Poll: Who will win the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election?

[BicycleB]

I have a 20something friend from a small African country who arrived in the US a few years ago. He likes Trump because he finds him very entertaining, much like a WWE wrestler. Informed of Trump's "He won because the election was Rigged" quote, Young Friend nodded approvingly and said, "That's good, because it means he won't dispute power or try to stay in office like in Africa."

His one serious prior comment about American politics was in early 2019. Several months after the 2018 midterms, he commented that he had been really surprised that "on the day after the election, everyone just got up and went work like normal." In his experience, elections are normally followed by mass protests and revolutions are things that have happened in living memory. Hopefully he's correct in the art of tweet interpretation.

ETA 11/16/20: Well, that didn't take long. Trumptweet today: "I WON THE ELECTION!" I guess we can still hope my Young Friend is correct. Until 2024 anyway.

[Montecarlo]

Right. Anyone who does business with him should assume that they're footing the bill for all costs. I have zero sympathy for businesses, contractors, or city government that agree to work with him at this point and then whine that he isn't honoring their contracts. Um, hello, that's been his MO for literally decades and it's not like it hasn't been public news.

In any other context that would be considered victim blaming.

I agree, however.  Whomever does business with him should have their big boy/girl pants on, like any vendor/creditor, but on steroids.

[former player]

Right. Anyone who does business with him should assume that they're footing the bill for all costs. I have zero sympathy for businesses, contractors, or city government that agree to work with him at this point and then whine that he isn't honoring their contracts. Um, hello, that's been his MO for literally decades and it's not like it hasn't been public news.

In any other context that would be considered victim blaming.

I agree, however.  Whomever does business with him should have their big boy/girl pants on, like any vendor/creditor, but on steroids.

The city governments don't seem to have been given much of a choice.

Wasn't the problem with people being stranded in the cold after Trump rallies because the bus companies had only been paid to get people to the rallies, not back?

[OtherJen]

Right. Anyone who does business with him should assume that they're footing the bill for all costs. I have zero sympathy for businesses, contractors, or city government that agree to work with him at this point and then whine that he isn't honoring their contracts. Um, hello, that's been his MO for literally decades and it's not like it hasn't been public news.

In any other context that would be considered victim blaming.

I agree, however.  Whomever does business with him should have their big boy/girl pants on, like any vendor/creditor, but on steroids.

The city governments don't seem to have been given much of a choice.

Wasn't the problem with people being stranded in the cold after Trump rallies because the bus companies had only been paid to get people to the rallies, not back?

Wasn't talking about the buses. City governments don't have to issue permits or provide security without his campaign providing the money up front. And yet, they keep doing it, to the point of this situation: Donald Trump's Tab For MAGA Rallies Jumps to $1.8 Million as 14 Cities Say President Hasn't Paid Police Bills, Report Finds. And that was more than 6 months ago. God knows what his rally debt total is now, and all of his money is going to his attempts to disenfranchise voters like me through the court system.

[nereo]

The lincoln project ran an ad naming the law firm, and they have gotten a lot of flak from the public prompting them to pull out.

Those guys don't pull any punches.

I think they are deeply critical and highly effective, but stay ‘within bounds’.  Most of their ammo is simply repeating what Trump and his surrogates have said in public and on the record.

When I think “doesn’t pull any punches” I’m more inclined to think of Trump and his extended family, who will blatantly lie, launch character attacks at dissenters and wallow in conspiracy theories and white supremacy so long as it furthers their cause.

Not really an even comparison with the Lincoln Project.

[WhiteTrashCash]

As sad as the behavior from Trump supporters has been in the aftermath of the election, I think it's kind of interesting how the election turned out. Biden won quite handily while the Senate stayed in GOP hands and the House remained in Democrats' hands but they lost several seats to the GOP. I think that shows that a significant portion of voters who typically vote GOP switched sides only for the Presidential race for vote for Biden over Trump. Republican voters are not a lost cause. A portion of them will "switch their sports team" if their candidate is really incompetent or displays values that are strongly against what they believe. That gives me a little hope for the future.

