Wish I could, but it really does look to be in the balance. Have been looking for updates obsessively, with a bit of time for sleep ...
Reckon the fastest way to get some relief would be a PA declaration, because 20 EC votes are decisive, and it does still look promising.
Speaking of sleep, I am impressed by (a) the CNN team's endurance and (b) their dedication to filling dead air convincingly. Do their suits never crease? Come to that, the endurance of two women at a desk (in Georgia?) behind the CNN reporter who seem to have been carefully unfolding, examining and flattening ballots into piles for 24 hours nonstop.
I will transfer my long insomniacal rabbit hole comment from the other thread!
Not necessarily reassuring, but caveats and extrapolations galore!
PA! PA! PA!
514: I cannot reassure you completely, but I do have some "data" that I gleaned from seemingly knowledgeable people on the internet .... (actually, there do seem to be in almost every state a few folks who really track and get it right. Maybe not the polling beforehand, but analysis during the process based voter/precinct and canvassing info. Jon Ralston in Nevada is an example, and his track record is part of why most people are not huffing about Nevada).
First let me say all of this extra prolonged anxiety could almost certainly avoided but for Rep. legislators in PA not agreeing to let mail vote counting get started early (more on PA in a subsequent comment). PA should end up not super close rendering all of this moot, but see subsequent comment for takes and caveats. Fuck my life.
1) It will probably be very close in Arizona. And a caveat on all of this is that the patterns of counting (and partisan voting behavior) has changed in Arizona so there is added uncertainty.
2) What has been coming in since Eday in AZ have been late-arriving mail ballots mixed with a few final Eday results. Mostly in Maricopa (Phoenix) and they have been quite R-leaning ~59-41. If you extrapolate that % to remaining votes it is nearly a dead heat.
3) But several differences in composition of remaining ballot (this mostly is from a couple of AZ data guys on twitter who Nate Silver and Taniel seemed to be deferring to, so will give them some credence-- and one is a data analyst for local TV station there).
a) Maricopa still the bulk but a fair number from other counties (most notably Pima (Tucson) which is a fair bit "bluer" than Maricopa) so should be somewhat better for Biden,
b) The Maricopa ones to be counted are now moving into very late mail ballots or ones dropped off on Eday vs sort of late-arriving by mail and they have stats on Party registration and they are somewhat less R. (early mail votes were heavily D)
b.data analysis Maricopa arriving 10/29 to 11/02: D25/R45/O30 arriving 11/02 to 11/04: D26/R39/O36 . The 59-41 Trump %s have been from the 25/45/30 days. So margin with the super late ones will probably be more like 55-45 or so. Still trumpy but does not extrapolate to him catching up as continuing 59-41 does (warning still some of first batch to be posted...)
c) And then there are a much smaller (but some 10s of thousands) left that are provisionals. I suspect many/most will not end up passing muster, but IIRC a number of them do in Arizona (the late count thing is not new to AZ, McSally was ahead on Eday in '18 and subsequently lost, but that was with a much larger pool of uncounted votes... I think there counting rules were like PA then; they allow earlier counting now.)
4) There is some less firm claims about location of the various drops *within* Maricopa county. The one I might give some credence to is congressman Raul Grijvala saying a a good chunk of late0arricvers in his district's part of Maricopa were not yet counted (and it is of course heavily gerrymandered so his portion is much more blue).
One person attempted to calculate "conservatively" and came up with ~12-15K Biden in the end. Currently 69K so not a lot of room for error, and any wrong assumption could be material.
Reassuring ain't it! (PA, PA, PA)
I do think the early callers erred (I had heard mentioned that there was confusion on #of ballots outstanding and they used a smaller number), but I suspect there analysis still has Biden squeaking it out and they are loath to retract it. (The fact they have not is mildly reassuring at about three degrees of removal from actual comfort...) Apparently Trump got into it with Fox/Murdoch on election night.
And it was to avoid rabbit hole's like this that I went to bed early on election night with my Dostoevsky. And should have last night (I still woke up middle of the night and read a chunk and I'm up now just chillin').
1: Koran me on. MSNBC looked exhausted. I think he worked for about 36 hours, took a. So mid day yesterday and was at it yesterday evening. Once this thing is called, I think he should take a whole week off to sleep.
Did not dive as deeply on Georgia. My read is that it may end up in Florida 2000 territory. Almost certainly more people went to the polls (or mailed) intending to vote for Biden, but I am going to guess it stays Trump.
4: And never come back. I have grown to dislike him very much. Milks the drama and is clearly intrigued by the herrenvolk.
Like Dean Baquet on Election Night 2016 addressing the gloom of his younger staff: "What a story!" (And you were a big part of it Deano, and not in a good way.)
I am assuming 4 was talking about Kornacki and not some other random Holy Book.
Arizona's definitely weird. There are like 8 states where late votes trended strongly Democratic, for the usual provisional and absentee ballot reasons, and then this one where they're apparently trending Republican?
It's been encouraging seeing all the other margins close. At one point, Trump had a lead of 10 percent in each of PA, NC, and GA. Now they're each down to less than 3 percent.
5: I really hope it can go blue It's at something like 19,000 votes now for Trump. But even if they are able to narrow the lead significantly to something like 5,000, that would be a huge validation of Stacey Abrams' work. If it is only a 500 vote difference, I hope the Biden campaign will fight aggressively to get the votes counted even if they have enough electoral votes. It's really important to continue the work of turning Georgia Democratic. Hopefully a Dem can win the gubernatorial race in 2022.
OK. A little more on PA. Seems to be plenty of mail votes to swing it. But I'd love to get it over with. (Most concerning to me is that there seems to be some uncertainty on votes outstanding Philly seems short to some..)
There was consensus early this year among Rs and Ds to allow early voting, but Rs 1) wanted some concession I forget what from Dems on something else, and 2) backed away entirely when Trump campaign strategy of kvetching about any post eday counting became apparent. When the PA Rs have the chutzpah to blame the late counting on Wolf and Ds it is the concession thing they are "blaming." Similar to Rs blaming lack of Covid\d relief on intransigent Ds.
Other thing that seems to make PA pretty certain (hell of a sentence construct there, Stormie) is that counties which are mostly complete counting have swung HRC to Biden by about 1.7%, and Trump won by .7 in 2016.
Anecdotal from the 3 precincts I've looked at closely (2 where I worked and my own) have swung 6, 3 and 0% 2016 to 2020. The 6 is my precinct which I lambasted yesterday (it is far and away the Trumpiest, though) . I apologize to you nice lovely mail voters in that precinct. Sorry I did not get to interact and help you vote. Good job, though.
And there is a pool of vote that I am not sure even show up as outstanding yet. Voters who requested mail in but did not send back and came to polls without them bot provisionals. Number was about 2% of e-day voters in both precincts at my place. Assume there have a good chance of being counted (especially if potentially determinative, but also already being challenged by Rs). Small number but would be heavily Biden and could add a few tens of thousands to his total if extrapolated.
8: It had always previously been late D like the other places because no mail votes counted early. They changed rules/procedures and now all the early early votes get counted before/on eday, so only late ones left to count now which this year trended R. Prevalence of mail voting in general very high in Arizona, so not a place where Rs were loath to use it.
7: Yes. I typed "Kornacke" on my iPad, and it autocorrected to "Koran" BUt I also mistyped a couple of things. "Nap" was supposed to be in the second sentence. My husband likes Kornacke. He doesn't care for the CNN numbers guy, and of course, he can't stand watching the CNN results when Wolf Bitzer is on.
12: Ah yes. Just about everyone else is worse.
Further to 10 on the potentially significant pool of provisionals in PA. have no idea how (or if) they are represented in u remaining ballots totals (and may be different in different counties). But they certainly are not yet in any counts, as given that the current rule is if their mail-in ballot arrives in the mail by Friday, the mail-in is counted and provisional tossed. So their status cannot be totally adjudicated until at least Friday. I will note that at our precincts no one did it because they mailed it and thought it might get there late. They had ll lost them said they never got the mail-in ballot.
I love our Secretary of State so much. He's just a boring guy who wants elections to work . I did see him get kind of mad about the census count being stopped, because they were not giving useful updates - just letters saying what a great job they did. But even then, he was pretty mild mannered and data driven.
Speaking of SoSs, good new from Georgia this AM; SoS there had said ~25k left, but later corrected that there are 50 to 60 k left.
10.1: Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report and NBC, whose affect I'm not fond of but knows his precinct-counting, thinks that the report Philly number is too low but also that Biden is "still in great shape" even if it's correct.
Agree in Wasserman. Philly commissioners supposedly updating on mail count process at 9 AM (now). Hope they clarify.
Agree in Wasserman. Philly commissioners supposedly updating on mail count process at 9 AM (now). Hope they clarify.
