Final Vote—All States, Progress in counting

[Backintheday544]

4 hours ago, Process said:

What's going on with the senate? From what I can tell it's currently 48-48 with two georgia run offs in January. Where are the other two seats?

 

Looking like 50/50 is best case for dems?

Still waiting on Alaska and North Carolina. Most likely both are red.

 

GA will decide it. 50/50 split will end with Dems in control due to VP Harris.

 

There is going to be a ton of money going to GA the next couple of weeks.

[Warcodered]

 

[Doc Brown]

3 hours ago, aristocrat said:

37 why?

You referenced the '86 drug bill as if cities were doing just fine at the time.  You obviously didn't live through it.  The crack epidemic of the 1980's decimated minority communities with drug related crimes and deaths from overdoses.  Emergency room visits were at an all time high because of it.  I would argue that along with the Crime bill the passage were more positive for minority communities than negatives.  Saying he destroyed African American communities is ridiculous. 

 

As far as Trump, I don't think he's a racist but he easily motivated those that were.

Edited November 8, 2020 by Doc Brown

[Q-baby!]

[MattM]

14 hours ago, Doc Brown said:

You referenced the '86 drug bill as if cities were doing just fine at the time.  You obviously didn't live through it.  The crack epidemic of the 1980's decimated minority communities with drug related crimes and deaths from overdoses.  Emergency room visits were at an all time high because of it.  I would argue that along with the Crime bill the passage were more positive for minority communities than negatives.  Saying he destroyed African American communities is ridiculous. 

 

As far as Trump, I don't think he's a racist but he easily motivated those that were.

I was at Columbia in upper Manhattan in the mid-80’s.  You are spot on on some of that, but a bit off on Trump and racism, in my opinion.  He’s made enough statements on nearly a weekly basis that show exactly who he is.  Witness this week’s baseless claims about Philly and Detroit or his recent MN rally where he complimented his nearly all white crowd on their “good genes.”

[SoTier]

7 hours ago, MattM said:

I was at Columbia in upper Manhattan in the mid-80’s.  You are spot on on some of that, but a bit off on Trump and racism, in my opinion.  He’s made enough statements on nearly a weekly basis that show exactly who he is.  Witness this week’s baseless claims about Philly and Detroit or his recent MN rally where he complimented his nearly all white crowd on their “good genes.”

 

It's the old idea that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it might be a duck.

[BillStime]

[TBBills]

1 hour ago, BillStime said:

Trump can say he is the only one that hit the trifecta.

[TBBills]

I have a feeling Trump is going to try and commit fraud to the recount. We know he is the type to do something corrupt. He always talked about voter fraud but I think he thought his republican party was going to do it for him. He didn't realize his republican office members don't like him though.

[BillStime]

18 minutes ago, TBBills said:

I have a feeling Trump is going to try and commit fraud to the recount. We know he is the type to do something corrupt. He always talked about voter fraud but I think he thought his republican party was going to do it for him. He didn't realize his republican office members don't like him though.

It’s over.

[TBBills]

13 minutes ago, BillStime said:

It’s over.

I know even his wife and step son are trying to tell him it is over. The guy has gone mad with power and does not want to give it up. 

[BillStime]

12 minutes ago, TBBills said:

I know even his wife and step son are trying to tell him it is over. The guy has gone mad with power and does not want to give it up. 

It is what it is.

[SoTier]

22 minutes ago, TBBills said:

I know even his wife and step son are trying to tell him it is over. The guy has gone mad with power and does not want to give it up. 

 

Trump hasn't "gone made with power"; he's always been there.

[Warcodered]

 

[ComradeKayAdams]

On 10/19/2020 at 4:56 PM, RealKayAdams said:

1. President: I have Biden narrowly beating Trump 278 to 260 by keeping 50/53 of the 2016 electoral college map and then flipping Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

 

2. Senate: I’m projecting an earth-shattering transfer of power with 6 Rep-to-Dem flips (losers: Collins in Maine, Tillis in NC, Loeffler in Georgia, Ernst in Iowa, Gardner in Colorado, McSally in Arizona) and only 1 Dem-to-Rep flip (loser: Jones in Alabama).

 

3. House: Democrats will hold it, going up from 232 to 244 (218 is needed for a majority).

 

4. Governors: 27 to 23 in favor of the Republicans (VT, NH, WV, IN, MO, ND, MT, UT) over the Democrats (WA, NC, DE).

 

<<< RealKayAdams fidgets with her red grading pen, adjusts her nerdy reading glasses, sternly gazes at her laptop screen. >>>

 

We are 8.5 days past Election Night. It’s time to grade our predictions! I’ll do mine:

 

President: 50 out of 53 (assumptions: Arizona and Georgia hold for Biden). Not bad, Kay! Not bad at all. I was wrong in both Arizona and Georgia by about 0.3% (<15k votes) each. I apparently don’t follow Omaha politics closely enough. Grade: A.

