2020 Election: Predictions, Results and Reactions

[Dave_LF]

The AP has called ME2 for Biden (other networks have not just yet). It's only one EV, but it's a big win because Trump was quite a ways ahead there for most of the night.

Edit: The AP has also called WI for Biden.

Edit2: Bah, I had that backwards. Trump won ME2.

[N.E. Brigand]

It is now 9pm Wednesday my local time, 5am EST. The electoral elves have been putting in a sterling effort in WI and they seem likely to make their 6am deadline. Biden now has the narrowest of leads, and as the outstanding ballots are from Green Bay and Milwaukee, his chances in the state look good. NYT is still unwilling to call NZ and NV, but both are looking likely for Biden. The other four states are anyone's guess, but if Biden can pull off WI he needs only one more.

It's a funny thing, but it's perfectly-possible for Biden to win all states still contested, which would be a comfortable Electoral College victory. He is likely to beat Clinton's popular vote edge. It would still be a polling miss, but still a win along the lines of Obama's 2012 performance. On the flipside, he could lose them all and leave us with a map very similar to 2016 with only AZ flipped. It's remarkable that both are still possible even at this late stage.

The bigger news is the President's claim of voter fraud and his insistence that's won a big victory. If Biden does win, this could get bad - really bad.

I honestly have no idea what I'll wake up to tomorrow.

One thing to note about the polling miss: all the campaigns, at all levels, run their own internal polls (to the degree that they can afford to), conducted by different firms than the ones whose results get announced publicly, and which for the most part are not seen by the public but are frequently shared with some journalists off the record.

And according to those journalists, the campaigns' internal polls, which both Republican and Democratic campaigns were relying on to shape their strategies, were showing pretty much the same things we saw in the public polls. Republicans, based on their own data, thought they were in for a far worse evening than we saw. The Trump campaign thought they would lose pretty decisively, and so did the Republican Party. There's a reason you started to see stories leaked about various Republican senators distancing themselves from Trump over the past two weeks, and why there was a story leaked from the White House over the weekend about Trump's aides trying to prepare some sort of "global" deal with Democrats that would keep state courts from prosecuting him after he leaves office.

[Dave_LF]

Ugh. Republican "poll watchers" have stormed the counting center in Detroit even though they already have the maximum number allowed by law inside. The police have had to escort them away. Trump has sued to stop counting, and it has stopped. But it's stopped with Biden in the lead, so I don't know what he thinks he's accomplishing.

https://twitter.com/JohnnyDomol/status/ ... 3716066306

[N.E. Brigand]

Ugh. Republican "poll watchers" have stormed the counting center in Detroit even though they already have the maximum number allowed by law inside. The police have had to escort them away. Trump has sued to stop counting, and it has stopped. But it's stopped with Biden in the lead, so I don't know what he thinks he's accomplishing.

https://twitter.com/JohnnyDomol/status/ ... 3716066306

Shades of the "Brooks Brothers riot" in 2000 when a bunch of Bush campaign staff did the same thing in a Florida elections office.

As for Trump supporters trying to stop the count when Biden has the lead, that's a good point. As Nate Silver puts it:

"Worth mentioning that if you stopped counting ballots *right now*, Biden would win with this map. So Trump is reliant on ballots counted after Election Day for his comeback chances."

[Túrin Turambar]

So I woke up, half-expecting to see the election called, and found that nothing has changed except Biden is now the likely winner in WI and is ahead in MI. AZ has not yet finished counting, but apparently we get the remaining votes from Maricopa County at 9pm EST. They're still counting slowly but steadily in PA. I have no idea what's holding up the last 5% of the vote in NC and GA - do they still have plumbing issues?

There's certainly been a big polling miss among Latinos, and another in the Midwest. Biden was expected to win WI by 8 points, but he's ahead by half a point at this stage pending the recount the Trump campaign has called for.

[River]

Ugh. Republican "poll watchers" have stormed the counting center in Detroit even though they already have the maximum number allowed by law inside. The police have had to escort them away. Trump has sued to stop counting, and it has stopped. But it's stopped with Biden in the lead, so I don't know what he thinks he's accomplishing.

https://twitter.com/JohnnyDomol/status/ ... 3716066306

He's accomplishing a tantrum.

I've got a feeling the lawsuit is going nowhere.

[N.E. Brigand]

It's probably worth repeating that the votes that are being counted last (i.e., now) are actually those that were cast first.

