2020 Election Results

[TV and credit cards]

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history."

The statement from cybersecurity experts, which trumpeted the Nov. 3 election as the most secure in American history, amounted to the most direct reputation to date of Trump’s efforts to undermine the integrity of the contest. It echoed repeated assertions by election experts and state officials that the election unfolded smoothly without broad irregularities.

“When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.”

They used the word "trust" in a sentence.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Pardon Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Ross Ulbrecht. Then also issue blanked pardons or commutations for federal prisoners who are in for petty charges.
Pull all troops out of the Mid-East, south Asia, and Africa, so that it will be impossible to ramp back up without sending initial troops in.
Declassify all the material about the US government spying on the US people.
Declassify all the material about US government interference on foreign elections.
Declassify politically motivated political probes into US citizens.
Take Marijuana off the DEA schedule entirely.

You have to admit, if Trump did that on the way out it really would sabotage the Biden administration.

That sounds like your wish list, not Don's. Nothing on that list gets him any money.

It would still screw over Biden.

Biden's base wants those pardons. Biden's advisors don't. If Trump did it, he would be the one pleasing Biden's base.
Biden's base wants peace. Biden's advisors are all war-mongering neocons. If Trump pulled the troops out, then it wouldn't be a matter of ramping back up. It would be a brand new invasion, and that would mean coming up with a "justification" for each new invasion. For Biden to do what his advisors want, he will have to do exactly the opposite of what his base wants.
A majority of the country is against the drug war. Of course Biden and Harris are both very incredibly tough on crime. Not that most people remember it, as it has been conveniently forgotten, but it is true. If Trump deschedules Marijuana, Biden would have to re-schedule it to have his way. That would really alienate his supporters.
The declassification is his way of getting revenge on those who worked so hard over the last four years to oppose him, and that includes the very same people who are part of the "return to normal". Telling people what the government actually does will hamstring the ability of the government to do that in the near future, rendering Biden / Harris powerless in those areas, the very areas where they desire power the most.

They would lack much of their power to abuse people, which is the power politicians crave the most. Although it doesn't make Trump any money, it does give him revenge. He hamstrings their ability to act while giving Biden's base exactly what they want but Biden will never deliver.

 

[repoman]

This is on just about all Youtube videos about the election

 

[lpetrich]

At least one Republican is considering what next for the Republican Party after the defeat of Trump.
Rubio says the GOP needs to reset after 2020 - Axios

"The future of the party is based on a multiethnic, multiracial working class coalition," said Rubio.

He has said similar things in the past, and it will be interesting to see where it goes. ...

If Rubio wants to run on this message in 2024 he has a big hill to climb. Good luck to him.

This was said by a few after '08 and '12. And then they nominated a Bigoted Troll in '16.

I agree. Let's see if anything comes of that.

 

[lpetrich]

The 2020 data says, 'that was close' | TheHill

In spite of polls indicating that the election would be a rout, with President Trump having little chance to win many, if any, of the key battleground states, he secured convincing victories in Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida. In fact, he is the first sitting president since 1892 to win Ohio but not win reelection.

A deep dive into the data indicates that when comparing the 2016 and 2020 elections, Trump’s 2020 loss was by a much narrower margin than Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss.

In 2016, Clinton lost three critical states (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) by under 78,000 votes out of just under 14 million votes cast. If she had succeeded in winning all three of these states, she would have narrowly won the election.

In 2020, Trump is on track to lose three critical states (Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona) by a combined 76,000 votes out of just over 15 million (and still being counted) votes cast. He also won North Carolina by around the same number of votes, a hotly contested battleground state, nearly matching his total losing margin for Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona. If he had succeeded in winning all three of these states, he would have won the election, in spite of losing the popular vote (as he did in 2016).

Trump is ahead in NC by 1.3%, but Biden is ahead in GA by 0.29%, in AZ by 0.33%, in WI by 0.63%, in PA by 0.81%, in MI by 2.6%, in NV by 2.7%, and in MN by 7.1%.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It was close? Was it?

Biden defeated an incumbent with a strong majority, both popular and EV, not a record, but it was notable. Even with Iraq falling apart and large turnout for Dems in '04, W won re-election. Trump's defeat appears small, but the reality is, to turn the inertia against an incumbent, you need a huge response. And the Dems got it. Now the question remains "how and how to recapture it?" .

A full autopsy is needed. And Stacy Abrams is one of the key surgeons to teach the docs what needs to be done. It'll likely be a multiple lessons thing. Firstly, turnout, turnout, turnout. It seems money needs to go to feet on the ground, not television. The TV is for keeping the opponent from creating your message. The feet on the ground is to get out the vote!

