US Presidential Election 2020 Thread II - Judgement Day(s)

everlast75

This is what Ingraham is broadcasting. Judge for yourself how credible this is...


https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1326368563804983298?s=19

robinph

everlast75 wrote: »

This is what Ingraham is broadcasting. Judge for yourself how credible this is...


https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1326368563804983298?s=19

Makes it so much easier to catch people up to no good when they wear their team uniform when doing the criminal activity.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/415rCyvKCsL._AC_SY400_.jpg

Brussels Sprout

The overall decisive margin has dropped by 4k votes since I last looked at it (the AZ lead shrinking has more then offset the GA lead increasing).

Had those 4 states gone the other way then Trump would have won 270-268. Once again, thanks to the Electoral College, this was a razor close election:

innuendo141

everlast75 wrote: »

This is what Ingraham is broadcasting. Judge for yourself how credible this is...


https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1326368563804983298?s=19

I was NOT expecting that voice. Oh Jesus tonight, that is priceless

Brussels Sprout

froog wrote: »

i wonder do republicans actually understand what would happen if trump somehow managed to steal the election. an actual civil war with no end in sight and international sanctions that would send them back to the stone age. it would be the end of the USA.

440Hertz wrote: »

What they're doing is incredibly dangerous. Even though it probably will not succeed, it's sowing the seeds of a conspiracy theory that could destabilise the US for years.

The Republicans are playing with fire. You can see by the way that this electoral fraud conspiracy has slowly gathered momentum over the past week that a lot of them were waiting to see which way the wind was blowing before jumping in to back it. They think that they can go along with it just to humour Trump and his base. I'll bet that they think that when the time comes they can put a stop to it before it gets too crazy. They're basically edging the base. That's a dangerous and reckless game to play.

paul71

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

The Republicans are playing with fire. You can see by the way that this electoral fraud conspiracy has slowly gathered momentum over the past week that a lot of them were waiting to see which way the wind was blowing before jumping in to back it. They think that they can go along with it just to humour Trump and his base. I'll bet that they think that when the time comes they can put a stop to it before it gets too crazy. They're basically edging the base. That's a dangerous and reckless game to play.

The reality is what they are playing with is the succession of California and New York followed by several other states who for about 30 years have tolerated the EC.

weisses

innuendo141 wrote: »

I was NOT expecting that voice. Oh Jesus tonight, that is priceless

Odds of that worker wearing a MAGA hat ?

Quin_Dub

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

The overall decisive margin has dropped by 4k votes since I last looked at it (the AZ lead shrinking has more then offset the GA lead increasing).

Had those 4 states gone the other way then Trump would have won 270-268. Once again, thanks to the Electoral College, this was a razor close election:

The Biden lead in Arizona looks like it'll end up at about 9.5k or so on current run rates.

Still way outside the limits for a recount request - It's 0.1% in Arizona which looks to be around the 3.5K range based on the volume of votes reported.

So there will likely only be 2 States that meet the requirements for a recount - Wisconsin and Georgia.

It's a 1% threshold in WI , and Biden currently leads by a little over 20,000 votes , roughly 0.7%

It's a 0.5% threshold in Georgia and Biden leads by ~14k , about 0.3%

At best they will find a few hundred erroneous ballots which may favour Trump given that Mail-ins are the more likely ones to get tossed in a recount and they favour Biden , but obviously that simply doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Ande1975

Quin_Dub wrote: »

The problem is, the longer this goes on it increases the chances of Trump and his allies pulling effectively a coup.



The potential for truly terrifying times in the US is very real right now.

Didn't want to quote the entire post but Jebus, this has terrifed the cr*p out of me.
I hope to God this doesn't happen but explains the shenanigans.

Brussels Sprout

Quin_Dub wrote: »

The Biden lead in Arizona looks like it'll end up at about 9.5k or so on current run rates.

Still way outside the limits for a recount request - It's 0.1% in Arizona which looks to be around the 3.5K range based on the volume of votes reported.

So there will likely only be 2 States that meet the requirements for a recount - Wisconsin and Georgia.

It's a 1% threshold in WI , and Biden currently leads by a little over 20,000 votes , roughly 0.7%

It's a 0.5% threshold in Georgia and Biden leads by ~14k , about 0.3%

At best they will find a few hundred erroneous ballots which may favour Trump given that Mail-ins are the more likely ones to get tossed in a recount and they favour Biden , but obviously that simply doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong. Trump hasn't a hope of overturning the election. Biden has won it clearly.

My issue is more with declarations, that in the end, it wasn't even that close an election. These typically use the fact that the Electoral College vote margin 306-232 is quite wide on paper. That gives an artificially false sense of distance though thanks to the way that the Electoral College's Wiiner Takes All allocation rules in most states can distort the raw margins.

OhHiMark

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong. Trump hasn't a hope of overturning the election. Biden has won it clearly.

