HEADS I WIN, TAILS YOU LOSE
Feb. 3rd, 2016 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogIowa is done caucusing, and my newsfeeds are ablaze with the two most important stories to come out of this:
1. Donald Trump actually lost something (besides money – HEYOOOOOO!).
2. OMG FLIPGATE!
The first one doesn’t mean all that much for now, if only because Ted Cruz is following in the footsteps of other Iowa winners like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. Also, with Cruz polling 27% to Trump’s 24%, I wouldn’t call it that decisive a win.
That said, it’s more decisive than HillRod’s win over #Bern, which is somewhat significant in that when Sanders the SOCIALIST launched his run, he was never expected to get anywhere close to Hillary by anyone except his hardcore fanbase who are convinced he’s been in the lead the entire race but the Mainstream Media that Hillary controls is lying – or so I gather from my Facebook feed.
Some of the same people are also convinced that the coin tosses were also somehow rigged by Hillary’s squad, because the odds of winning six out of six coin tosses are so slim they might as well be zero.
In which case, I’d refer you to this NPR article that points out a couple of useful things to know:
1. Updated reports are saying there were more than six coin tosses, and Sanders won some of them, which makes the odds more reasonable.
2. Even if were just the six, and even if Hillary won all of them (legitimately or otherwise), it wouldn’t have made a difference in the final delegate count, thanks to the way Iowa’s insanely complicated caucus system works.
Meanwhile, there’s this Snopes article which points out there’s conflicting info on just how many coin tosses there were and how many Hillary or Bernie won. Which, again, is a moot point because the tosses didn’t really affect the outcome, so it’s inaccurate to say Hillary won on a coin toss, and in any case, in a race this close, “winning” is almost academic. (Remember in 2012, Rick Santorum beat Mitt Romney by something like 24 votes – and we all know who that worked out better for.)
So yeah, nice try, conspiracy mavens.
As for Trump, well, you never know. Iowa was the one primary where his polling was weakest. He’s leading in NH and SC by double-digit margins, so depending on what Cruz and Rubio do in the next couple of weeks – and how many more people drop out of the race between now and then (Huckabee quit on election night, and Rand Paul quit while I was typing this) and where their support goes – he could still win some delegates. Maybe the one thing working in his favor is the Establishment hates Cruz almost as much as they hate Trump. Whether that makes a difference will depend on whether the Establishment still has the influence it used to. The Tea Party people are betting the farm that it doesn’t. And arguably, if it did, Trump wouldn’t have been leading the pack for the past six months to begin with.
On to New Hampshire!
Flip yr wig,
This is dF
1. Donald Trump actually lost something (besides money – HEYOOOOOO!).
2. OMG FLIPGATE!
The first one doesn’t mean all that much for now, if only because Ted Cruz is following in the footsteps of other Iowa winners like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. Also, with Cruz polling 27% to Trump’s 24%, I wouldn’t call it that decisive a win.
That said, it’s more decisive than HillRod’s win over #Bern, which is somewhat significant in that when Sanders the SOCIALIST launched his run, he was never expected to get anywhere close to Hillary by anyone except his hardcore fanbase who are convinced he’s been in the lead the entire race but the Mainstream Media that Hillary controls is lying – or so I gather from my Facebook feed.
Some of the same people are also convinced that the coin tosses were also somehow rigged by Hillary’s squad, because the odds of winning six out of six coin tosses are so slim they might as well be zero.
In which case, I’d refer you to this NPR article that points out a couple of useful things to know:
1. Updated reports are saying there were more than six coin tosses, and Sanders won some of them, which makes the odds more reasonable.
2. Even if were just the six, and even if Hillary won all of them (legitimately or otherwise), it wouldn’t have made a difference in the final delegate count, thanks to the way Iowa’s insanely complicated caucus system works.
Meanwhile, there’s this Snopes article which points out there’s conflicting info on just how many coin tosses there were and how many Hillary or Bernie won. Which, again, is a moot point because the tosses didn’t really affect the outcome, so it’s inaccurate to say Hillary won on a coin toss, and in any case, in a race this close, “winning” is almost academic. (Remember in 2012, Rick Santorum beat Mitt Romney by something like 24 votes – and we all know who that worked out better for.)
So yeah, nice try, conspiracy mavens.
As for Trump, well, you never know. Iowa was the one primary where his polling was weakest. He’s leading in NH and SC by double-digit margins, so depending on what Cruz and Rubio do in the next couple of weeks – and how many more people drop out of the race between now and then (Huckabee quit on election night, and Rand Paul quit while I was typing this) and where their support goes – he could still win some delegates. Maybe the one thing working in his favor is the Establishment hates Cruz almost as much as they hate Trump. Whether that makes a difference will depend on whether the Establishment still has the influence it used to. The Tea Party people are betting the farm that it doesn’t. And arguably, if it did, Trump wouldn’t have been leading the pack for the past six months to begin with.
On to New Hampshire!
Flip yr wig,
This is dF
