In presidential elections, size doesn't always matter
(and, of course we know that der drumpfenfuher exaggerates the size of his audiences by serious numbers)
In presidential elections, size doesn't always matter
Trump talks about crowd size at his rallies, but big events don't always translate to election victories. Candidates can be blinded to the state of their campaign by rallies with large crowds
(CNN)It's the most deceptive sign in politics. Every four years, a presidential candidate gazes out over a vast crowd and convinces themselves the White House is there for the taking.
In 2016, the general election candidate drawing the biggest and loudest crowds is Donald Trump. "We got to Oklahoma, we have 25,000 people. We had 21,000 people in Dallas, we had 35,000 people in Mobile, Alabama. We get these massive crowds," Trump said in Florida earlier this month. "Look, if she had 500 people I would be surprised," he added, poking fun at Hillary Clinton's more intimate events.
During the primaries, Trump's massive crowds did, in fact, translate to votes. But size is not always a barometer of a campaign's destiny.In fact, extrapolating electoral prospects from the size of rally crowds is often a misleading metric -- for evidence, look no further than the campaigns of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry and Mitt Romney. Bernie Sanders thrilled thousands of people in mega-rallies over the past year and a half as well.
Yet every election, candidates and aides, seeking silver linings when beset by bad polls, indulge the wishful thought that bulging rallies will mean a stampede at the ballot box.
Often, they tout that mystical, yet unquantifiable, political commodity: Momentum.
"Momentum's a word from physics that got hijacked by journalists and political operatives to sound scientific," said Sam Wang, a professor of neuroscience who runs Princeton University's Election Consortium. "What it means is -- 'I am excited by where I am today, I am excited by what is happening.'"
That is not stopping Trump however -- just as it did not stop Sanders supporters who saw his crowds of 20,000 and up in the primary race to argue that a tsunami of enthusiasm for the Vermont senator could overcome Clinton. Trump supporters are putting their faith in boots on the ground at his rallies. "They are standing in lines for two hours and (in) 90-degree weather to get in," New York Rep. Chris Collins told CNN's Brianna Keilar this week."This energy you are seeing ... is why the polls mean nothing. This is a turnout election and the energy is behind Donald Trump." But history shows, that for all its faults, polling is a better predictor of electoral success in a broad electorate, than crowd size.
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http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/27/politics/2016-election-crowd-size/
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