Richard Dawkins writes:

Dear New Zealand,

The two largest nations in the English-speaking world have just suffered catastrophes at the hands of voters—in both cases the uneducated, anti-intellectual portion of voters. Science in both countries will be hit extremely hard: In the one case, by the xenophobically inspired severing of painstakingly built-up relationships with European partners; in the other case by the election of an unqualified, narcissistic, misogynistic sick joke as president. In neither case is the disaster going to be short-lived: in America because of the nonretirement rule of the Supreme Court; in Britain because Brexit is irreversible.

There are top scientists in America and Britain—talented, creative people, desperate to escape the redneck bigotry of their home countries. Dear New Zealand, you are a deeply civilized small nation, with a low population in a pair of beautiful, spacious islands. You care about climate change, the future of the planet and other scientifically important issues. Why not write to all the Nobel Prize winners in Britain and America, write to the Fields medalists, Kyoto and Crafoord Prize and International Cosmos Prize winners, the Fellows of the Royal Society, the elite scientists in the National Academy of Sciences, the Fellows of the British Academy and similar bodies in America. Offer them citizenship. The contribution that creative intellectuals can make to the prosperity and cultural life of a nation is out of all proportion to their numbers. You could make New Zealand the Athens of the modern world.

Yes, dear New Zealand, I know it’s an unrealistic, surreal pipe dream. But on the day after U.S. election day, in the year of Brexit, the distinction between the surreal and the awfulness of the real seems to merge in a bad trip from which a pipe dream is the only refuge.

Yours,

Richard Dawkins, founder and board chairman, Richard Dawkins Foundation

Free citizenship to any Nobel Prize winner. Works for me.

Long time readers of Kiwiblog may recall my incorrect predictions before the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections. This time around, aside from a few posts in the primary season, I decided to refrain from writing and predicting. This was partly due to current busyness but also because the race was so volatile and unpredictable that I felt that meaningful prognosticating was next to impossible. When asked, I told people that Clinton was highly likely to win but that with Trump, anything was possible given the numerous times he managed to utterly defy conventional wisdom. As stated in earlier posts, I was a Rubio supporter who voted for Cruz in the primary as Rubio had by then dropped out of the race. I voted for Trump only to stop Hillary and not because I like him or some of his policies. Here are 11 reasons why I feel Trump won:

1 – Clinton’s failings were more consequential than Trump’s failings

Trump’s failings have been the subject so much media scrutiny that it is fair to categorise some of the coverage as overkill such as his:

• racist attack on the judge in the Trump University case;
• mocking of a disabled reporter;
• criticism of Gold Star parents’ the Khans;
• mocking the weight of a Miss Universe contestant ;
• vile comments about his sexual exploits (real or imagined) to Billy Bush;
• overly aggressive and inappropriate advances to women;
• aggressive use of eminent domain to get his developments completed;
• supposed stiffing of contractors;
• numerous corporate bankruptcies;
• relentless and often personal attacks on almost all his opponents;
• being the subject of various lawsuits.

These are indicative of Trump’s numerous character flaws but frankly come as no surprise. Some of this sadly comes with the territory of a mega rich billionaire. Most mega wealthy people in the US are dogged by lawsuits; most are frivolous attempts at out of court settlements. Most of the rude outbursts were manifestations of Trump’s political naiveté (e.g. attacking the Khans who were definitely Clinton operatives and deeply involved in abuse of the business visa programme BUT who’s loss of their son in Iraq made them politically untouchable). Trump’s misogyny is sadly typical as well – it doesn’t make it right but it does not disqualify him from office, especially when one considers the peccadillos of many prior Presidents Republican and Democrat.

Let’s look at Clinton’s negatives and see how they stack up:

• Hillary got a child rapist off a serious sentence and bragged about how she roughed up the child victim in court to do it.
• Hillary handled Bill’s numerous ‘bimbo eruptions’ with concerted campaigns of intimidation and attempts to silence these women. This included aggressive use of private detectives, filing of counter claims, intense harassment and threats of financial ruin from libel suits. There was no ‘let the victim speak’ like her claimed support of women victims of sexual and other violence.
• Her ethical lapses over the Rose Law billing scandal, the Whitewater investment and the White House travel office scandal are well known. Hillary used subterfuge, lies and obfuscation to cover her tracks in a pattern that has become her standard modus operandi.
• Clinton’s time as Secretary of State is littered with abject policy failures. Her famous Russian reset emboldened Putin to invade Crimea and back nationalist Russian insurgents to undermine the central Ukraine. Her fingers were all over Obama’s disastrous Syrian policy and his inaction that has fueled the civil war and the massive refugee crisis and vastly increased Russian influence in the region. She was supportive of the awful Iranian nuclear deal and is singularly unable to point to any substantive achievement in office or her driving of any key Senate legislation.
• Clinton’s inaction and incompetence was most evident in her appallingly bad judgement over Libya. Gaddafi had been well contained and had given up all attempts to obtain nukes and yet she pushed for regime change with no viable replacement opening Libya up to violent chaos as rival factions soon dominated by ISIS (and all the extreme Muslim fundamentalist violence that accompanies them) filled the vacuum. Add to this her deaf ear to the many requests for a security upgrade at the US Consulate in Benghazi, the untimely death of Ambassador Stevens and three other US security personnel represents a failure of her basic duties as SoS. Her (and the entire Obama Administration) blaming the incident on some obscure internet video (when documents show she knew from the get-go it was a terrorist related attack) and lying to the families of the deceased, was a low point in the conduct of any senior Administration official.
• Bill and Hillary Clinton set about to leverage off her influence as SoS by employing aggressive shake down pay-for-play tactics via the Clinton Foundation. The sheer level of greed, graft and corruption evident in the nefarious actions of the Clinton Foundation make Trump’s eminent domain and Trump U excesses look like tiny pin pricks. Peter Schweitzer’s Clinton Cash movie (viewable for free here https://youtu.be/7LYRUOd_QoM ) details the cleverly worked corruption on a grand scale enriching the Clintons to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and ensuring lavish private jet and luxury hotel accommodation for the Clintons and their entourage of hangers on.
• Clinton’s blatant use of a non-secure and non authorised external email server was conceived precisely to enable her to evade normal Congressional scrutiny over her actions whilst in office concerning the Clinton Foundation. She has repeatedly, consistently and blatantly lied about this server (and the emails sent from it) since it was discovered in March 2016. She and her staff engaged in systematic attempts to destroy key evidence after given notice of Congressional interest in seeing her emails constituting clear cut examples of obstruction of justice. Her cavalier attitude towards classified material (including the sending of emails given the very highest levels of security classification) from her insecure server is such that would earn any lessor mortal a spell in a Federal penitentiary. Various experts have weighed in (including senior FBI sources) that at least five foreign powers hostile to the US likely penetrated her server and obtained highly classified top secret information including the names and addresses of intelligence assets located inside the security intelligence agencies of potentially hostile nations such as Pakistan jeopardising operational secrecy and even agents’ lives.

