Was the margin closer or larger than you expected?

[morgankingsley]

For me, electorally roughly the same, but smaller in the popular vote

So Leaning towards closer

[compucomp]

Definitely closer. I believed the NPV polls showing Biden +8.4 since they were actually pretty close in 2016 and even thought that there was a decent chance there would be a polling error in Joe's favor since COVID was (and is still) surging in the last week in the campaign.

If you told me before the election the NPV would be Biden +4.5 I would have been sweating bullets since that would mean the Blue Wall was in danger. It's a tribute to Joe's campaign that he put the Blue Wall first, held it (particularly spending the last two days of his campaign traveling around PA), and targeted the right "insurance" states, AZ and GA. It was a huge strategic win for him to focus on GA and not FL or NC since that was against the conventional wisdom and most peoples' intuition, generally people thought GA would flip last.

[Catalyst138]

I did think the margin would be slightly tighter than the polls suggested (like +6 or 7) but I was still wrong.

[Senator-elect Spark]

Knew it would be a close election either way.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

Closer. Trump and the Republicans did better in all the actual battleground states (i.e. not IA or OH) than I expected. I’m particularly surprised how close NV and AZ were.

[Hope For A New Era]

It was much closer. I have to admit I was expecting 413. I (and I think also a lot of other people) underestimated just how excited some people are about Trump.

It's clear now that that's what won him the election in 2016 as well. It wasn't an anti-Hillary swing, it was low-propensity, low-information voters turning out for him.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Closer, tho I didn't discount the idea that Trump might pull out a victory thanks to the Electoral College.

[Buzz]

Everything went exactly as I thought except GA

[SN2903]

A little bit larger. I thought Trump would win NV and MI.