Outside of a Wasserman, it's too bright to read.
Bad statistical reasoning: The score is 253-217 with Biden leading, and PA, AZ, NV, NC and GA undecided. To reach 270, Biden needs just PA, or any two (or more) without PA. There are 32 possible outcomes, of which Biden wins 27, or 84.75%. So not far from what 538 predicted before voting started.
Really, the odds are better than 50/50 in all but NC, so probably it's closer to 90%. Which is exactly where 538 had the odds before voting started.
Never mind.
.
I'm doing a lot of bad statistical reasoning, too. Of the most recent 35,000 votes counted in Georgia, Biden took 78 percent and thus gained 19,000 votes on Trump.
The NYT says that the gap is now about 18.5K votes with 61K uncounted. So Biden should win, right?
Georgia plans to report in two hours anyway, so all of this is kind of ridiculous.
If it makes you feel better, 22 is better reasoning than 21.
Huge unstated positive: most of the drama is happening in states (PA, MI, NV) with Democratic governors who own the process and the state troopers and have no interest in conniving at or even tolerating Trump malarkey. so different from Katharine Harris (of classic Old Blogging moment "Katharine Harris is Drunk" fame) in 2000.
Repeating my love for Stacey Abrams. She may well have given us our last shot at the Senate.
3, etc, here was my response in the Results Thread:
I also appreciate all the great detail of 517 - thank you for spelling it all out for me.
On my commute to work just now, I was truly steeling myself to live within Trump's presidency for the next four years. He seems to fail upwards in every other way, why stop now.
22: yep. And Ossoff will get a runoff. But what's the probability that the number of uncounted ballots the Times states is accurate? And are we sure that the next batch of ballots are from the same or comparable locations?
27: NYT was quoting a Georgia official, who had a very precise number: 61,367. So that looks reasonably solid.
And of course, I have no evidence that the next batch of votes will mimic the last one. That's what makes it bad statistical reasoning.
Everything I've seen suggests Biden is going to win PA by well over a percent. The count is slow, but it's not likely to end up close.
My response in the other thread was basically Reason tatters, the forces tear loose from the axis.
I haven't watch any election TV at all -- how can you all stand those people blathering on trying to fill their time on air with no new information?
We have been watching Dark on Netflix. Did one of you suggest it, and I just missed that?
Ossoff is now apparently already in runoff territory, so we get the double-Senate-runoff election in January.
I can't stand the TV coverage either.
31 That's excellent news! I hope that fatigue from this one doesn't kill our ability to make a complete push in that one -- if Biden ends up winning, though, I think we just might have a decent shot. Thanks to Abrams, and with added Trump drama.
Jon Ralston in Nevada is an example, and his track record is part of why most people are not huffing about Nevada
Is that why we aren't freaking out over Nevada? Because Biden is only up by 8000 votes there with 15% left to go.....
Warren/Castro would be putting up better numbers in Nevada right now.
Warren/Castro would be putting up better numbers in Nevada right now.
But most likely worse in PA*.
* Pure speculation, of course. I think CCarp had the correct position in the previous thread. I voted for Warren in the primary, and I am on board with the idea of nominating liberal candidates and seeing what happens. But, today, I have a hard time imagining them outperforming Biden nationally.
Here is Ralston's thread about NV today.
I guess what I'm seeing is a huge Biden underperformance which may or may not have attached to another candidate. I mean, the polls that told us that Biden was our best shot this year are the same polls that seem to have botched the turnout model.
I feel strongly that Bernie would have done better. I'm less convinced of Warren, but I don't accept that notion as obviously wrong.
I guess what I'm seeing is a huge Biden underperformance which may or may not have attached to another candidate.
Biden running ahead (or Trump running behind) of the combined house candidates.
The popular vote for the House is running at about D+0.8 at the same time as it's D+2 for the Presidency. Currently, that's a 1.2 point GOP overperformance relative to Trump.
It just occurred to me, about this whole waiting period. I know everyone is too traumatized to enjoy anything, but at least we aren't on the downside, desperately hoping as things look worse. At least we aren't discussing desperate paths. That comes with the added bonus that Republicans ARE feeling that dread and have been for two days and will so long as it takes. The Trump exec must be twisting in the wind as it becomes more inevitable. A cheerful thought!
I badly wanted Warren in the primary, on a theory of "no one knows the future and the polls aren't reliable, vote for the one who'd be best President." Between misogyny and the fact that Biden's run a better campaign than I thought, I am not confident she'd be doing better, and she might be doing worse.
I do have many many complaints with Dems' Congressional leadership.
I badly wanted Warren in the primary, on a theory of "no one knows the future and the polls aren't reliable, vote for the one who'd be best President." Between misogyny and the fact that Biden's run a better campaign than I thought, I am not confident she'd be doing better, and she might be doing worse.
I do have many many complaints with Dems' Congressional leadership.
I could see Warren and Biden doing just about the same, if blue voting is anti-Trump rather than pro-anyone. And we could be arriving at exactly the same place with Warren as the candidate. But oh boy would I have been terrified this past few days.
That comes with the added bonus that Republicans ARE feeling that dread and have been for two days and will so long as it takes. The Trump exec must be twisting in the wind as it becomes more inevitable. A cheerful thought!
Are any professional Republicans unhappy right now, except the ones who directly work for the Trump administration who may need a new job? If they control the Senate and the Supreme Court they figure they can prevent any progress from happening and be back in power ASAP. There was no repudiation. The Democrats can't pack the courts.
Maybe we could check the hypothesis by stacking up more overt centrists vs leftists in similarly close House races?
One (cherrypicked) contrasting pair example I saw was Katie Porter winning vs. Donna Shalala losing.
Katherine!
I wanted Warren to get it, but it's my belief that if you can't make your case to Democrats, that's a fairly strong piece of evidence that you're going to have more trouble with the country at large.
And yeah, I was genuinely impressed with Joe. I did not expect him to be as good a general election candidate as he was.
I mean, look at this Republican guy's tweets. This guy is incredibly happy. The country repudiated Trump, sort of, but did not repudiate the Republicans. He wants Democrats to celebrate but I don't know if any will celebrate as much as him.
" Updated data: Biden lead over Trump in Nevada expands from 7,647 to 12,042".
Bwahahaha, also Nevada is trolling.
Updates
Nev. First batch just coming in (from Clark, Biden up a bit more to 12K). Per Ralston thread. More rurals may come in before big Clark provisional #s get counted (they go last) so probably not resolved today. Per that thread Biden not as strong as Clinton in Clark (prob. due to weaker Latino numbers, similar to Rio Grande Valley where It was really striking.
Pa. Am getting a bit nervous that the most optimistic predictions are using a what seems to be a too big un-updated number on the SoS website for remaining absentees. Should be OK, county swing %s would still indicate it should work (although variable increases in turnout can make mess that up (if say Red counties turnout growth is disproportionate) , but margin seems to be coming down so slowly. Big number of Philly mail still out plus apparently some Philly e-day. But it may need the Eday surrender mail provisionals. Or things like 29K mail that Allegheny cannot count until Friday (there was a printing error on the original ballots so are being treated as "provisionals") I am going to take a nap and not think about this one for a while.
Georgia was supposed to have reported by now, what news?
Georgia was supposed to have reported by now, what news?
Georgia Sos has been a bit of the mess. Early this Am said 25K ballots left, now it is 61K. Said counting would be done by noon, and then revised to most likely today.
Oh man, I'm just a lurker and I was super pro Warren, but I don't understand the idea that she would be doing better. I think the combination of machismo and socialism fears would leave Elizabeth warren in an even worse position with Hispanic voters. And voters in Georgia went overwhelmingly for Biden in the primary over Bernie and Warren, so you lose any chance of Georgia coming close to being in play. Plus,. Biden is over performing Clinton in rural counties in PA, and i don't think we can assume Warren gets that either? It's hard to game out a counter factual with a woman who doesn't have the decades of baggage that Clinton did. But also, Trump loved shitting on women and PoC, so every rally would be footage of him saying god knows what about her, and as crazy as he is, these things end up leaking out into the ether. So I am genuinely curious which groups you think Warren be doing better with?
Perdue is down to 49.99%! Two runoffs in Georgia (if the result holds up), and Senate control remains uncertain until January 5!
The joint session of Congress that will certify the election results is set for January 6, presumably without any representation of the state of Georgia. Pence will have the tiebreaker at that point anyway.
I can tell myself a story that Warren does a much better job hanging the sh*t economy on Trump's incompetent response to COVID and the Senate not giving a damn and that Castro helps with Hispanics but I really don't have any confidence at all in that and it's a pretty pointless debate. Pramila Japayal for house speaker though.
