November 06 , 2020
Biden Edges ahead
America went to vote on November 3, though actually 100 million Americans voted early, and the results were much closer than polling had predicted. In national polls before the vote, Biden was up about 7-8%, but looks like he will win by 3-4%. In the all-important Electoral College, this election turns out to be very close indeed.
Many Democrats were hoping for a “Blue Wave” that would see them winning back the traditional Democratic states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the three states that Trump won by the tiniest margins in 2016 to give him the White House. But the wave was supposed to also wash over many other Trump states, places like Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and perhaps even Texas and Ohio.
When the votes actually came in, Trump was able to hold onto Ohio, Texas, and Florida. He won Florida by almost 3%, Texas by 5% and Ohio by 8%. The big story in Florida was in Miami, where Hispanic voters moved sharply to Trump. Many of these voters are Cuban-Americans or Venezuelan-Americans, refugees from failed socialist experiments in Cuba and Venezuela, and Trump’s appeal that Biden was a socialist clearly worked with them.
The one big win for Biden was in Arizona, which voted Democratic for only the second time in 80 years (Bill Clinton won it in 1992). Biden also won a single electoral vote in the split voting that happens in Nebraska by winning Omaha and its suburbs. With those pickups, he only needed to win two out of the three states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to win the White House.
On election night however, Trump was actually winning in all three of those states. He quickly moved to capitalize on that lead and declare himself the winner and demand further vote counting be stopped. But in all three states the bulk of votes consisted of mail ballots, and they had not been counted. Because Democrats used mail ballots while Republicans tended to vote in person, this greatly skewed the early numbers, creating a “Red mirage”, hinting that Trump was ahead. In fact, once a large number of mail ballots were counted in Wisconsin and Michigan, Biden already took the lead in both states by Wednesday morning, while Pennsylvania still has over a million ballots to count. Based on how those ballots are predicted to go, Biden should win all three states, giving him the White House.
What happened to Democratic hopes in the South? In a word, they fell short almost everywhere. But all hope is not lost. Large numbers of ballots in the Atlanta area, which are mostly Democratic votes, and mail ballots still to arrive in North Carolina, leave the final outcome uncertain. As of now, the New York Times thinks Biden is likely to win Georgia but lose North Carolina when the final tallies occur.
The Democrats will hold on to the House, but their hopes of gaining control of the Senate look highly unlikely. Two Republican Senators they were counting on defeating, Collins in Maine and Tillis in North Carolina, appear to have won. Other possible wins in Iowa and Montana also failed to take place. The Democrats did pick up seats in Arizona and Colorado, but they need to pick up two more to get control. They might have a chance in a Georgia seat that is going to a runoff in January, and it is still possible that Collins might lose in Maine when the full count comes in. But those are longshots at this point.
One casualty of the evening was the polling industry. They clearly missed the national popular support for Trump, and he appears to have run 4 points better than predicted. This is a significant error. In 2016 the polls nationally were only off by 1 point. What caused this? We need to further dissect exactly what happened with voting patterns, but the main source of error is probably the vast surge in turnout of voters. It looks like 15-20 million more votes were cast in 2020 than 2016, and Trump did much better with these than many expected. All polls use models of what the demographics of the electorate will be, and if those models are off, the polls will also be off.
For Trump, this defeat, even though narrow, is still going to be catastrophic. Without the shield of the Presidency, he is going to be subject to massive legal scrutiny of his taxes and finances. The main bank that he owes money to, Deutsche Bank, is also rumored to want his outstanding loans of about 400 million dollars repaid rather than rolled over as they have done in the past. Trump’s businesses will also suffer from his loss of prestige and the fact that half the country despises him. He may even have to file for bankruptcy again in a few years, if he doesn’t end up facing tax fraud charges likely to come out of New York state.
For Biden, a win is a win. He looks set to be the 46th President of the US. He is coming into a nation in crisis, roiled by a pandemic that has killed nearly 300,000 people, and an economy in recession. His ability to govern effectively is going to be contingent on Republican Senators willing to work with him, and that is a dubious proposition. Without control of the Senate, his hopes of being a leader of major progressive change will have to wait.
