News for the Week of 9/20-9/27

Author: Liene Riekstina
Source: The Roanoke Times

This Saturday on 9/24 Donald Trump was visiting Roanoke city in Virginia. This was his second appearance in the last two months. 

Trump gave a 30-minute speech to a crowd of about 8,000 people. He started his remarks with a shout-out to the Virginia Tech football team, which won against East Carolina University team earlier in the day.

The rest of his speech covered such topics as college debt, opioid abuse, over-regulating the energy industry and the notorious topic about building a border wall between the United States and Mexico.

Latest polls show that 42% Virginians might vote for Trump, so the race is tight. That is why Trump plans to be back in Virginia every week until the election in November.

You can read more about Trump's visit in Roanoke here: http://www.roanoke.com/news/politics/roanoke/trump-stages-roanoke-encore/article_7807c296-7ee2-54e8-a394-c28220a72499.html

Author: Payden Volbrecht
Source: CNN

Last Saturday, 9/24/2016, CNN posted an article that shows Donald Trump either gaining or increasing his lead in many of the battle ground states. Virginia in particular was very surprising due to the fact that the former governor of Virginia, Time Kaine, is Mrs. Clinton's running mate. Mrs. Clinton had such a commanding lead in Virginia that advertising for the democratic candidate in that state had stopped. Unfortunately for Mrs. Clinton, this proved to be a questionable decision as the newest polls show that her lead has fallen too only a 6 point lead. The Quinnipiac University survey that created these polls say that there is a 3.8 point margin of error for the Virginian poll. With Mr. Trump visiting Virginia frequently, Mrs. Clinton may want to start advertising in that state again.

The article that I obtained this information is posted below,
 http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/22/politics/quinnipiac-university-poll-colorado-virginia-hillary-clinton-donald-trump/

Author: Carter James

Source: WDBJ7 (Roanoke, VA)

A poll was conducted recently by the Watson Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University. The poll shows that currently among likely voters in Virginia that Hillary is currently beating Donald Trump in the state. In a head to head contest between the Republican and Democratic nominees, Clinton is winning 48-38 percent but among the 5 candidates that will be on the Virginian ballot, the tally is Clinton 39, Trump 33 and Johnson 15. Green Party nominee Jill Stein and independent Evan McMullin each take 3 percent. The poll also found that 54 percent of voters dont trust Hillary and 53 percent of voters find Donald Trump to be racist. 

The interesting thing is looking at the millennial vote breakdown. In a head to head poll, Clinton has a commanding lead of 52-30 percent but with the full ballot, Clinton is at 34 percent, Johnson at 27, and Trump at 23. Other data taken from the poll include things like women in Virginia prefer Clinton to Trump at a 2:1 ratio and military voters prefer Trump 48-39 percent. 

The article link can be found here

How is Virginia going to vote?

Author: Liene Riekstina
Main source: www.270towin.com

Virginia is one of the original 13 colonies and birthplace of 4 of the first 5 U.S. presidents, including George Washington. In 1792, Virginia controlled 15.9% of all electoral votes which is the largest concentration in U.S. history. From the post-Civil War Reconstruction period through 1948, Virginians almost always sided with the Democrats in elections. However, from 1952 through 2004, Virginia was reliably Republican. Again in 2008 Virginia changed its voting habits by voting for Democrat candidate, Barack Obama. Figure 1.1. shows a graphs depicting the voting history of Virginia.

Virginia voting history

(Figure 1.1.)

Yellow: winning candidates from party other than Democratic or Republican.

Red: Republican party

Blue: Democrat party

2016 is colored green until after the election.

Source: http://www.270towin.com/states/Virginia

In order to become President 270 ellectoral college votes are required, Virginia has a higher number of electoral college votes with 13. It is likely that in 2016 elections Virginians will vote for Democrat candidate Hilary Clinton. Latest polls show that 46% might vote for Clinton, while 42% might vote for Trump. The presidental race is going to be tightenting nationally but polls are already indicating that Clinton is more likely to get the required 270 votes. Figure 1.2 is a map that shows the current poll standings for each State.

If no candidate receives 270 electoral votes, the House of Representatives will pick the president. Each state delegation gets one vote, regardless of the number of congressional districts it has. 26 votes, representing a majority of the states, are required to win.

(Figure 1.2.)

Source: http://www.270towin.com/maps/associated-press-electoral-map-analysis

 

News for the Week of 9/13 - 9/20

Author: Payden H Volbrecht
Source: The Virginian Pilot

September 9th 2016 Hilary Clinton's Running Mate, Tim Kaine, gave a speech at the Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. It was a 22 minute speech that highlighted a few of the more debated and recent issues that have been brought up about the two front runners of this election, Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. The most notable criticisms that Kaine gave towards Republican Candidates was to criticize them for their support of the Russian President Vladimir Putin. In addition to also calling Trump out for criticizing military service members, their families and the Pentagon.

With regards to Hilary Clinton, Kaine spoke about her military policies specifically the US Navy. Kaine told the crowed that Hillary Clinton did not support automatic budget cuts which would limit the funding for many parts of the military. He continued on in support of Clinton by reassuring the audience that she acknowledges her mistake of combining her work email with her personal email and that she learned from this mistake and is striving to do better in the future.

After the speech Kaine answered a few questions for The Virginian Pilot about his next step in the campaign process. Moving forward Kaine is preparing for his debate with the Republican Running Mate, Mike Pence, the 4th of October and continuing to spread Hillary's message to citizens of the USA.

A link to the article can be found below:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8

Author: Carter A James
Source: Fairfax City Patch

On Friday the 16th at George Mason University, First Lady Michelle Obama spoke at a Hillary Clinton event. It's the first time she has spoken on Hillary's behalf since the Democratic National Convention in July. Michelle avoided talking about the Republican candidate Donald Trump by name but talked about the negativity surrounding the campaign.

Michelle talked about the important characteristics a president needs to have that she believes Hillary does have, that it's about the poise of the candidate, not about being the loudest. Lastly, Obama encouraged the students in attendance heavily to register to vote and mentioned that Barack only won Virginia by 150,000 votes in 2012. The latest poll in Virginia as of Thursday has Hillary up by 3 points.

A link to the article can be here.