I think Warren would have done a lot better pulling in non-voters, which I think was Trumps hidden strength. On election day I saw a steady stream of disaffected youths, and middle aged voters who looked like they were hepped up on Q-Anon, who had never voted before but were turning out. People who normally don't show up showed up, and voted Red.
I don't see that there was as much corresponding energy on the Blue side. I think if Warren ran on a platform of fixing health care, $15 minimum wage, and legalizing weed, she might have created some.
56 looks right to me. I was a Warren-then-Bernie voter, but looking at the states Biden lost that we were hoping to win (mostly thinking about Florida) I can't see either of them having done better.
I agree. I don't think Bernie would have won. Yes, there are demographics he would've done better with, but there's others he would have done much worse with. Having someone who actually uses the socialist label would have mobilized even more Trumpists. As frustrating as it may be, Biden is probably our best shot.
Has Georgia reported yet? I'm about to pass out.
Bernie could have beaten Obama in 2012 and then we wouldn't be in this fix at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PEOPLE. Unless you think Bernie or Warren should have another shot in 2024, I'm not sure why this is worth one second of contemplation. We are living through a time of massive transformation in the media/information ecosystem, and I think a lot of Dems are very I-don't-even-have-a-TV about it. (I know I fucking am.) This year is also an extinction event for the Democratic Party (not the party itself, but many of its prominent members and strategies). Or maybe I am looking for an ecological succession metaphor. Anyway. Very few of the names in this thread are going to matter all that much for the next election.
For whatever it's worth, Southern WI seemed to be getting a lot of first-time voters doing same-day registration, including many Black voters in the precincts I observed.
The one thing that all of the candidates who lost to Biden have in common is that they lost to Biden in Democratic primaries. Given that they were to the left of Biden, and given that the primary electorate is a long distance to the left of the general electorate, it is very unlikely they would have done better in the general.
64 isn't wrong. Things are bad. Right now we are looking at 4 years of Biden getting jacked by McConnell, and après that, the deluge.
I've always wondered if open vs closed primaries make a difference. Like in a year when the Republicans don't have a presidential contest and a state has an open primary, do many Republican vote in the Democratic primary? How many? Does it have a moderating influence?
Although, I'm wondering if we won't have a decent shot at those Georgia runoff seats given that Trump won't be on the ballot and probably won't even be bothered to help with the campaign.
68: Offset by there not being as much outside Dem money and energy flowing into those races. Possibly also in-state energy drop.
Is there actual evidence that disaffected Republicans who were tired of bad leadership made up a nontrivial number of Biden votes? That could very well explain a lot of the supposed ballot splitting -- not nervous centrists uneasy about court packing, but comfortably Republican voters hoping (reasonably) that Biden gets pulled rightward. I hate speculating about voters overall, but I guess I am curious about that one.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JirsgRrAfSX43Vt1-b-dubKat_AofWvl/view
That is a link to the Dems version of PA remaining mail-in votes. left. The numbers out are still confusing and they may be too optimistic, but not necessarily given how Trump had demonized mail-in in PA. My precinct was 68-32 on eday for Trump, and the mail-ins were 74-26 for Clinton. The big question for me is whether the outstanding mail-in numbers are correct. (And they may be, many counties did not even start on those until yesterday, Allegheny started on Tuesday morning, and would be all done except for the printing error.
(It may also be that this data includes the "mail-in non-surrender provisionals"*. Fuck me, I need my fucking nap. Who are you people? I don't know you. Don't respond to this Prank comment! Prank comment!)
I'm wondering if we won't have a decent shot at those Georgia runoff seats because I believe Stacey Abrams can achieve nearly anything.
Oh for crying out loud. Take the good news, guys!
Oh for crying out loud. Take the good news, guys!
Not until PA/AZ are actually in the bag.
Right now we are looking at 4 years of Biden getting jacked by McConnell, and après that, the deluge.
Things are bad, yes. But this is 2 years, not 4 years. The senate map is favorable in 2 years.
69:. Don't you think with the Senate on the line there will be more money pouring in ( for both sides) than anybody will know what to do with?
71: Look at the link in 71 if you want good news. It's the pure goddamn shit I'm posting for you unappreciative motherfuckers. Inject it right into your goddamn eyeballs. Mucho many rat orgasms per kilobyte.
In our family chat I made a joke about how we should all move to GA for a couple months and my FIL who AIHMHB has been trending Trumpy since he started dating a Trump supporting woman got mad about how unethical that would be.
I never would have thought the link in 71 would be to good news, given the tone of 71. That seems to be the world we're in now.
70: there's been a lot of Takes about the absence of flipped Rs from the exit poll, but the problem with any statement about the exit poll is that the exit poll polls people exiting the polling booth, and by definition people who voted by mail will not have been polled outside a polling booth!
I have no idea if the exit poll tries to account for this and I am not sure how you could do so (an additional phone poll sample?).
Or it could just be BS optimism pron from spinning Dems. A big fucking footbnall for Lucy to pull out and turn us all into drooling shadows of our former selves for the next 4 years. (You know, so kinda like the last 4.)
But, I did just see where the PA SoS says 550K mail votes left to be counted which is consistent with the Dem sheet conveniently linked above, so maybe there is consensus on that.
I don;t know if Dems have observers who can access voter files on remaining received mail ballots or if they are estimating (either could be off in the buttfuck rurals-- a lot of registered Dems voting for Jabba the Hut out there). But, but, the mail %s have not been correlating necessarily with the overall Biden-Trump % (such as my precinct above) due to Jabba's demonization of mail-in PA.
Looking into the abyss that is our red tsunami -- to mix it up -- I see the following, which I think is oh so explanatory. Here's a quick Montana table:
2012 Senate Race 218R 236D
2014 Senate Race 213R 148D
2016 Gov Race 236R 256D
2018 Senate Race 235R 253D
2020 Senate Race 330R 270D
We worked our tails off to bring D turnout up, and did! And we thought that, along with having better candidates for every position, was going to do the trick. But oh my God that R side. Turns out that the caravans of pickups with Trump flags really speaks to something those people wanted/needed. Along with not wanting to be told what to do -- our new legislature is likely to deprive county health officers of the power to require masks in schools or businesses. Because, as one of the incoming legislative leaders said yesterday, the pandemic was over in May.
84: Yeah. That is one of the Dave Wasserman points that I got tired of, but is correct: In almost any state in the US (except the SW and maybe sme in the South) generally the largest pool of non-voters in terms of raw numbers have been Whites w/o college degree.
This is going to be a bad winter for people who don't want to die.
One newspaper in California tried to do a new kind of exit poll - they identified and surveyed people online who had already turned in ballots, then tried to weight the responses to likely electorate. It got the ballot measure outcomes pretty wrong, but within certain groups, it found:
* Of those who say they mostly but not always vote GOP, 15% voted for Biden and 9% voted for a third party candidate
* Of those who mostly vote Dem, 0.6% voted for Trump
* Of those who say they switch back and forth between what parties they support, it was 69% Biden, 21% Trump, 11% third party
Credibility calibration notice for my a takes and analyses.
I am a person who bent many a friend's ear with a detailed 5-point argument on why the polling error would not be like the one in 2016.
84: Our restrictions were due to get stricter - masks in public even if you can social distance for anybody over age 5 required. Over age 2 still recommended. Requiring restaurants to close at 9:30 is bringing out the restaurant industry in full force. We need a restaurant bailout and they should all close indoor dining, but Mitch McConnell won't let that happen.
JP cannot nap until Biden is instated as president.
85: We need the black people in the South and the Mexicans in the Southwest to save us white people from ourselves.
85: We need the black people in the South and the Mexicans in the Southwest to save us white people from ourselves.
"White People Want America to Be a Failed State"
I have some issues with that article but, on the whole, it's a fair claim.
84 - yeah, the "end the lockdowns because COVID is basically over" message from Trump was homicidally irresponsible but probably helped him get votes from people who just want this shit to be over.
On the one hand, I basically don't think that anyone outside of Unfogged remembers that there was a giant Ebola panic that magically evaporated in 2014.
On the other hand, it sure does sound like a lot of Trump supporters believe that Democrats were using that same exact playbook this time around.
There is literally no way to win. If Covid sticks around after the election is called, none of them will update their thinking. When Ebola magically was no longer going to melt all of our faces off, no one updated their thinking. Two different epistemic worlds and two different sets of rules to play by. The whole world can fuck right off.
I either had Ebola or hay fever that year.
I had swine flu. In fact, I had the best swine flu ever. I was 6 months post-partem, and about to get married. I got swine flu, and dropped my pre-baby weight, and my dress fit just right, and then I packed the weight back on and never looked back. No regrets.
I debated if it was "partem" or "pardem" for a while, and then guessed. Turns out neither. Who knew!
