2020 Presidential Election Results & Exit Polls commentary thread

[GeneralMacArthur]

I wonder if it would be a good idea to have separate megathreads for each of the major swing states?

We're going to get hit with a lot of content at once and this thread will become a tangled mess of different conversations -- about PA, NC, FL, AZ, TX, etc.

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1323658013652226048
Here’s another great example we are at almost 80% turnout in the Villages and Trump is doing 10% worse then in 2016 while NPAs (a group that has constantly been pro-Biden in polling) has spiked.

Sumter was 56 R, 24 D in 2016. How do you get "10% worse" from that?

People can also cross party lines so its extra useless

Exactly.  I expect Sumter to have >80% of its retiree turnout and most of them will be registered Republicans.  So the party turnout will look basically the same as 2016.

The difference is that a lot of those registered Republicans are going to vote for Joe Biden.  They're not going to change their party registration to reflect that!  Most of them probably didn't even decide this until the last few weeks.

So bedwetting over Sumter numbers being the same as 2016 is pointless.  Biden's advantage isn't "higher Dem turnout in deep-red counties that were near-100% turnout in 2016."  It's that some of those Republicans will vote for him because Trump is literally costing them their lives.

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://twitter.com/davecatanese/status/1323664834706186240?s=21

Reaganite Texas will stay Republican

Sounds like more ultra-conservative Biden estimates to me.  I expect Trump to surpass all those margins today, but turnout is going to matter more than anything.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Can we please not divert this thread into discussing the ludicrous AOC rumor that has nothing to do with the election

[GeneralMacArthur]

My takes:

A) NYT needle is trash.  And they know it.
B) Biden is clearly improving with White voters everywhere in Florida
C) On the other hand, the Trump "socialism, socialism, socialism!" strategy in Miami has clearly worked as Cubans and Venezuelans have shifted to Trump.

The question is whether Biden can make up for the losses in Miami-Dade.  He's consistently running 4-5 points ahead of Clinton in the other major counties in the votes counted so far.

But if it's not, it's still a good sign for Biden's ability to win the other swing states.  Cubans and Venezuelans can't save Trump in Arizona.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Trump looks strong in the Hispanic parts of Florida lol

Hispanics are going to be part of the republican party in the future. They're religious, pro-family and mostly pro-life.

Fact.

Latinos will be a swing vote......

A lot of Latinos fled socialist dictatorships....Democrats need to explain what the hell socialism is and stop using it as a buzzword

Democrats need to get rid of Bernie and AOC and all these fools who proudly call themselves "socialists" without a care in the world as to how it impacts the party.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Florida is so confusing.  It keeps swinging back and forth by 2-3% on MSNBC and nobody knows what the ED/EV/VBM composition is, which is hugely important.

Unless NYT has that information, I'm still an advocate of completely ignoring the needle.

Every single county Kornacki taps on has Trump about 2-3% down from 2016 and Biden up 2-3% on Clinton.  As is also true in Pinellas.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Can someone give me a succinct breakdown of what's outstanding in MI, WI, and PA?  I can't find anything decent in the media.

In particular, in PA Biden is down by 13 with 26% of the vote left.  Is there any reason to believe that he can win the remaining vote 2-1?

[GeneralMacArthur]

https://twitter.com/populismupdates/status/1323896983313018880?s=21

Is this true

75% of the 1.4 million mail in votes that still need to be counted, not necessarily 75% of all the votes still needing to be counted.

Yes.  There's 26% left, and Trump leads by 13.  Biden needs to win 19.5 - 6.5 of that remaining 26 to make up the 13.  That's a 3-1 margin, or 75%.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Well if Trump wins, he can claim victory over Pelosi botching the stimulus package which was held up deliberately by Pelosi for D's, you don't play with consumers money.

She still has a House but it's no good now without Senate and WH

She should lose the Speakership

I agree with this. Though if Trump wins, he'll still want to pass a stimulus package but he can play hardball now, I would fully expect Trump and Mitch to start bumping heads.

Pelosi passed a COVID relief package months ago.  It was Trump who tweeted out that he wouldn't negotiate with Pelosi under any circumstances until after the election.  Then he backtracked, and asked Mitch to come to the table for a compromise bill, and Mitch refused.

As usual, Mitch is absolved of all blame for situations where he's entirely responsible.