[Dave_LF]

Republicans have surrounded the convention center in Detroit and are chanting "stop the count." Tyrants, all of them.

[Túrin Turambar]

This is what was making me nervous last night. Usually presidential elections end when one candidate is reliably projected based on counted votes to have reached 270 electoral votes. But this is only round one in 2020.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

CNN has called Michigan for Biden, though the AP has not. By CNN's count, if Biden holds on to his lead in Arizona and Nevada that would give him 270 electoral college votes, regardless of what happens in Pennsylvania, Georgia or North Carolina. Unless, of course, there are any faithless electors!

[N.E. Brigand]

Another point worth emphasizing: the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to act on a suit to prevent the counting of certain mail ballots in Pennsylvania.

But even if that maneuver is successful,* that would only affect mail ballots received after Election Day.

What's being counted now (and maybe for a couple days more) is mail ballots that were received by Election Day. And those alone probably are enough to give Biden the state (but we'll see).

*Mind you, the suit to stop the counting of PA mail ballots received by Friday should not be successful. Those votes were cast as per the Supreme Court's own actions two weeks ago, when it declined to hear an earlier challenge. It would be reprehensible for people to have ballots rejected after they cast those ballots in accordance with a provision that the Supreme Court previously chose to let move forward.

[Maria]

This is useful for tracking which news agencies have called which portions of the election:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... acker.html

[N.E. Brigand]

Republicans have surrounded the convention center in Detroit and are chanting "stop the count." Tyrants, all of them.

And some Republican officials, who should know better, are flat-out lying about what's going on.

There were already an equal number of Democratic and Republican poll observers in the room, as per state law.

The people trying to get in were on top of that.

But the chair of Michigan's Republican Party, for instance, is trying to rile people up by sharing messages like this:

"Republican poll challengers blocked from entering the TCF Center in Detroit! This is egregious!"

And that message remains up more than two hours after she posted it.

This is an attempt to undermine our democracy. If I saw a Democratic official making a similar claim, you can bet I'd call it out.

[yovargas]

That is a useful link, Maria. Interesting to note that as of right now, Fox news is giving Biden the biggest lead. It's always interesting when that pops up, because for all the talk of how biased Fox is, their actual news reporting branches often seem pretty even handed.

[elengil]

Republicans have surrounded the convention center in Detroit and are chanting "stop the count." Tyrants, all of them.

And some Republican officials, who should know better, are flat-out lying about what's going on.

There were already an equal number of Democratic and Republican poll observers in the room, as per state law.

The people trying to get in were on top of that.

But the chair of Michigan's Republican Party, for instance, is trying to rile people up by sharing messages like this:

"Republican poll challengers blocked from entering the TCF Center in Detroit! This is egregious!"

And that message remains up more than two hours after she posted it.

This is an attempt to undermine our democracy. If I saw a Democratic official making a similar claim, you can bet I'd call it out.

Reminds me of when Republican Representatives crashed a hearing claiming they were being kept out, when some of the people who crashed were specifically allowed to be in that hearing. But it's all about the easy lie that people hear first.

[Túrin Turambar]

This is useful for tracking which news agencies have called which portions of the election:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... acker.html

I agree with yov, it's a helpful link.

(And I've heard it noted before that Fox has some of the best election analysis).

With the MI call, this could potentially be over pretty soon. The final votes from Maricopa County, AZ, are expected within hours. If Biden holds his lead in AZ and NV to the end, he's won.

Who knows what happens next, though?

ETA: Someone at The Guardian seems to have finally lost it at Trump:

Guardian Tweet.PNG (154.39 KiB) Viewed 5199 times

[elengil]

And of course the last upset that hasn't been mentioned yet - especially if the EC count is exceptionally close, faithless electors could still flip the results.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I mentioned that a little while ago, actually.

CNN has called Michigan for Biden, though the AP has not. By CNN's count, if Biden holds on to his lead in Arizona and Nevada that would give him 270 electoral college votes, regardless of what happens in Pennsylvania, Georgia or North Carolina. Unless, of course, there are any faithless electors!

Here is the state of play as Nate Silver saw it a little less than half an hour ago:

Where The Race Stands For Now
We’re taking a bit of a pause on the live blog until we get results from Arizona and Georgia — expected around 9 p.m. ET and potentially, in Arizona, anyway, again at 12:30 a.m. ET.