[FIPurpose]

Hmm. I kind of got the opposite conclusion. Biden only won by a few thousand votes in a few states. There are not enough centrist voters in swing states to reliably vote for a moderate candidate. Biden won this time, but what happens in 4 years if it's Biden vs Trump again? All it would take would be a small economic hiccup and a lot of those centrists will start shuffling back over to Trump.

Biden's coalition is not strong. It wasn't strong enough to produce a Dem Senate. Biden's bare minimum appeal won't be good enough in 2024 to win an election. So the Dems need to start planning today on how to start building a real coalition with real policies and taking down the GOP. (Doug Jones had a pretty interesting take on this recently as well. If Democrats can't even protect a Senate seat from a Football Coach who doesn't even know the branches of government, are they putting in any effort?)

[WhiteTrashCash]

Hmm. I kind of got the opposite conclusion. Biden only won by a few thousand votes in a few states. There are not enough centrist voters in swing states to reliably vote for a moderate candidate. Biden won this time, but what happens in 4 years if it's Biden vs Trump again? All it would take would be a small economic hiccup and a lot of those centrists will start shuffling back over to Trump.

Biden's coalition is not strong. It wasn't strong enough to produce a Dem Senate. Biden's bare minimum appeal won't be good enough in 2024 to win an election. So the Dems need to start planning today on how to start building a real coalition with real policies and taking down the GOP. (Doug Jones had a pretty interesting take on this recently as well. If Democrats can't even protect a Senate seat from a Football Coach who doesn't even know the branches of government, are they putting in any effort?)

Have to say I disagree with your assessment. Biden managed to prevent Trump from getting a second term which is the first time since 1992 that anyone has accomplished that with an incumbent President. He won the popular vote by more than 5.5 million votes so far and flipped five states. That is an incredible accomplishment during this time of ridiculously high amounts of propaganda. The states he flipped were states with large working class populations, so he appealed to normal people and not just people with graduate degrees. All of that shows me that he was probably the best candidate the Democrats could have had under these circumstances. If Bernie Sanders had been the candidate, then the Democrats would have lost this election under an avalanche of Socialism-phobia. I think this can be kind of hard to see for many people though, because internet echo chambers are everywhere these days.

[OtherJen]

Hmm. I kind of got the opposite conclusion. Biden only won by a few thousand votes in a few states. There are not enough centrist voters in swing states to reliably vote for a moderate candidate. Biden won this time, but what happens in 4 years if it's Biden vs Trump again? All it would take would be a small economic hiccup and a lot of those centrists will start shuffling back over to Trump.

Biden's coalition is not strong. It wasn't strong enough to produce a Dem Senate. Biden's bare minimum appeal won't be good enough in 2024 to win an election. So the Dems need to start planning today on how to start building a real coalition with real policies and taking down the GOP. (Doug Jones had a pretty interesting take on this recently as well. If Democrats can't even protect a Senate seat from a Football Coach who doesn't even know the branches of government, are they putting in any effort?)

Have to say I disagree with your assessment. Biden managed to prevent Trump from getting a second term which is the first time since 1992 that anyone has accomplished that with an incumbent President. He won the popular vote by more than 5.5 million votes so far and flipped five states. That is an incredible accomplishment during this time of ridiculously high amounts of propaganda. The states he flipped were states with large working class populations, so he appealed to normal people and not just people with graduate degrees. All of that shows me that he was probably the best candidate the Democrats could have had under these circumstances. If Bernie Sanders had been the candidate, then the Democrats would have lost this election under an avalanche of Socialism-phobia. I think this can be kind of hard to see for many people though, because internet echo chambers are everywhere these days.

I have to agree with this assessment. Biden won the popular vote by a much larger margin than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, and Biden was running against an incumbent with a cult following. That’s damned impressive.

I’d be shocked if my old-school Republican in-laws didn’t vote for Biden. They’re moderates and fiscal conservatives and were repulsed by Trump.