I swear the revisionist history of this election already being written is gonna drive me batty.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Susan Collins is still under 50 in Maine.  How does the outstanding vote look there?

Unfortunately Collins will probably add the 1.7 who voted for crazy person Max Linn.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Well if Trump wins, he can claim victory over Pelosi botching the stimulus package which was held up deliberately by Pelosi for D's, you don't play with consumers money.

She still has a House but it's no good now without Senate and WH

She should lose the Speakership

I agree with this. Though if Trump wins, he'll still want to pass a stimulus package but he can play hardball now, I would fully expect Trump and Mitch to start bumping heads.

Pelosi passed a COVID relief package months ago.  It was Trump who tweeted out that he wouldn't negotiate with Pelosi under any circumstances until after the election.  Then he backtracked, and asked Mitch to come to the table for a compromise bill, and Mitch refused.

As usual, Mitch is absolved of all blame for situations where he's entirely responsible.

I swear the revisionist history of this election already being written is gonna drive me batty.

If you don't think Pelosi doesn't have any blame in this situation, you're delusional and I know what was going on with stimulus. But this could've been settled back in August.

Pelosi needs to be a better politician, but she was in the right.

Americans just seem to always side with Mitch and Trump in any sort of legislative fight.  Maybe the hatred for Pelosi is just too baked-in.

[GeneralMacArthur]

What's going on with Arizona?  I went to bed last night feeling pretty good because Fox/AP called it, then I wake up and see the lead has narrowed to 3%.  Wasn't really expecting the lead to narrow with the outstanding vote being what it is.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Control of the senate will likely hinge on the runoff in Georgia glad its Warnock vs Loeffler Cunningham looks toast and its looking really hard for Gideon to pull off a win in Maine but theirs a lot of votes left to count their so lets see

Warnock will win imo no matter who wins the GE Pres.
It’s a bold claim, but I have been saying it for a while now.
Him going against Loeffler of all people will make it even better.

It seems like it should be a slam dunk given how terrible a candidate Loeffler is; however, Warnock was one of the biggest underperformers of the entire map.  He got 32% when polls had him in the 40s.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Control of the senate will likely hinge on the runoff in Georgia glad its Warnock vs Loeffler Cunningham looks toast and its looking really hard for Gideon to pull off a win in Maine but theirs a lot of votes left to count their so lets see

Warnock will win imo no matter who wins the GE Pres.
It’s a bold claim, but I have been saying it for a while now.
Him going against Loeffler of all people will make it even better.

It seems like it should be a slam dunk given how terrible a candidate Loeffler is; however, Warnock was one of the biggest underperformers of the entire map.  He got 32% when polls had him in the 40s.

Loeffler+Collins also underperformed. And he should inch upwards as Atlanta comes in. Looks like all the other random candidates overperformed.

Loeffler and Collins performed about the same as their polls.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I'm about to take a break but just wanted to summarize what's up real quick -- let me know if I have anything wrong.

WI -- basically just got called for Biden
MI -- Biden has a lead, and the outstanding vote is mostly Detroit and mail-ins
AZ -- Biden has a solid lead, and the outstanding vote is mostly Phoenix and mail-ins
NV -- Biden has a lead, and the outstanding vote is mostly early vote from Vegas/Reno
======= Biden winning the above 4 states = 270 ==========
PA -- Biden is down and needs to win by a 3-1 margin, but the outstanding votes are primarily mail-in ballots from heavily-Democratic areas.
GA -- Biden is down and needs to win by a 2-1 margin, but the outstanding votes are primarily Atlanta and mail-ins
NC -- Biden is down and needs to win by a 3-1 margin, but the outstanding votes are primarily from Raleigh/Greensboro

ME -- unclear where the remaining votes are located, and unclear how the RCV would shake out, but Collins has probably held on
NC -- Cunningham is slightly underperforming Biden
MI -- Peters is substantially underperforming Biden
GA -- Perdue is above 50%, but will likely end below 50% given the outstanding vote.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Just put MillenialModerate on ignore, folks.  It'll save you a lot of anguish and a lot of time wasted reading nonsense.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I know it will change, but I love the irony that Biden is currently doing worse than Hillary in terms of the popular vote and yet appears to be on his way to victory.

