2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[Túrin Turambar]

In position, it's 9:50am local time. First polls will close in IN and KY in ten minutes. Turnout might reach 67%, which would surpass every presidential election since 1908. Very little disruption, fortunately.

6:38pm EST: Lexington, KY, becomes the first populous area to return a sizeable number of votes, showing a strong swing to Biden (73% vs 51% to Clinton in 2016). But these are early votes, so they are likely to favour Democrats.

6:47pm: Nate Silver takes to Twitter to tell off people for making too much of early KY results. Calls of 'Bluetucky!' are certainly premature. Polls in FL close in a little over ten minutes and some counties will begin reporting counted early votes.

7:11pm: Those Floridans are counting at warp speed - 12% of the vote already, up to 80% in some counties (by NYT projections). Hard to know what it says given the partian split between early and election day voting. NYT has called KY for Trump and VT for Biden, to nobody's surprise, and ABC has started projecting some state-level and congressional elections in IN and KY. Nothing newsworthy yet.

7:26pm: Florida is all over the place, with Biden doing well in some counties which Clinton lost in 2016 and doing badly in counties which she did well. Still, with 46% of the vote counted, the NYT needle is starting to point to a Trump win in the state.

7:44pm: FL has Biden slightly ahead with 73% of the vote counted, but that is without votes from the strongly-Republican panhandle. Biden has been doing poorly in Miami-Dade, but is only slightly behind Clinton's numbers in neighbouring Broward. The NYT needle is still projecting a Trump win of around 3 points. Commentators are discussing Trump's strength with the Cuban vote.

[Túrin Turambar]

8:20pm: Biden is performing poorly among Latinos in FL, slightly behind Clinton among African-Americans in FL, but noticeably ahead of Clinton among white midwesterners. From rural Indiana to the suburbs of Cleveland, he's getting more support than she did.

[Dave_LF]

Trump's going to win all three of Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, which presumably means ME2 as well. Odds of things being close enough to decide in the courts have gone way up.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

North Carolina is still too close to call, though it starting to tilt towards Trump. At the current moment, the New York Times Election Needle gives Trump a 63% chance of winning NC (and 86% chance to win Georgia, and over 95% in Florida).

[Túrin Turambar]

I wouldn't bet on NC one way or the other as yet - Biden is ahead but more urban than rural precincts have reported. TX is also lineball, but from the map it looks like more Democratic precincts in urban areas and the Rio Grande Valley have reported than Republican counties in other parts of the state. I'm not sure what to do about GA based on the delay caused by the Atlanta water main incident, but the NYT is predicting a Trump win.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

We will definitely not know who will win tonight.

[Dave_LF]

Quoted from Twitter: "War of the needles: NYT needle giving Trump a 76% chance of winning NC, but Fox meter giving Biden a 89% chance of taking it." Pessimism all around

[Túrin Turambar]

We will definitely not know who will win tonight.

I agree. Biden is actually running ahead of Clinton in most counties which have reported all or almost all their results, but outside of FL, they don't tell us much.

Quoted from Twitter: "War of the needles: NYT needle giving Trump a 76% chance of winning NC, but Fox meter giving Biden a 89% chance of taking it." Pessimism all around

Yes, not knowing whether we're talking about mail-in, early or election day ballots makes it impossible to project.

In other news, I can't figure out what's going on with Biden's strong performance in KS and MO, and Trump's ongoing lead in MI.

CO seems to be the first blood for the Senate, with Democrat John Hickenlooper appearing to have defeated Republican Cory Gardner.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Early returns in Ohio look promising, but it is way too early to know what will happen.

If Trump's lead holds out in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, that would make the race a toss-up, but if Biden then wins Ohio, the chances of a Trump win goes down to about 1% (as per Nate Silver).

[Túrin Turambar]

TIL that Milwaukee is in Wisconsin, I thought was in Minnesota. Following U.S. elections does wonders for my knowledge of American geography.