Then I debated changing it behind the scenes. But it turns out I'm too lazy. Who knew!
Is there actual evidence that disaffected Republicans who were tired of bad leadership made up a nontrivial number of Biden votes? That could very well explain a lot of the supposed ballot splitting -- not nervous centrists uneasy about court packing, but comfortably Republican voters hoping (reasonably) that Biden gets pulled rightward. I hate speculating about voters overall, but I guess I am curious about that one.
One thing Wasserman has suggested on Twitter is that the Dem underperformance in congressional races compared to 2018 could be due to the fact that in 2018 voting Dem in a congressional race was the only way to repudiate Trump, whereas now with Trump on the ballot a lot of Republicans can vote against him directly while voting for the downballot GOP candidates they find more comfortable. That seems plausible to me, despite Wasserman's general annoyingness.
But what if I didn't. Then I barely dodged death.
Looks like there will be "Protect the Vote" marches Saturday.
Hey, my friend built a really cool vote tracker, and I got permission to share it, but he's kind of a dick and I don't want him to find this site, so I don't want to post it here. But I'll share it over email.
(Also he keeps changing the url to toy with people. Kind of a dick.)
the "end the lockdowns because COVID is basically over" message from Trump was homicidally irresponsible but probably helped him get votes from people who just want this shit to be over.
Yes. COVID is extremely unpopular and somehow Trump has made the Democrats own it. In retrospect, throwing a massive COVID party and catching it himself was an amazing move that successfully made everybody forget about his tax returns.
This year is also an extinction event for the Democratic Party
The inner enemy! Defeat them and then the true enemy will simply fade away.
Katie Porter winning vs. Donna Shalala losing.
It seems like a structural failure of the party establishment that Donna Shalala was sitting on that House seat instead of some dynamic young Cuban-American Dem who had been recruited and groomed for the spot.
Maybe it's just the communists, butt they really seem to like leaders without much grooming.
That's why I've let myself go since getting elected.
2018 primary results
31.9% Donna Shalala
27.5% David Richardson
17.5% Kristen Rosen Gonzalez
16.9% Matt Haggman
6.1% Michael Hepburn
Kristen Rosen Gonzalez followed this up with a surprise upset loss in the 2019 election for Miami Beach City Commissioner so I don't think she's the dynamic young star we're looking for either.
Something that I've been musing over. Suppose this were an ordinary election year -- PA and NV isn't mail-in. On election night, late, but still on election night, as Philadelphia rolls in, we have a Biden victory as he takes PA, NV, and GA. Anyone feel like we'd be hailing that as a Democratic success?
That Shalala results makes me wish primaries used ranked choice. Why make someone the nominee with less than 1/3 of the vote?
it seems like a structural failure of the party establishment
one of many.
To the OP, here's the most recent plausible attempt I've seen to extrapolate the outstanding AZ vote:
https://twitter.com/djquinlan/status/1324428554403110913
The key assumption is also that in 3.3.b, that the 200K Maricopa ballots dropped off on Election Day will lean Trump but not quite as much as what we saw yesterday. If that assumption holds - and if the outstanding Pima and Coconino vote (bluer) offsets Pinal (redder) to something like a Maricopa-like average, then Biden stays ahead by a whisker, maybe 10k votes. We're not going to know for days, though. I had thought most Maricopa dropoffs would be counted yesterday, but I was way overestimating.
115: I was compelled to research Ms. Rosen Gonzalez's ethnic background.
"My father was Jewish, my mother was Southern Baptist and I married a Catholic from Argentina," says Rosen Gonzalez. "I hit all the bases because I am a product of this district."
https://communitynewspapers.com/miami-beach-news/the-unlikely-politician/
it seems like a structural failure of the party establishment
one of many.
I don't want to defend the party establishment, but my theory is still that everybody feels like there's somebody in charge, and just knows it isn't them, or anybody they can identify -- and the people nominally in charge also feel like their hands are tied and they can't accomplish anything.
Meanwhile, Republicans are stuck in their own gridlock.
I posed these questions to Tea Party conservatives, populist reformers, and old-line Reaganites. The answer, in every case, was the same. Different Republican senators have different ideas, but across the party as a whole, there is no plan. The Republican Party has no policy theory for how to contain the coronavirus, nor for how to drive the economy back to full employment. And there is no plan to come up with a plan, nor anyone with both the interest and authority to do so. The Republican Party is broken as a policymaking institution, and it has been for some time.
119: lourdes, I don't think I have your email address. (And I'm about to hop on a meetinf unfortunately)
116: I think seeing GA flip in real time would have felt like a big deal. Lots of cheers for Abrams. The congressional and statehouse results would still have been a bitter pill, though.
118: I wasn't there, no-one saw me do it, you can't prove anything.
120. Thanks. I could see many people not viewing her as Hispanic and maybe as something of an outsider pretending to be an insider.
Also she did something called Turkey Gate.
116: Sure, and right now, most Democrats seem reasonably cheerful. But between Tuesday night and now, there were periods when Trump had big leads in several states. If you had taken a snapshot at midnight Tuesday, which I know isn't how the election works but I think it's not totally crazy to have an emotional reaction along these lines, I think Biden would have lost.
Personally, my nightmare scenario on Monday was not a legitimate loss, but Republicans doing something quasi-legal or outright illegal to push a swing state their way and the courts backing them. The longer things go, the less likely that seems. That's the main reason I'm cheering up.
Personally, my nightmare scenario on Monday was not a legitimate loss, but Republicans doing something quasi-legal or outright illegal to push a swing state their way and the courts backing them. The longer things go, the less likely that seems. That's the main reason I'm cheering up.
I think because Republicans kept control of the Senate, will be able to gerrymander most states again, etc. they don't need to help Trump cheat to win anymore. Before the election we were hearing all about the Republican Party's ruthless and very plausible plans to sue to block vote counting, and now we are hearing about Trump's pathetic doomed and nonsensical attempts to sue to block vote counting. Presumably being painted that way by Republican sources who had been preparing last week to be part of said plans.
I've been waiting for this. The thing about Trumpism is that it's all about Trump. If the Republican Party no longer serves him, he will turn on it.
127: Sure, but I challenge anyone to think that a Democrat is going to win when none of the cities are counted. I'm blaming the Needles entirely here. There shouldn't have been any "Strongly Trump" with three million votes outstanding. I don't blame people for feeling emotional but I am blaming "Bernie wouldn't have lost like Biden" folks for not thinking it through.
They have not yet kept control of Congress.
117: We voted on that and voted against ranked choice voting. So stupid.
If Biden carries AZ, PA, and GA, that will be more electoral votes than Trump's in 2016.
No it will be exactly how many Trump won in 2016, 306. Technically Trump ended up with 304 because of two faithless electors but by votes he won 306.
Fetterman is recommending that I drive to Maryland and buy weed. I guess I just park out of sight so they can't see my PA plates? I don't think I'm going to get better advice today.
Maryland's medicinal marijuana laws may be the most sincerely medicinal ones in the country, as you would expect from a paradise of bureaucracy like Maryland. You have to register with the state here as a patient. Obviously to do that you have to be a Maryland resident, so no luck for Fetterman fans living on the border.
I think there are 3 dispensaries in my county (one for every 100,000 people), and they have names like "Wellness Institute of Maryland", and I've never seen an ad for any of them. I visited Oklahoma and there were giant billboards for dispensaries everywhere with names like "Budworx" and "High Society" and "The Joint".
Maybe he meant I was supposed to go to New Jersey?
136: Apparently DC has a thriving gray market where everything is called "gifts"?
In DC you can buy a pen for $100 and they will throw in a quarter ounce of weed out of the goodness of their heart.
DC people are nice that way. And Trump only got 5.2% of the vote. I bet even the white people voted against him.
NEW: I'm told that President Trump can't get his messaging straight on counting the votes because he doesn't understand what "stop the count" means. On a call this morning, an adviser had to explain to him that if they stopped counting votes right now, he would lose the election.
Never stop defying satire, sir.
People are saying to fear the lame duck period and I get that. But there's also the possibility that he'll turn on Republicans and do real damage to them in his thrashing around. I mean, he can't lose the Dems even more than he has. But he could definitely create a Trump-Republican divide. Remember, he destroys everything he touches.
Right, but everything he touches includes health policy and we're in the middle of a pandemic.
I mean, personally I'm not very hard pressed. I feel like a huge weight is just not coming off my chest.
His health policy in this pandemic will be as bad as it possibly could be. That has always been true and it will be true until Jan 20. That's unrelated to the fact that he might spend the lame duck trashtalking Republicans for not supporting him enough. Suppose he turns his Q followers against establishment Republicans, for example.