Clinton’s failings were (and are) far more consequential. They have led to foreign policy disasters. They have emboldened Putin and allowed Russia to emerge as a regional power. They have endangered national security and her incompetence has led to the death of four US embassy staff and she lied to cover up what happened. Everywhere you turn with the Clintons you see graft, greed, incompetence, lies, cover ups, attempts to blame others and them taking donations from vile dictators and totalitarian regimes whilst betraying allies such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Israel. I’m sorry but insulting a fat beauty queen and talking about grabbing pussy doesn’t come close to the corrupt mess that is Hillary Clinton and everything she touches. Despite the MSM blowing up Trump’s negatives in an endless drumbeat of revelations and downplaying the Clinton’s multitudinous scandals, voters could assign the correct weight to the seriousness of each candidate’s deficiencies and opted for Trump’s antics that, whilst very unpleasant in a frat boy kind of way, did not jeopardize national security, lead to a loss of independence of Crimea or to the avoidable death of embassy staff.

2 – Power of the MSM and the elite political class has been permanently shattered

Never in my living memory has media coverage of a major political campaign been so incredibly lopsided in favour of one candidate. It is well known that the US mainstream media tilt to the left and reliably support Democrat candidates. But MSM support for Clinton was on a scale that was unprecedented. Trump’s every gaffe however minor was relentlessly and repeatedly reported. The anti woman material received blanket, wall to wall coverage day after day. Collusion between the Clinton campaign and key media, often suspected, was fully confirmed in various of the WikiLeaks releases and were never refuted. The DNC Chair Donna Brazile, a CNN contributor, gave the campaign a couple of CNN debates questions in advance. Campaign talking points featured often in the line of questioning undertaken by MSM moderators. Lester Holt from NBC was caught rehearsing his line of questioning before the NBC debate with Clinton’s people and the campaign gave talking points on Trump to prominent liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank that he duly published. And these are the incidents we know about.

But it was the attitude of political elites from the Republican Party that led to a circumstance unheard of in any Presidential election campaign – that of the old elite of the party of the nominee actively opposing the nominee. At the nadir of the campaign, Trump had to endure countless attacks from within his own party from the Bushes, Mitt Romney and a line of ‘Never Trump’ prominent conservative commentators such as Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, Eric Erikson and virtually the entire editorial board and contributors of National Review such as Jonah Goldberg. At the peak of the Billy Bush tape furor, even prominent and highly regarded conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt abandoned Trump and called for him to stand down.

Trump took none of this lying down and repeatedly and forcefully struck back. His stump speeches were littered with attacks on the media to the roar of approval from his huge crowds. He was scathing in his denunciations of those on the right who attacked him and at several junctures in the campaign seemed to be spending more time arguing with Republicans than fighting Clinton. A parade of Congressional Republicans, especially those in vulnerable Senate seats, denounced Trump and tried to create distance from him.

In the end, the chattering classes (including those in NZ on the right like Matthew Hooton) and their media fellow travelers entirely misread Trump’s audience. Via social media (like Facebook and Twitter) and his large number of huge rallies across the nation and direct email, Trump went over the heads of the elites and got his message out. He astutely used new media such as less hostile conservative bloggers and a raft of supporting talk back radio hosts. Once the primaries were over and the MSM turned on him, he stuck mostly to interviews on Fox News and increasingly only with his biggest fan boy, TV and radio commentator Sean Hannity. Whilst Hannity was pilloried by many conservatives for his almost sycophantic support of Trump, his ratings climbed as there was a thirst from middle America to see and hear Trump unfiltered by hostile MSM attitudes and attempts to ignore him. Just as was the case with the governing media elites in Britain who castigated supporters of Brexit, average voters saw through the bias and could make judgements about Trump that were far more balanced and nuanced seeing a net positive in his bombastic style of populism. Audiences and readership for the network TV channels, left leaning cable channels and the old print media giants had been declining before 2016. This election cycle has signaled the death knell of any residual influence the mainstream media once had, so blatant was their bias for Clinton and so pernicious were their tactics used to assist her.

3 – This election was partially a referendum on Obama’s performance and Trump pounded Obama’s weaknesses

Notwithstanding Obama’s relatively good personal approval ratings this far into his second term, Trump seized on Obama’s two most controversial legacies: the Iran nuclear deal and Obamacare. The tawdry sight of hundreds of millions of cash in dollars, euros and Swiss francs seen being loaded onto pallets just prior to the release of US hostages, gave every impression of a cash for hostages deal further underscoring how weak and ineffectual the Obama Administration looked in their dealings with the Iranians.

As for Obamacare, Obama’s signature domestic achievement is in tatters. Special co-ops set up to provide cheap insurance have mostly gone under, many of the state insurance exchanges (online marketplaces) have been rendered worthless by so many insurance providers in various states pulling out. But by far the biggest and electorally damaging aspect of Obamacare’s failings has been the relentless march of massive premium hikes in the 5 years since the legislation has been operative. This has been coupled with reduced doctor choice and big leaps in aggregate deductibles and copays. Whilst federal subsidies have taken some of the sting out of these increases, the embattled middle class who earn too much for subsidies, have been forced to absorb these huge premium hikes and policy provision constraints when Obama told them the Affordable Care Act would reduce costs whilst they could keep their plan and their doctor. All these promises were dramatically broken. One week before the election, voters got their 2017 Obamacare renewals and were stunned with sticker shock at some of the premium hikes (on the back of 4 previous years of hikes). Trump pounded on Obamacare at every opportunity promising a full repeal in his first 100 days in office.

4 – Clinton could not replicate Obama’s winning coalition from 2008 and 2012

Obama won because of the record turnout (and vote for him) from Blacks, Hispanics and Millennials. The comparison between 2016 and 2012 saw Clinton underperforming compared to Obama in all three key demographic groups:

• Blacks went 93 Obama and 6 Romney in 2012 but only 88 Clinton and 8 Trump in 2016 or a 7-point swing.
• Hispanics went 71 Obama and 27 Romney in 2012 but only 65 Clinton and 29 Trump in 2016 or an 8-point swing.
• Millennials went 60 Obama and 37 Romney in 2012 but only 55 Clinton and 37 Trump in 2016 or a 5-point swing.

In each instance Clinton underperformed Obama and for Blacks and Hispanics, despite all the criticism Trump endured over his harsher immigration stance, he overperformed compared to Romney!

5 – Polls were wrong …. again!