[wenchsenior]

Agree with OtherJen and WhiteTrashCan. Biden pulled off something really impressive in this election. Aside from Barak Obama, Biden won a larger share of the popular vote than any democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson all the way back in 1964. He flipped states like GA and AZ that democrats haven't won since the 1990s and, while he only won GA by thousands of votes he won more enough other states by at least an order of magnitude more than thousands of votes that he could have lost GA and still won with room to spare.

Also agree with the above posters. This was a VERY impressive win.  (I also want to point out that 1992 defeat of George HW Bush almost certainly would not have happened either, had it been a 2 person race without Ross Perot splitting off a ton of the conservative and independent vote.) The AZ and GA flips are quite astonishing.  I expect those states to backslide for an election or two, but if they move into purple territory after that, the entire electoral map is going to be upended in the future.

Re: whether the Dem coalition is strong, that's an entirely different issue.  The majority of Dem voters (let alone independents) are not nearly as far left as the activist, highly visible wing of the party, which is why Biden ran away with the nomination despite all the sound and fury of media focused around more 'exciting' further left candidates.  Biden was helped by left-leaning voters' raging desire to unseat Trump in particular, and the suspicion that we needed a more 'boring', centrist candidate to do that.  And those suspicions turned out to be correct.

This election has pointed out some very flawed assumptions that Dem election strategists have been working with, mainly that minority votes can't be wooed away by a wildly racist 'populist' GOP candidate.  I found myself quite surprised by this, but in retrospect it should have been really obvious, given that Trump won white women easily in 2016, despite being a disgusting sexist, serial philanderer, and possibly a sexual predator, running against an incredibly qualified white woman.

The Dem coalition is always more fragmented than the GOP coalition b/c it includes more disparate groups of people.  In addition, the Dems lean heavily on identity politics as part of messaging, which I think backfires on them just as often as it activates them, which can add to the fragmented nature of the coalition. The Dems also want to actively govern and create policies, which is much more difficult to sell to the average voter than is the GOP's message (protect guns, outlaw abortion, dismantle laws, cut taxes).

The Dems always have inherently a harder row to hoe in order to get elected, and the Senate is by design incredibly weighted against Dems taking control, even in relatively favorable years. 

So...yes, Dem coalition is weaker.  Odds are that Dems rarely control the Senate in any given year no matter what the overall political climate is.  That makes Biden's win even more impressive IMO, regardless of exactly why and how it happened.   

[FIPurpose]

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

So a total of 55k votes separated the Biden win over Trump. In 2016, Trump won with

WI: +22k
MI: +11k
PA: +44k

So a total of about 77k votes.

By the electoral college standards, Trump won with a bigger margin in 2016 than Biden did this time. So unless you want to claim that Trump's 2016 win was by some equally huuuge margin, then you're kidding yourself. This was an extremely close election that could just have easily become our country's biggest popular vote upset. So yes, Biden's position is extremely precarious.

The only way out of this mess is by getting the country to move to a popular vote election. Because Joe Biden winning by an additional +700k in CA over Hillary Clinton means diddly squat if 10k WI decide they don't like Joe that much to back him again.

[nereo]

Hmm. I kind of got the opposite conclusion. Biden only won by a few thousand votes in a few states. There are not enough centrist voters in swing states to reliably vote for a moderate candidate. Biden won this time, but what happens in 4 years if it's Biden vs Trump again? All it would take would be a small economic hiccup and a lot of those centrists will start shuffling back over to Trump.

Biden's coalition is not strong. It wasn't strong enough to produce a Dem Senate. Biden's bare minimum appeal won't be good enough in 2024 to win an election. So the Dems need to start planning today on how to start building a real coalition with real policies and taking down the GOP. (Doug Jones had a pretty interesting take on this recently as well. If Democrats can't even protect a Senate seat from a Football Coach who doesn't even know the branches of government, are they putting in any effort?)

