Election Night Live posts

[buster]

I may be one of the few, but I'll probably be up most of the night as results come in and then, maybe, I can go to bed calmly.

I would really like to have this thread active so some of us can post comments, observations, predictions - not to be the first to nail the winner, but to notice trends and, for me, continue hoping that this will turn out well for now and for the future. There are things like Texas, which will probably go Trump, but maybe future results will show in the patterns of votes. And will Florida emerge from the dark side? Will the Senate be manageable? And will North Carolina or Georgia actually, really shift to the Blue side?

So as a neighbour of mine suggested, will the States slide into the hands of the left wing radicals and communists and end up like Venezuela , or as I suggested, will it re-elect  a narcissistic psychopath who enhances the wealth only of the very, very few? (We are not close friends at the moment.)

I will be here if anyone else feels lonely.

[ssfc72]

Thank you Buster, for my chuckle for this evening. :-)

So as a neighbour of mine suggested, will the States slide into the hands of the left wing radicals and communists and end up like Venezuela , or as I suggested, will it re-elect  a narcissistic psychopath who enhances the wealth only of the very, very few? (We are not close friends at the moment.)

I will be here if anyone else feels lonely.

[fox]

Of course I will be watching it, and following the results with baited breath.

[buster]

So for republicans to win they need to hold Iowa, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and Ohio, and all of these are quite doable. Then the big challenge would be to win Florida and Pennsylvania. Arizona might come into play.

Florida will be known by midnight probably, Pennsylvania will be known whenever.

A loss in any of Pennsylvania, Florida or even maybe Georgia would probably do Trump in.

I'll again refer everyone to this great educational and enjoyable game which lets you play with pretty accurate statistics as you see the weird electoral system in action and choose the possibilities. And it will make the election night viewing much clearer. And much more fun.

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/us/2020/battlegrounds/

Harry, who will probably be up all night

[Jason]

FiveThirtyEight has a bit of a different take. They use aggregated polls with more recent polling given more weight (it's the same technique that Eric Grenier of the CBC uses) Biden has a clear advantage in Pennsylvania and of the closest states, that's all he needs.

Trump needs to win all the states he's ahead in, a few of which he has precarious leads in:
Ohio (+0.6%)
Iowa (+1.5%)
Texas (+1.5%)

And he has to win the states that Biden is ahead in, some of which are possible, but if he loses even one, he's out. I could see Trump getting half of those states, maybe 1 more. But all of them? No way. I don't think all of the polling margins of error are going to fall in his favour and without Pennsylvania, he's pretty much toast.

Georgia (+0.9%)
Main 2nd District (+1.6%)
North Carolina (+1.7%)
Florida (+2.5%)
Arizona (+1.6%)
Pennsylvania (+4.7%)
Nebraska 2nd District

Should he lose any of those, then he'd have to get one or more Biden states to make up for the lost electoral votes. If he wins all of the leaning Biden states, but loses Pennsylvania he'd have to make up 10-12 of electoral votes and as you can see below, that gets harder and harder to do. Nevada is the easiest but not enough so he'd need Michigan too.

Nevada (+6.1%) - 6 electoral votes
Michigan (+8%) - 16 votes
Wisconsin  (+8.3%) - 10 votes
Minnesota (+9.1%) - 10 electoral votes

So, to recap, everything has to go in Trump's favour in the close states and he has to win a state where Biden is ahead by almost 5 points or one or more states where Biden is ahead by 6-9 points). It would take a polling error of catastrophic proportions for the polling to be this far off. As I saw one person put it, the polling companies should admit they don't know what they're doing and just quit.

Sadly, I don't it will be decided tomorrow. With so many states that are close and the high proportion of mail-in ballots and early voting which won't be counted election night. And most of those voting via mail or early are Democrats.

So it's completely possible that on election night, Trump could be over 270 on election night based on counted ballots but 1-2 weeks later lose massively as they count the rest.

I fear that he will declare himself the victor tomorrow night if that happens and then try to annul the main-in ballots. He'll lose but it will paralyze the nation and may very well lead to violence since he's poisoned the mind of his supporter so much that they will fall for the propaganda of voting fraud.

My only hope and it's a huge long shot is that Biden is so far ahead that based on the votes counted he goes over 270. Not that it won't cause Trump and his supporters to cry foul. But if the win is really significant, like 350 then it will be obvious who has won.