Underestimating support for centre right parties and candidates has become a feature of various elections over the last two years. The following elections all saw centre right parties outperform their polling in various jurisdictions: the 2014 US Midterms, the 2015 Israeli Knesset election, the 2015 UK General Election and the most dramatic of all (until now), the June 2016 Brexit vote where poll aggregates the day before had Remain up by 2% only for Brexit to win by 4% or a 6% miss.

Commentators have speculated about the role of the so-called shy Tory voter and pollsters in the US seem to be unable to find a way to identify shy Trump voters. So toxic had Trump’s political brand become in the media, social media and the public square that Trump supporters and voters (like me) disguised their intentions in public discussion due to the stigma attached to, and opprobrium directed toward, support for Trump. This time around, the failure of pollsters to identify hidden Trump voters (and to assume the 2012 Obama coalition would turn out for Hillary) was spectacular. The vaunted Real Clear Politics (RCP) average had Clinton up 3.2% in the raft of polls issued on Monday November 7^th whereas Clinton won the popular vote by 0.2%.

But of course it is individual states (and their electoral College votes) that determines who will be President and the polling failure at the state level was even more pronounced. Here is the ‘rogues’ gallery’ of how far wrong the polls were for most of the key battleground states (in alphabetical order). This is the margin between the actual Trump vote and his Monday November 7 RCP average:

Florida (+4.2%), Iowa (+6.4%), Michigan (+3.7%), Minnesota (a staggering +11.4%), North Carolina (+2.8%), Ohio (+5.1%), Pennsylvania (+3%) and Wisconsin (+7.5%). Only in New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado and Virginia were polls close and only in Nevada did Clinton overperform from her RCP average.

The shy Tory syndrome is not going to go away. Mainstream median voters who lean to the right are rudely crowded off the public square by Orwellian attempts by angry leftists to ban anything they disagree with and label it as ‘hate speech’. Ordinary centre right voters will continue to lie or avoid pollsters to spare themselves the hassle of the dealing with SJWs and progressive activists and if pollsters will continue to skewer their samples in favour of left leaning candidates and parties then those on the left are going to continue to be shocked by results that don’t match the polls.

6 – WikiLeaks’ in October did more damage than Comey’s announcement

The steady drumbeat of revelations that were drip fed to the media and waiting people via social media throughout October revealed the inner workings of the Clinton campaign and threw up a series of ugly truths. Space does not permit their telling but they were beginning to sag Clinton’s numbers before Comey announced his bombshell on October 28^th. Faced with a potential revolt from dozens of senior FBI agents who threatened to resign en-mass and reveal the true reasons for Clinton’s lack of being indicted (the political interference of the Obama appointees in the Department of Justice) AND the fact that even more damning material was held on the Clintons by the New York Police Department who too had threatened to go public, it was not possible for Comey to hide from Congress the fact that the FBI had the Wiener laptop and that it contained possibly hitherto unknown (and destroyed) Clinton emails. That the FBI searched 650,000 emails in just over a week to declare Clinton again in the clear seems lost on her supporters who veered from praising Comey to damning him to praising him again. When all is said and done, the fault lies not with Comey but the Democrat Party for nominating a candidate who carried with her the baggage of a secret email hoard that was hidden from scrutiny many of which were destroyed when knowledge of their existence was unearthed. If you don’t want your candidate to be tainted with the threat of possible indictment for intelligence breaches, then perhaps you ought to have chosen someone else without a slow burning scandal hanging over them.

7 – Neglected working and middle class voters in the Rust Belt saw Trump as their only champion

If there is one policy issue on which I part company most clearly with Trump, it is the issue of free trade. I’m an ardent champion of free trade. But globalisation has consequences and a disproportionate number of those affected in the US are the workers in the Rust Belt states where traditional powerhouse US industries of coal, steel, shipbuilding, car manufacturing and other heavy industries have seen countless factories and millions of jobs lost to China, Asia and since NAFTA, Mexico and Canada. I don’t believe in protectionism and Trump promised the rust belt that he’d bring their jobs back with tariffs on goods made in China and Mexico. This has all the makings of a trade war and one would hope that the reality of governing will dawn on President Trump. That said, Trump owes his Presidency to the four mid-west states where his message of economic populism and protectionism resonated the most powerfully: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio. In the case of the first three, they have not been won by a Republican in almost three decades. Trump won non-college educated whites by margins even more dramatically lopsided than Reagan did in his 1984 landslide. Clinton was an anathema to the working-class base that once was the bedrock of the Roosevelt coalition and she lost it to a New York billionaire!

 8 – Protecting the southern border and limiting immigration from countries that harbour Islamic terrorism was not racist

A common criticism of Trump is that he is racist and when asked why, his opponents cite the wall Trump proposes to build along the Mexican border. Trump won because middle America is fed up with the porous border on the South and the many failed promises by various Presidents to build a proper fence. Trump played on a range of fears associated with uncontrolled illegal Latino immigration: the imported criminals and the range of horrific murders and rapes committed by recidivist illegal felons, the loss of American jobs, the changing cultural shape of cities in border states and the seemingly uncontrollable flow of drugs coming from Mexico blighting young American lives. To many Americans, Trump’s promise to build a wall was not just common sense but music to their ears and accusations of bigotry and racism, implicitly directed at them by elites in their criticism of Trump, got their hackles up and further fueled anti media sentiment.

The same is true of Trump’s promise to pause immigration from Muslim terrorist hotspot countries until a much more rigorous screening process could be put in place. The attacks in San Bernardino, perpetrated by Islamic fanatics who both emigrated to the US under normal rules and yet whose radical tendencies were not picked up but yet were plain to see, drove home how US Federal law enforcement and screening has been weakened and hampered by political correctness and pro Muslim sentiment to the extent that the San Bernardino killers’ radical postings on Facebook were not allowed to be even be assessed by the Department of Homeland Security when their application for residency in the US was being processed. Liberals cried foul and Islamophobia when Trump called for a temporary halt to such applications until a tighter screening regime could be implemented. Middle America, tired of random attacks and seeing the results of untrammeled Muslim migration into Europe, agreed that such a policy was simply wise and ignored media criticism of Trump’s proposal.

