PART II – NOVEMBER ELECTION
11/3/20 (Predawn Hours): The blogger can’t sleep. Worried. Trump might be reelected. Awful.
If you prefer Joe Biden, take heart. Several states and districts which were “battlegrounds” in 2016 appear out of reach for Trump now. Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Maine 1 are examples.
Also take heart knowing that almost a hundred million Americans have already cast ballots. Until a week ago, Biden had an eight-point lead, nationally, in an average of all polls. This morning that lead has shrunk to 6.7 points, but with Democrats also holding a 6.8 point lead in the generic ballot (which party do voters hope will control the next Congress). In other words, there appears to be no evidence that a great “red wave” is coming, as the president predicts.
BLOGGER’S NOTE:
Final results show Biden winning by 4.4 points, 51.3% to 46.9%.
Once again, the polls were generally accurate.
*
(Election Night): No more polling required! Americans trudge to the polls, or the mailbox, as it were.
Turnout is reportedly huge.
Much to this blogger’s surprise, watching early returns, it appears that Trump might win another term. First, he takes Florida with relative ease, the victory not unexpected, but the margin a shock. Ohio also goes for Trump by an eight-point margin, which makes this Ohioan sad.
Even worse, Trump rolls up a big lead in Pennsylvania.
(Sound of blogger gagging.)
I stay up till 1:30 a.m. looking for signs of hope. Then I turn in, but sleep fitfully for three hours. At 4:30 a.m. I wake and start checking my phone.
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11/4/20: Just after 2 a.m., President Trump declares victory, and insists counting of the ballots should end.
I rise again early, and watch all day as more and more returns pour in. The trends in almost all the battleground states are running light or dark blue. It seems clear our side has a real chance to win. I knew, for example, because, unlike the president, I stay informed, that in Pennsylvania at least a million more Democrats voted by mail than Republicans.
That meant, while Trump had a lead of 700,000 in the Keystone State, that as ballots were opened and tallied, his lead might evaporate.
(I also knew that Pennsylvania law required mail-in ballots to be counted last.)
Late returns from Milwaukee pushed Biden into a lead in Wisconsin. The “red mirage” faded in Michigan. Trump voters had showed up at the polls in person and their votes had been counted first. Now, as blue mail-in votes were recorded, the “mirage” of a Trump win in Michigan died.
Biden also built a lead in Arizona – and Fox News called the state for Biden. President Trump was livid.
I was worried the call had come too soon; but I knew we’d keep counting the votes until we found out if Fox was right.
Texas remained red. Nevada was trending blue again. And Georgia? Georgia was the palest pink when the day started. Those who studied voting numbers pointed out that almost all remaining votes were going to be reported out of the heavily-populated blue areas in and around Atlanta.
When I went to bed on November 4, I was no longer depressed. I was fairly sure we had votes to win.
P.S. Many heavily Democratic areas tally votes last because they’re heavily populated areas, and counts must be checked and rechecked. Fulton County in Georgia, for example, will have more than half-a-million votes to count. Turner County, in the very same state, will have only 3,700.
Greeley County, Kansas, polled a total of 627 votes for president in 2020. I’ve bicycled through that county. I know what it’s like.
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Kansas. |
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11/5/20: My wife and I spend the day watching vote totals change. In Pennsylvania, something like 500,000 mail-in ballots remain to process. Trump’s fat lead has shriveled to 136,000. If Democrats continue to rack up huge margins in mail votes (since we were told to vote by mail and not risk catching COVID-19), Biden has an excellent chance of wiping out Trump’s lead.
Nevada is still reporting only 75% of the vote. Trump trails by 8,000. So: he could still win that state.
And here’s a final oddity – a Trump scam, if you will – for his fans to ponder. Right now, Team Trump is insisting that vote counting in Pennsylvania (where he leads) come to a halt.
In Arizona, where Biden leads by 68,000, the president is demanding that the tallying continue to the bitter end.
