White House Watch: Trump 43%, Clinton 39%

[Excited Penguin]

Awesome... fellow atheists fighting over politicians

There is no such thing as fellow atheists. Only people having different opinions and values. Atheism as a defining factor matters as much as having to take a leak off and on, as far as real life and the world is concerned.

Tell that to those in self-denial about being atheists.

[Seraphina]

It's a fool's errand to predict the outcome of a US presidential election based on polling percentages.
The outcome is not decided by voters, it is decided by the electoral college.
The same Rasmussen outfit quoted by the OP had Barack Obama at 47% and Mitt Romney at 48% only days before the last election.
The electoral college results were 332 to 206 - not even close.
There are websites that crunch the electoral college numbers for those who are interested. But you're barking up the wrong tree by looking only at polls of likely voters to try and figure out who will win.

[KevinM1]

A better predictive tool would be state-by-state percentages. Since the vast majority of states (48, IIRC) use a winner-takes-all system for Electoral College votes, that would give everyone a clear indication of which states are in the bag for which candidate, and which are legit battleground states.

[Brian37]

It's a fool's errand to predict the outcome of a US presidential election based on polling percentages.
The outcome is not decided by voters, it is decided by the electoral college.
The same Rasmussen outfit quoted by the OP had Barack Obama at 47% and Mitt Romney at 48% only days before the last election.
The electoral college results were 332 to 206 - not even close.
There are websites that crunch the electoral college numbers for those who are interested. But you're barking up the wrong tree by looking only at polls of likely voters to try and figure out who will win.

I look at Fivethirtyeight and 270 as well.

[Mister Agenda]

Nice Mister.  Any predictions?  Not about Clinton v. Trump, about the future of our political system.

I think it's impolitic to try to go back to the old way entirely, but we need to find something to replace the pro-cooperation incentives that used to be in place. It used to be that deep personal relationships could occasionally trump party loyalty, but that seems to have faded away. Social media lets politicians bypass the usual methods of advancement (get on the good side of the speaker of the house and get better and better committee appointments until you're an obvious candidate for president) and run 'rogue campaigns'.

People have been predicting the demise of the GOP for a long time, but I think it's at least going to undergo a reformation over the next 8 years. I think whatever is left is going to be more socially inclusive, as the culture warriors are going to get jettisoned. It's going to move toward the center, probably leaving some version of the Tea Party to occupy the far right, doomed to eventual irrelevance by demographics. Hopefully a Center Right party (younger side of the GOP) and a Center Center Party (Democrats) can find new ways to work together that aren't available with the GOP being a far right party.