Ohio and Iowa could be lost. Trump screwed the farmers with his fucked up trade war. They still voted for him. Ohio might be suffering from Brain Drain. Pennsylvania, could be trending purple. If this is the case, North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona need to be on the long term plan (starting immediately in 2024). We also need to find out what the heck is so different from Minnesota and Wisconsin!

 

[lpetrich]

Trump retreats from public eye in post-election fight | TheHill - "President Trump has gone a full week without making any public comments beyond his Twitter feed, a rare instance of extended absence as he refuses to concede the election."

I saw a short interview with John Bolton in a YouTube video clip, and JB seemed like a model of reason about the election. Trump lost the vote, and his lawsuits are unsupportable. But he looked forward to a future Reaganite Presidency.

 

[lpetrich]

Underwood wins reelection in Illinois House race | TheHill - race called by the Associated Press
She defeated IL State Senator Jim Oberweis (R) with a margin of 1.1%.

Lauren Underwood on Twitter: "It’s official -- we won! I’m so honored to continue to represent our community’s values in Congress. Thank you for all of your support. https://t.co/ArOPb0hBRu" / Twitter

She has this video message:
Lauren Underwood on Twitter: "To all the voters who entrusted me with your vote, and to those of you who voted for my opponent: I hear you, I see you and I am here to serve you. There's a lot of work ahead, but I know we can do it -- together. https://t.co/WHfWSAOa71" / Twitter

She will have some friends:
Marie Newman on Twitter: "HUGE congratulations to @LaurenUnderwood and the hundreds of volunteers across #IL14 who made this possible. Cannot wait to work together with you soon! " / Twitter

AirKingNeo on Twitter: "@Marie4Congress @LaurenUnderwood I am so glad. I really, really, really did not want to be represented by a "free market" fundamentalist kind of person." / Twitter

Katie Hill on Twitter: "So proud of you @LaurenUnderwood and grateful to call you a friend. Your constituents and our country need you now more than ever " / Twitter
Katie Hill and Lauren Underwood were roommates while KH was in office as CA-25 Rep.

In the latest count for that seat, Mike Garcia (R) leads Christy Smith (D) by 0.07% -- 219 votes.


The Hill on Twitter: "Rubio calls on GOP to rebrand as party of "multiethnic, multiracial, working class" voters (links)" / Twitter
Linking to my earlier-mentioned article.

With this cute response:
Murtaza M. Hussain on Twitter: "Marco Rubio is joining The Squad" / Twitter

But,
Ilhan Omar on Twitter: "Membership rejected *" / Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "@IlhanMN By unanimous vote " / Twitter

 

[blastula]

Check out the be Fox News barbie torching the orange liar.

[TWEET]https://twitter.com/JacquiHeinrich/status/1327098471661367296?s=20[/TWEET]

What is going on?

 

[bilby]

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history."

The statement from cybersecurity experts, which trumpeted the Nov. 3 election as the most secure in American history, amounted to the most direct reputation to date of Trump’s efforts to undermine the integrity of the contest. It echoed repeated assertions by election experts and state officials that the election unfolded smoothly without broad irregularities.

“When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.”

They used the word "trust" in a sentence.

Do they mean "repudiation"?

 

[lpetrich]

Editorial board of Adelson-backed newspaper tells Trump it's time to face reality - POLITICO

“In fact, rhetoric from Trump surrogates alleging widespread illegal activity has been devoid of detailed evidence supporting the charge that there was a concerted effort to ‘steal’ the election through corruption,” states the editorial published Wednesday night. “An electoral system that involves the participation of 150 million Americans will have its share of issues, but it’s an insult to reason and logic to argue that isolated irregularities constitute proof of a grand national conspiracy.”

That's why it hasn't gotten very far in the courts. I remember a video of a court delivering a smackdown to "Birther Queen" Orly Taitz for that reason also. She didn't provide any evidence that Barack Obama was born outside the US, and was thus ineligible for the Presidency.

The paper noted that Republicans down ballot from Trump outperformed expectations and preelection polls — a fact that has Republican candidates pretzeling themselves to fit within the president’s characterization of the election.

“Why, if there were some orchestrated Democratic attempt to rig the balloting, did the party underachieve in congressional and statewide balloting across the country?” the editorial asks.

Very good point.

 

[Treedbear]

The theory about massive voter fraud hinges on the idea that when you suddenly switch to using mail-in ballots the states haven't had time to prepare by updating their voter registrations so they don't send them out to dead people or to the wrong address. But of the 9 states plus DC that sent unsolicited ballots to all voters, only California, Nevada, Vermont, New Jersey, and DC did it for the first time. So how is it possible that these five would have gone for Trump? Maybe Nevada with its 6 EV's. Not much there to hang your hat on.

 

[Swammerdami]

... Biden is ahead in GA by 0.29%, in AZ by 0.33%, in WI by 0.63%, in PA by 0.81%, in MI by 2.6%, in NV by 2.7%, and in MN by 7.1%.

