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I have my doubts that Clinton will get the presidency. A lot of Sanders supports will either:
A) Not Vote
B) Support Trump as their Nuclear Option
C) Support the Jill Stein/The Greens.

I think more people would support Hillary than they would Trump.

Hillary has her had sides to her, sure.  But Trump's bad sides...well, they trump Hillary's. 

The slander of Clinton out here has basically resulted in people supporting a sort of "anything but Hillary" position, which I really don't like, but I myself can't deny the fact that Hillary is a corporate puppet. But those stupid pundits beating the e-mails night and day are what're going to cost her the election, even if she gets the nomination. And the more frustrating thing is that it doesn't even matter if the e-mails were actually a problem in the first place!! What was it Gobbels said? If you say something loud enough and often enough, it becomes the truth? (Something like that.)

True, but you can't deny that people are going to rather want her than someone who outright said he was going to close US borders to "Muslims," not even thinking about the fact that Muslims come in all races, not just one.

For the stupid shit Hillary has pulled, Trump has pulled some stupid, racist, bigoted shit himself.

I'm not so sure that the emails have really mattered. Ultimately long before this most people had formed opinions on her, and the emails probably only served to self-validate the opinions of those that didn't like her, while those that do probably dismissed the allegations as being politically motivated.

I think her problem is that she's just an uninspiring candidate...she's trying to talk the talk and claim herself a progressive, but she's in reality a centrist in the mold of her husband. Ultimately, her platform is maintaining the status quo with maybe a few small changes here and there at a time when people want the hope and change that Obama campaigned on back in 2008. It seems to me that most people aren't supporting her because they really like her or her platform, but they see her as the least riskiest candidate in terms of not losing to a Republican.

That woman doesn't have an iota of sincerity in any molecule of her body. She'll say whatever she has to to win. I don't think she even thinks past her own ambition. In the words of my favourite homicidal clown, she's a dog chasing tyres. She won't even know what to do with it when she catches it. Mmusi Maimane, the new leader of the DA after Helen Zille stepped down, is exactly the same, and I absolutely refuse to support him, even if he's a better candidate than Zuma. I'd rather just go waste my vote on a party I actually agree with, like COPE, who are what the ANC initially promised to be.

That woman doesn't have an iota of sincerity in any molecule of her body. She'll say whatever she has to to win. I don't think she even thinks past her own ambition. In the words of my favourite homicidal clown, she's a dog chasing tyres. She won't even know what to do with it when she catches it. Mmusi Maimane, the new leader of the DA after Helen Zille stepped down, is exactly the same, and I absolutely refuse to support him, even if he's a better candidate than Zuma. I'd rather just go waste my vote on a party I actually agree with, like COPE, who are what the ANC initially promised to be.

I've been thinking about throwing my vote away on a third party if Bernie doesn't win the nomination.  Apparently I favor the Green Party for most issues.  Jill Stein '16!

That woman doesn't have an iota of sincerity in any molecule of her body. She'll say whatever she has to to win. I don't think she even thinks past her own ambition. In the words of my favourite homicidal clown, she's a dog chasing tyres. She won't even know what to do with it when she catches it. Mmusi Maimane, the new leader of the DA after Helen Zille stepped down, is exactly the same, and I absolutely refuse to support him, even if he's a better candidate than Zuma. I'd rather just go waste my vote on a party I actually agree with, like COPE, who are what the ANC initially promised to be.

I've been thinking about throwing my vote away on a third party if Bernie doesn't win the nomination.  Apparently I favor the Green Party for most issues.  Jill Stein '16!

My friend who caucused for Sanders in Iowa said he will write in his [Sanders'] name for the general if he doesn't win, so that's always an option. But if you already agree with the Greens, it's best to give them support instead, seeing as how a party needs 5% of the ballot to be nationally viable (present in national debates, receive federal campaign funding, etc.).

However, I worry that such an effort on a mass scale would play spoiler effect, such as Ralph Nader's run in 2000.

