the republican national committee's own model had donald trump losing. | getty the gop shared its analysis with reporters four days before election day to prove that it had given trump the tools to win. by kenneth p. vogel 11/09/16 03:01 am est the republican national committee, despite its sometimes testy relationship with donald trump, publicly predicted in the campaign<u+2019>s final days that its presidential nominee was going to win. privately, though, the committee was much less optimistic. story continued below the rnc<u+2019>s sophisticated predictive modeling had trump losing in the campaign<u+2019>s last stretch, all the way until the friday afternoon before the election, according to an embargoed briefing the rnc delivered to reporters at the party<u+2019>s capitol hill headquarters on friday afternoon. at the time of the briefing, the rnc<u+2019>s model showed trump finishing 30 electoral votes short of the tally needed to clinch the white house, while losing by various margins to hillary clinton in the battleground states of florida, iowa, pennsylvania and wisconsin. trump won all those states, and the associated press declared him the winner at 2:31 a.m. on wednesday <u+2014> a shocking upset victory that most pollsters struggled to explain . 2016 by shane goldmacher and ben schreckinger the fact that even the models put together by trump<u+2019>s own national party committee weren<u+2019>t forecasting a victory is a testament to just how much the outcome confounded conventional metrics. it also likely reflects the amount of ground that trump made up in the final few days of the race after the briefing. the rnc<u+2019>s model had shown trump closing fast on clinton in several key states after the fbi<u+2019>s announcement, 11 days before the election, that it was reviewing new evidence related to its investigation into the handling of sensitive information by clinton and her aides at the state department. while fbi director james comey on sunday announced the agency had completed its investigation and would not pursue charges, the renewal of the inquiry galvanized republican voters who had been on the fence about trump, suggested rnc chief of staff katie walsh. <u+201c>even before (the announcement), when people started to really come home on the republican side, voters were moving dramatically towards (trump),<u+201d> walsh said at the friday briefing. republican voters <u+201c>came home drastically in the last 20 days and really drastically in the last 5,<u+201d> she said, arguing that trump had a path to victory despite being down in the rnc model. <u+201c>we have 10 states within 2 points, so i wouldn<u+2019>t say that just because florida is down 2.2 today, that we say yeah, he<u+2019>s going to lose florida,<u+201d> walsh said. <u+201c>we could be 2 percentage points off in our prediction in florida, but we<u+2019>ve also said that a big piece of this program and why we invested in it was so that we could do this over the course of the election, to get him within 2.2 points <u+2014> this close.<u+201d> the briefing was called ostensibly to highlight the rnc<u+2019>s advances in voter modeling and its heavy investment in the party<u+2019>s ground game. but it also seemed at least partly intended to prove that the republican party gave trump <u+2014> and all of its 2016 candidates <u+2014> the tools to succeed in 2016. the suggestion was unmistakable: if trump loses, the blame should fall on the rookie candidate and his overmatched campaign <u+2014> and not the party or its chairman reince priebus. the briefing was conducted by the rnc<u+2019>s top staff, who asked reporters to agree not to divulge details <u+2014> or even the existence of the briefing <u+2014> before the election was called. the rnc<u+2019>s model included 9.8 billion rows of data collected from 26 million phone calls that allowed the rnc to assign scores between 0 and 100 on all manner of issues. donald trump's full remarks on the election night. 11/09/16 04:24 am est on friday, it showed trump losing by two or more percentage points in six battleground states <u+2014> florida, iowa, new hampshire, pennsylvania, virginia and wisconsin. trump had won four of those states at press time, with clinton winning virginia and leading in new hampshire. the model showed trump losing colorado by half-a-percentage point. clinton was winning the state by three percentage points at press time. the model showed trump ahead in the remaining four battleground states it was tracking <u+2014> arizona, georgia, michigan and nevada. by the time the race was called tuesday, he had won georgia, was ahead in arizona and michigan and had lost nevada to clinton. by contrast, the model only showed trump winning by two percentage points or more in four battleground states <u+2014> indiana, missouri, north carolina and ohio. he won all those states handily. the model was used to direct the activities of a ground operation that was unprecedented in gop history, including 315 field offices staffed by 6,012 paid employees and fellows. that ground game <u+2014> which supplemented the barebones operation assembled by trump<u+2019>s campaign <u+2014> was getting a lot of credit as the results rolled in showing trump out-performing projections in almost every key battleground. the <u+201c>gop ground game was outstanding ,<u+201d> tweeted rnc chief strategist sean spicer. by bill scher by joshua zeitz by thomas wright by jack shafer
rnc model showed trump losing - politico
kenneth p. vogel shane goldmacher ben schreckinger jack shafer