This initial overview from me got a bit buried earlier with the Michigan projection for Biden, so I wanted to leave you with this in the meantime. Some of the numbers are a little outdated as of now, but only by a hour or so.

Here’s where the presidential race stands from most likely Trump win to least likely Trump win:

North Carolina. Trump leads by 1.4 points or about 77,000 votes, but mail ballots can arrive after Election Day in North Carolina, so perhaps 5 percent of the vote is still outstanding. The mail vote should be pretty blue in North Carolina, but is it enough to flip the state? Probably not, according to The Upshot’s needle, which gave Biden about a 15 percent chance in North Carolina before it was frozen. I’d call this one Likely Trump, although 15 percent chances aren’t zero, obviously!

Georgia. Trump leads by 78,000 votes without around 200,000 votes outstanding (there’s some uncertainty over the exact number). That seems like a tall order for Biden, but the remaining vote is expected to be very blue: mail votes from blue counties plus some Election Day votes from predominantly Black precincts in blue counties. The Upshot’s needle actually had Biden slightly favored to pull it off as of last night. We’ll know more soon. Let’s say Tossup but you could force me into Lean Biden if you told me I had to make a pick.

Pennsylvania. As expected, far more uncounted votes here than elsewhere, mostly mail votes that should be quite Democratic-leaning, though. There are too many outstanding ballots for us to be in the endgame where we can game out exact scenarios, but in counties that have completed reporting, Biden looks to be hitting the targets he needs. Even with the Trump campaign filing a number of lawsuits, the margin is tightening quickly enough that I think this belongs in Lean Biden.

Arizona. We may need to do a longer post on Arizona later. What’s left to count is mostly mail votes that were returned late in the process — on Monday or Tuesday. There’s some ambiguity about how many ballots this actually is; Edison Research seems to think around 450,000. If so, Trump would need to win those votes by 21 points to overtake Biden’s current 93,000-vote lead. They’re disrupted fairly evenly throughout the state.

Wait — outstanding mail votes? Shouldn’t those be good for Biden, as in other states? Well, not necessarily, because Republicans have a fairly strong mail voting program in Arizona and — this is the key part — the mail ballots that were returned later in the process (the ones yet to be continued) were significantly redder than the ones that came in earlier on, as Democrats sent their votes in early. For instance, the party registration of the votes that came in Monday and Tuesday were: 23 percent Democratic, 44 percent Republican, and 33 percent independent or other parties. That is to say, a 21-point GOP edge, which would put Trump on track to tie things up.

But … here’s the bad news for Trump. Party registration may be a misleading indicator in Arizona. It has a lot of ancestral Republicans who have now turned into swing voters. Biden also had a big lead among independents in polls. And earlier batches of mail ballots were considerably stronger for Biden than party registration alone would suggest. So probably these ballots are going to come in more for Trump than for Biden, but not as strongly as he needs.

There’s also the fact that two other news organizations, the Associated Press and Fox News, have called the state for Biden. I’d assume they’ve put more work into looking into this than I have, so that shifts my priors a bit, but you never know and you will get incorrect calls occasionally. Overall, I’d say this is Likely Biden but I don’t think the state should have been called yet.

Nevada. This one’s a bit more straightforward. Biden leads by only 0.6 percent or about 7,500 votes. But what’s remaining should be pretty good for him. It’s all mail-in ballots that were either received late in the process or which are still coming in — in Nevada, mail ballots can be received by Nov. 10 provided they’re postmarked by Election Day. The mail ballots were quite blue in Nevada by party registration, much more so than in Arizona, including votes that arrived relatively late in the process. Likely Biden.

Wisconsin. No known votes left to be counted. The Trump campaign says it will seek a recount, but recounts rarely change results, and certainly not with something on the magnitude of Biden’s 20,000-vote lead. Biden is the “apparent winner,” per ABC News.

[Dave_LF]

Trump tweeted "I hereby claim Michigan*" and a lot of other nonsense I'm not going to repeat. Banana republic bullshit.

Back in the world of sanity, the Wall Street Journal has called Arizona for Biden.

*Do you think he thinks writing that on Twitter constitutes some kind of official, binding legal statement? Reminds me of that Office episode where Michael walks out in the middle of everyone and shouts "I declare bankruptcy!"

[Túrin Turambar]

I hereby claim Colorado!

No reason really, just think it's a nice place.