 

Senate: 30 out of 33 (excluding Georgia). The Tillis race in NC was a slight surprise to me. I badly underestimated Ernst in Iowa and Collins in Maine. The fate of the world depends on the 2 Georgia runoff elections in January, and I still like my original choices here of Perdue winning and Loeffler losing. My bold prediction of the Dems taking back control of the Senate doesn’t look like it will come to fruition, but there were just too many expected close Senate races this year…I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Grade: B-.

 

House: I predicted the Dems to gain a dozen seats, but so far it looks like they will instead lose about half of that. We’re talking about 435 individual battles, so there is a fair amount of uncertainty here and I only closely follow the big Congressional names plus NYC tri-state area races. Hey, at least I correctly predicted the party that will have majority control. Grade: C.

 

Governors: 11 out of 11. The electoral prediction equivalent of spelling one’s own name correctly at the beginning of a test. Grade: A+.

 

Overall 2020 Election Day grade: B. There was a red wave competing with a blue one on November 3. For the executive branch, I (more or less) correctly predicted the wave crests relative to the polls. I did so mainly with a combination of the “shy Trump voter” polling theory and the expected enthusiasm gap between Biden’s voter base and Trump’s base. For the legislative branch, however, it looks like I went a bit in the opposite direction and placed too much trust in the polls. The “shy Trump voter” effect appears to have followed the Reps down ballot somewhat and did not distinguish between government branches as I thought it would have done. Perhaps I also let some of my own personal judgments of candidate quality (namely, Ernst and Collins) slip in and cloud my perception of what their constituents think? Oh well. Live and learn.

 

Brief takeaways from this whole ordeal:

 

1. Polls are difficult to trust when you have such a polarizing non-traditional candidate at the top of the ticket like Donald Trump. Compare average poll accuracy between the 2018 midterm and both the 2016 and (especially) the 2020 elections. Do I owe Trafalgar and Rasmussen apologies??

 

2. “It’s the economy, stupid.” That’s a phrase I’ve heard many times before, and it’s one that I believe best summarizes American electoral politics. Even with a once-per-century pandemic where polling data indicated that a large majority of Americans cared most about the health crisis issue and believed the challenger to be more capable of managing it, the incumbent with a slight polling edge on economic issues greatly overperformed and nearly pulled off a bigger upset than in 2016. Was economic anxiety the real determinant of the discrepancy between polls and results? I don’t know, but I’m raising it as a possibility.

 

3. Electoral demographics are shifting in the Sun Belt and in the Rust Belt as I type. A superficial post-election analysis might conclude that Trump’s legacy and the aging GOP voter base are dooming the party. A deeper analysis might indicate major Democratic Party vulnerabilities with Latinos (primarily over economic issues) and with working class whites (primarily over cultural issues) that the GOP can potentially exploit.

 

4. Election integrity should be a bipartisan issue. Sensible protections against voter fraud and voter suppression in 2022+ must be implemented ASAP so to not add fuel to future conspiracy theory fires. I’ll throw in proposals for an Election Day national holiday and for ranked choice voting if we want to get serious about free and fair elections, although I think we all know why those two ideas won’t be pushed (answer: status quo maintenance for the one-party corporate oligarchical establishment).

 

5. Corporate mainstream media is corrupt and social media is corrupting. We are all animals on a British farm circa 1984. Is there any doubt now? Does anyone on either political side disagree?

 

6. Accompanying the continued erosion of public trust in institutions of knowledge and expertise is a rapidly expanding communication divide between the two political sides. It’s one thing to distrust people on the other side, but it’s quite another to completely cut off contact with friends/family/news sources whose views may differ from yours! I find these societal developments to be very dangerous and troubling indeed.

 

And on a related note with point #6…anyone know what’s happening with The Great Right-Wing Bills Fan Message Board Exodus of October 2020?? Are they coming back to PPP soon or was their move intended to be permanent? Should we instead migrate over there? I do miss our Trump-loving Bills fans terribly and worry about them isolated in their unchallenged right-wing internet echo chamber (just as this place is slowly becoming one for the left…).

 

Also, will PPP be transitioning from “sub-forum” status to “club” status soon? If so, should we hold elections for club owners and club moderators? I recommend a decision-making triumvirate of owner, left-leaning moderator, and right-leaning moderator. Voting criteria should include familiarity with PPP’s longstanding culture of vigorous free speech, knowledge and passion for politics, enough free time to visit TBD regularly, mental stability, and good people skills. I think BuffaloHokie13 volunteered to be club owner at one point. A few names I would nominate for moderator on the left-leaning (or anti-Trump) side include Doc Brown, ALF, SoTier, Capco, BullBuchanan, shoshin, and Tiberius. Some names for me on the right-leaning (or anti-Biden) side would include Foxx, Azalin, KRC, GG, 3rdnlng, IDBillzfan, and leh-nerd skin-erd. I know I’m forgetting a lot of other good moderator candidates right now. Please don’t take your exclusion personally!!!