More importantly, though, it probably means a lot of the outstanding vote is going to Biden generally, not just in the swing states.

What are you talking about?  Biden is outperforming Hillary in the NPV.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Michigan looking safe for Biden, which leaves three paths to the presidency:

AZ+NV

or

GA+NV

or

PA

(just GA would be a cursed 269-269 tie)

The PA path has been looking pretty strong thus far, Biden needed to win these early returns 3-1 or so and he's been winning them 5-1 or 6-1.

AZ+NV really just depends on who you believe.  We're getting totally conflicting reports out of Arizona.  Most folks seem to think Nevada is going to end up going for Biden.

Next big news out of Georgia is 6 PM EST, and out of Arizona is 9 PM EST.  Biden doesn't need GA or AZ, but we'd all sure feel a heck of a lot more comfortable if he gets some good news.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Biden ahead by nearly 65K in Michigan now.

Biden 2,680,665 (49.8%)
Trump 2,616,170 (48.6%)

Peters up by 9K now, 49.14% to 48.97%.

Bear in mind that for Peters, the NYT is still including those almost-certainly wrong numbers in Antrim County.  This could swing things by a few thousand votes.  

Yeah it's a 6000 vote swing.  So Peters is up 3K, although from what I've heard the remaining vote is still D-favorable.

Hopefully Antrim is the only county with that issue.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Great summary and post, kudos.

YW, we gotta keep our heads on straight here.  Stick with hard numbers and provable stuff.  Don't overreact to trolling and misinformation from the Trump campaign, but I'm also not buying anything from mainstream pundits or journalists unless they've got hard numbers to back them up.  The last 16 hours has just been an exhausting flurry of "M votes remaining in X county, with N% expected to go for Biden; P% are mail-in and Q% are early-vote" and such reports have frequently been wrong.

[GeneralMacArthur]

If Biden has to be a lame duck, he's probably the best lame duck we could have gotten since he has lots of personal connections in the Senate and a rich history of bipartisan compromise.

I'm not saying he'll get anything done, but it's tough to think of a Democratic president more up to the challenge than Biden.

That said, we should have hundreds of children freed from cages and reunited with their parents in the first few weeks of a Biden presidency.  That's indisputably a good thing, regardless of whether Biden is able to get Mitch McConnell to came to the table on a comprehensive immigration reform package.

People just need to set their expectations accordingly.  I don't want to hear, in 8-10 years, everyone whining about how Biden was a "big letdown" who "didn't do anything he promised" and was "right-wing" because of compromises he had to make with Republicans.  There's been a lot of baby's first election this political cycle, with the media narrative driven by 18-35s who don't actually remember the Obama years and think that because Obama didn't give us universal health care he was a right-wing failure.  They're about to get a harsh lesson in what divided government looks like.  At least this time the Democrats are going to have the House.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Stop posting Twitter pundits unless they have credible, sourced numbers backing up their claims.

Obviously Ben Shapiro isn't privy to some mathematical truism that all the professional election forecasters are missing.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Is anyone watching the House?  It's been called for the Dems by every news org, but it seems a bit premature to me.  Dems only have 208/218 seats called, and most of the remaining ones are R leads.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Here's the uncalled House races via ABC.  I suppose the thinking is that we're still waiting on mail-in ballots for most of these, which are likely to favor Dems.  Dems need to win 10 to keep the House.

CA-34 (reporting error, but listed as likely D)

NJ-03 (55-44)
NH-02 (54-43)
NJ-07 (55-45)
ME-02 (54-46)
NH-01 (52-45)
NV-04 (51-46)
NV-03 (50-45)
VA-02 (51-47)
NY-18 (51-48)
NY-17 (47-44)
IL-17 (51-49)
VA-07 (51-49)
MI-11 (50-48)
MN-02 (48-46)
IA-03 (49-48)
CA-39 (50-50)
CA-48 (50-50)
IL-14 (50-50)
PA-08 (50-50)
IA-02 (50-50)
FL-27 (49-51)
NY-3 (49-51)
PA-17 (49-51)
PA-07 (49-51)
TX-23 (47-50)
MN-01 (46-49)
FL-26 (48-52)
IL-13 (46-54)
CA-50 (48-52)
CA-08 (47-53)
CA-42 (45-55)
CA-01 (45-55)
NY-22 (43-54)