My issue is more with declarations, that in the end, it wasn't even that close an election. These typically use the fact that the Electoral College vote margin 306-232 is quite wide on paper. That gives an artificially false sense of distance though thanks to the way that the Electoral College's Wiiner Takes All allocation rules in most states can distort the raw margins.

But it's a wide margin in the electoral college, and in the popular vote. By any measurement it wasn't close.

Gbear

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

The overall decisive margin has dropped by 4k votes since I last looked at it (the AZ lead shrinking has more then offset the GA lead increasing).

Had those 4 states gone the other way then Trump would have won 270-268. Once again, thanks to the Electoral College, this was a razor close election:

That said, Biden's number of electoral college votes will outperform his national votes. Ultimately, beating a fascist by only 5% or so is not a good result.

Macron beat Le Pen by 33%.

Obviously it's a different system, but it shows that Trump wasn't the cause of their problems. It's a sick democracy that can put him into power, and it's still sick if it can't deliver a firmer repudiation of him after 4 years in office.

Robert2014

I think this will blow over at some point. From what I remember, in the end this is what happened with Florida. Everyone was fed up with it before it went to the Supreme Court and Gore accepted its verdict. As this drags on and there is very little evidence of fraud, more and more Americans are going to get fed up with this and eventually Republicans will have enough. Particularly if it starts to seem that people in Georgia are getting annoyed and they could lose the run-off Senate races.

Brussels Sprout

OhHiMark wrote: »

But it's a wide margin in the electoral college, and in the popular vote. By any measurement it wasn't close.

The popular vote is entirely irrelevant. As I have stated earlier in this thread I think the Electoral College is fundamentally undemocratic and I am no fan of it. That being said that's the system in place so we can only assess an election based on that.

In Electoral College terms this was decided by 3 states (WI, AZ, GA) + 1 electoral district (NE-3) . In turn those were decided by a cumulative total of just 68k votes. If you don't consider that close then I don't know what else to say.

4 years ago there was a lot of talk about how Clinton only lost the election by 78k votes across Michigan, Wisconsin & Pennsylvania. Well this election was even closer then that despite the fact that the popular vote margin will be much wider.

Quin_Dub

Robert2014 wrote: »

I think this will blow over at some point. From what I remember, in the end this is what happened with Florida. Everyone was fed up with it before it went to the Supreme Court and Gore accepted its verdict. As this drags on and there is very little evidence of fraud, more and more Americans are going to get fed up with this and eventually Republicans will have enough. Particularly if it starts to seem that people in Georgia are getting annoyed and they could lose the run-off Senate races.

It's a very different world to twenty years ago and a very different America.

In 2000 , people watched the news and read the papers and that's what formed their opinions.

Today there are a core of people on both extremes that source their "news" from the most bizarre extreme corners of the internet.

The people that believe Breitbart, Project Veritas , Alex Jones et al will not simply "get bored" of this.

They won't be allowed to , they will be kept in a permanent state of rage and fear by these outlets. They need them like that to continue to collect their ad revenue.

robinph

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

The popular vote is entirely irrelevant. As I have stated earlier in this thread I think the Electoral College is fundamentally undemocratic and I am no fan of it. That being said that's the system in place so we can only assess an election based on that.

In Electoral College terms this was decided by 3 states (WI, AZ, GA) + 1 electoral district (NE-3) . In turn those were decided by a cumulative total of just 68k votes. If you don't consider that close then I don't know what else to say.

4 years ago there was a lot of talk about how Clinton only lost the election by 78k votes across Michigan, Wisconsin & Pennsylvania. Well this election was even closer then that despite the fact that the popular vote margin will be much wider.

Why wasn't it decided by PA and a bunch of others instead and the 50k vote difference in that one state? AZ and GA were not needed to get Biden over 270 EC votes.

50k, and growing, isn't close in that one state. No chance of a recount being called in PA.

Brussels Sprout

robinph wrote: »

Why wasn't it decided by PA and a bunch of others instead and the 50k vote difference in that one state? AZ and GA were not needed to get Biden over 270 EC votes.

50k, and growing, isn't close in that one state. No chance of a recount being called in PA.

because if you flip GA, WI, AZ & NE-3 then you don't need PA.



Again, I'm not talking about Recounts or Trump having any chance of winning. It's more a commentary of how close this was from slipping away from Biden due to the crazy idiosyncrasies of their electoral system.

robinph

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

because if you flip GA, WI, AZ & NE-3 then you don't need PA.



Again, I'm not talking about Recounts or Trump having any chance of winning. It's more a commentary of how close this was from slipping away from Biden due to the crazy idiosyncrasies of their electoral system.

But you've just picked that set of states as it makes it appear narrower. Pick WI and PA and its at 70k + and that will get bigger yet.

It's not close nationally, a couple of states were close but they are not needed to get over 270 and once they are added to the total the EC numbers won't be close either.

listermint

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

because if you flip GA, WI, AZ & NE-3 then you don't need PA.



