US Election Week 2020

[Syt]

So we have this criminal county sheriff who is presently indicted for felony evidence tampering after he destroyed a video to cover up the murder of Javier Ambler last year by his deputies. Fortunately, despite the asshole spending shitloads of money to stay in office he lost by 12 points. The new Sheriff will be the first Democrat to hold a county wide office in this county in 25 years. We will see if he can hold it.

But that was an election we just had to win. The guy should be in prison but for now just having him out of office is a good start.

I saw a story on Twitter where some sheriff had fired a deputy for being an out lesbian. She was elected in his stead now.

[11B4V]

https://www.insider.com/sheriff-fired-lesbian-deputy-shes-been-elected-to-replace-him-2020-11

[11B4V]

But damn georgia , you go....

[Sheilbh]

Just wondering, what is the chance that it wasn't polling that was garbage, but vote counting?  We don't know how many ballots are considered voided, do we?  Maybe it's a horrifically high number.

I think I saw something about the spoilage being normal - but that may have just been for one state.

Also apparently political scientists who've looked into various polling failures haven't found evidence of "shy" voters. But lots of evidence of unrepresentative samples and weighting errors.

I don't think you guys should assume that everyone voting for Trump is in love with him or anything.

A lot of people in 2016 voted for Trump, not because they liked him, but because they despised Hillary and viewed her as an existential threat to the republic.

I don't know if a lot of people voting for Trump in 2020 are mainly voting against Biden, but it seems possible too.

I think there are fewer people who really hate Biden in that way though. But also isn't there a difference between taking a chance on Trump in 2016 and voting for him after the last four years?

And he has kept and expanded his base. I think Trumpism has consequences for the GOP (I posted a really good New Yorker piece on this - I don't know which side wins). But I think it may be it's own thing almost semi divorced from the GOP. So I saw one possibility that strikes me as plausible, Trumpism becomes a bit like an American Peronism: highly mobilising, highly polarising, not always in power, but always there (possibly always there as an option for the GOP). I think that is partly an inherent risk in a Presidential system. A President and their electorate have a relationship, it's always zero-sum/referendumy and there's always a risk if the President starts conflating their electorate with "the people" which is, I think, what Trump has done since day one.

What is the likely hood of Biden winning PA and GA?

Pennsylvania looks very good the mail ballots so far are still breaking about 75-80/25-20 in Biden's favour which will be enough to win - I think if it keeps up, given the number of votes, it would end up with Biden winning by about 2% (same as Michigan). Georgia looks very close and probably will get a recount.

Edit: It is insane to me that how many problems are being caused and probably millions of people will believe the election is actually being stolen or fraudulent, all because of one man's chronic insecurities

[merithyn]

As of right now,  Biden has 3.4 million more votes than Trump. Knowing that is likely to grow to over 4 million makes me happier.

[Threviel]

Yeah, but take out California and it's even.

[Valmy]

Yeah, but take out California and it's even.

Well let me know when you take out California.

[Tamas]

WTH how long is this going to take?

[Admiral Yi]

WTH how long is this going to take?

Sounds like Maricopa will take forever.

tldnw: reporter says they have 450k to count, doing 6-8k an hour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK8yShONfJ

woops forgotted link

[katmai]

WTH how long is this going to take?

we should hope to know Nevada at Noon eastern time tomorrow. No idea Georgia, PA or Arizona

[Syt]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/liberal-election-fantasy-loses-trumpism-wins/2020/11/04/ca79be4c-1e91-11eb-90dd-abd0f7086a91_story.html

The fantasy of repudiating Trumpism is dead

So you were hoping for a "repudiation." A resounding rejection of Trump and Trumpism.

Election officials and news outlets had spent the better part of the month warning us that this would be an election week, not an election day, and still in some liberal circles there was a jacked-up fantasy that nobody would have to wait for Pennsylvania's tortured ballot count because by 10 p.m. Joe Biden would turn Florida and North Carolina blue — and maybe Texas, why not?

