The Odds of Trump Not Lasting Four Years

[tgards79]

You'd be surprised how many people asked BTRTN to do this analysis:
http://www.borntorunthenumbers.com/2017/02/the-odds-of-trump-not-lasting-four-years.html

[unblock]

1. not overly impressed with this analysis.

the incapacitation analysis seems overly simplistic.

the odds of someone donnie's age having a stroke in the next 10 years is around 13%. maybe his are lower than average, given the no smoking an supposedly no drinking, and also if we're to actually believe that his blood pressure is normal and untreated. plus, not all strokes are incapacitating, at least not to the extent that would force removal from office.

we all talk about the 25th amendment as a means to remove someone by force, against their will; but its purpose was to remove someone if they're incapacitated in a way that even partisans should recognize, as wilson certainly was and reagan nearly was. republicans won't remove donnie because of his policies or personality defects, but they likely would if he were more demonstrably incapacitated.

overall, i'd put the odds of this around 2-4%, keeping in mind stroke isn't the only way an incapacitation could happen (an assassination attempt could certainly cause this without resulting in death, which the article covered elsewhere already covered).


also, i'm not sure it's proper to just add up the numbers. i think it makes more sense to consider the chance of each not occurring, so 100% minus each, then probably multiply them together. then 100% minus the result would give the chance of actually lasting 4 years.

the result would be in the same ballpark, but a slightly lower chance of him leaving within 4 years.

[tgards79]

2. Happy for critiques...

...it is all guesswork, so you can do this with many methods.

But I don't think you are correct on the 100-minus-X-and-then-multiply. Being assassinated has nothing to do with impeached or being incapacitated. You can add them all up without fear of overlap. Of course, he could be shot while going out of his mind and having a stroke on the way to his impeachment trial, while thinking to himself, jeez I should just quit.

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3. sorry, didn't realize this was your work ;)

i'd have still offered my point of view, but might have softened my word choice

i'm a fan and happy to see you here on du!

i might be agreeing with you on the last point, though not quite following the explanation. i don't think it's right to say they have nothing to do with each other (if that were the case, then i think my proposed math would actually be correct). rather, i think, as you point out, in practice these forms of exit are mutually exclusive -- you're not getting assassinated and incapacitated during your resignation speech, e.g.; however you leave office, it counts in one of these categories at most.

so they actually are dependent, in the sense that however you determined the chance of assassination, it presumes you didn't resign first.

that said, the way i was estimating stroke percentages is different, as i went off age rather than historical percentages of presidential strokes. other presidents, being younger, didn't have the same chance (though perhaps they faced higher odds elsewhere, e.g., consider william henry harrison.)


anyway, interesting to think of this statistically rather than the usual idle speculation....

[tgards79]

4. No worries, thanks for your comments and glad you like us! :)

I think your way of estimating stroke percentage is perfectly valid, probably an improvement over mine! I should have mentiond that my "1 in 3" chance was the same odds Trump had of winning the election as of election eve....