Agreed, Clinton v Trump was Clinton's to lose -- Trump was probably the least electable (well, there was Carson, I guess) of the Republican nominees. That's why Clinton very nearly won, and even then she lost only because of poor strategy in the swing states.

Trump won the Republican nomination because he lied bigly and consistently, making promises that nobody -- even if they were competent -- could keep. Those lies would not have been needed to convince the electorate to vote for a sane, competent Republican candidate when the alternative was Clinton. It would have been interesting to see a Trump v Sanders battle -- or indeed, Sanders v any of the other Republican candidates.

Bigly?
You'll be suggesting we take your posts seriously next.

doesn't every politician do that?

No - the left never lie. This explains why Clinton was seen as such a trustworthy and honest candidate.

Nobody ever as bigly as the Artist of the Deal.

It's "take your posts serious" (haven't you been listening to Swiss Germans speaking English?). Bigly used up all the "-ly" suffixes there are for adverbs.

No, because included in those 320million are people ineligible to vote - under 18, people who are not registered, people who can't vote because of criminal records, or because they are incarcerated, legal aliens, green card holders. I think that politico estimates the number of registered voters in the us at 200 million.

So what you're proposing is that if you didn't vote for Clinton, it was a vote for Trump, which means 33% voted for Clinton. I know it's still a loss, but at least use the appropriate base.

Snork.

'Stop Trump state visit' petition rejected

Flynn resigns. Spicer press conf will be interesting; SNL doubly so.

The petition will be debated by the House of Commons on 20 February.

Final dates have not yet been agreed for the State Visit

You've never had to write a statistics story have you. In doing so you are perfectly entitled to cherry pick the numbers that best tell your story - and that includes picking numbers which don't make sense. So 66/320 is perfectly OK - especially if the story will appear on Fox "News"

A nice headline would be "400% more people didn't vote Clinton" - it doesn't make sense - but I fail to see why I should make sense in the world of US politics!

That is nothing compared to the 95% of British people that didn't support the Trump petition

Or the 100% of them who didn't vote for him!

But only 300,000 voted for the petition to invite Trump!

300,000 strongly believed that Trump should be invite
66m had no feelings either way

While 95% of the British do not support the petition against the visit, a majority of 300.000 vote to get him to the UK.

i should work in PR

So the 1.85 million who have petitioned against should get their wish. After all that's how voting works isn't it? The majority who participated win, even if a bigger majority couldn't be bothered to take part.

I don't know about standouts. There were 17 candidates at one point, all vying for TV time, a few words at a debate, and of course votes. The TV networks even had to split the debates because there wasn't enough room on the stage. Trump had an advantage thanks to his experience on TV. He knew/knows what the cameras and audiences want. Networks quickly realized that putting Trump as a lead story and in the center of the stage got more views. I haven't seen a tally on the free media Trump received but it's got to be YUGE.

It wasn't a vote - it was an online petition.

The government (who were actually elected by a vote) will now decide whether to take either of the petitions seriously. If they do they will then submit it to parliament for a vote.

However based on their experience in listening to the public they may do the sensible thing and completely ignore both petitions.

Will of the people innit!