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And the winner of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, as reported by the major mainstream media outlets is Donald Trump. It has also been reported that Hillary Clinton called President-elect Donald Trump to concede.
Electoral vote count (so far): 279 for Donald Trump, 218 for Hillary Clinton. 270 electoral votes are needed to win.
Popular vote: 57,227,164 votes (48.0%) for Donald Trump, 56,279,305 votes (47.2%) for Hillary Clinton. Update: Now it is closer to 59,085,795 votes (47.5%) for Donald Trump and 59,236,903 votes (47.6%) for Hillary Clinton.
Yell, scream, gnash teeth... but please keep it civil.
Results at CNN, NYT, FiveThirtyEight, Wikipedia.
takyon: Republicans have retained control of the House and Senate.
Here's some market news:
Dow futures plunge nearly 750 points as investors warily eye electoral map
Asian markets plummet on likelihood of Trump victory
Bitcoin price soars as Trump pulls ahead
Opinion: How to profit from a Donald Trump victory
Ballot measure results will be covered in an upcoming story. Some initial results can be found at Ballotpedia and CNN.
[TMB Note: Stop breaking stuff, cmn32480]
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09 2016, @09:13AM
People are way too stupid for it. We're seeing a wonderful wave of populism all over the globe currently. I guess the old adage that there is no such thing as negative publicity is true.
What is needed is an _enlightened_ dictator.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09 2016, @10:11AM
Ugh, take that dark enlightment shit somewhere else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09 2016, @07:09PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09 2016, @11:15AM
The media has been for months on end engaging in 24/7 demonization of Trump and propping up of Hillary in every conceivable way. And yet we look at the results and Hillary was beaten. If we look at her performance relative the "polls", she was absolutely demolished. The people, whether you disagree or agree with their vote, were certainly voting on issues and logic beyond just listening to what the media told them. Even conservative media such as FoxNews had turned against Trump. I think this election is a huge victory for the independence of thought of the masses even if at times it might not feel that way.
Another issue is that Obama, when he was running for office, seemed like a godsend. Intelligent, unbelievably charismatic, an ostensible outside visible by something as apparent as the color of his skin. Yet he nothing like we thought. He was just another establishment corporatist. If we didn't live in a democracy, this man who seemed like everything we could have ever asked for in a benevolent dictator would be choosing his successor and we'd end up with a Hillary-like. Democracy may be slow, but so long as votes are counted fairly and without coercion it means you're never stuck with any given failure for all that long.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday November 09 2016, @11:27AM
No, you're just stuck with a long, long series of failures. But the US doesn't have a democracy anyway, since our political system is designed to be a two-party system; there's no democracy in voting for the 'lesser evil' all the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09 2016, @02:56PM
Maine passed their Ranked Choice Voting Initiative [ballotpedia.org], which is the beginning of the end for our two-party system, as long as we can make sure the rest of the states adopt it as well.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09 2016, @08:54PM
Maine passed their Ranked Choice Voting Initiative [ballotpedia.org], which is the beginning of the end for our two-party system, as long as we can make sure the rest of the states adopt it as well.
I hadn't even heard that was on the ballot -- it's a very good sign that it passed, in terms of voters being aware of the problems with our current system, and being willing to try something different.
However, I need to point out several issues with that.
For a thorough, text-heavy criticism of IRV relative to range voting, see here [rangevoting.org]
For a more graphical set of demonstrations (about IRV and many other systems, you'll need to understand Yee diagrams. Once you understand them, they're one of the clearest ways to see certain failures of voting systems. With carefully selected inputs, they can make almost all voting systems look bad (because most voting systems do have serious faults), but IRV is really bad. I'll offer a brief explanation here, but there's also one in the first link below, so go with whichever is easier for you to follow.
A Yee diagram depicts results of a family of simulated election results, holding the candidates constant and letting the voting population vary. It is based on a political model with 2 arbitrary axes, simply because 2 dimensions fit well on a computer screen. There are an arbitrary number of candidates, positioned anywhere in both axes. The voting population is modeled as a single normal distribution, centered about a variable point in each axis (which are varied to create the diagram). So it does not model anything like a distinct urban population, centered at one point, and rural population, centered at another point.
The output, that is the Yee diagram itself, is a simple, square image containing only two sets of features:
With that in mind, look at these pages:
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 09 2016, @03:43PM
On Monday, I got an email from Bill de Blasio, Mayor of New York, demonizing Trump. He has always been a Clinton surrogate in NYC. I had already resolved to vote for Trump, but even if I hadn't I'm pretty sure that email from Bill would have pushed me over the top. There's something about condescending fucks, pretending to be your betters and telling you what to do, that moves a person to do the exact opposite.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09 2016, @07:01PM
This bullshit rhetoric started during this election cycle. There is no such thing as an enlightened dictator, and you forget the next step where someone worse takes over and you have no recourse. I often call people idiot or stupid as a general insult, but for you I actually mean it. You are an idiot of colossal proportions.