9 – The Supreme Court balance kept many conservatives on board

I count myself in this camp. I was prepared to overlook Trump’s many manifest faults and flawed policy positions on this one issue alone. The death of Antonin Scalia was a shock to conservatives as he was the most reliable conservative voice on SCOTUS and he brought a ferocious and indominable intellect to his rulings. Clinton would’ve replaced him with a progressive liberal judge who would do the left’s bidding on all the big issues. With liberal Ruth Bader Ginsberg and squishy centrist Anthony Kennedy old enough to likely be retiring in the term of the 45^th President, the prospect of ideologically shaping the court for a generation was beckoning. To conservatives who watch the courts and know how liberals love to legislate for their agenda from the bench, the prospect of 25 years with a 6 to 3 (or even 7 to 2) liberal split raised the very real prospect of: permanent undermining of the 2^nd Amendment with a view to de facto gun control, the foisting of unions on thriving businesses where even workers voted against their presence, the legalising (and then federal funding of) late term abortion, the forcing of extremist trans-gender politics down the throats of the states with the threat of withdrawal of federal funding, the weakening of the 1^st Amendment by restricting conservative speech such as allowing the so-called Fairness Doctrine forcing conservative dominated talkback radio to balance their content and enlarging the scope of what constitutes hate speech, undermining States rights by chipping away at the 10^th Amendment and supporting unilateral Executive Orders like those used by Obama to bypass Congress. Stopping Hillary’s liberal judges and the progressive’s dream agenda (none of these issues would receive majority support at any ballot box) became Job 1 for many conservatives. When Trump named a list of 20 jurists from which he would choose his SCOTUS nominees, he received strong support for his choices from conservative legal and constitutional experts. That was a signal for many thinking folk on the centre-right to hold their noses and vote for Trump.

10 – Middle America is fed up with political correctness

David posted on this only a few hours ago. After decades of the progressive left controlling the media, Hollywood, academia, the bureaucracy, the unions, the schools and elite opinion, mainstream median voters had had enough. They see universities, once the bastion of free speech, shutting down conservative speakers and trying to protect young minds with trigger warnings, safe spaces on campus and labelling anything not approved by the progressive intelligentsia as ‘hate speech’ and cried foul. When the Obama Administration attempted to foist trans-gender toilet access on States with the threat of withholding of federal funds and when North Carolina legislated against such needless ideological intervention, people could see that the left’s agenda was forcing people to accept an 18-year-old man who identifies as a woman into a girl’s bathroom (like Target attempted to do until a massive boycott of customers forced a practical compromise), people said enough is enough. Trump is a massive antidote to all this political correctness and the more the media elites criticised him for his non-PC comments and attitudes, the more people fed up with rampant PC encrochments supported him.

11 – Trump’s unconventional campaign worked

The Clinton campaign outspent the Trump campaign 2:1. They had a superior ground game and had a tail wind of near universal media support. Trump aggressively used Twitter and Facebook to great effect. Trump also crisscrossed the country and spoke at over 100 rallies. Each of these rallies were massive affairs held in large arenas, stadiums and convention centres such was the large numbers who wished to hear him speak. More often than not, people would queue for hours in advance with cars banking up for miles and long lines awaiting to enter arenas. The crowds were reminiscent of the Obama rallies in 2008 in terms of passion and energy. Clinton held fewer events and all were in significantly smaller venues with less passionate crowds. As the campaign drew to its climax, she resorted to holding concerts with pop icons like Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen to artificially pump numbers of attendees.

Yard signs were another telling marker of campaign enthusiasm. In key battleground states, such as Pennsylvania, Trump signs were ubiquitous and Clinton signs almost nonexistent even in towns and counties that had voted Democrat for decades. The media poo pooed these indications of campaign energy and intensity and were proven to be wrong. Clinton spent over $1.4 billion to Trump’s $700 million and yet no amount of dollars could compensate for a lousy candidate overshadowed by the stench of corruption.

Conclusion

I’ll leave the final word on Trump’s election to a most unlikely source – a scion of liberal Hollywood thinking, movie maker Michael Moore. Moore, after seeing Trump’s appeal up close in his home state of Michigan, made a pro-Clinton anti-Trump movie documentary. At a promotion event, he spoke of Trump’s appeal. Inadvertently he makes the most powerful case for Trump and he explains (in ways sometimes NSFW) why Trump would win https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lMp_363B2c . He was most prescient and accurate in his assessment. It is a MUST SEE clip.

Robby Soave writes at Reason:

Trump won because he convinced a great number of Americans that he would destroy political correctness.

I have tried to call attention to this issue for years. I have warned that political correctness actually is a problem on college campuses, where the far-left has gained institutional power and used it to punish people for saying or thinking the wrong thing. And ever since Donald Trump became a serious threat to win the GOP presidential primaries, I have warned that a lot of people, both on campus and off it, were furious about political-correctness-run-amok—so furious that they would give power to any man who stood in opposition to it.

I have watched this play out on campus after campus. I have watched dissident student groups invite Milo Yiannopoulos to speak—not because they particularly agree with his views, but because he denounces censorship and undermines political correctness. I have watched students cheer his theatrics, his insulting behavior, and his narcissism solely because the enforcers of campus goodthink are outraged by it. It’s not about his ideas, or policies. It’s not even about him. It’s about vengeance for social oppression.

Yep.

And no doubt because the author used the word oppression he will be condemned for using a word that only minorities can use.

He described Trump as “an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness.” Correctly, I might add.

What is political correctness? It’s notoriously hard to define. I recently appeared on a panel with CNN’s Sally Kohn, who described political correctness as being polite and having good manners. That’s fine—it can mean different things to different people. I like manners. I like being polite. That’s not what I’m talking about.

The segment of the electorate who flocked to Trump because he positioned himself as “an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness” think it means this: smug, entitled, elitist, privileged leftists jumping down the throats of ordinary folks who aren’t up-to-date on the latest requirements of progressive society.

Example: A lot of people think there are only two genders—boy and girl. Maybe they’re wrong. Maybe they should change that view. Maybe it’s insensitive to the trans community. Maybe it even flies in the face of modern social psychology. But people think it. Political correctness is the social force that holds them in contempt for that, or punishes them outright.

A great example. The outrage if you do not call Chelsea Manning Chelsea or a woman.

If you’re a leftist reading this, you probably think that’s stupid. You probably can’t understand why someone would get so bent out of shape about being told their words are hurtful. You probably think it’s not a big deal and these people need to get over themselves. Who’s the delicate snowflake now, huh? you’re probably thinking. I’m telling you: your failure to acknowledge this miscalculation and adjust your approach has delivered the country to Trump.

Is this why he gained 14% among non college whites? I think it is a part, not just the economic dislocation.

There’s a related problem: the boy-who-cried-wolf situation. I was happy to see a few liberals, like Bill Maher, owning up to it. Maher admitted during a recent show that he was wrong to treat George Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain like they were apocalyptic threats to the nation: it robbed him of the ability to treat Trump more seriously. The left said McCain was a racist supported by racists, it said Romney was a racist supported by racists, but when an actually racist Republican came along—and racists cheered him—it had lost its ability to credibly make that accusation.