[Jason]

And will North Carolina or Georgia actually, really shift to the Blue side?

They're both so close it's hard to say. I think that Trump will win one but probably not both. If he loses both it'd be a very bad sign for him as would losing Florida or Ohio.

When Trump is only ahead in Texas by 1.5% you know things are going very bad in the Republican campaign. That should be an easy state for them and with 38 electoral votes, second only to California, they're toast if that happens. They'd have to win all the other states that Biden is slightly favoured in plus
4 states where Biden is ahead by >5%.

What do you think the final outcome of electoral votes will be? I'm looking at a Biden win of between 280 and 407 and Trump a loss between 131 and 270 votes.
I would love to see Biden take 407 but that's pretty unlikely.

I can see 335 to 203 for Biden. And I think that's going to be my prediction but we likely won't know for a week. Something like 56% of Texans (who did vote) voted via early voting or mail-in ballots. That's crazy. So Texas is most likely to switch sides as that vote is counted.

It's not as easy as the CBC interactive but I think FiveThirtyEight's interactive game is more interesting but it takes a bit more work. I also think it's more accurate because it takes into account how one state affects another state with similar demographics or positioning. It can be a bit slow as you pick each state because of these calculations. If you make several changes at a time, longer.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-biden-election-map/

[buster]

This is a very good summary fo how the election results will come in during the evening, considering closing times for polls and methods of counting and what we know already:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-election-guide-1.5786629

[Jason]

It sounds similar to your link, Buster, but there's how networks project a winner. I didn't realize that they use state projections that are based on exit polling and polls as well as counted votes.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-us-election-calls-1.5783995

[Jason]

This video that someone cooked up says it all.

https://twitter.com/UTMBColorado/status/1323768157358706688?s=20

(You don't need a Twitter account to watch it)

[Jason]

Washington Post says that Florida has 80% of the votes counted and Biden is leading, but only by 0.3%!

[Jason]

WaPO has called Oklahoma (7 electoral votes), Indiana (11) for Trump and Vermont (3), Mass. (11), New Jersey (14), Delaware (3), Maryland (10).

Swing states like Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20), Florida (29), Ohio (18), South Carolina, Georgia (16) have no clear leader but some of those have only 1% counted.

And looks like Florida has switched to Trump with a 0.2% lead. The counties that haven't been counted are traditionally Republican though so so Trump will likely take Florida.

[Jason]

There are still voters in lines in many places and Nevada GOP seeks to extend voting for 1 hour in Clark County, not sure where that is. Biden and, Obama and Trump Jr. are urging voters to stay in line. And just in, hand sanitizer in Iowa has jammed some voting machines (giggle).

[Jason]

Btw, WaPo is showing different electoral vote decisions than the CBC but the CBC is being more conservative in their calls. WaPo says Biden has 207 electoral votes locked up while Trump has only 125. 206 electoral votes are up in the air. That means Trump has to win 75% of those to get re-elected.

Not sure if you guys can view this (might have to register) but this page shows Biden's or Trump's paths to victory. It's fascinating.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/03/paths-to-victory-trump-biden/

[fox]

I'm surprised that Biden is leading substantially in Ohio. I hadn't expected that at all. On the other hand, Florida going the opposite.

[Jason]

Ohio was a toss-up state so doesn't surprise me that much. They were also supposed to get all these magical manufacturing jobs that Trump promised that never emerged.

But Michigan is weird as it was a state that Biden was should be winning but only 16% of the vote has counted so it depends on whether that's rural or urban voting, I guess.

What really shocks me is that Biden is ahead 1% in TEXAS with 65% of the vote counted. That really bodes badly for Trump.

Trump seems to be winning in Florida because of the Latinx vote which still surprises me that they'd vote for him of all people.

I still don't see a path for Trump to win even with Florida. He has to win all of the swing states to take it but if he loses Texas, even that won't be enough with its 38 electoral votes. CBC mentions that Texas is a lot more of an urban state with a more diverse population. That's bad news for the GOP in the future because they'll be losing their solid voters.

It looks like the Democrats could take North Carolina although it doesn't matter that much except that Trump needs to win all the swing states plus one or two Democrat-leaning states to win.

Oh boy, just saw that Democrats are ahead in Kansas with 39% of the vote counted. That also bodes badly for Trump. Kansas and the mid-west generally votes GOP.