OK so what the hell happened?

[GeneralMacArthur]

I'm tuning back in, had to take a long break because I was so stressed out from all this.

But seriously, what the hell happened?  How were the polls so wrong?  What happened to the Democratic wave in the suburbs?  What happened to Biden winning indies and 65+?  Where were all those people who showed up in 2018?

2016 was a nightmare, but at least I understood it.  I really don't understand what I watched tonight.  My entire political intuition is apparently completely wrong.  Biden won pretty much every news cycle of the campaign, while Trump self-destructed constantly, the fundamentals of the election were all in Biden's favor, and this was reflected in virtually every one of the thousands of major polls taken over the last two years.

And yet here we are.

[Democratic Hawk]

Trump has just declared victory

[charcuterie]

I don't think we're ready for a postmortem analysis of this election. First of all, there hasn't even been a winner declared and several states are still outstanding. There's a difference between Trump taking the electoral college and winning, a 270-268 vote, or Biden coming back in GA for 306. But it's clear that there needs to be major re-calibration, or something really has gone wrong either in the fundamentals or the electoral process.

There is an explanation, and we'll have to find it, but now is not the time. The election is still active.

[VBM]

I'm tuning back in, had to take a long break because I was so stressed out from all this.

But seriously, what the hell happened?  How were the polls so wrong?  What happened to the Democratic wave in the suburbs?  What happened to Biden winning indies and 65+?  Where were all those people who showed up in 2018?

2016 was a nightmare, but at least I understood it.  I really don't understand what I watched tonight.  My entire political intuition is apparently completely wrong.  Biden won pretty much every news cycle of the campaign, while Trump self-destructed constantly, the fundamentals of the election were all in Biden's favor, and this was reflected in virtually every one of the thousands of major polls taken over the last two years.

And yet here we are.

Trump excites his base. Biden doesn’t. This is why you need to run guys like Bernie instead of “safe” moderates.

[John Dule]

Biden and Harris were bad nominees. Should've picked Yang when you had the chance!

[GeneralMacArthur]

My question isn't a post-mortem so much as, what even is electoral politics if this campaign was a win for Donald Trump?  Every single aspect of this campaign pointed to a major defeat for him.

If it's just about playing to the base non-stop, maybe the Republicans are just destined to have a permanent advantage over the Democrats, because they have a much more homogeneous and easily-unified base.

[lfromnj]

There is a Democratic wave in the suburbs, it was a bit exaggerated( I was always skeptical of D's winning Indiana 5th by 10 points or so) , however rural areas came just as hard back and swung a bit R with more turnout. Cubans swung hard R. In Texas the RGV was an absolute collapse for Democrats.

Trump actually flipped a 1972 Mcgovern county in South Texas !

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

My question isn't a post-mortem so much as, what even is electoral politics if this campaign was a win for Donald Trump?  Every single aspect of this campaign pointed to a major defeat for him.

If it's just about playing to the base non-stop, maybe the Republicans are just destined to have a permanent advantage over the Democrats, because they have a much more homogeneous and easily-unified base.

This isn't true. All winning coalitions in the US are unwieldy as a result of their size.

[Catholics vs. Convicts]

He must have turned out a ton of people who really never bothered to get involved in politics and voting in the past, and came out to vote for him because they embraced the culture of trumpism.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Cult mentality is very strong. The polls did not reflect that.

[Tekken_Guy]

He must have turned out a ton of people who really never bothered to get involved in politics and voting in the past, and came out to vote for him because they embraced the culture of trumpism.

I wonder what his “true” approval rating is.

[kwabbit]

The rural vote shouldn't be underestimated. Perhaps there was a shy Trump effect, but perhaps that effect was not just for White voters, but even more so for non-White voters. The complete collapse in Miami-Dade and the Rio Grande valley signal that Hispanics are a lot more in play for Republicans than initially thought.

[Anti-Trump Truth Socialite JD Vance Enjoying Juror]

Cubans and Venezuelans swing hard R

Rural Hispanics not included above swing hard R

Black vote swings mildly R

Other hispanics swing mildly R / stay even

Rural vote stays even

Suburbs swing D

That roughly seems to be what happened.

[BudgieForce]

He must have turned out a ton of people who really never bothered to get involved in politics and voting in the past, and came out to vote for him because they embraced the culture of trumpism.

I wonder what his “true” approval rating is.

CBS's exit poll had him at 47/51.

[NHI]

America is broken.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

You do understand that Biden is still the prohibitive favorite, right?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Cubans and Venezuelans swing hard R

Rural Hispanics not included above swing hard R

Black vote swings mildly R

Other hispanics swing mildly R / stay even

Rural vote stays even

Suburbs swing D

That roughly seems to be what happened.

So basically, latinos really do love Trump.  Someone's gonna have to dig into that to find out why.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

So far it looks like what happened is that pollsters failed even more than in 2016. Trump held onto basically every single swing state vote he won in 2016 and somehow has managed to increase turnout in Republican base counties as well as in the rural working class Obama 2012-Trump 2016 counties. Also Latinos (at least in Texas, Florida and the Midwest) swung to Trump by comical margins and black turnout/margins are unimpressive for "the most racist president ever".

