2020 Presidential Election Results & Exit Polls commentary thread

[emailking]

No it's still going.

[emailking]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1327350069947936768

And he's going to be talking in a few minutes apparently for the first time in a week.

[emailking]

Yeah to me he looks the same except the hair but it could be lighting I guess. He's very subdued though.

[emailking]

Biden is going to be only the second President ever to be from Pennsylvania.

Isn't he running from Delaware officially?

[emailking]

Simply amazing.

https://conservapedia.com/United_States_presidential_election,_2020

lol they give Biden ME-2.

[emailking]

Based on the combined vote margins in the deciding states (WI+GA+AZ), this was a closer election than 2016 (PA+WI+MI)!

Pretty sad that Dems had to win the popular vote by 4%-5% to barely scrape by.

[emailking]

I agree, the order the states are called in doesn't matter.

[emailking]

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1328041173856956418

Yes. In the same way that Dems needed to understand why Trump won and why he had the support he did among WWC, Trump supporters need to come to terms with why he is so hated and why there were thousands of people dancing in the streets when he lost.

[emailking]

You're moving the goal posts. All Biden needed was Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and he flipped them.

All Trump needed was GA, WI, and AZ and he didn't get them. He got closer to getting them than MI, PA, and WI.

[emailking]

It depends what you mean. He outperformed Trump 2016 by 6%-7% in the popular vote margin, but that's style points. He came closer to losing the election that Trump did in 2016.

[emailking]

Yeah when you look at the map and the PV margin and compare to 2016 it certainly feels like Biden had a pretty solid victory here. But when you actually look at the math (and yes, the math is what matters here) and look at the margins, he won it by the skin of his teeth.

[emailking]

ermm i disagree. it wasnt a blowout but he certainly won by more than trump did

Ok, how? It's not clear to me.

[emailking]

ermm i disagree. it wasnt a blowout but he certainly won by more than trump did

Ok, how? It's not clear to me.

His margin of victory in PA and MI are larger than Trump's were in 2016. His margin in WI is almost identical to Trump 2016. Plus, he flipped two red states. Like... his win is bigger than Trump's

All that's true but he also came closer to losing than Trump did in 2016. PA and MI were Trump flips remember. There's nothing special about PA/MI/WI other than if Biden got them back and also held all the Hillary states he wins. He almost didn't though because he barely won Wisconsin.

[emailking]

We might be debating different things. You can perhaps make an argument that Biden's win is more impressive or maybe even "bigger" than Trump's win in 2016, but he still came closer to losing. Shift 40K votes in 3 states, (or just a uniform popular vote shift of 0.01%), and he loses despite the large PV margin and taking PA & MI back by a significant amount.

[emailking]

Yes I'll caveat I'm assuming he'd lose the House vote.

[emailking]

Let me put it like this. Biden won the states that put Trump over the top in 2016 by more than Trump won them by in 2016.

Trump in 2016 won the states that put Biden over the top (GA/AZ/WI) by more than Biden won the states that put Trump over the top in 2016. This is not a metric that helps your argument.

Some people seem to be trying to say that Arizona and Georgia saved Biden when that simply isn't true. Biden would have won without both of them. Just because they are the tipping point does not mean that they saved Biden.

We're saying AZ, Ga, and WI saved Biden. He wouldn't have won without all 3 of them.

[emailking]

Like just reverse the order of the two elections hypothetically. For 4 years we'd be talking about how the GOP need to take back GA and AZ and get a midwestern state and they win.

[emailking]

Or look at it this way. If Trump and Biden are the nominees 4 years from now, one way Trump could win is to grab back MI/PA/WI, but it's an easier lift (based on the results) to take back AZ/GA/WI.

[emailking]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1328152462331699202
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1328152466752491526

[emailking]

I think the 3 closest states is relevant (which is coincidentally the margin of victory in 2 consecutive elections) because if you shift the 20K votes in WI but leave AZ & GA alone Biden still wins even though they're not the tipping point states. But yes there are different ways of looking at it.

[emailking]

Will the electoral college be able to meet in states with more than 10 electors and a Democratic governor (Washington, California, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey)?

Yes.

[emailking]

Will the electoral college be able to meet in states with more than 10 electors and a Democratic governor (Washington, California, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey)?

Yes.

Indoors. Haven't governors banned indoor gatherings of more than 10 people?

They just have to vote in the capital. They don't have to meet in the same room or even indoors.

[emailking]

Wisconsin is not the tipping point state!  Or at least it is not the sole tipping point state.  If Trump won WI, AZ, and GA, he’d only be at 269 EV, as would Biden.  WI and PA are equally tipping points.  

(I realize most people believe Trump would win a House vote, but I don’t think we can assume that for for the purpose of historical calculations.)

It depends how you define it I guess, since this election you hit a tie as you dial the PV % towards the loser.

[emailking]

They said he'd win. That means they had a 99.5% confidence interval for [Biden - Trump] that did not include 0 or any negative values. Beyond that it's totally unknown what they had. It could have been a big interval or small interval (probably big but who knows). They don't have to estimate Biden's percentage of the vote at all, and the fact they didn't speaks nothing to their capability. When was the last time you saw a call with estimated final percentages attached? I can't think of a single one.

[emailking]

They don't have to meet in the capital. New York electors used to meet in Hudson, and Alaska electors have met in Anchorage.

Yeah I remembered that wrong, sorry.

If they were that good, they would also know that the other candidates would get 1.5% of the vote. It is idiotic to believe that they thought the other vote could end up 0.5% or 2.5% but no matter what Biden would eke out a win.

If you believe that they had a 99.5% confidence interval, then you acknowledge they were using statistical methods and not just going on a hunch. If so, their statisticians had a mean estimate and a standard deviation. It is unbelievably unlikely that it would be less than 0.1%.

You can literally make this argument about any call any news organization has ever made. "If they're that good they could have just estimated the percentage. Oh look, the result was closer than I was expecting based on the quick call, no way they could have gotten it so close. Why didn't they give me the percentages?"

Yes they were using statistical methods, unless they are outright liars, and I don't believe they are.