Everything is terrible; take the schadenfreude where you can find it.
Regardless of what Trump does about the Republican establishment, it's a relief that they seem to be willing to cut him loose now that it's clear he's losing.
There seems to be an outpouring of love for Philadelphia on the social media. How is it on the ground? Witt?
I will indeed take whatever I can get in he way of schadenfreude, but even if Trump's policy doesn't get worse, the need for good policy is growing very quickly. The election was an epidemiological disaster.
He's going to be trying to smuggle the silverware on his way out the door.
Apparently the networks took Trump off the air, mid-press-conference because he was lying about election fraud.
We all know that conservatives love liberal tears. I suppose it doesn't speak well of me, but I'm really enjoying Trump's press confererence, which has the character of a concession speech even as he says he'll win if only legal votes are counted.
It will be interesting to see how this unhinged performance is covered.
So what happens with health insurance if the supremes throw out the ACA? If we don't take the senate will there be any hope?
152 before reading the end of the thread. I see that we are now pro-schadenfreude.
News segment on the 6 o'clock news here tonight: "What a Biden presidency would mean for Canada..." (shorter version: dear God, please Biden! ...).
There's no question they expect Biden to win this thing. May they soon (very soon!) be proved correct.
Maybe Biden can offer McConnell a seat in the cabinet to get him out of the Senate and flip it to the Dems.
I was speculating that Trump will probably leave the WH but might take a shit on the desk first. (AIHMHB I heard of someone shitting in the hall of the company from which they were laid off)
If I was Biden I would be leery of the Upper Decker.
People keep mentioning cabinet seats for hated Republicans, but wouldn't it work equally well to offer a cabinet seat to any bland Republican senator from a blue state? It doesn't have to be one of the dramatic ones to take away the Republican lead. Maybe one of the ones that don't get attention would be more tempted.
Whatever happens, sure seems like to me, the next time there's no Dem incumbent president (or VP), we should really try to make it someone Latinx.
159: Collins is the only senator who fits that description, unless you consider Wisconsin a blue state and Ron Johnson bland.
Yeah, it's an interesting thought, but there just aren't many blue-state Republican senators left.
164: there just aren't many blue-state Republican senators left
To be precise, there is only one, unless you consider Wisconsin a blue state.
Toomey? I guess we'll find out soon if Pennsylvania is a blue state again.
True, true. He's probably too much of a party man to accept an appointment to get him out a little earlier anyway.
And we should note that Wolf is (essentially) term limited, there are two rising stars in the Pennsylvania Democratic party (Shapiro and Fetterman), and the Pennsylvania GOP is, with regard to statewide elections, a hot mess. 2022 might suck (or it might be the amazing wave we've been hoping for, but more likely it'll suck), but at least the commonwealth might have some nice results.
it seems like a structural failure of the party establishment
There's no one in a party who can tell a candidate not to run, and certainly no one who can tell a member of Congress to retire. My state party is required to be neutral in primaries, and this is probably pretty common. There are PACs here that are devoted to bringing women candidates along, and to working with Native candidates, but they are, and have to be, outside the party structure. We're all friendly, of course, part of the same small town with really long streets. But the ultimate choice on things like the Shalala seat get made by the voters, not the smoke filled room. OK, sure, if it looks like no one is going to file for a seat, or like only someone who isn't going to win has filed, then anyone, including people in party leadership, can tell a friend or someone they know of 'hey, you might try for this. I bet there'd be support for you' -- but they can't offer anything official.
153: If we don't take the Senate, I think there is no hope. It's entirely at the mercy of the Supreme Court. If they strike it down, I guess we revert back to the old system?
Further to 171, even if there is some sort of favorite candidate groomed by the local establishment, there's still no one who can tell you that you can't also file for the seat, and run against the establishment's hand-picked candidate as the true representative of the people.
My state party is required to be neutral in primaries, and this is probably pretty common.
It may be for state parties, but the DCCC and its siblings don't seem to be bound the same way.
I was thinking Collins could get Secretary of Agriculture. She currently sits on the Ag Committee.
Of course, what would happen if Joe Biden nominated Susan Collins for Secretary of Agriculture is that Mitch McConnell would totally block the appointment. This is not a plan that would actually work.
She wouldn't even accept it would she? It's not like you can draft her.
Ok, so at the point the two main things remaining at this point that are unclear are:
1) Do AP/Fox know something about some bucket of pro-Biden votes left in AZ or are they just full of shit and hoping their bad call squeaks by?
2) Why is Al Gross so confident? That seat can't really be in play can it?
Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska. He says he's gonna win.
Alaska's Own Bear Doctor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjt7bozW8tM
It's not like you can draft her.
No, I'm pretty sure you can. Its in the Constitution that says anybody who gets tapped for Secretary of Agriculture can't say no. Its right next to the part about the Electoral College.
I am hypnotized by this shrinking Georgia margin. 2,497. 1902. 1775. I can't make myself go to bed.
Try counting margins except picture them as sheep.
1902 bottles of beer on the wall, 1902 bottles of beer...
Ag Secretary is totally a better gig than Senator, though. If I was Susan Collins I'd take the promotion.
This was not a good night for the Amber Alert interacting with my nerves.
Heebie, you could use this election as an example if you even need to explain Zeno's paradox.
Zeno's paradox is just somebody deliberately created a stupid mathematical model and claiming to be deep.
Even if Collins would accept a cabinet position, her nomination would never come before the Senate for a vote.
190 is fair.
192: Yes -- https://mobile.twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/1324505213349335044
Agriculture isn't just farming affairs - they also administer food stamps.
Some people really like the taste of the glue on stamps, but I don't think they have any real stamps now.
178.1: Actually yes- AP and Fox News broke away from the other networks election analysis consortium and focused more on mail-in and alternate methods. They therefore think they have a stronger model of the AZ mail vote and have repeatedly stood by their projection.
192- I saw a report of this as a ratfucking operation, also in NV. If they can get a fraudulent ballot slipped in to a class of votes, such as late-arriving, then they think they'll have grounds to ask a court to throw out that entire class of ballot because they'll have evidence that at least one (the one they submitted) is in fact fraudulent. I'm sure there's some fancy legal term for that kind of conspiracy to create evidence to support your claim by committing the act of which you're accusing others.
The best way to run a conspiracy is to use mailchimp and a donor list to recruit conspirators.
I checked and it's not in my spam folder. Maybe they were secretive.
Al Gross is just projecting confidence and making it clear that he isn't conceding yet. We won't know the actual result for a long time, but it is still mathematically possible for him to win, and it could really happen. So far they've counted all the election day votes and the last few days of early voting, but none of the mail ballots or the rest of the early voting and other methods, which are estimated to be about 40% of the total vote and heavily Dem-leaning. Exactly how Dem-leaning is anyone's guess; we've never had remotely this many mail votes before so there's no historical parallels to look to. The outstanding mail and other ballots are being reported by state legislative district, but not by precinct or broken down by party registration. Everyone's flying blind.
This article is a good explanation of why Alaska counts so slow. Mail ballots have to be postmarked by election day but have ten days to arrive after that, and the Division of Elections waits a week after election day to even start counting them so they can cross-check with the ED votes and throw out any mail ballots from people who also voted in person. Apparently they investigate those people for potential vote fraud, but they also count their in-person votes. It's a weird system that appears to be the idiosyncratic idea of the current head of the state Division of Elections, but it is what it is and it means we'll be waiting a long time for anything approaching solid Alaska results.
Rhode Island changed its formal name. I wonder if Maine will change its plantations.
It's down to less than 700 votes in Georgia.
202: 900 in Biden's favor now. Need to wait for the military ballots, but maybe he will be able to pull this one out.
A point I saw made: "military ballots" is actually "overseas ballots", and a) a lot less of them are military than ten years ago, because of drawdown in Iraq - the rest are overseas students, overseas workers, diplomats, Peace Corps and so forth, none of whom are very Trump-friendly groups - and b) the military is polling narrowly pro-Biden, both at enlisted and officer levels.
205: officers are pro Biden. Last poll I saw enlisted were 47% against Trump.
Also, not all overseas ballots are outstanding, only late arrivals. I saw one prediction that a cushion of 500 would likely be enough. Biden's 900+ lead should only grow as the initial counting finishes up.
If Maine 2 hadn't gone Trumpy, Georgia would be enough to get to 270. As it is, we need one more.
They think Prop 15 (major property tax reform + new revenue) is within reach with the 4 million remaining ballots in CA. Let me know if you want a link to the ballot curing events.
Here's">https://alex.github.io/nyt-2020-election-scraper/battleground-state-changes.html">Here's a version of the site I mentioned last night that I can share.