The more that I think about it, the more impressed I am with the Biden win.  BIden unseated an incumbent when the market was near an all-time high and just ~6 months into a national emergency. That combination should have been insurmountable against any other President. Somehow Biden won a majority of votes, and the popular vote by a wide margin.

Consider the other elected one-term presidents, George HW Bush, Carter, Hoover and Taft. All but Hoover were impacted by a strong running of 3rd party candidates. Only Roosevelt beat Hoover and also won a majority of the popular vote.  All were defeated during a recession or depression  (to be fair, unemployment spiked during March for Trump, but has rebounded along with the markets and polling showed a net positive for Trump in the months before the election. ). Also of note - Bush, Carter and Hoover lost to challengers who would come to define their party for decades to come (Clinton, Reagan and Roosevelt, respectively). 

I’ve got no idea whether Biden will step down after 4 years (possible, given his age), and whether there will be a Biden/Trump rematch.  But generally speaking the incumbent has a couple percentage points advantage.  Biden (and the broader Dem party) will also benefit from the ongoing demographic shifts in our country.  And Trump (should he be the challenger) will have to overcome the image of the loser of 2020.  I think the GOP’s best chance will be a deep recession in 2024.  Who knows if that will happen.  Whomever challenges in 2024 will need to win back Georgia and AZ, as well as hold onto Florida and NC while winning back at least one more state (possibly PA).

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

I can’t get over how similar your argument is to Dems after 2016... and yet Trump lost the popular vote, bigly.  What that shows to me is that there are states which will be nail-biters, and others which are ‘safe’.  What this latest election showed to me is that there are far more states which are must-wins for the GOP right now than the Dems.  AZ, WI, GA, PA, FL, NC, MI, WI, NV..  For any GOP candidate to win they must win at least six of those nine.  Put another way, I think the GOP has a harder time going forward than the Dems, and that’s going to be amplified with an incumbent.

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

The lincoln project ran an ad naming the law firm, and they have gotten a lot of flak from the public prompting them to pull out.

Those guys don't pull any punches.

I think they are deeply critical and highly effective, but stay ‘within bounds’.  Most of their ammo is simply repeating what Trump and his surrogates have said in public and on the record.

When I think “doesn’t pull any punches” I’m more inclined to think of Trump and his extended family, who will blatantly lie, launch character attacks at dissenters and wallow in conspiracy theories and white supremacy so long as it furthers their cause.

Not really an even comparison with the Lincoln Project.

I feel like you read something in my post that wasn't there, and I certainly did not intend to denigrate the Lincoln Project or support Trump. I even researched the idiom :-) to make sure that it didn't mean to cheat or be unethical. I was just meaning they don't soften any blows on Trump. I think they're extremely effective because of their political persuasion and biting commentary. I find their attacks on Trump to be much more effective than any Democratic attack because of where they are coming from and the fact that they're so darn clever and so biting. There is certainly no comparison between Trump's unethical and outrageous lies and the Lincoln Project's cutting but accurate attacks.

[FIPurpose]

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

I can’t get over how similar your argument is to Dems after 2016... and yet Trump lost the popular vote, bigly.  What that shows to me is that there are states which will be nail-biters, and others which are ‘safe’.  What this latest election showed to me is that there are far more states which are must-wins for the GOP right now than the Dems.  AZ, WI, GA, PA, FL, NC, MI, WI, NV..  For any GOP candidate to win they must win at least six of those nine.  Put another way, I think the GOP has a harder time going forward than the Dems, and that’s going to be amplified with an incumbent.

To put this into a larger context, I don't know what this is called, but I'll call it the "electoral popular vote margin". For the minimum margin in states that would have changed the outcome

Obama 2012: 4 state difference with about 526k margin
Obama 2008: 7 state difference 1.1MM margin
Bush 2004: 3 states 36k votes
Bush 2000: 1 state 500 votes

Clinton 1996: 19 State difference with about 1.8MM difference
Clinton 1992: 17 State difference with about 870k difference

Bush 1988: I mean this was a blow out, Bush won the popular by +8 and the electoral college by +157.

