Re: The Awesomesauce of the American 2020 Presidential Elections
Reply #111 –
Here's where it stands today:
Six states to decide the election
Joe Biden is now the favorite to win the presidency, and Republicans are favored to keep Senate control — but both results are far from certain. And Democrats failed to win the resounding victory that pre-election polls had suggested they could.
Here’s where we stand after a topsy-turvy election night, in which the situation shifted multiple times:
The outcome is unclear in six swing states — Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and all are still counting votes. We may get some final vote counts today, while others could take a few days.
“Biden’s the favorite, even if narrowly, just about everywhere,” Nate Cohn of The Times tweeted, listing five of the six states above (all but North Carolina). Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics agreed: “Would probably rather be Biden than Trump.”
The outstanding ballots are mostly mail-in ballots, which are likely to favor Biden, because more Democrats than Republicans voted early this year. He leads in the current vote count in Nevada and Wisconsin, while Trump leads in the remaining four. “I don’t think people have fully internalized how Democratic these mail and absentee ballots will be in MI/PA/WI,” Nate wrote.
If Biden holds onto his lead in Nevada and Wisconsin, he would need to win only one of three states — Georgia, Michigan or Pennsylvania — to secure a majority of electoral votes (and could still lose North Carolina).
The counting of ballots seems likely to be slowest in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Officials in Pennsylvania have said they expect all votes to be counted by Friday.
Even with Biden’s seeming advantages at this point, the country has never experienced an election with such heavy voting by mail, which creates significant uncertainty. It is entirely possible that Trump will retain his lead in the states where he now leads and win the election.
The situation in the Senate is different — and more favorable to Republicans. They appear to be in a strong position to retain Senate control, which would give them a veto over nearly all of a President Biden’s legislative plans.
Democrats needed to win at least five of the 14 competitive Senate races and have so far won only two. Six races remain up in the air. The only incumbent Republicans to have lost are Martha McSally in Arizona and Cory Gardner in Colorado.
[New York Times, newsletter... }
As many people (and organizations) have noted, the "news" stations do not determine the outcome of the election. No matter how much they want to...
@Barulheira: You've got it right. I wish some others would grasp the simplicity of the matter: The U.S. is not nor was it ever meant to be a democracy... But it can be and often is a united people.
Wait and see.