P.S. Many heavily Democratic areas tally votes last because they’re heavily populated areas, and counts must be checked and rechecked. Fulton County in Georgia, for example, will have more than half-a-million votes to count. Turner County, in the very same state, will have only 3,700.
Greeley County, Kansas, polled a total of 627 votes for president in 2020. I’ve bicycled through that county. I know what it’s like.
I head for bed Thursday feeling good. Georgia is teetering. There’s a chance it may turn pale blue.
___
11/6/20: I woke up very early this morning to news that the State of Georgia had gone blue, at least for now.
Joe Biden had a 3,500-vote lead. The president’s chances of being reelected were slipping away.
As the hours passed, it was clear that the President of the United States was losing the last marbles he possessed. He stalked to the podium in the White House press room and insisted that the election was being stolen, because state election officials kept counting all the votes they received. In Pennsylvania, what had been a large Trump lead, built on votes from those who showed up in person, began to disappear as several million mail-in ballots were tallied.
In Arizona and Nevada, where Trump trailed, Republicans insisted that only communists would try to stop the counting before every vote could be tallied.
In Arizona, as more votes are counted, Biden’s lead is sliced in half. It looks like Trump might win. So, we need to count the votes.
Nevada, too, might slip from Biden’s grasp.
Meanwhile, as hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots are tallied, Trump’s once impressive lead in Pennsylvania vanishes. Biden moves ahead. This has nothing to do with “fraud” and everything to do with the fact Democratic leaders had urged supporters to get ballots in early, by mail.
Money in the electoral bank.
Indeed, if you had tried your best to be informed, you would have known this was coming. On October 12, it was reported that Pennsylvania had received 2.6 million mail-in ballot requests. That figure included 1,794,448 Democrats but only 693,670 Republicans, the rest independents.
It was clear then, that Republicans might have a lead when in-person votes were counted. It would have to be huge.
1,794,448
– 693,670
??? Potential Democratic gain in mail-in voting
This math problem was much too hard for the president, or Lou Dobbs, or Sean Hannity, or all three combined, to figure out.
So, as the president’s lead shrank and then disappeared, he and they squealed like punctured porkers.
Pennsylvania’s Republican senator, Pat Toomey, chastised the president for making wild, unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
By Friday night, additional counting showed Biden with a lead in Georgia that had grown to more than 4,000. In Nevada, Biden’s lead had also grown. In Arizona it continued to trickle away. The biggest prize, Pennsylvania, was getting away from Mr. Trump. Biden’s lead passed 20,000. Even in counties where the same-day vote had given Trump 2-1 leads, mail-in ballots were running in favor of Mr. Biden.
Once it became clear that Biden was going to end the day with a slender lead in Georgia, Trump supporters who had been shouting that it was past time to stop the count, suddenly started shouting anew. “Let the counting go forward!” they cried.
Several thousand ballots from U.S. military men and women overseas were still coming in. I knew military votes tended to run red, so I knew, because I’m not a fool like Mr. Trump, that he could still carry the Peach State.
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11/7/20: You know what they say, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” So true, for President Trump.
As votes pile up, Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania grows. The trend is clear. He’s going to gain the state’s twenty electoral votes and send Trump packing after one tumultuous term.
Symbolically, Trump happens to be golfing – symbolically, again, at one of his private courses – at the moment Fox News, CNN, the Associated Press, and other news services declare Mr. Biden, “President-Elect.” (The BBC does have film of the president playing golf again.)
Back at the White House after his round of golf, the president tweets in all-CAPS, red-hot fury:
THE OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED INTO THE COUNTING ROOMS. I WON THE ELECTION, GOT 71,000,000 LEGAL VOTES. BAD THINGS HAPPENED WHICH OUR OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE. NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WERE SENT TO PEOPLE WHO NEVER ASKED FOR THEM!
If Arizona remains blue, let’s give it up for the Navajo Nation. In three counties that overlap their lands, the Navajo people gave Joe Biden 73,954 votes.
Trump got 2,010.
Biden’s lead in the state when I last checked: less than 20,000.
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