Again, I'm not talking about Recounts or Trump having any chance of winning. It's more a commentary of how close this was from slipping away from Biden due to the crazy idiosyncrasies of their electoral system.

Yes it was so close . Trump had to flip 4 states close......

... Tbf that's not as close as you are indicating. It's 4 states!

moon2

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

In Electoral College terms this was decided by 3 states (WI, AZ, GA) + 1 electoral district (NE-3) . In turn those were decided by a cumulative total of just 68k votes. If you don't consider that close then I don't know what else to say.

In US terms this is considered a definitive victory. Biden has a wide majority of EC votes and won by a fairly substantial margin in swing states. I'd have to go back and verify the numbers from prior elections, but iirc his margin is going to be higher than what Trump achieved, and also higher than previous elections which were deemed decisive victories.

As such it would be disingenuous to call this anything other than a decisive victory. The only thing that lent any credibility to the "it's a close election" story is the delays caused by counting mail-in votes.

BluePlanet

Can anyone cite an example of a recount in US Presidential elections that actually flipped the result?

everlast75

Quite a definitive headline from the NYT

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1326502436916375554?s=19

Carfacemandog

BluePlanet wrote: »

Can anyone cite an example of a recount in US Presidential elections that actually flipped the result?

I can't off hand but wisconsin has had 2 recounts, one in 2016 which brought a change of 132 votes, and another in 2018 that saw a change of about 300 votes.

The current gap in wisconsin is 20k votes, with the closest two being Georgia and Arizona at 14k and 13k respectively. The margin are simply too much for recounts to overturn.

gmisk

Quin_Dub wrote: »

It's a very different world to twenty years ago and a very different America.

In 2000 , people watched the news and read the papers and that's what formed their opinions.

Today there are a core of people on both extremes that source their "news" from the most bizarre extreme corners of the internet.

The people that believe Breitbart, Project Veritas , Alex Jones et al will not simply "get bored" of this.

They won't be allowed to , they will be kept in a permanent state of rage and fear by these outlets. They need them like that to continue to collect their ad revenue.

Unfortunately I agree.
Even the "news" available on tv will likely get more and more extreme.
You just have to look at people now seemingly moving from Fox to OAN and Newsmax.
They make Fox look extremely balanced by comparison!

briany

Interesting factoid about the election, just to step back from the ongoing outrage, is that Biden is not only the first catholic president since JFK, he's also the first since JFK to lose both Florida and Ohio and still win the election.

spacecoyote

Carfacemandog wrote: »

I can't off hand but wisconsin has had 2 recounts, one in 2016 which brought a change of 132 votes, and another in 2018 that saw a change of about 300 votes.

The current gap in wisconsin is 20k votes, with the closest two being Georgia and Arizona at 14k and 13k respectively. The margin are simply too much for recounts to overturn.

I'm assuming that they are ultimately targeting throwing our ballots rather than just go with recounts?

Brussels Sprout

robinph wrote: »

But you've just picked that set of states as it makes it appear narrower.

Yes exactly. That's exactly what I did. I sought out the absolute minimum number of votes required to flip the map.

It's the same exercise that was done in 2016 to show that Clinton, in the end, only lost by 78k votes across 3 states.

listermint wrote: »

Yes it was so close . Trump had to flip 4 states close......

... Tbf that's not as close as you are indicating. It's 4 states!

Which themselves were all determined by less than 20k votes. In the case of the 3 full states I mentioned, with millions of voters each that's a wafer thin margin. They're winner takes all so had Trump got those few extra votes then he would have taken all of the electoral college votes for them and Biden would have got none.

moon2 wrote: »

Biden has a wide majority of EC votes and won by a fairly substantial margin in swing states. I'd have to go back and verify the numbers from prior elections, but iirc his margin is going to be higher than what Trump achieved, and also higher than previous elections which were deemed decisive victories.

Well that depends on what swing states you are talking about. My whole point is that there is a collection of swing states where the margin was not large and had he lost those collectively it would have lost him the election.

BluePlanet

I think it's safe to say that it is unprecedented that a recount flips the result in a US Presidential election.

For Trump, he doesn't just have to flip 1 state but 4?
It's beyond pathetic that this joke of an administration doesn't man-up here.

Brussels Sprout

one armed dwarf wrote: »

Yeah none of the margins here are remotely as tight as Florida 2000.

That's true but that's like saying a 6'6 man is not tall just because he happens to be standing next to a 6'10 man.

moon2

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

That's true but that's like saying a 6'6 man is not tall just because he happens to be standing next to a 6'10 man.

I've been hunting around to see if there's a historical analysis of the minimum number of votes needed to flip the election outcome. Looking solely at popular vote isn't that useful, neither is the EC margin particularly useful by itself. So far I've not been able to find anything.

To take your analogy further, if most men are about 6'6 then they wouldn't be tall no matter who they're standing beside.

I feel american elections are typically tighter than what we see in other countries, but due to the convoluted nature of how they elect its harder to see that.