The Next President of the United States

[TightEnd]

The real reason Trump won't release his tax returns

http://www.dailypublic.com/articles/07292016/donald-trump-star-exemption-and-tax-returns

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

[TightEnd]

According to Gallup, Trump's convention was the first in US political history to to make voters LESS likely to back the candidate.

Click to see full-size image.

[Marky147]

I've seen him referred to a fair few times as 'The Donald', which makes me chuckle.

Was it Obama that started that, or one of the media outlets?

[DMorgan]

Sounds like something that John Oliver would say

Last Week Tonight has been very good the last couple of weeks, incred episode about the republican convention

[MintTrav]

He's had that nickname a long time. Came from Ivana, when they first got together and her English was still dodgy.

[Marky147]

Comment sections on any videos of Obama/Trump  make for some good lunchtime reading on Facebook

[TightEnd]

Obama says Trump is 'unfit' to be President. But here's why his comments might help Trump: http://specc.ie/2axi9zf

[DMorgan]

I just started listening to the Foreign Policy Editors Roundtable podcast, really interesting view of the race from the viewpoint of the foreign policy 'elites' that Trump derides. The latest episode talks about Trump and his relationship with Putin which I thought was very good and not too dry for a 45 minute talk show.

Highly recommended if anyone wants to check it out

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/fps-editors-roundtable-e.r./id1034003458?mt=2

[Tal]

What seems like an age ago, some political fantasists expressed the idea that Trump - who had for so long been a supporter (personally, publicly and financially) of the Clintons - was a tactical plant in the GOP, where he would split the vote and leave a free run in for his pal Hillary.

Since then he has been a noisebag...then a noisebag with niche support...then a noisebag who was surprisingly effective...then one of a number of possible challengers to the favourites...then one of that group...then a radical free thinking voice...then a momentum surfing juggernaut who was forcing his rivals to yield to his populist might...then a juggernaut who had a few mechanical faults...then a juggernaut with wonky steering and with an unhealthy noise out the back end...all the way to a former juggernaut who has caused a trail of destruction through the Republican Party and now seems to have left Hillary a clear run to the White House.

My question for the politicos here: might those fantasist have had a point?

[Marky147]

Like something from Infowars, Tal

After a month out there, it wouldn't surprise me if the bookies had it as wrong here, as they did with Brexit, and the wack job actually got in.

[TightEnd]

dozens of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials, many of them former top aides or cabinet members for President George W. Bush, have signed a letter saying they will not vote for Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/08/us/politics/national-security-letter-trump.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1

[Marky147]

Just seen this on Oddschecker

A few months ago, I highlighted the claims of a genuine longshot for the Presidency. My argument then was that he was a candidate who had not been damaged by the internecine warfare that had brought the party to the impasse it found itself in then. After all, they had done similar before, when they could find nobody among the leading contenders who could command the support of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. Eventually, they found someone who at first said he wasn’t interested but later relented.

They could also pick someone, I argued, who is currently next in line to the Presidency after Joe Biden. Or they could pick someone who had already shown a taste for the White House, running as recently as 2012 for the Vice-Presidency of the United States. In other words, I highlighted the claims of one man who combines all these characteristics. He is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, he is second in line constitutionally to the Presidency, and he was the running-mate of Mitt Romney in the 2012 Presidential election. His name is Paul Ryan, and he was trading at a healthy 500-1 to be the next President of the United States.

To a small stake, those odds looked very tempting. When Donald Trump secured the nomination of the Republican Party for President of the United States, it looked like the bet was lost, which is often the case with 500-1 longshots.

In the past few days, however, there have been some serious rumblings, going beyond the usual murmurs of discontent, about the viability of Mr. Trump as a serious contender for the Presidency, and equally a worry among mainstream Republicans that the alternative possibility, that he actually could be elected, was even worse.

But how likely is it that these rumblings could turn into something that could lead to the current nominee dropping out of the race? One way of estimating this is to assess the likelihood of the Republican Party winning the Presidential election in November, and compare this to the chance of Donald Trump winning the Presidency. A glance at the current Betfair odds separates these two probabilities by about 1.3 per cent. This can be viewed as a rough and ready estimator of the likelihood that a different Republican than Trump wins the election.

To this must be added the chance that Mr. Trump’s replacement loses the election. Currently the chance that the Republicans lose, using the same metric, is 77 per cent, so that is more than three times the likelihood they will win. Multiplying 1.3 per cent by this factor gives a probability of someone other Republican than Donald Trump losing as about 4.3 per cent. So the total likelihood of someone other than Trump winning or losing the election sums to 5.6 per cent.

Taking all variables into account, and adding a dose of personal judgment, I estimate that the chance of Trump being replaced on the ballot paper as Republican candidate is between 4 per cent and 8 per cent. At this stage of the race that replacement would, in my opinion, almost certainly be a respected member of the Republican establishment, untainted by the internal battles, and able to command broad support. I would estimate that Speaker Paul Ryan would be about a two in three chance of being that candidate.

On the basis of these estimates, I estimate that Ryan has about a 4 per chance of being on the ballot. If he is, I think he has about a 40 per cent chance of winning. This means that odds of greater than about 60-1 about Speaker Paul Ryan being elected the next President of the United States are starting to look like value.

At current best bookmaker odds of 66-1 (Bet 365, Ladbrokes), or slightly longer on Betfair, there is in my judgment a sliver of value, to small stakes, especially if you haven’t already taken the previously advised 500-1.

[Tal]

Backed him at 40/1 in April.

[TightEnd]

What bothers US voters about Trump: Bloomberg poll

https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rAjnCYJjgvBw/v0

Click to see full-size image.

[Marky147]

Incred


Some people have way too much time on their hands, lol.