The one redeeming thing Biden has going for him is better turnout and margins in white middle class suburbs, which is the only reason he's not doing even worse than Hillary. Fortunately for him Arizona is dominated by white middle class suburbs (and the Latinos there didn't swing as hard against him as Tejanos and Cubans did) and Pennsylvania could conceivably be held by getting huge margins in the Philly suburbs while holding Trump down in Allegheny but it doesn't appear to have been a profitable trade unless Biden somehow flips Georgia.

I know I keep harping on it but there's really no excuse for the polling of Wisconsin which said Biden was going to win back the Southwest. You can't write it off as "undecideds swinging back" or whatever the latest excuse is, this is just a total failure of pollsters to get a proper subsample. It's almost as though they just called a bunch of housewives and college students in Dane County and called that their "Southwestern sample".

[Tekken_Guy]

The rural vote shouldn't be underestimated. Perhaps there was a shy Trump effect, but perhaps that effect was not just for White voters, but even more so for non-White voters. The complete collapse in Miami-Dade and the Rio Grande valley signal that Hispanics are a lot more in play for Republicans than initially thought.

Those Dade numbers really were the turning point in the race.

Which reminds me: congratulations to Ron DeSantis on winning a second term.

[kwabbit]

The rural vote shouldn't be underestimated. Perhaps there was a shy Trump effect, but perhaps that effect was not just for White voters, but even more so for non-White voters. The complete collapse in Miami-Dade and the Rio Grande valley signal that Hispanics are a lot more in play for Republicans than initially thought.

Those Dade numbers really were the turning point in the race.

Which reminds me: congratulations to Ron DeSantis on winning a second term.

Yeah Biden +7 is a legitimately shocking result. I thought Trump would do well in Miami-Dade but I thought that meant Biden +15 not 7. Florida might actually be a lean R default state now.

[GeneralMacArthur]

You do understand that Biden is still the prohibitive favorite, right?

I'm not believing any sort of reporting about this race right now because everybody I trusted has been proven wrong.  Except Selzer, lol.  Guess she's totally vindicated.

But even if Biden ekes this out, it's still a major loss for the Dems relative to expectations.  The Senate and House end up about where they started, and we're probably not going to make enough progress at the state level to really change much.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

So far it looks like what happened is that pollsters failed even more than in 2016. Trump held onto basically every single swing state vote he won in 2016 and somehow has managed to increase turnout in Republican base counties as well as in the rural working class Obama 2012-Trump 2016 counties. Also Latinos (at least in Texas, Florida and the Midwest) swung to Trump by comical margins and black turnout/margins are unimpressive for "the most racist president ever".

The one redeeming thing Biden has going for him is better turnout and margins in white middle class suburbs, which is the only reason he's not doing even worse than Hillary. Fortunately for him Arizona is dominated by white middle class suburbs (and the Latinos there didn't swing as hard against him as Tejanos and Cubans did) and Pennsylvania could conceivably be held by getting huge margins in the Philly suburbs while holding Trump down in Allegheny but it doesn't appear to have been a profitable trade unless Biden somehow flips Georgia.

I know I keep harping on it but there's really no excuse for the polling of Wisconsin which said Biden was going to win back the Southwest. You can't write it off as "undecideds swinging back" or whatever the latest excuse is, this is just a total failure of pollsters to get a proper subsample. It's almost as though they just called a bunch of housewives and college students in Dane County and called that their "Southwestern sample".

Wisconsin hasn't been called yet. The margins were narrowing over the last week, so a bare Trump win in Wisconsin would fit the MOE.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

You do understand that Biden is still the prohibitive favorite, right?

I'm not believing any sort of reporting about this race right now because everybody I trusted has been proven wrong.  Except Selzer, lol.  Guess she's totally vindicated.

But even if Biden ekes this out, it's still a major loss for the Dems relative to expectations.  The Senate and House end up about where they started, and we're probably not going to make enough progress at the state level to really change much.

FL, TX, and NC were never more than toss-ups. I cannot emphasize this enough. This was always a strong possibility and I don't see any weakness in the 290 map.

[GeneralMacArthur]

The one redeeming thing Biden has going for him is better turnout and margins in white middle class suburbs, which is the only reason he's not doing even worse than Hillary. Fortunately for him Arizona is dominated by white middle class suburbs (and the Latinos there didn't swing as hard against him as Tejanos and Cubans did) and Pennsylvania could conceivably be held by getting huge margins in the Philly suburbs while holding Trump down in Allegheny but it doesn't appear to have been a profitable trade unless Biden somehow flips Georgia.

Which reminds me, early in the night there were some border counties in Texas that had absolutely insane swings, like 100-points swings from Clinton +60 to Trump +40.  I guess that's where you'd have to start for a post-mortem.

The Democrats didn't talk about immigration much this cycle.  I guess we just assumed that Trump's unacceptability to latinos was self-evident.  Maybe latinos just don't care as much about ICE or immigration-related issues as we thought.  Or maybe that Politico story about Spanish-language media being overrun with right-wing Hannity-knockoffs will prove to be the prophetic article of this election.

[Pyro]

Biden openly centered his campaign on appealing to Republican moderates and older suburbanites at the expense of progressives, black voters, and Hispanic voters. This strategy moved the needle among suburb dwellers, thus continuing the trend from 2018, but deliberately ignored the party base and left many voices unheard. He could still win it, but it'll be by a hair and to the detriment of downballot Dems.

Possibly the clearest example:

https://twitter.com/bridgietherease/status/1323784380569939968