Election Post Mortem - Trump and Gun Owners Win

The election results from last night confirmed that Donald Trump tapped in to an undercurrent of unrest among a segment of the public.  Unless you were listening to certain talk radio programing, you heard that Trump was going to lose because polls showed he was trailing and could not win.  National Review's Jim Geraghty addressed that in his post election Morning Jolt:

Everything I wrote yesterday about the polls generally being right most of the time is now inoperative. Pollsters have had off years before, but there has never been a colossal ten-car pile-up like this in the polling industry. The entire industry needs to scrap everything they know about the electorate and start over. One of the giant questions they must address is whether we now live in an atmosphere of such far-reaching and stifling social disapproval of politically incorrect positions that a significant portion of respondents no longer feel comfortable expressing their actual beliefs to a pollster.

As Geraghty said, there really is a "silent majority" that waited until election day to voice their opinion.

It also looks like the NRA knew what they were doing in their placement of Campaign Field Representatives (CFRs).  NRA-ILA strategically chose eleven states to place one or more CFRs and their efforts paid off in seven in the Presidential race and helped defeat the so-called "universal background check" ballot initiative in Maine.  NRA made it known via Twitter:

Congratulations, President-elect @realDonaldTrump, on your hard-fought victory! #2A pic.twitter.com/Ju6J9YH43s

— NRA (@NRA) November 9, 2016

On the gun ban lobby side, Politico reported Monday that Bloomberg spent $65 million, with $25 million going to ballot initiatives including three gun related efforts, one in Washington (Allows courts to prevent dangerous individuals from acquiring guns), one in Nevada ("universal" background checks) and Maine ("universal" background checks), and the rest on several U.S. Senate candidates - both Republican and Democrat and several statewide races.  On the ballot initiatives, he won handily in Washington, barely won in Nevada, and lost in Maine.  He also had mixed results in the Senate and statewide candidate races.

Last night was a good night overall for gun owners.  Trump has vowed to appoint justices to the Supreme court that will not overturn Heller.  He has said he will put his Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the judicial appointments.  We shall see.  And, Bloomberg will continue to spend his unlimited pot of money at the state level in areas where he thinks he has the best shot to win.  We need to analyze our win in Maine and use what worked there to defeat him going forward.  But for now, we can all breath a sigh of relief that Hillary Clinton will not take up residence in the White House.