. ”
by real man, you mean “neanderthal”? you want to be derogatory in the use of feminized, understood. you are out of touch with the modern world. go back to your cave.
you seem to think authority and respect come from vulgar, loud mouthed displays. that is how a chimp asserts dominance.
“He’s successful – worth billions of dollars, actually employs people, and created real value.”
he also LOST a billion dollars. his atlantic city casino empire was a bust. so were his airlines. his publicly traded company?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/donald-trump-was-a-stock-market-disaster-2015-07-22
peak, apparently you and i know two very different donald trumps.
“I would say Trump is pragmatic like Bill Clinton”
As president of the USA I prefer sombody who is not a pathological lier, politics is about credibility.
To call Trump “pragmatic” gives pragmatic a menaing it does not deserve, and is IMHO only a cheap excuse to cover Trumps real truth issue.
The real tragedy is that the only available alternative is HC.
trump occasionally says the truth. just last night, he admitted to losing a billion dollars in one year. and he admitted to not paying federal taxes for years, perhaps decades. those were honest statements.
Nate is just a (not so, IMO) thinly veiled hedger:
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/783816729738764288
I like Sam Wang’s analysis at election.princeton.edu a lot better. Less salesmanship
I would say that anyone trying to defend either Trump or Clinton is morally and ethically challenged. This nation is in deep trouble.
no. anyone trying to defend trump is morally and ethically challenged. trump is in a class by himself.
When I read Jonah Goldberg’s article and see the list of Republicans who are jumping ship, I can only think that Republicans deserve to lose.
These Republicans seem to be as shocked by the revelations about Trump as Captain Renault was shocked to learn that gambling was going on. Of course Goldberg is right that this is the real Trump. Everybody already knows that and Goldberg does too. And of course he’s right that even if you think Trump’s the lesser of two evils, you must be prepared for an endless stream of more embarrassments. Check-Trump’s supporters have long understood that.
But Trump isn’t running against Mother Therese for Pope. Goldberg and other conservative intellectuals who oppose Trump should reflect on why there is no liberal version of Jonah Goldberg writing a similar article about Hillary Clinton. Such an article would be easy to write. It could start by reviewing the long history of scandals and investigations throughout the 90s and then come to the present–covering the enormous sums of money both Clinton’s have made, the email scandal in which credible evidence of a violation of a felony and misdemeanor stature was produced, the non-investigation by Justice and the FBI, and what that must imply. The article would warn that even if you think Clinton is the lesser of two evils, you must be prepared for an endless stream of investigations and scandals.
That article would be right too. And just like the Republicans, Democrats know this, although they will never admit it (which is why there is no liberal Jonah Goldberg.) But the difference is that Democrats are just fine with the stream of investigations and scandals that are coming. They know from experience they can be managed. Unlike the Republicans, they understand that winning is the most important thing.
Republican intellectuals cannot abide that Trump is liberal in a number of areas, such as trade. They don’t trust that Trump will listen to them. They fear their loss of influence. Democrats know that Hillary Clinton is also similarly untrustworthy on a number of issues. But they don’t care. The know that half a loaf is better than no loaf. The Democrats understand that winning is the most important thing.
When threatened with a candidate–Sanders–who was not the establishment’s pick and who would have trouble winning a general election, the DNC intervened in favor of the candidate they favored. But the Republican Party leadership did not intervene in the primary process to stop a candidate that they knew would be problematic, because that wouldn’t be fair–it’s undemocratic. Early on, Nate Silver confidently predicted that Trump would not be the nominee, because ultimately the party would intervene. Nate Silver was surprised to learn that the Republican Party did not intervene as he had predicted, but that’s because he’s a Democrat. Democrats know that winning is the most important thing.
Republicans who are publicly abandoning Trump at this point are just making the potential defeat worse, threatening down ballot candidates. Like it or not, you really can’t sever the down ballot candidates from the top of the ticket. If you are dealt a bad hand, the last thing you do is throw your cards in the air and run from the table. You’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt as best you can.
Otherwise you deserve to lose.
your description of the republicans is correct. you are out of your league about the democrats. in four years, no democrat will be embarrassed for voting for hillary if she is elected. in four years, if trump would be elected, there will be very few republican who would admit they voted for him. don’t try compare the republican dumpster fire to the democrats-the comparison is not even close to accurate. accept the dumpster fire for who you are.
Hi, Menzie and James.
Trump is mentally ill, narcissism. HRC is worse than Trump, but she has the MSM on her side and it’s a done deal. At the last debate Clinton’s pupils were tremendously open- she was high on cocaine and crystal meth.
It will not be Trump, it will be Clinton’s health.
And Bill does not look good too, there is no denying Chelsea (say CVC) will take over the Foundation money soon, and CVC’s husband is the biggest clown in this Frankenstein club. Have a look at the wikileaks emails, no wonder these guys want to murder Assange.
It’s a racketeering scheme, and Goldman Sachs is their house bank.
you need to stop listening to right wing shock therapy!
lol !
What about the chemtrails??? And the flies?
Dear Prof. Hamilton,
Sorry to write this here, but the comments are closed in the post on “Why you should never use the Hodrick-Prescott filter”.
I wanted to ask you a question regrading your new de-trending procedure.
On p.17 of your wp you give an example of how you can de-trend a pure RW with your filter. As per equation (23) the filtered series would simply be w_t+h=y_t+h-y_t and the trend in t+h is y_t. However, RW is a pure stochastic trend process, shouldn’t the trend in t+h be y_t+h-1? Isn’t the procedure, when applied to a RW process, assigning shocks of the stochastic trend into the filtered stationary series (w_t+h)? If this truly is the case one should be quite careful in specifying h. A thorough analysis of the time series subjected to de-trending should be conduct. This would prevent in construction of cycle not compatible with the true underlying dgp.
And… the paper is simply amazing! The consequences are enormous. I hope that the paper will affect the DSGE literature (where HP and procedures alike are used to extract cross-correlations between the cycles). Even more important, policy decisions are heavily based on the output GAP, budget balance, credit to GDP gaps produced with an HP filter or in a tailored (miss-specified) trend-cycle state space model…
Kind regards,v
vasja: I propose as a definition of the trend at date t+h to be the value that could have been predicted at time t. For a random walk, the value of the trend at date t+h is given by the value of y_t. I use h = 2 years on the grounds that the main reason we will be wrong in forecasting most macro variables two years ahead is cyclical developments, namely, whether the economy goes into a recession during the next two years, or whether the cyclical recovery picks up steam, and not because there could be a change in the long-run growth rate over the next two years.
James_Hamilton: Thank you for your reply. I got caught in thinking in terms of explicit models models for trend and cycle and automatically started assigning those shocks to the de-trended series and the trend. However, you make it clear in the paper that your concept of the cyclical component does not demand knowledge of the correct model of DGP.
I will set up a small experiment. The experiment will verify the predictive power of the cyclical components (extracted under various assumptions and models) and the de-trended series for variables that are used as inputs in policy decisions.
Thank you again and kind regards.