So now, exactly one month in the future, we have additional updates on the state of the race:

• Donald Trump has all but locked up the Republican race, with his main competitors Ted Cruz and John Kasich withdrawing their bids.
• However, interestingly enough, there was a rumour about Ted Cruz supposedly reentering the campaign should he somehow win the Nebraska GOP primary today (through early voters or the fact that Cruz is still on the ballot). This news comes less than two weeks after he named his vice-presidential nominee to be Carly Fiorina before the Indiana primary and subsequently dropped out.
• Hillary Clinton remains in the lead for the Democratic nomination, though Bernie Sanders is favoured to win the next several states and partially alleviate his delegate deficit. Regardless of what happens in the race, Sanders has promised to keep his candidacy open until the July nomination convention.
• @Wintermoot, it is the West Virginia primary today for both Republicans and Democrats, so I encourage you to vote if you have not already done so. I hope you have already registered, because there is less than an hour before the polls close, I believe.

This election has been a fun/interesting/weird ride for me both as a first-time voter and as a newfound political junkie, so I hope to hear more discussion on the election and politics in general. I'd rather not take away from other general Wintreath interests, so I've found a Reddit political discussion board to contribute to; they even have an IRC server, so at some time or another I may end up juggling both chat threads.

Just as an aside, I know that we're not a political region in terms of how we do things internally or in gameplay, but I think discussion of real-life politics could certainly be a Wintrean interest, and I occasionally try to create these sorts of topics to stir up activity and discussion. If we decide not to talk about things because we don't think they're a regional interest, we'll just be denying ourselves a chance to have more discussions and to be active in more areas.

Anyways, the primary election is pretty much decided at this point. The main question going forward will be where the people who supported the other candidates go. Will Sanders's supporters turn to the Green Party, which will be actively courting them, stay home, or fall in line behind Clinton? On the other side, will those that didn't support Trump end up staying home, supporting the Libertarian party (or a new party...there's still talk of that at least), or even support Clinton? I've ready articles postulating all of those possibilities.

On the Democratic side, there's also the question of what happens to Sanders himself. At this point, I suspect he's running not so much to win the nomination, but to get as many delegates as possible in order to influence the Democratic Party platform, and perhaps to keep Clinton from trying to move further to the right as she'd almost certainly do in the absence of a challenge from the left. But once she's nominated, what happens to him? Will she nominate him for a position in the same way Obama nominated her after he won against her? That in itself could have an impact on what happens with his supporters.

And then there's the general election...who do people least dislike, Trump or Clinton?

Well I mean Clinton is pretty nasty as time has shown, but Trump is a goddamn psychopath.

Trump is a narcissist, not a psychopath. Ted Cruz is a psychopath.

Were I in your people's shoes, I'd probably just not vote, or vote for some party that doesn't stand a chance of winning.

The nice thing about SA is that people can still win seats in parliament depending on their percentage score in the election. If the DA had 30% of the votes, they get 30% of the seats. If some fringe party won 1% of the votes, they get a few seats as well.

Voices aren't drowned out like they are in America.

Well the voting in for the House of Representatives and senators is another time and it kinda works like that...
Weirdly enough though very few in America give a single fuck about that one even though it is as important if not more important than the president...

The nice thing about SA is that people can still win seats in parliament depending on their percentage score in the election. If the DA had 30% of the votes, they get 30% of the seats. If some fringe party won 1% of the votes, they get a few seats as well.

The consequence of that is that you end up voting for a party rather than a candidate. And oftentimes in parliamentary systems like that, there are severe penalties for an MP voting out of line with their party. That is probably the result of parties that can afford to have narrower platforms. Approval of that versus a two-party system is a matter of opinion.

But Congressional seats are still of that system, just on a more local level. That is, a Green Party Congressional hopeful with 5% of the vote or so would still lose. Even if the 435 seat races gave 5% to the Green Party nationwide, they would most likely end up with zero seats.

The lack of interest in Representative and Senatorial elections is absolutely disappointing, however. Some even go so far as to run unopposed (although that's not terribly common) due to such an incumbency advantage, a principle that goes back to "hating Congress but loving your Congressman".

It's still a much more diverse view-point. Although some people in the parties in America are willing to oppose their parties, I've never seen such a stalemate in South Africa as I can sometimes see between the Republicans and Democrats.

A few individuals, like Mmusi Maimane and Julius Malema, have begun abusing the system, but it's quite a novelty.

Ironically, their dirty politics have started to make me much more sympathetic to certain members of the ANC, such as Blade Nzimande and Cyril Ramaphosa, who truly know their shit, and try their best to get things done, when these obstructionist assholes get in their way.

Also, Cyril Ramaphosa and Blade Nzimande have quite different views on all matters political than, say, Jacob Zuma or the previous president, Thabo Mbeki.