Biden can lose any TWO of these seven states and still get to 270 EV's. (If he loses the biggest two — PA and either MI or GA — he still gets 270 exactly, with single-EV Omaha tipping him over the top!)

And yet Betfair is still taking bets on the outcome of this election, with odds showing Trump as almost 9% to win! ::wow:: :: It may be partly due to happy Biden betters who want their money in play elsewhere and are willing to cash in their Biden tickets for 91 cents on the dollar ... but a week ago they could have had over 95 cents on the dollar.

One part of the explanation is "the long-shot bias." David Rothschild, a statistician who uses betting markets to form probability estimates, writes about this, well known from earlier journal articles (though I don't recall Rothschild applying it for the odds quoted at his own website, Predictwise.com).

The "long-shot bias" is discounted by replacing a derived probability p with
. . . . p' = φ(1.64 · φ^-1(p))
(φ() is the function which replaces a std-deviation measure with its corresponding probability. The factor 1.64 was derived empirically.)

When this adjustment is applied the 9% Trump win-probability becomes just 1.4% But even that seems large enough to concern.

 

[lpetrich]

'Dejected' Trump continues to waffle over waging baseless election fight - CNNPolitics - "Trump himself was waffling by the hour and day between a pugilistic desire to keep fighting and a more resigned attitude that his efforts will ultimately fail, people who spoke to him said."


Waleed Shahid on Twitter: ""If Mr. LINCOLN be elected, he will have to cut off the Abolition and extreme wing of his party; otherwise he will go by the board. Mr. THOMPSON believes that President LINCOLN, being a practical, common-sense man, and an old Whig, would reject the radical Republicans." https://t.co/RDATa23uM1" / Twitter
That was tweeted with a scan of a bit of an old newspaper. I searched for it, and I found that it was real: THE CAMPAIGN IN THE WEST.; Hon. Richard W. Thompson's Speech in Jeffersonville,Indiana, for the Union, and for the Constitutional Union Ticket, Pure and Simple. - The New York Times - 1860 Sep 29

Waleed Shahid on Twitter: "New York Times covering the abolitionist movement in 1859: "They are as rancorous and abusive as if they were on the point of utter annihilation. Their speeches sound more like the ravings of Bedlamites than the utterances of men seeking the accomplishment of a practical object." https://t.co/V0RHFA140O" / Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Sounds familiar" / Twitter
AOC finds some nice stuff. Like this.

 

[lpetrich]

What Planet Is AOC On? - POLITICO

Both sides have similar descriptions of Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill — arrogant, bereft of creativity, generationally obsolete.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in an interview with The New York Times, accused her party’s leaders of losing elections by relying on “magical thinking” rather than grappling with changing power dynamics, and by being “blinded [by] anti-activist sentiment.” Rep. Conor Lamb, a centrist who won reelection to his swing district in Pennsylvania, told the Times that “when push comes to shove the younger members who have come from these really tough districts and tough races don’t always feel that the leadership takes our input as seriously as we would like.”

Then about AOC's recent interview in the NYT.

Ocasio-Cortez, on some occasions, counts as one of the party’s freshest and most-appealing new voices. Her sour interview Saturday with the Times’ Astead W. Herndon was not one of these occasions.

...
More striking about AOC’s interview was that she sounded less like a political visionary and more like a campaign operative, boasting for reporters at some hotel bar as last call nears. This from the primary sponsor of the Green New Deal? This is the transformative future of the Democratic Party?

AOC has done a lot of campaigning, and she has been known to criticize what she considers bad campaigning. Like when she dismissed her first opponent's campaign mailings as a "Victoria's Secret catalog" without any real substance.

The post-election memo by four progressive groups — New Deal Strategies, Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement and Data for Progress — came closer to the mark than Ocasio-Cortez’s interview. It called for a new set of policy and rhetorical appeals that seek to merge the Black Lives Matter message with an economic message that would also appeal to less-prosperous and less-educated whites who have been attracted to Trump. There is not abundant evidence that this can be successful, but it is at least more attuned to the genuine challenge than scolding fellow Democrats for not being with it on Facebook.

Ocasio-Cortez has earned the right to lecture moderate Democrats like Conor Lamb on how to connect with a rising generation of impatient progressives. Lamb has earned the right to lecture Ocasio-Cortez on how to take a seat that used to be held by Republicans and put it in the Democratic column. But a more promising strategy likely would put listening before lecturing.

 

[Politesse]

Waleed Shahid on Twitter: "New York Times covering the abolitionist movement in 1859: "They are as rancorous and abusive as if they were on the point of utter annihilation. Their speeches sound more like the ravings of Bedlamites than the utterances of men seeking the accomplishment of a practical object." https://t.co/V0RHFA140O" / Twitter

Well, they were. There were many cases of outright murdering their political opponents, long before the war started. The abolition of slavery was undemocratic in the extreme; if only land-owning white men's perspectives are to be considered.