Absolutely. I find what Trump said so awful I wouldn’t even wear the normal Republican elephant on election day lest anyone think I support him. But you know what, when Reagan was campaigning some on the left said it would be the end of days also – that he would lead the country into Armageddon.

The right have got used to all their candidates being called racists that it just became background noise.

My liberal critics rolled their eyes when I complained about political correctness. I hope they see things a little more clearly now. The left sorted everyone into identity groups and then told the people in the poorly-educated-white-male identity group that that’s the only bad one. It mocked the members of this group mercilessly. It punished them for not being woke enough. It called them racists. It said their video games were sexist. It deployed Lena Dunham to tell them how horrible they were.

And what happened is that non college whites have now formed their own minority group, and started voting like a minority group – overwhelmingly one way. But they are a minority group that makes up 40% of the US.

And again no doubt someone will complain that the term minority was used about non college whites, because minority is about power, not size.

I warned that political-correctness-run-amok and liberal overreach would lead to a counter-revolution if unchecked. That counter-revolution just happened.

There is a cost to depriving people of the freedom (in both the legal and social senses) to speak their mind. The presidency just went to the guy whose main qualification, according to his supporters, is that he isn’t afraid to speak his.

This is not the only factor but I have no doubt it is a significant one.

The NZ Initiative has highlighted 21 major points from their research into inequality. Here’s a few of them:

• Increased housing costs are hitting those on low incomes hardest, and to a very severe degree. (Figure 28.) Getting more houses built is a critical issue, regardless of economic inequality.
• There is substantial material hardship in New Zealand households.  Specifically, around 4% of the population are “doing without” to a severe degree and 11% to a less severe degree.  For children the proportions are higher, at 8% and 18% respectively.  For the elderly they are lower, at 1% and 3% respectively. The overall proportions are similar to an average for a group of EU countries.
• Claims that quarter of a million of children or more (25%+) are living in poverty because they are in relatively low income households are gross exaggerations.
• Current income is a poor indicator of hardship. Specifically, only around 40-50% of those experiencing relatively low current incomes are also experiencing hardship, and some on higher incomes are experiencing hardship.One reason is that low income is a temporary situation for a considerable proportion of households, another is that the elderly can be asset rich but income poor.
• Contrary to what the public is continually told, disposable income inequality has not trended up since the mid-1990s on the most commonly cited measure (the Gini coefficient). Market income inequality has actually trended down. (Figures 4 and 5.) The paradox is that newspaper headlines featuring inequality have risen more than 8-fold in the last decade.
• One response to the call that the rich should be “asked” to pay more in tax is that they already do. Indeed, on Treasury numbers the top 40% of households by income are the only ones that pay any income or GST over and above what they receive in return through the welfare system and health and education benefits in kind.
• It is very important that market incomes are fairly earned and are seen to be fairly earned.  Anything else corrodes community trust and cohesiveness. There should be a strong presumption against corporate welfare, including bail-outs for bankers.

Well worth reading the full report.

Professor Jordan Peterson writes in the Toronto Sun:

In early October, I recorded a set of three videos about political correctness and posted them on my YouTube channel, Jordan Peterson Videos.

The first of these decried the latest legislative moves to make “gender identity” and “gender expression” protected categories under the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code.

This set off a firestorm online and in the traditional media, particularly after a free-speech rally, organized by students, met with counter-protesters who tried to shut it down with white noise, chanted cries of “shame” and, finally, assault and deceit.

Perhaps three million people have watched the cellphone videos of these events online.

Generation Snowflake seems unable to handle a professor who defends free speech.

I noted in the videos that the policy statements surrounding similar laws already in place in Ontario and several other provinces were dangerously vague and ill-formulated. I also indicated my refusal to apply what have become known as “preferred” pronouns to people who do not fit easily into traditional gender categories (although I am willing to call someone “he” or “she” in accordance with their manner of self-presentation).

So this isn’t about refusing to call someone by the gender pronoun they prefer, just that he won’t use gender neutral pronouns such as “zhe”. And for this he has been demonised.

I also objected to the requirement that I mouth words that have been produced by those pushing an ideology with which I strenuously and deeply disagree. I regard artificially formulated words such as the so-called “gender neutral” pronouns as part of the vanguard of a wave of political correctness which has historical roots that disturb me (the association with Marxism) and psychological motivations that I do not trust (based as they are on an excess of care best devoted to infants and grounded in an intense resentment of anyone who has become successful for any reason whatsoever).

Not unreasonable.

On Oct. 3, the University of Toronto sent me a letter warning me about the potential illegality of my actions, and reminding me of my obligations to students as detailed in its own recent equity-based policies.

On Oct. 18, U of T sent me another letter requesting that I stop talking about such things.

Another university that can’t handle free speech.

Civilized people present themselves in a manner that makes dealing with them simple. This is because each of us is only one person — but one person surrounded by a multitude of others. It is impossible for us to interact with that multitude, even one-on-one, without conventions that make each of us more straightforward than we are.

If I am interacting with a bank teller, for example, I do not want to know about his or her sexual proclivities, medical problems, financial issues, and past traumas. To do her job, she has to dress in a relatively innocuous manner, and present herself in way that enables particularized, efficient and relatively shallow interactions. That’s how society functions.

I might ask her, “How’s your day?” Depending on the genuineness of my request, she might share a bit of personal information. But there are strict implicit limits on how far she can (and should) go in revealing the person behind the persona.

It is simply not reasonable for a stranger — say, a student in one of my classes — to request that I learn, speak and remember a whole set of personal descriptors as a precondition for our interactions. It is certainly not reasonable to demand that I do so — and it is absolutely unreasonable for that demand to have been given the force of law. You don’t get to exercise control over my speech.

But they want to.

The demand for use of preferred pronouns is not an issue of equality, inclusion or respect for others. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s a purposeful assault on the structure of language. It’s a dangerous incursion into the domain of free speech. It’s narcissistic self-centeredness. It’s part and parcel of the PC madness that threatens to engulf our culture.

A line must be drawn somewhere, and this is a good place to draw it. We should, further, abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission and its enforcement wing, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. We should reject Bill C-16, and we should repeal its sister legislation in those provinces where it has already been instantiated.

We should refuse, in no uncertain terms, the demands by the ideologically possessed that we speak their special language. Or we should await the consequences, and they won’t be pretty.

Very brave of him.

The Democrats have said one of their top priorities is to overturn the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United as money has too much influence in politics.

They should be cheered by the election result.

Clinton spent $500 million to $250 million to Trump and lost.

And the evil Super PACs sent $190 million backing Clinton and only $60 million backing Trump – a 3:1 ratio and he won.

So they’ve proven that the impact of money on the outcome of elections is quite minor (which is different to zero).

