Ten reasons to not be a doomer

[GlobeSoc]

but its only 11 pm cst tho

[GeneralMacArthur]

As part of reconciling with the reality of the 2020 election and owning up to where we all were wrong, it's fitting that I should revisit one of the most-recommended posts in this blog's history.

Which of these reasons were right?


1:  Polls have been fixed since 2016
Clearly wrong.  The polls were way off.  Whatever they did to "fix" their 2016 issues, it obviously wasn't enough.

2:  Biden will do well with independents and Republicans

According to the NYTimes exit poll, Biden won 6% of Republicans and 54% of Independents.  The indie number is a clear improvement over Hillary Clinton's 42%.  The question is phrased as "No matter how you voted today, do you usually think of yourself as a..." rather than asking about party affiliation -- meaning many registered Republicans who abandoned the party may have abandoned the Republican self-identification in the question.  Other exit polls didn't ask this question.  Overall, it seems like the independents part of this assumption held up, while the Republicans one probably wasn't enough to make a big difference.

3:  WI/MI/PA are all Biden needs

Obviously this held up.  Biden struck out in most of the states the doomers were dooming about, but at the end of the day it was always all about WI/MI/PA, and those three states are why Joe Biden is the 46th president of the United States.

4:  Biden is polling above 50%

This held up.  It seems like the main issue with the polling is that just as in 2016, all the undecideds broke for Trump.  And it didn't make a difference, because Biden already had a majority.

5:  No third-party threat

This also holds up.  Biden, unlike Clinton, was not kneecapped by any third-party or write-in candidates, and as a result his majority held strong.

6:  Biden dominated fundraising

I don't think this ended up mattering.  Most of the Senate and House candidates also dominated in fundraising and they all lost.

7:  Biden's high favorables mean he won't have last-minute defections

This holds up.  Biden didn't suffer any last-minute defections.  The problem is that the undecideds all went to Trump.  But Biden's coalition held strong and weathered the storm.

8:  There's no complacency this time around

This holds up.  Biden's voters were certainly not complacent and delivered him historically-high turnout and vote totals.

9:  Biden has a wide field of play

Also holds up.  The reason we didn't have to totally freak out about PA is because Biden also made plays in Georgia and Arizona, and only needed 1 of those 3 to win.  Biden supporters have enjoyed multiple different paths to the presidency over the course of the week, which eases our anxiety when he gets a bad set of numbers from any one particular state.

10:  There's no last-minute Comey surprises to kneecap Biden

Also holds up.  Biden maintained his coalition through to the election without a hitch, and that coalition was, as his campaign anticipated, enough to win the election.



Overall:  7.5/10.  Don't trust the polls to fix themselves, and don't use fundraising as a proxy for anything.  Iffy on the Republican defectors, who may have refused to self-identify in the vaguely-worded exit poll question.  But the core thrust of this argument -- that Biden's coalition is strong and well-motivated and sufficient to win the election even if everything else goes against him -- ended up being on the money.