Sorry. As John King or Steve Kornacki spent the night informing viewers from their respective magic walls, President Trump over-performed in myriad polling measures. There would be no landslides, only squeakers and clenched jaws — and, possibly, court fights.

Win or lose, Trumpism will not have been swept into the dustbin of history; it will remain all over the furniture. It's part of the furniture. Unsweepable.

Anecdote isn't evidence, but I'll note that for the past two years, the demographics in my inbox who most fervently believed in a 2020 blue landslide were White liberal men and occasionally White liberal women. Surely, they insisted, what had happened in 2016 was a blip. Hillary Clinton had been uniquely flawed, the country uniquely complacent, Donald Trump uniquely novel. The results didn't really reflect America. Black women would save the party; Black women would save us all.

The Black women who wrote to me, meanwhile, were exhausted and often worried. To them, 2016 didn't feel like a blip. It felt like the America they'd already been living in for decades was finally made visible to the rest of the country. Yes, it had always been racist. Yes, it had always been sexist. Yes, yes, yes.

If you, like Biden, have had the recurring privilege of sadly shaking your head and saying, "This isn't who we are," what you really meant was, "This isn't who I've ever had to see us be." What you really meant was, "This isn't my America. . . . Crap, is it yours?"

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court was reshaped, and conspiracy theories multiplied, and 230,000 Americans died in a pandemic, and children were in cages, and however the race ends up, as of mid-Wednesday morning Trump had amassed 3 million more votes nationwide than he did in 2016: According to exit polls, he performed worse among White men, but slightly better among voters of color (Biden, at the same time Wednesday, was ahead in the popular vote by more than 2 million). On Tuesday a Georgia congressional seat was won by a QAnon believer, and a North Carolina seat was won by a 25-year-old Republican who used the dawning moments of his career as a U.S. representative to tweet out, "Cry more, lib."

The bad parts of America are not blips, they're characteristics. For every stone monument to democracy, an enslaved person forced to build a monument to democracy. For every "All men are created equal," a reminder that it really did only mean men, and only some of them. For every barrier-breaker like Sarah McBride, the newly elected transgender Delaware state senator, who openheartedly tweeted, "Thank you, thank you, thank you," there is a "cry more, lib." Do you know how hard it is to love this place sometimes?

Maybe the closeness of this election will make us revisit Hillary Clinton: It wasn't so much that she was flawed as that we were. Older White male candidates don't guarantee a tidal wave, either.

Still, votes are being counted.

Wisconsin was red for most of the night, and then Milwaukee and the mail-ins arrived, and around 4 or 5 in the morning, Biden pulled tenuously ahead. By 9 a.m. CNN's chryon read, "Biden takes lead in tight Michigan race," and a Detroit election official tersely told Chris Cuomo that more results could have come in while she was waiting on air to talk to him.

Pennsylvania isn't guaranteeing anything until Friday, officials have said, and chances are decent that it will come down to Pennsylvania again. Georgia isn't out of the game for Democrats, either — its mail-in ballots are still trickling in.

Biden might not lose. But some of the pillars of Americana he ran on — decency, truthfulness (or at least accountability for lying your tail off), a prevailing respect for science and history — may emerge all the shakier.

You can't effectively repudiate a worldview that nearly half the country believes in. Or at least, is willing to vote for.

[celedhring]

WTH how long is this going to take?

Christ, the wait is killing me 

O say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
the votes we still counted at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad chads and bright crayons through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we count'd, with Nate Silver gallantly streaming?
Despite the map's red glare, or Trump bursting in hot air,
We had hope through the night that the votes were still there;
O say do we still for election results have to wait
On the land of the free and the home of the brave?

[Valmy]

I mean even the most optimistic predictions of a humiliating Trumpist route still had 45% or so of the country voting for him.

[Syt]

Washington Post shows Trump with 68,052,419 votes so far. That's more than any other winning president, except Obama in 2008 (69,498,516).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin

[garbon]

Yeah, but take out California and it's even.

Curious