Take">https://alex.github.io/nyt-2020-election-scraper/battleground-state-changes.html">Take 2
(now I suspect the guy I know may have just been trying to pawn it off as his own. Like I said, he's a dick.)
I learned to do links posting here.
Overseas ballots are also just ordinary citizens living abroad (like me!), and who also tend to lean Democrat, too. I really should have thought things out a little further and gone to live with my Grandpa for a few months before moving to the UK so I could be an Ohio voter and not a California voter.....
Plus, they have spaghetti topped with chili.
Which gets old after a few months, but is really good when you first try it.
That's a pretty good shelf life for leftovers though.
222: What more could you want?
(I've never had it! My family is from Northern Ohio.)
The cheese is what you need to watch. It's not the kind that's supposed to have blue bits.
212, 214: I gotta say, that's pretty cool.
Rhode Island changed its formal name.
Yes, but the late-breaking write-in campaign to call it CHOAD Island seems to have fallen short.
North Dakota has not responded to my suggestion that they change the name to "Covid Town".
So I have a four-year-old bottle of Chinga Tu Pelo. Open it tonight, or wait until inauguration or some in-between phase (official certification/the electoral college/whatever)? I'm assuming it's probably not actually drinkable even though it's been in the fridge all four years. (c. 4.8 percent ABV pale ale).
Drink it tonight, but have a Hamm's first to prepare your palate.
To be absolutely safe you might wait until he starts talking about the amazing new cable network he's going to helm very strongly.
The EC/popular split on this election is going to be huge. Biden will win nationally by over 5% and in the tipping point (one of WI/PA/AZ) by less than 1%.
Biden was really good at picking where to put his last days of the campaign resources.
Has he tweeted yet? I can't stop laughing.
234: I was just looking at how much that has changed. In 1984 Reagan had a landslide of 58.4%, but in the electoral college, Mondale only won one State. 1980 with 3 candidates it was 50.7 but it was spread out. Carter won just a few states.
Carter messed up. He should have been selling his peanuts to foreign agents and government agencies at a huge mark-up. Then he could just pay people to build houses for those in need.
I'm sure he was a fine carpenter, but I bet $50/hour would have gotten somebody better.
I do think the huge infusion of Dem cash into potentially competitive races in other states needs to be thought about a bit. And quickly before the Georgia runoffs. Not a new concern--it was raised after the Ossoff House seat special (a seat which Dems have since won twice with less publicity).
Of course there is no way for the 2 Georgia runoffs to not become nationalized, but somehow need to find a way to tamp down "rich Californian/New Yorkers picking *your* Senator vibe.
My New Year's Resolution is to figure out how to figure out PA legislative races that need money. I never gave to a Senate race for the reason you list, just to the DSCC and Biden.
I mean, there are enough rich California people buying houses around me that, even though they are certainly an overall improvement to the city and almost always nice people, but it's not hard to see where the impulse comes from.
I do think the huge infusion of Dem cash into potentially competitive races in other states needs to be thought about a bit. And quickly before the Georgia runoffs. Not a new concern--it was raised after the Ossoff House seat special (a seat which Dems have since won twice with less publicity).
I can believe people are unhappy with random people calling them trying to be helpful and telling them to vote, but I can't believe many people are following news stories about fundraising. Is the problem that they inevitably lead to an unnatural proliferation of unnaturally slick ads, instead of producing great "under the hood" campaign infrastructure?
I think the national "Threaten Collins with a wave of money" hurt Gideon. Or at least I think somebody should do research to check if it did.
I'm assuming the actual money was very helpful, because capitalism.
OK, for Gideon specifically I can see a backlash to annoying Dems nationwide hating Susan Collins for being a phony so-called moderate. In most of these cases it's nothing personal and annoying Dems just want to donate to an election they've been told they can win.
The one anxiety at a time dictum would put that concern on hold for a minute, and focus on Trumpian attempts at court and/or state legislature antics to overturn state results (and the potential civil chaos and violence from the well-regulated goober militia-in-their-diseased-minds folks).
On that front:
Worrisome: Cruz, Graham joining in with Hannity. Sub-hack judges at all levels of the Federal judiciary (they have so far kept to some limits). The herrenvolk itching to herren it up a bit.
Comforting: Barr has been nearly invisible. Some fuckhead sub-fuckian Reps have put out moderating statements, Fox news regular has so far generally not taken the bait. Trumpers lashing out RINOs not getting on board.
Winning all the remaining close ones would help forestall any serious attempt at this. (I regard North Carolina as very not likely to happen (bold prediction, Ferris) but am feeling more positive on Georgia*.
I'm sure Kemp and idiot SoS there would try to help, but probably would only do something outrageous if it were potentially determinative. And I think the looming Senate runoffs will help stay there hand as they do not want to fire up Dem voters in Georgia even more.
It wasn't really all that close. The margin in Pennsylvania will probably be well over 100,000 by the end. If Pennsylvania had counted its mailed ballots before election day, the election would have been called around midnight on election day, when the count got stuck at 253. Biden will probably end up with 306 electoral votes, one more than Trump had in 2016.
Pennsylvania Republican State Senators are not interested in overturning the popular vote, nor are any other Republican state legislatures. None of the pending lawsuits will make any difference -- at worst, a court might require a recount under slightly diffeent rules, which won't affect the outcome.
I still want revenge on them for the last couple of weeks.
So "them" is pretty narrow in 250.
In a state where the Democratic Party can win over half of state-wide elections but don't control either branch of the state legislature, it behooves the politically active of that state to focus narrowly on flipping that legislature. But I probably wouldn't have been very motivated about it except for the blocking of reasonable counting rules for the election and all the fuckery law suits. I took those as a personal attack.
245: You know, I used to live in Maine. As far as effective, moderate Republican Senators who can bring home the bacon for your State go, Olympia Snowe was way better than Collins.
Fucking fuckers, department of total predictability.
Senate committee talk from Graham: If we keep the Senate which I think we will and I become Budget chairman. I'd like to create a dialogue about how can we finally begin to address the debt.
254: Well, yeah. why couldn't the NH State Democratic Party work on their legislature and not just the presidential campaign. Redistributing in a census year, people.
256: As Paul Krugman always says. But hell the Federal Reserve Board chairman is against that right now.
This tweet is sweet perfection https://twitter.com/adamserwer/status/1324645636877258753?s=24
Latest big Maricopa (AZ) drop was 53%/47% Trump so it looks like the assumption in 3,3,b and 119 about the more blue nature of latwer Maricopa drops is holding so far.
Standing on the corner in Maricopa Arizona....
Only just passed the county line out of Maricopa driving home. This is the lower-elevation point where you lose the saguaros and get nothing but creosote for two hours.
This morning's drop is a big deal! It was supposedly a mix of the last late earlies plus some e-day votes; if that's true, the remaining drops might come out even better for Biden. But 53/47 is good enough.
You guys seem very optimistic to me. Are you sure Trump doesn't have effective leverage with 5 Justices? What if someone somewhere turns up some evidence of cheating? I admit it would be totally without precedent to throw out all the mail in ballots just because some were thought to be illegitimate. I do think the Justices will have to take into consideration the death threats their details will have to deal with.
In the best case scenario where Biden takes office, how many of the ~70 million Trump voters are going to think Democrats cheated him? I'd expect a solid majority. We think we've seen a lot of right wing conspiracy theories up till now, but I bet there's a lot more to come.
Am I right in thinking that because the NH state legislature has way more members per state population than any other state legislature, it is unusually non-susceptible to gerrymandering?
Trump would have to overturn results in at least three separate states. Yay federalism.
The rumblings about legislatures just ignoring results and seating their own electors is overblown. Technically that could be done some year but some TV commentator noted that federal law requires it to be the chosen method before Election Day- a state can't run an election then change the method if they don't like the result.
There's nothing for the Supreme Court to do- in PA the question about late arriving ballots is irrelevant, Biden won without them.
That was the pep talk to the volunteers. We have to win by enough that they aren't needed.
Not really, but I did do 20,000 steps in a single day.
Then I switched from literature dropping to talking to humans.
The one thing that unites all of Pittsburgh is extremely poor maintenance of front steps.
And now a religious curiosity - I have been looking a little at the charismatic evangelical/prophecy grifters this afternoon, and it's pure Seventh Day Adventist stuff -- Trump has already won the election in heaven, even if we are too sinful to see it here on earth. All that's needed is the prayer of the faithful remnant.
But the conviction that the Democrats are literally demonic is a little frightening. It explains the overlap with lizard people theories.
I had no idea that's what the Seventh Day people were like. They have a whole college and a lot of adminstrative offices in Lincoln. I thought vegetarianism was their main weirdness.
Burned-over district era NY is truly wild.