Some of this just may be politics of a bygone era, but Biden's win from an electoral standard looks a lot more like 2016 or 2004 than it does like 2012.

[Travis]

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

I can’t get over how similar your argument is to Dems after 2016... and yet Trump lost the popular vote, bigly.  What that shows to me is that there are states which will be nail-biters, and others which are ‘safe’.  What this latest election showed to me is that there are far more states which are must-wins for the GOP right now than the Dems.  AZ, WI, GA, PA, FL, NC, MI, WI, NV..  For any GOP candidate to win they must win at least six of those nine.  Put another way, I think the GOP has a harder time going forward than the Dems, and that’s going to be amplified with an incumbent.

To put this into a larger context, I don't know what this is called, but I'll call it the "electoral popular vote margin". For the minimum margin in states that would have changed the outcome

Obama 2012: 4 state difference with about 526k margin
Obama 2008: 7 state difference 1.1MM margin
Bush 2004: 3 states 36k votes
Bush 2000: 1 state 500 votes

Clinton 1996: 19 State difference with about 1.8MM difference
Clinton 1992: 17 State difference with about 870k difference

Bush 1988: I mean this was a blow out, Bush won the popular by +8 and the electoral college by +157.

Some of this just may be politics of a bygone era, but Biden's win from an electoral standard looks a lot more like 2016 or 2004 than it does like 2012.

It looks like presidential races are becoming progressively tighter with each cycle. What's the take away?

[FIPurpose]

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

I can’t get over how similar your argument is to Dems after 2016... and yet Trump lost the popular vote, bigly.  What that shows to me is that there are states which will be nail-biters, and others which are ‘safe’.  What this latest election showed to me is that there are far more states which are must-wins for the GOP right now than the Dems.  AZ, WI, GA, PA, FL, NC, MI, WI, NV..  For any GOP candidate to win they must win at least six of those nine.  Put another way, I think the GOP has a harder time going forward than the Dems, and that’s going to be amplified with an incumbent.

To put this into a larger context, I don't know what this is called, but I'll call it the "electoral popular vote margin". For the minimum margin in states that would have changed the outcome

Obama 2012: 4 state difference with about 526k margin
Obama 2008: 7 state difference 1.1MM margin
Bush 2004: 3 states 36k votes
Bush 2000: 1 state 500 votes

Clinton 1996: 19 State difference with about 1.8MM difference
Clinton 1992: 17 State difference with about 870k difference

Bush 1988: I mean this was a blow out, Bush won the popular by +8 and the electoral college by +157.

Some of this just may be politics of a bygone era, but Biden's win from an electoral standard looks a lot more like 2016 or 2004 than it does like 2012.

It looks like presidential races are becoming progressively tighter with each cycle. What's the take away?

I don't think races are necessarily becoming tighter. Because honestly, if Biden's team put in a good ground game, they could have easily achieved Obama's numbers. They're tighter in the sense that I don't think we'll be seeing a 400+ EV victory anytime in the next 20-30 years.

My point is that for the last 30 years, the presidential race is basically the Dem's to lose. The GOP has had to skirt by on less than 100k votes to gain power, so Biden only winning by a similar margin makes him, to me, not seem popular enough to have a comfortable victory in 2024. If Biden runs again in 2024, only has had a so-so presidency, and the GOP put up someone better than Mitt, then it'll be another coin-flip race.

[WhiteTrashCash]

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

I can’t get over how similar your argument is to Dems after 2016... and yet Trump lost the popular vote, bigly.  What that shows to me is that there are states which will be nail-biters, and others which are ‘safe’.  What this latest election showed to me is that there are far more states which are must-wins for the GOP right now than the Dems.  AZ, WI, GA, PA, FL, NC, MI, WI, NV..  For any GOP candidate to win they must win at least six of those nine.  Put another way, I think the GOP has a harder time going forward than the Dems, and that’s going to be amplified with an incumbent.