The Herald reports:

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff has revealed his role in scuppering ratepayer funding for the Joseph Parker heavyweight title fight.

Goff told media today that he let the council’s events arm Ateed know that unless there was a business case justifying an investment by the ratepayer “then it ought not to happen”.

“In the end there wasn’t such a business case that would justify the expenditure of ratepayer money,” said Goff, who met with Ateed on two occasions before it made the decision to withdrew support for the fight.

“I carried out my responsibility as the elected representative of the people of Auckland to ensure their ratepayer money is spent properly,” said Goff, a boxing fan who attended the last two Parker fights.

Excellent leadership from Goff.

He didn’t say yes or no on a whim. He just said he would not support funding unless there was a business case to justify it.

What should be alarming is that it appear Ateed was running out with the chequebook just on the basis of excitement they could be involved. They should not be funding anything significant (say over $50,000) without a full business case.

Some are saying that the outcome is undemocratic in the US as the winner of the popular vote did not win the electoral college and hence the presidency.

Putting aside that it is unwise to insist that any non-proportional system is undemocratic, this misses a key element.

Candidates campaign based on the rules of the electoral system. If the US system was the winner of the popular vote becomes President, then the candidates may have campaigned quite differently and Trump may have won the popular vote because he would have spent more time in New York and California. Instead he spent most of his time on the Rust Belt states and this paid off.

The same goes in New Zealand in 1978 and 1981 when Labour got more votes than National. This was FPP so parties went for marginal seats. If it had been MMP then the popular vote may have been different as parties would have campaigned differently and campaigns do matter.

The Electoral College is an anachronism, but it is the system the elections are fought under, and can be changed if a constitutional amendment passes. But it was designed on purpose to make the US a federation of states, rather than a singular country with no states. It protects smaller states so that their interests are not lost to the larger more populous states. Now I’m not saying that is reason to retain it, but that is why it exists.

Liam Hehir writes at Stuff:

Gareth Morgan is founding his own political party, but before we get down to making fun of it, we really should give him credit for putting his money where his mouth is.

A brave thing to do, given the size of the mouth.

Morgan is a successful businessman. However, he first began infringing the public consciousness as the father of Trade Me founder Sam Morgan.

But while he may have started out as a kind of celebrity dad, he has managed to cling to the spotlight by becoming the nation’s most notorious know-it-all. 

According to tradition, an oracle stated the philosopher Socrates was the wisest man on Earth. Socrates had a hard time believing this, because he did not consider himself to be wise.

When he then tried and failed to find someone wiser, however, was forced to conclude: “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” 

One imagines that the profundity of this paradox would be lost of Gareth Morgan. If his public pronouncements are anything to go by, he would be more likely to say: “I am the wisest man alive, because I am the cleverest.”

Where Socrates was a gadfly because he asked questions, Morgan is a gadfly because he has all the answers.

Some of the intractable issues that could apparently be solved if we just acknowledged Morgan’s superior sense of logic include race relations, native bird numbers, the welfare state, the healthcare system, climate change, global fish stocks, North Korea and the performance of New Zealand soccer.

It seems there are few problems that could not be solved by his doing a bit of thinking and then declaring some grand scheme as the obvious solution. All that is required is for the rest of us to surrender our own experience, philosophy and values so that we can bask in the irresistible glow of Morgan’s rationality.

It is apparent that Morgan intends to bring this heroic self-belief to his political endeavours. You see, the reason he’s decided to get his hands dirty is that the solutions to our problems are “easy”. It’s just that our current politicians don’t have the guts to “disturb” voters by implementing them. 

While a bit harsh, I think it does resonate a but because Morgan does have the habit of pronouncing his policy prescription as the solution.

I actually reserve judgment on Morgan personally because a mutual friend has assures me that he is a good and decent man. There is also no doubt that he had forged a successful career in business quite apart from his son’s achievements.

Morgan has a very successful business career and I think it is great he cares enough about New Zealand that he will fund and offer policy solutions. I even agree with some of them, and disagree of course with  others.

But I still have trouble with his trip to North Korea where his praise of their farming and “magnificent” economic achievements came across as naive as best.

What he is likely to discover is that there is a world of difference between being a critic and being what Theodore Roosevelt called “The Man in the Arena”.

I might slag off Beauden Barrett’s goal kicking the morning after a test, but that doesn’t mean I could foot it in the black jersey. The same thing goes for the difference between politics and punditry.

Morgan may need to learn this the hard way. In some of his first public comments after announcing his new party, Morgan actually volunteered a statement likening himself to Donald Trump.

Then, obviously thinking better of the comparison, he said that he was nothing like Donald Trump. Then he reversed himself again by saying that maybe he was a bit like Donald Trump. 

This was all in the course of the same interview.

“Gareth Morgan launches new political party: Compares himself to Trump” announced the New Zealand Herald. “Philanthropist Gareth Morgan launches political party, compares himself to Donald Trump” said Stuff. Is it gotcha journalism when the victim sets his own trap and then repeatedly walks into it?

I suspect the media will run to Gareth for an interview whenever they are bored and need a good headline.

And it’s not clear there’s a market for another party. Despite attempts to hitch domestic politics to the narrative of discontent that prevails overseas, the last public poll showed that just 29 per cent of respondents think this country is on the wrong track. In a comparable survey, 56 per cent of Britons, 58 per cent of Australians, 64 per cent of Americans, 71 per cent of Germans, 83 per cent of Italians and 88 per cent of Frenchmen answered the same way when asked about their own country.

That’s an astonishing statistic and one people should reflect on.

Stuff reports:

A 110kmh speed limit looks likely to be introduced on some New Zealand roads.

Associate Transport Minister Craig Foss said a proposed new speed management guide, released on Thursday, would “modernise New Zealand’s approach to managing speed” and enable a limit of 110kmh on some roads.

“To be eligible for a 110kmh limit, a road will have to meet very strict conditions, including having a median barrier, at least two lanes in each direction and no direct access to neighbouring properties,” he said.

Excellent. As our road quality improved, the speed limit should reflect safer roads.

Others likely to become eligible include the soon-to-be completed Kapiti Expressway, the northern section of Christchurch Motorway, and the Transmission Gully motorway north of Wellington when it is finished in 2020.

Yay.

There are seven confirmed candidates for Mt Roskill. They are:

• Richard Goode, NAP
• Andrew Leitch, Democrats for Social Credit
• Roshan Nauhria, NZ People’s Party
• Parmjeet Parmar, National
• Tua Schuster, Independent
• Brandon Strange, Cannabis Party
• Michael Wood, Labour

This is fascinating, showing the change (according to exit polls) from 2012 to 2016. So effectively how Trump did compared to Romney.