 

[lpetrich]

Los Angeles Times on Twitter: "Actress Eva Longoria sparked a backlash with comments she made on MSNBC ..." / Twitter

Actress Eva Longoria sparked a backlash with comments she made on MSNBC

U.S. Latinas are the “real heroines” of the 2020 election victory of Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris, the Democratic activist Longoria said on cable television

“I can see that this sounds like I’m comparing Latinas to Black women, which I would never do,” Longoria wrote on social media. " Black women deserve a standing ovation for the work they have done year after year!! ... Again, so sorry.”

Senator Joe Manchin on Twitter: "Defund the police? Defund, my butt. I'm a proud West Virginia Democrat. We are the party of working men and women. We want to protect Americans' jobs & healthcare. We do not have some crazy socialist agenda, and we do not believe in defunding the police. https://t.co/EIFHX5OQ37" / Twitter

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: (link)" / Twitter - she tweeted a picture of her looking taciturn as she sits behind that Senator.

 

[lpetrich]

Patrick Svitek on Twitter: "Latest @BetoORourke email to supporters goes long on Dem lessons from last week in Texas: https://t.co/BJJOSXaKon" / Twitter

Beto O'Rourke:

The asymmetrical advantage that Trump and the GOP had this cycle in Texas is far more powerful than many of us understood. And I think it begins to explain Republicans' incredible performance on Tuesday night.

The ability to campaign free of the truth (examples abound, especially along the border, of social media and texting campaigns that trafficked in lies and scare tactics);

Some Republicans are experts in dirty campaigning - Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, ...

a far more compelling economic message (not an honest one or better in terms of policy, but simpler, more emotional and more compelling);

The Left does better than centrists here, I think.

a willingness to knock on doors and hold in-person events through the duration of the pandemic (when almost no Democrat did the same);

There is a way to do safe canvassing, I'm sure. Stay out of doors and invite one's contacts to come outside.

the ability to use dominance in government (Republicans hold every statewide office) to maximize voter suppression and raise and deploy massive campaign donations across the state; and the power of the national race to produce record turnout without having the Democratic ticket make a meaningful investment in Texas, were all factors that contributed to GOP and Trump success in our state.

Then he talked about how the Rio Grande Valley has been neglected by national and state Democrats.

Nothing beats meeting your voters, eyeball to eyeball. We should always find way to canvass directly at the voter's door. There is a safe way to do this, even in a pandemic.

We should be talking to voters year-round. ...

The central messaging that many Democratic candidates felt obligated to adopt (because they believed that funding and other support from Democratic organizations was contingent on it) doesn't work. ...

One should ask what voters' concerns are.

We have to be far more effective on digital and social media. The anecdotal takeaway from those I've listened to, especially in border communities, is that Trump/GOP had a ferocious game (lies and powerful memes, effective targeting of new and young voters) and we had none.

We've got to show up everywhere, be there for everyone especially the places that are hard to get to. Especially for those whose votes have been taken for granted in the past.

 

[lpetrich]

Rashida Tlaib on Twitter: "Direct voter contact, engaging your district year long, and staying rooted in why you are running is right on point.

P.S. Note that when Beto says it, the pundits don't declare it an “attack” or “lashing out”" / Twitter

I've crunched the numbers on the 32 swing-seat Democrats, and I've tried to estimate how impact M4A and the GND had on their vote margins. I used Cook PVI (partisan-voting index of their district) and GovTrack ideology as inputs, and I used recent counts for the vote margins: (D) - (R). I fit to linear-fit models, because anything more risks overfitting.

There were 7 candidates who endorsed M4A, and of these, 2 candidates who endorsed GND. So I split them by M4A endorsement, splitting them into 7 yes and 25 no. The 2 candidates who endorsed GND all also endorsed M4A, so I didn't split by GND.

I think tested each set of candidates on a model trained on the other set, to get an idea of how much difference M4A might have made.

For the "yes" cands, the "no" models decreased their margins by 2% to 3%, making them more likely to lose.

For the "no" cands, the "yes" models increased their margins by 5% to 7%, though this large improvement may be a side effect of the limited range of the "yes" candidates.

Six of the candidates lost, and I find with my models that M4A endorsement would have helped all 6 of them win.

So M4A is not campaign poison.

 

[Swammerdami]

Six of the candidates lost, and I find with my models that M4A endorsement would have helped all 6 of them win.

So M4A is not campaign poison.

The Affordable Care Act has been very popular, even among Republicans. It is Obamacare they don't like.

(Yes, stupidity is the biggest single factor in GOP electoral success.)