To put this into a larger context, I don't know what this is called, but I'll call it the "electoral popular vote margin". For the minimum margin in states that would have changed the outcome

Obama 2012: 4 state difference with about 526k margin
Obama 2008: 7 state difference 1.1MM margin
Bush 2004: 3 states 36k votes
Bush 2000: 1 state 500 votes

Clinton 1996: 19 State difference with about 1.8MM difference
Clinton 1992: 17 State difference with about 870k difference

Bush 1988: I mean this was a blow out, Bush won the popular by +8 and the electoral college by +157.

Some of this just may be politics of a bygone era, but Biden's win from an electoral standard looks a lot more like 2016 or 2004 than it does like 2012.

It looks like presidential races are becoming progressively tighter with each cycle. What's the take away?

I don't think races are necessarily becoming tighter. Because honestly, if Biden's team put in a good ground game, they could have easily achieved Obama's numbers. They're tighter in the sense that I don't think we'll be seeing a 400+ EV victory anytime in the next 20-30 years.

My point is that for the last 30 years, the presidential race is basically the Dem's to lose. The GOP has had to skirt by on less than 100k votes to gain power, so Biden only winning by a similar margin makes him, to me, not seem popular enough to have a comfortable victory in 2024. If Biden runs again in 2024, only has had a so-so presidency, and the GOP put up someone better than Mitt, then it'll be another coin-flip race.

Let's put aside Clinton's victories in 1992 and 1996, because they only happened due to Perot splitting the GOP vote. Bush won in 2000 due to a Supreme Court verdict while not winning the popular vote. Bush won reelection in 2004 due to the power of incumbency and he barely did that. Obama was elected in a landslide in 2008 because there was a global financial meltdown. (I really remember that one vividly.) Obama was reelected in 2012 due to the power of incumbency and because he did a good job helping the nation recover from the meltdown. Trump won in 2016 by a handful of votes (while losing the popular vote by a lot) because Hillary Clinton is a woman and Rust Belt voters didn't like that. (Plus she was dealing with a socialist insurgency in the party that took the Democrats four years to control. It got so bad during the 2016 election that some socialist electors voted for random people rather than give their pledged votes to Clinton.) Biden won the election because Trump did a terrible job in the middle of a global pandemic and Rust Belt voters like Biden because he's a blue collar man who likes to talk about punching people in the face.

That's pretty much the story for the past thirty years.

[nereo]

Except Perot wasn’t enough to swing 1996, unlike 1992. Even if you had given Dole every Perot vote, Clinton still won. Power of incumbency, perhaps?
Worth noting that Trump cant legitamitely blame a 3rd party as the reason he lost, though Johnson’sstringervshowing (relative to Jo Jorgensen) might have...

[OzzieandHarriet]

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

So a total of 55k votes separated the Biden win over Trump. In 2016, Trump won with

WI: +22k
MI: +11k
PA: +44k

Um, you left out Biden’s almost 50k >68,000 margin in PA. Trump needed PA to win this.

Edit to update vote margin reported since I typed that earlier.

[talltexan]

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

I can’t get over how similar your argument is to Dems after 2016... and yet Trump lost the popular vote, bigly.  What that shows to me is that there are states which will be nail-biters, and others which are ‘safe’.  What this latest election showed to me is that there are far more states which are must-wins for the GOP right now than the Dems.  AZ, WI, GA, PA, FL, NC, MI, WI, NV..  For any GOP candidate to win they must win at least six of those nine.  Put another way, I think the GOP has a harder time going forward than the Dems, and that’s going to be amplified with an incumbent.

To put this into a larger context, I don't know what this is called, but I'll call it the "electoral popular vote margin". For the minimum margin in states that would have changed the outcome

Obama 2012: 4 state difference with about 526k margin
Obama 2008: 7 state difference 1.1MM margin
Bush 2004: 3 states 36k votes
Bush 2000: 1 state 500 votes

Clinton 1996: 19 State difference with about 1.8MM difference
Clinton 1992: 17 State difference with about 870k difference

Bush 1988: I mean this was a blow out, Bush won the popular by +8 and the electoral college by +157.