He massively picked up votes of non-college whites. But he also increased the vote with Asians, Hispanics and Blacks. Overall the white vote for him only up slightly.  A 5% increase with men.

He lost support with women (but not much), over 65s, Jewish voters, gay voters and white college voters.

The big divide change is the white vote polarising between college and non college so much more.

Stuff reports:

Protest action has taken place outside Westpac in Invercargill on Friday after the bank’s financial offer to the victims of an alleged cheque fraud was deemed inadequate.

More than $55,000 was allegedly stolen from a meatworkers union “shed fund” expense account at the Blue Sky Meats processing plant over a seven year period.

The shed fund committee team has been seeking reparation from Westpac for the lost funds.

Why not seek it from the person who stole the money?

I presume he is or was a union official.

Money was paid into the shed fund account by union members at the meatworks plant and it was meant to be spent on expenses incurred by onsite union officials in the course of their union duties.

However, allegations surfaced that cheques were drawn for personal use on at least 500 occasions between 2007 and 2015.

Eddie Wood, who works at Blue Sky Meats and has been chairman of its unionised shed fund committee since 2015, says the bank’s offer to settle the dispute was too low.

He believes the bank should have had procedures in place to detect the “unsophististicated” fraud.

Westpac had accepted more than 500 cheques totalling more than $55,000 which he claims were either forged or only had one signature on them instead of the required two signatures, he said.

Banks basically never check signatures on checks unless over a certain level. If the cheques were an average $100 each then no way they would get checked.

If the union had detected the offending early on, then I suspect the bank would compensate. But if you don’t detect the fraud for seven years, can’t really expect the bank to be liable. The union should have accounts and an auditor which would pick this up.

Stuff reports on views of Wellingtonians in the annual WCC residents surveys. Indicators reported are:

• Residents who recycle 96% (+35%)
• Perception that Wellington is a great place to live 95% (-1%)
• Satisfaction with artificial sports fields 94% (+5%)
• Attendee satisfaction with council-supported arts and cultural festivals 85% (+1%)
• Perception that public transport services are convenient 69% (-1%)
• Perception that Wellington is a great place to work 66% (+3%)
• Residents who rate the city’s roads as good or very good 66% (nc)
• Residents’ satisfaction with their involvement in council decision-making 59% (-15%)
• Residents who think parking enforcement is fair 48% (-2%)
• Residents who think public transport services are affordable 46% (+8%)
• Residents who think peak traffic volumes are acceptable 43% (-4%)
• Satisfaction with grass sports fields 42% (-36%)
• Residents who agree council decisions are being made in the best interests of the city 34% (-2%)
• Residents who understand how the council makes decisions 33% (-2%)

Annoyingly I can’t see the full survey results on the WCC website.

Wellington Mayor Justin Lester said he was generally quite pleased with the results of the latest monitoring survey, which showed the council hit 65 per cent of its performance measure targets.

But there was always more work to be done, and while he knew the council had always made decisions in the best interests of the city, he would aim to improve public perception in that area through greater community planning.

The results are pretty good, but I’m not sure I’d be satisfied with achieving 65% of performance measure targets. I’d be aiming for over 80%.

This is from the exit polls.

So Trump had overwhelming support from white non-college voters, rural/small city voters and protestants.

Moderate support from men, married voters, older voters, Catholics, suburban dwellers and white college educated voters.

Clinton had moderate support from younger voters, women, single voters.

Clinton had strong support from city voters, Hispanics, non religious voters, Jewish voters, gay voters and Blacks.

Guide Fawkes covers the spending row over Baroness Scotland, the Commonwealth Secretary General:

Baroness Scotland has surfaced on the Today programme where she insisted “there has been no extravagance at all” in her spending since she became Commonwealth Secretary General.

Scotland said it is “untrue” she demanded £4,000 for a mirror-lined cupboard. Hereis the cost plan showing her demand for a £4,000 mirror-lined cupboard.

She said there is “no chandelier”. Read the emails where her staff complain about her demands over an “extremely expensive chandelier” here.

She said the total cost would be the original budget “plus the fees plus things that would come up”. Read her staff complaining about how expensive those “things that would come up” are here.

Scotland said she followed all procurement rules to hire her friend Lord Patel on £30,000-a-month. Here is a memo showing procurement practices were waived.

NZ taxpayers help fund the Commonwealth. Should our Government be asking questions?

UN Watch reports:

UN chief Ban Ki-moon and human rights high commissioner Zeid Hussein are being called upon to investigate how their officials allowed Venezuela to commit “fraud on a massive scale” to influence today’s UN review of the country’s human rights record by using hundreds of “front groups” to submit comments favorable to the regime, a watchdog group reported.

While “an astronomical amount of 519 supposedly non-governmental organizations” submitted comments for Venezuela’s review, only 54 commented on Uganda, 26 on Syria,  23 for South Sudan, and 20 on Zimbabwe, according to a new report published by UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental human rights monitoring group.

Although “critiques by genuine NGOs do appear, they are overwhelmed by an unprecedented amount of submissions by fraudulent ‘NGOs’ that, if  they do exist, are either controlled by the government of Venezuela, or by its allies Cuba and Bolivia,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch and an international lawyer.

“This is fraud committed on a massive scale,” said Neuer, as Venezuela’s foreign minister appeared before the UN Human Rights Council this morning in Geneva, Switzerland, to present her government’s case. The UNHRC audits each nation every five years for its Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

“Venezuela used hundreds of front groups to hijack the United Nations database and compilation summary of NGO submissions, and turn it into a propaganda sheet for the regime of President Nicolas Maduro,” said Neuer.

The UPR is not binding on anyone “but does have an impact because it’s a megaphone, a podium, which does shape the way people think and it’s a source of legitimacy,” said Neuer.

“Among the 500 groups absurdly praising Venezuela’s alleged human rights accomplishments include the Bolivian Baseball Association, the Cuban Federation of Canine Sports, and the ‘Association for Obvious Things,’ a group in Slovenia that hailed Venezuela’s record on combating hunger,” said the UN Watch report.

“The result is that the review today of Venezuela’s human rights record is being conducted based on a massive amount of manifestly false information,” concludes the report.

Under UN rules, the world body is only supposed to gather submissions that provide “credible and reliable information.” The report calls on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Hussein to investigate “how and why their officials failed to screen out submissions that clearly do not meet this standard.”

“Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner Zeid should declared Venezuela guity of conempt for the Human Rights Council on which it sits,” said Neuer.

Venezuela is on the Human Rights Council, of course!

Good to know the UN will accept submissions from the Bolivian Baseball Association on human rights in Venezuela. Very credible.

The Herald reports:

Nearly three-quarters of Kiwi fast-food consumers would trim their intake if the Government imposed a fat tax, a survey suggests.