Also The Leftovers is so good, and if you'd watched S3E1 you'd know about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vQgcxD9JWQ
Predicting the end of the world requires commitment, but not as much as giving up both meat and alcohol.
Just narrowly avoided running out of gas in the Mojave. Calculating miles remaining against upgrade, downgrade and estimated reserves is really exactly like this ballot anxiety.
264
You guys seem very optimistic to me. Are you sure Trump doesn't have effective leverage with 5 Justices?
I was a lot more worried about that stuff earlier in the week. The more time goes on, the less likely it looks. We're seeing legal filings with absolutely no evidence and they're getting shut down. The votes are still being counted. No one has been killed yet. We might expect them to find or make up some concrete evidence of fraud eventually. Project Veritas' had a big scoop along these lines back in September but it was drowned out by Trump's tax returns. Maybe they'll try again in a few months. I'm sure assholes will believe them, but will it matter more or less than the general QAnon bullshit?
I'm not saying I'm optimistic overall. I'm sure a Biden administration will be depressingly centrist and Republicans will manage to obstruct a lot. But on the specific question of "will there be a Biden administration?" the odds look fairly good right now.
I do think the huge infusion of Dem cash into potentially competitive races in other states needs to be thought about a bit.
Yeah, it's still early but I think this was likely a factor in the senate races this year. The main concern is that it gives Republicans a very effective message about outside money trying to swing "our" elections, often with scary ads drawing on Anti-Semitic tropes. (We had one particularly egregious online example with Schumer hovering in the background of Gross, who is Jewish himself, over a sea of dollar bills.)
I think this year it also had a diminishing-returns effect at least in some states. Here, the airwaves have been hilariously saturated for months with ads for both Gross and Sullivan, and anyone considered remotely reachable has been getting multiple mail pieces a day, plus calls, texts, etc. Obvious in this specific race we don't yet know how effective that all was, but other states suggest the answer is not very.
Anyway, I gave Ossoff $50 because he called me personally. That's the only personal giving I've done this cycle.
I've long thought money has diminishing returns and I'm fairly sure that applies to texting and call-banking too.
That was the big advantage of early voting. Nobody called after those votes were recorded.
Teo, did you hear of any effect (positive or negative) from the letters or postcards sent to Alaska?
282: I haven't heard of any specific effect from those. I think they just blended into the overall torrent of election mail for most people.
Still, I was getting texts asking me to remember to vote while I was canvassing on election day.
Thought-provoking from Bree Newsome Bass:
I personally feel whenever a community successfully mobilizes itself in any kind of way, the best use of energy is to help make everyone aware of the power they just flexed & their potential to do much more. Focusing on how it didn't change everything overnight is disempowering.
You've got individuals with absolutely everything coming at them who just participated in a collective action that brought about the outcome they wanted. They deserve uplift & encouragement & credit & focus & continued support as much as organizers.
There was a definite lack of coordination among some of the texting/calling efforts. I once got two calls in the same day from the Gross campaign reminding me to vote.
279: I gave a bit of money to Warnock. My acquaintance in the Atlanta suburbs out the races this way: "Warnock is great. Lieberman is an ass. Ossof is great generally - but he doesn't seem to have any issues raising money."
I'm inclined to give him another $25.
Re: money, it'll be interesting to see postmortems, once dust clears. This has been a very weird year. Coronavirus and other 2020 shit. Democrats had a huge spending advantage, but most articles I can find predate the election, so it's hard to correlate dollars to votes. Trump improved his vote share with several minority demographics - how??? In the previous thread, Charley said he saw the results as a repudiation of moderation and I'm tempted to agree with him, but see previous - the "socialism" label might not help with Florida Hispanics specifically.
I think it is pretty clear that the role of money in politics needs to be rethought. Money for ad = way oversaturated at this point, at least for any election higher than representative. Could still be useful for DA elections in cities or something.
Useful things that could be done with money: leftwing outreach to low-trust voters (leftwing version of fox, 9/11 trutherism, etc.). Getting coastal elites to move to senate seats by locating universities and job in red/swing seats (could be low-pop places that are nice to live, like Montana, Idaho, Wyoming), or swing states like Wiscosin, NC. Also funding legislation-writing mills equivalent to ALEC.
Anyway I don't see why GOP operatives including justices would want Trump at this point - much better to let Biden eat a shit sandwhich and demoralize the idiot left.
289: Don't look at exit polls!!! The reason should be obvious.
Yeah, exit polls are always meaningless this early but especially so this year.
Though there is plenty of other evidence that Trump has improved his standing with some minority groups over the last four years.
Yeah, the strong shift towards Trump from 2016-2020 among hispanic voters is quite clear just by looking at counties. At first it looked like it was just Miami and RGV, but now it's looking like it also includes El Paso and northern New Mexico. You don't need exit polls for that. (Though you will need exit polls to figure out whether it was only among men or not.)
I wonder how much of this is just that being quietly racist while not actively campaigning with minorities is a losing strategy when compared to just vocally and clearly courting both the racist vote and minority voters.
Anyone else following the counts on this site? It was making me feel better but now I think I'm getting 2nd derivative nerves or something.
It also seems likely that "Black Lives Matter" as a slogan plays *terribly* with non-Black minorities.
Yeah, the strong shift towards Trump from 2016-2020 among hispanic voters is quite clear just by looking at counties. At first it looked like it was just Miami and RGV, but now it's looking like it also includes El Paso and northern New Mexico.
It'll be interesting to see how the AZ and NV numbers come out. The TX and NM (and CO) results seem to show Trump making gains with specifically rural Hispanic communities, but the AZ and NV Hispanic populations are much more urban. What we might be seeing is an urban-rural split within the Hispanic vote similar to what we've had for a long time with the white vote.
I meant a repudiation of the Democratic party as it exists in Montana.
Our statewide candidates were all center left. I don't think there's any reason at all to think that further left would have done better in any of those races. We got swamped by newly energized Trumpers.
I hear people (organized Dems) saying that unscientific polling shows that 'fear of socialism' was the big motivator for those Trumpers. I'm inclined to think that's just a euphemism for white supremacy, and that we waste our time completely thinking about whether we need to adjust our messaging/positioning a click or two to the left or a click or two away from the left.
Very radical Republicans have been given carte blanche. I expect them to wildly overplay their hands, but it'll take a cycle or two for that to play out.
This is the end of the beginning, to coin a phrase never used before.
Cyrus 277- Thanks that is encouraging stuff.
I personally feel whenever a community successfully mobilizes itself in any kind of way, the best use of energy is to help make everyone aware of the power they just flexed & their potential to do much more. Focusing on how it didn't change everything overnight is disempowering.
That's a good reminder. Thanks.
297: Towards the rural hypothesis, there's a small but noticeable (5%-ish?) shift towards Trump in the Mississippi Delta (excluding suburban De Soto), with a shift towards Biden in urban and suburban Memphis. Nothing as dramatic as what you see in rural Hispanic Texas, but still noticeable. (This is even more noticeable if you include the Arkansas Delta, but that's hard to interpret because Clinton likely had some home-state effects there.)
Am I right in thinking that because the NH state legislature has way more members per state population than any other state legislature, it is unusually non-susceptible to gerrymandering?
In the House, sure, but our Senate only has 24 seats.
Also it looks like Sununu is going to run for US Senate in two years against Maggie Hassan (D). I'd say he has a very strong shot at flipping that seat.
Should I be posting updaytes on counting here or the "Results Thread". Did an update a bit ago over in Results. PA not going to be the walkaway folks were anticipating. (Should still say Biden with a cushion.)
Does that mean it makes sense that no one has called PA yet? I thought they were just waiting till prime time.
306: Look at latest comments in Results thread. By usual standards would certainly have called it. Only real defensible thing for not calling I can see is that everyone is a bity spooked by all the new "patterns" of partisan lean in timing of ballot counts and so are a bit leery. (And per my discussion over there, I do think Dems did get out a bit over their skis on optimistic predictions of several hundred K margin.)
306, 307: And thinking about it, it is in fact somewhat scandalous compared to how quickly they were willing to call for Trump in a much, much closer election. (And after those calls, the already small total margin in WIMIPA nearly halved.)
Another example of the massive asymmetry of press treatment.
I think I'm actually going to watch Biden's address tonight (8 Eastern maybe)? And then order a pizza.
Meanwhile:
Our daily update is published. States reported 1.5 million tests and a record 126k cases. There are 55k people currently hospitalized with COVID-19. The death toll was 1,186.
Hospitalization coming close to previous two peaks.
305: We will find it no matter where you post.
If Minivet happens to be around, I'd LOVE to know where he's getting interesting and trustworthy information on CA propositions (especially 15). Thanks!
PA margin is going to be far larger than Wisconsin by absolute numbers, and at worst about the same percentage wise. Wisconsin was called two days ago.