 

EDIT: A grammar mistake. Poo. So…no replies to the last two paragraphs of my post??

Edited November 13, 2020 by RealKayAdams

[The Frankish Reich]

I've kept away here while the dust settles. 

 

The dust has settled.

 

https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/notes-on-the-state-of-the-2020-election/

 

The presidential race: both not close and extremely close

Votes continue to be counted in the presidential race, and all indications are that Joe Biden’s lead in the national popular vote will continue to grow. Among those states that still appear to have a significant number of votes to count are California, Illinois, and New York. These big blue states will pad Biden’s national edge, which currently sits at 50.7%-47.4% in the national popular vote as of Wednesday morning. Biden’s national popular vote edge appears likely to exceed Barack Obama’s from 2012 (about four points), though it will fall short of Obama’s seven-point edge in 2008. Assuming Biden clears Obama’s 3.9-point 2012 margin, his will be the second-biggest popular vote win in the six elections this century (yes, we know, 2000 technically isn’t in this century, but we’re including it anyway).

Of course, the popular vote does not determine who wins the presidency.

We (and others) frequently noted the past four years that Donald Trump’s 2016 victory was built on the strength of a roughly 78,000-vote edge in three key states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). Flipping those states, which were Trump’s three-closest victories, to Hillary Clinton would have given her an Electoral College majority.

This time, Biden’s fate was in the hands of four states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia, that were collectively decided by about 97,000 votes (that number will change, and Biden’s edge at least in Pennsylvania should continue to expand while Arizona has gotten closer in later-counted returns). Give these four states to Trump, and Trump wins.

[Tiberius]

29 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

I've kept away here while the dust settles. 

 

The dust has settled.

 

https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/notes-on-the-state-of-the-2020-election/

 

The presidential race: both not close and extremely close

Votes continue to be counted in the presidential race, and all indications are that Joe Biden’s lead in the national popular vote will continue to grow. Among those states that still appear to have a significant number of votes to count are California, Illinois, and New York. These big blue states will pad Biden’s national edge, which currently sits at 50.7%-47.4% in the national popular vote as of Wednesday morning. Biden’s national popular vote edge appears likely to exceed Barack Obama’s from 2012 (about four points), though it will fall short of Obama’s seven-point edge in 2008. Assuming Biden clears Obama’s 3.9-point 2012 margin, his will be the second-biggest popular vote win in the six elections this century (yes, we know, 2000 technically isn’t in this century, but we’re including it anyway).

Of course, the popular vote does not determine who wins the presidency.

We (and others) frequently noted the past four years that Donald Trump’s 2016 victory was built on the strength of a roughly 78,000-vote edge in three key states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). Flipping those states, which were Trump’s three-closest victories, to Hillary Clinton would have given her an Electoral College majority.

This time, Biden’s fate was in the hands of four states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia, that were collectively decided by about 97,000 votes (that number will change, and Biden’s edge at least in Pennsylvania should continue to expand while Arizona has gotten closer in later-counted returns). Give these four states to Trump, and Trump wins.

So many new voters this time. Wonder if they keep voting? Was it Trump that brought out all the new voters or is it deeper than that? 

 

Just thinking out loud 

[The Frankish Reich]

5 hours ago, Tiberius said:

So many new voters this time. Wonder if they keep voting? Was it Trump that brought out all the new voters or is it deeper than that? 

 

Just thinking out loud 

I do think it was Trump that juiced the turnout. Ordinarily that would have been good news for him (see Obama 2008), but the difference this year is that Trump juiced not only his turnout but also Biden’s turnout. 

[Warcodered]

1 hour ago, The Frankish Reich said:

I do think it was Trump that juiced the turnout. Ordinarily that would have been good news for him (see Obama 2008), but the difference this year is that Trump juiced not only his turnout but also Biden’s turnout. 

I think this is true but I do wonder if it will linger due to him being a cautionary tale of what happens when you don't get out the vote.

[North Buffalo]

1 hour ago, The Frankish Reich said:

I do think it was Trump that juiced the turnout. Ordinarily that would have been good news for him (see Obama 2008), but the difference this year is that Trump juiced not only his turnout but also Biden’s turnout. 

Part of it was the animosity of the race agreed... but part I have to think was the ease of which absentee and early voting made it easier to find time to vote.  I voted in person but on Thursday before the election.  I wish I had filled out an absentee/mail in ballot and just dropped at the polling place drop box... would have saved me an hour and a half.... what a concept... making it easy to vote.  Only good thing to come out of this pandemic.

Edited November 13, 2020 by North Buffalo