Fourteen per cent said they would quit fast food under a fat tax, according to the Perceptive Research survey of 1004 people done in September for Diabetes NZ.

The support group has declared November to be “diabetes action month”, to help people cope with the disease and to draw attention to what it says is New Zealand’s fastest-growing health crisis.

It says forty people a day are diagnosed with diabetes.

“More than 260,000 people in New Zealand have diabetes; the prevalence has doubled in the past 10 years.”

Obesity is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes and New Zealand’s rate of obesity, at 31 per cent, more than triple what it was in the 1970s, continues to grow.

The survey also asked about views on a tax on fizzy sugar drinks. It found 39 per cent said they would change their fizzy drinking habits with a tax.

Nineteen per cent said they might buy the drinks less often with a 20 per cent tax. A further 20 per cent might alter their buying habits with a 25 per cent tax.

These questions mean little. It is asking people what they think they will do, which is very different to what they actually do.

An example is this poll on free range eggs. 53% claim that ethics is more important to price when they buy eggs. However free-range eggs make up only 12% of the market so 41% have said they will buy free range eggs for ethical reasons, but never actually do.

Taxing something will generally reduce consumption of it, but each item will have its own elasticity of demand. Also heavy consumers can respond differently to moderate consumers.

The other issue is substitution. If people, for example, substitute orange juice for fizzy drinks, they may end up more obese.

Here’s the unemployment rates for significant OECD countries:

1. Germany 4.3%
2. New Zealand 4.9%
3. UK 4.9%
4. US 5.0%
5. Australia 5.7%
6. OECD 6.3%
7. Canada 7.0%
8. Ireland 8.4%
9. EU 8.6%
10. France 10.0%
11. Euro area 10.1%
12. Italy 11.5%
13. Spain 20.1%
14. Greece 23.5%

Donald Trump’s victory is the biggest upset in modern politics. It dwarfs everything that came before it.

It was not just a polling upset in that the polls were wrong (and they were) like in Dewey vs Truman.

It was also a data upset in that all the models based on early voter turnout were wrong. The stories of massive Latino turnout early on being good for Clinton were a red herring.

Trump’s campaign did nothing that professional campaigns are meant to do.

• No get out the vote machine
• No voter segmentation and targeting
• A relatively small ad buy

Yet he not only won the election but he smashed through Clinton’s blue firewall and won midwest states he wasn’t even meant to be competitive in.

You have to give credit to Trump. He had a belief that he was speaking to mid west America and would motivate them to turn our and vote like they never had before – and they did.

Despite the fact only one living Republican presidential candidate (Dole) was voting for him and scores of top Reublicans were not, he won the presidency plus the Republicans retained the Senate and had few losses in the House.

What does this all mean? How did he win? Well I may be as wrong on this as I have been on almost everything Trump, but my take is:

• People wanted change, and he offered it. As flawed as he was and as uncertain as to whether the change he offers would be good change, the prospect of change won out over the certainty of the status quo
• The big divide was not just race but education. Trump actually got 29% of the Hispanic vote up 8% from Romney. With women he in fact only got 1% less than Romney. But with non college whites he beat Clinton 39% and while with college whites only 4%
• One good analysis pointed out that minority groups often vote overwhelmingly one way, making their impact powerful. So in NZ Pacific Islanders overwhelmingly vote Labour and in the US African Americans over-whelmingly vote Democratic. Well non-college whites over-whelmingly voted Trump as a minority, but they are a large minority – 40% of the country
• Trump picked up massive support from poorer Americians. He did 16% better than Romney with those earning under $30,000
• Clinton was a very flawed candidate who can to embody the status quo that so many were unhappy with

I have huge reservations about Trump, and especially his narcissistic personality and thin skinned nature. He could be a disastrous President, but he has won and deserves the chance to show he can be a better President.

There is something amazing about watching an election night as the results come in, and everyone is equal in terms of information. Barack Obama is learning the results at the same time as everyone else is. At the end of the day 100 million Americans got to decide the future of their country, and they voted for dramatic change.

So what are the results?

President

• Electoral College looks to be 305 Trump and 233 Clinton. Trump got more EC votes than Bush 43 did in 2000 and 2004.
• Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa (and Maine’s and Nebrasks’s 2nd Districts)
• Clinton is ahead in the popular vote by around 0.2%

Senate

• Republicans look to have kept 52 seats and the majority. New Hampshire too close to call.
• They lost Illinois but kept Wisconsin, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Florida
• The win in Indiana was huge – almost 10%. The Democrats brought back former Senator Evan Bayh who at first looked to win in a landslide. But as it emerged he no longer even lived in the state and couldn’t correctly name the address of the property he owned there, anger grew against him

House

• Forecast Republicans 239 and Democrats 196
• A net pick up for the Democrats of just eight seats – below what most were predicting

Governors

• Republicans looked to have picked up two Governors

The Future

• The Democrats are decimated. The Clinton control of the party is finished as are they. Obama is out of politics. Sanders, Biden and Warren are old. Who will be their 2020 Presidential candidate?
• The next Senate election in 2018 is awful for Democrats – they have to defend 25 seats to eight for the Republicans. Realistically Republicans likely to control the Senate until at least 2020 and the House also.
• TPP is dead. Jane Kelsey can celebrate
• Will Trump really pull out of the Iranian nuclear deal and the Paris Climate Change Agreement?
• What will replace Obamacare?
• Who will serve in a Trump administration?
• There will be no Justice Garland. Who will Trump nominate to replace Scalia?
• Will Justices Bader-Ginsburg (83) and Kennedy (80) and Breyer (78) see out Trump’s term? If any of them die or retire the Supreme Court may get a clear conservative majority for a generation
• Will Trump keep any or many of his promises?

Use this thread to comment on the results as they come in.  Will try and do updates of significant states as they occur.

UPDATE: looking good for Clinton. Well ahead in North Carolina with half the votes counted

UPDATE 1527: Trump doing better than before in some states. NY Times has dropped Clinton’s probability to win from 80% to 60%!

UPDATE 1619: NY Times now has Trump at 78% to win and the Dow Jones has dropped more than it did on 9/11. If Trump wins this is biggest upset in history. Thrilling.

UPDATE 1704: NYT now has Trump as over 95% likely to win the electoral college (but lose popular vote). Unless their model is crap this is looking massive.  He is leading in Michigan and Wisconsin which were not even thought in play.

Republicans also looking likely to win the Senate so you may have them in control of Executive and Congress.

UPDATE 1911: I’m calling it for Trump.  He is leading in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania which gives him the presidency comfortably. The biggest upset of modern history.

Something amazing about seeing the votes come in and determine a Government. It shows that voting does matter