Supposedly at 9 a big Maricopa dump. This one will almost certainly determine whether Trump still as a chance to eke it out, or if he is really done there (but who knows if done enough for the tastes of the networks). Trump will need high 50s at leasdt to continue to have a chance.
We tried to order Chipotle, but Chipotle is fucked, so no big Maricopa dump tomorrow. Also ordering pizza.
312: I forget if you are on any social media, but this person is worth a follow on multiple platforms.
Hey, I just figured out why the name "Wasserman" makes my stomach clinch. But, I also learned that Allegheny County's Biden support is above it's support for Clinton and rising.
When are they going to call this thing, fer f*ck's sake?
Also, fuck Chipotle. I was hungry an hour ago and now I still have to wait.
OK, maybe Biden isn't talking tonight. (Waiting for PA to be called?)
Here is 538 on the PA provisionals.
His view is similar to Wasserman's. To me the bigger question isds how many actual mail-ins are really still out there? That is where SoS and counties do not always match. Good new is Allegheny should have a good chunk of 29K to come out. (Tonight? I hope.)
I just want it over and as big a margin as possible.
316: thanks! Not as hopeful as I'd like, but better than nothing!
My mind is tired. Have there been any good articles about voters in the Rio Grande Valley? For whatever reason I haven't seen one go by.
Interesting observation by Wasserman:
True story: Trump is currently winning a higher share of the vote than he won in '16 in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - but he's lost Michigan and Wisconsin and trails in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
This is getting absurd. Biden now up over 21k in PA. Remaining pool of votes increasingly well understood. A chunk of very Biden mail-in votes, and another similar-sized chunk o fprovisionals that may range from slightly Trumpy to (more likely) solidly Biden.
A 3rd group (the Sam Alito specials) that will have arrived between e-day and today will certainly be much smaller. Allegheny apparently got 952, extrapolating to the state would be about 10K. And if counted they would most likely be very Biden like the other mail-ins.
314: Big dump was 55-44 Trump. So not enough for what he needed, but not enough to definitively close the door. (Less Trumpy than prior days, but more so than this AM.)
Margin is 29K.
Apparently no more Philly dumps tonight.
Be nice if the Allegheny 29K mail-ins came in tonight.
328: That would be the Maricopa (AZ) one.
Ranking of absurdity of not calling:
1. NV- there is no pool of Trump leaning ballots. Every single release expands Biden's lead
2. PA- Even if the provisionals are less blue than usual there's no way Trump will win them 80-20. He hasn't won any set of ballots anywhere in the state 80-20 and the provisionals are overweighted to Philly and Pittsburgh
3. GA- close margin but least remaining votes. Even if all outstanding overseas votes were returned on time, Trump has to win them 75-25 and they've been 50-50 at most. Barring a tabulation error it's over.
4. AZ- Trump keeps coming in under targets which just raises the target for future polls. But not outside possibility he gets a good set.
Unknown- NC I'd probably put more callable than PA but no updates until next week so who knows.
On another note, is anyone slightly miffed that people treat Kornacki's ability to convert differences to ratios as some kind of wizardry? Maybe I'm just saying that because my wife said she and her middle aged wives book club find his khakis sexy, even though they know he's gay.
I guess least remaining should be fewest remaining, right?
Your math skills are amazing- how do you do that?
Thanks to the power of Belgian beer.
I assume the relative increase in 326 is ascribable to all the people who voted libertarian or something else miscellaneous as a "never-Trump" gesture coming around to love the ownage.
3rd Party voters are basically assholes.
I've watched more cable news this week than I have in the last four years combined and TV commercials are just bizarre when you're not used to them.
Still haven't turned on the TV!
And still paying for cable!
Why, peep, why,?
(K votes from Allegheny add 5.4K to Biden's lead. Presumably from the pool of 29K mail-ins.
Cable is money down the toilet. You can even get Columbo on the aerial.
337: Yes, but I think 2016 drew a chunk of Republicans to third party where they hadn't been before.
2012: Libt 1%, Const 0.09%.
2016: Libt 3.3%, McMullin 0.5%, Const 0.15%.
Anyway, the PA provisional ballots are not going to be fewer Biden than the mail-in ones by any appreciable amount. Trump fucked the post office so that people didn't get their mail-in ballots, so they had to vote provisionally.
Is Biden coming on TV or is he still in his basement or what?
Not that I even own a TV. Or subscribe to cable, rather.
Couldn't 326 be the result of most of the 2016 third party voters switching to Biden?
I don't own a TV, but my wife's TV is showing George Stephanopolis and I'm surprised he doesn't look older.
I guess it makes sense that there's a Delaware County PA, but I don't seem to be able to recall learning that before. I remember the one in Ohio.
My medium-information relatives still think PA is a tossup.
I get that objectively it would be a very bad thing no matter what and that innocent people are at great risk of being killed and I'm very glad the FBI stopped it, but between you and me, of all the things I'm worried about this election, none of them are that a few rednecks from Virginia are going to turn the election by driving up to Philadelphia with guns in their hands and Trump up their colon.
Delaware County is the one that's not any bigger than Philadelphia County itself. Then the large counties surrounding Philly are Chester, Montgomery and Bucks (L-R).
Since Philadelphia is 5 times as big as Pittsburgh, there are 5 dense suburban counties around Philadelphia (including Philadelphia County) while Pittsburgh AND all its suburbs are within one county.
The one thing I don't forget is the there's a Berks County.
Is that like a Kansas City, Kansas-Kansas city MO thing?
Berks County and Bucks County are among the many PA counties that are just named after English Counties. (Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, they call them over there)
Anyway, Pittsburgh has suburbs in Butler, Washington, and Westmoreland Counties. I hardly ever go that far, but people do.
Another 2,400 votes for Biden (of 3200) from Allegheny County.
Somebody call this fuckery done. They cheated and chiseled and lied. They still can't get the win.
I heard Biden on the TV from downstairs, but I didn't hear "dickless, shitsucking crapweasel", so I'm guessing he didn't declare victory.
NH has a neighboring Londonderry and Derry although as far as I know they don't hate each other.
My hometown has a Londonderry Drive. It was founded by a Fenian. And a very dedicated one. People suck at remembering shit, but at least it's better than who ever dyed the beer green.
I guess it makes sense that there's a Delaware County PA,
There is a Delaware County MD, too. Some people call it the State of Delaware, but I don't recognize that.
Mark Meadows has Covid? Is that new?
364: yup. Presumably he'll get extraordinary care, but he's 61, so one never knows.
And at least 4 other white house staff. Funny how that keeps happening there.
https://twitter.com/sarahcpr/status/1324997826657595392?s=21
Meanwhile over on Fox viewers getting excellent analysis and insight on election bote counting. This is Mike Flynn's current lawyer BTW.
Emptywheels's comment:
For those of you who haven't closely followed Sidney Powell's batshit challenge to Mike Flynn's prosecution, it all goes like this, but Powell got Billy Barr to deploy DOJ resources to serve the batshittery, which resulted in tampered documents.
Even if you don't ever click the links click this one. This is crazy pure undiluted "Blue Sky" of wingnuttery. High art.
Might help you understand why Judge Sullivan has been do unrelenting in the Flynn case.
Not sure what the pool of votes it represented but Georgia vote total went up from 4k to 7k.
Also Wasserman with some middle of the night deep dive on Philly precincts. Suggests naive extrapolaters may be underestimating Biden's gains to cone from there. (Although he notes some are in college areas so may have actual low turnout.)
Of course it is all just mapping the exact position of the deckchairs on Mr. Trump's Titanic.
And a good reminder for all that all of our favorite narratives that rely on turn out numbers in areas not completely counted* are even more hot garbage than the ones based on full counts.
*For instance some going around about New York ir especially those bemoaning "low turnout" iin early days after election in 2016.
And Fox joined in the general call a few minutes later - the epistemological bubble is pierced.
Whoops in the streets.
Hahahahahahahahaha cheers and love and joy to all!
373.last: Giggles between the sheets
I've poured the bubbly, but I really just want to celebrate by curling up under the covers and sleeping soundly for the first time in a long time.
Yes. I've been waking up early for no reason lots lately.
Finally. Now we just have to get through to late January without something regrettable happening.
Why would you even entertain such a remote possibility?
Cars honking and some firecrackers in my neighborhood. Whew.
I'll post a victory thread, hang on.
Ume and I just watched a chunk of Rudi G. I'm with ajay.
But we still broke out the pink champagne.
382: My wife watched that and called me to share the angst. My response was to suggest not tieing her emotional state in any way to the actions or words of Rudy Giuliani.
But you guys are absolutely right that it is going to be an utter shitshow.
My daughter: Onward to the next anxiety!