Fox projects that Democrats will hold the House of Representatives and gain a minimum of five seats.

Outside the collapse of the Democratic vote in one county (Miami-Dade) which has taken up so much media attention it actually seems to be a fairly good night for the Democratic Party. If John Kerry was getting these numbers in OH back in 2004 they'd have been breaking out the champagne in Boston. Obviously Trump could still pull it off, but if I was forced to put my life savings down on one candidate right now (9:31 EST) I'd take Biden.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yeah, even if Biden doesn't win Ohio, his strength there bodes well for the must-win state of Pennsylvania.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

From Nate Silver: "I’ve been looking a bit at Johnson County, Kansas (the wealthy Kansas City suburbs), where Biden is +8 with 98 percent reported. Trump won it by +3 in 2016. If that Johnson County result is as complete as claimed, it would be a good sign for Biden in other Midwestern suburbs."

[Túrin Turambar]

It looks like the election officials in Detroit have counted 3% of the vote then gone to bed. PA is still progressing, although incredibly slowly. Hopefully we will get some clarity on OH and NC in the next hour. Given that Trump is now slightly ahead in TX with most of the urban and far southern vote, I expect him to hold the state, albeit narrowly.

This is one of the less-enjoyable election nights I've seen, and it's not even for my President (although everyone in the world is affected by the U.S. Government to some degree). High stakes, a slow count, little clarity three hours into the night, and the growing likelihood of litigation, dispute, and disorder. It's pretty miserable to be honest.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I've already written off North Carolina and Texas, and have turned my attention to Ohio and Arizona.

[Túrin Turambar]

Speaking of which, Arizonans seem to be competing with Floridans to be the fastest ballot counters - they've returned 69% of precincts on close of voting. A strong result for Biden in Maricopa County, but too early to project the state.

[Inanna]

You guys are far more optimistic than me right now.

If it comes down to PA, we won’t know today.

[N.E. Brigand]

I've already written off North Carolina and Texas, and have turned my attention to Ohio and Arizona.

There are more than 100,000 possibly outstanding mail ballots in North Carolina that could come in over the next three days. I say "possibly" because that's how many were requested but not returned by today; some may never be returned. As you know, the Supreme Court has allowed that state to accept ballots as long as they were postmarked by today. So if Trump's margin this evening is small enough, it might still flip in a few days. Still, it makes sense to move on for now.

As we're all wondering about the polls, while there do seem to have been some mistakes again this cycle (much to sort out later), a few thoughts:

(1) Polling in general has gotten much harder because people don't respond. I was reading one pollster describe how he started with a potential pool of 10,000 people to contact and ended up with fewer than 10 responses.

(2) Some of the polling tonight seems to have been better than other polling. Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina are all coming in better for Trump than expected, but Texas and Ohio are coming in very close to the polls. (I think both will go to Trump but by very narrow margins.)

(3) Neither candidate has yet flipped a state from 2016. Obviously Trump doesn't need to, he just needs to hold.

(4) If Trump wins, or if he loses, he's going to be farther behind Biden in total popular vote than he was behind Clinton, probably by twice as much.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

You guys are far more optimistic than me right now.

If it comes down to PA, we won’t know today.

I've already said we are not going to know who wins tonight.

[N.E. Brigand]

Apparently there are a bunch of votes in Fulton Co., Georgia (where Atlanta is located) that won't be counted until tomorrow because of a pipe that burst earlier today in the building where they do that.

[Túrin Turambar]

Early returns in WI show President Trump matching his results in some counties from 2016. I agree we won't know tonight.

The entire thing is a mess. Even if Trump loses, this won't be enough of a repudiation to discredit Trumpism as an ideology. Meaning it's likely it will spread to other dissatisfied and electorally-unsuccessful conservative parties around the world. It certainly won't be enough to defeat it within the Republican Party.

And the election is close enough that the winner will have a legitimacy crisis. I don't know how American democracy will hold up under this sort of stress.