The Official US 2020 Elections thread

[minestrone]

This is a hammering.

[NickFitz]

So: all we know is we don't know yet.

We were never going to know yet. The claim to report results on election night is purely performative, intended to make the 24 hour news media seem important and relevant, but it was always known that it would be days before the true results were available.

In 2018 all the "results" being presented at this stage suggested that the Republicans had swept the House, but it turned out it had fallen to the Democrats. And as I recall, that wasn't even a national election, with just half of the states voting, and bringing out nothing like the proportion of the electorate reported to have turned out this time.

And of course there's a much larger postal vote this time because of the pandemic; see my point above about there being a number of states that won't even start counting those votes - which most commentators agree will skew heavily Democrat - until tomorrow.

[GhostofTarbera]

Tump now 1/3 it’s all over

Victory is his


Sent from my iPhone using Contractor UK Forum

[minestrone]

This is over already but Jill Biden won't let him concede until every last vote is counted and every legal avenue is exhausted. The riots will last for days.

[fullyautomatix]

Looks like a Trump victory again isn’t it? Just don’t know how Biden can win from here...

[fullyautomatix]

Florida called for Trump and huge lead in Pennslyvania...Biden has not got the maths for a win...

[NickFitz]

Remember, when a state reports tonight that it's counted 90% of votes and, say, 51% of them are for Trump - that's 90% of on-the-day ballots. But many states are likely to have about 50% of postal votes, or other early votes such as those from military personnel serving abroad, that aren't counted in that 90%. Those early votes won't be fully counted for a few more days.

So the 90% of votes they've counted are actually 45% of the total votes cast in that state. And 51% of 45% is 22.95%. So what they're really reporting is that, so far, Trump has 22.95% of that state's votes, and Biden 22.05% (ignoring other candidates, write-ins, and so on).

But Biden supporters were more likely to vote by post because of Trump's dumb stuff claiming that his supporters' votes would be destroyed or something if they voted by post, so there's almost certainly a preponderance of votes for Biden in the remaining 50% of the ballot yet to be counted, which will markedly change the "result" that's being announced tonight once all votes are counted, the way votes are in an election.

But hey, if you don't want to accept these basic and obvious facts, I suppose you can believe whatever bulltulip you like if it makes you happy

Edited to add: this certainly applies to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania; I believe it also applies to some degree to Georgia, due to that burst pipe business. I'm not enough of an expert to know which other states it also applies to, nor whether to a greater or lesser extent. But those first three it definitely applies to, and they are able to tip the balance nationally.

[Eirikur]

Just counting the states that haven't been declared yet but have interim results, it's going to be Trump who will win

[WordIsBond]

Remember, when a state reports tonight that it's counted 90% of votes and, say, 51% of them are for Trump - that's 90% of on-the-day ballots.

If you want to say this is fact that we should just accept, would you like to provide an authoritative link on that?

Because CNN is reporting that tens of thousands of mail-in ballots are already included in the totals in these states.

[WordIsBond]

Just counting the states that haven't been declared yet but have interim results, it's going to be Trump who will win

Yeah, but that's not really dependable. Because there are a lot of mail-in ballots that aren't in yet. And in some states, some areas are heavily Trump, others are heavily Biden, and you don't know which areas are unreported yet.

I think Biden's hopes of flipping Wisconsin are gone. Michigan is really looking good for Trump, and I think Georgia and North Carolina are, too. If those four states hold, Trump is POTUS without even needing Pennsylvania. But it's way too early to call any of them with certainty.