Some of this just may be politics of a bygone era, but Biden's win from an electoral standard looks a lot more like 2016 or 2004 than it does like 2012.

What's incredible about that Bush 1988 result: the Democrats never looked seriously threatened to lose their House majority (which they'd maintained for thirty years) or surrender the Senate majority they'd just won back in 1986. This dominance came during a period in which Democrats only one three Presidential elections out of ten.

[FIPurpose]

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

So a total of 55k votes separated the Biden win over Trump. In 2016, Trump won with

WI: +22k
MI: +11k
PA: +44k

Um, you left out Biden’s almost 50k >68,000 margin in PA. Trump needed PA to win this.

Edit to update vote margin reported since I typed that earlier.

Nope, Biden has 306 EV's and GA, WI, AZ have 37 EV's which would put Biden at 269 and Trump at 270.

[EscapeVelocity2020]

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

So a total of 55k votes separated the Biden win over Trump. In 2016, Trump won with

WI: +22k
MI: +11k
PA: +44k

Um, you left out Biden’s almost 50k >68,000 margin in PA. Trump needed PA to win this.

Edit to update vote margin reported since I typed that earlier.

Nope, Biden has 306 EV's and GA, WI, AZ have 37 EV's which would put Biden at 269 and Trump at 270.

Not responding to if you are right or wrong, but the bigger picture is that the EC is totally outdated.  I am exhausted with living in a state where my 'protest vote' is meaningless.

[FIPurpose]

Let's put aside Clinton's victories in 1992 and 1996, because they only happened due to Perot splitting the GOP vote. Bush won in 2000 due to a Supreme Court verdict while not winning the popular vote. Bush won reelection in 2004 due to the power of incumbency and he barely did that. Obama was elected in a landslide in 2008 because there was a global financial meltdown. (I really remember that one vividly.) Obama was reelected in 2012 due to the power of incumbency and because he did a good job helping the nation recover from the meltdown. Trump won in 2016 by a handful of votes (while losing the popular vote by a lot) because Hillary Clinton is a woman and Rust Belt voters didn't like that. (Plus she was dealing with a socialist insurgency in the party that took the Democrats four years to control. It got so bad during the 2016 election that some socialist electors voted for random people rather than give their pledged votes to Clinton.) Biden won the election because Trump did a terrible job in the middle of a global pandemic and Rust Belt voters like Biden because he's a blue collar man who likes to talk about punching people in the face.

That's pretty much the story for the past thirty years.

Yeah... there's no proof that Perot voters split the GOP. Clinton still only won the popular vote by like +5.5% over Bush. So, maybe there were a few states where the Perot vote helped break for Clinton, but there is no evidence that I know of that the election without Perot would have ended any other way. (What other reason would a guy like Perot run other than recognizing that the current president was extremely unpopular?)

Otherwise, your story very conveniently fits your own narrative. So that's nice. But claiming Hillary lost because of being a woman and a socialist insurgency? (no idea what this is) Consider that the House members that lost their seat this term were some of the most moderate members of the House whereas several new progressive members are winning seats. (Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman)

Why is that? Because the Progressive Caucus actually organizes and does the groundwork to win. Do you have to look much farther than Rep. Omar in MN and Tlaib in MI who probably are responsible for MN and MI not being a close race this year. They put in the work to get Biden elected. The progressive caucus provides a lot more votes to the House than honestly the Dem party usually deserves.

[FIPurpose]

Nope, Biden has 306 EV's and GA, WI, AZ have 37 EV's which would put Biden at 269 and Trump at 270.

I think you have a math error somewhere as your electoral votes for Biden and Trump add up to 539 and there are only 538 electoral votes available.

You're right, GA, WI, and AZ losses would have led to a 269-269 tie, which almost certainly would have re-elected Trump.

[EscapeVelocity2020]

Nope, Biden has 306 EV's and GA, WI, AZ have 37 EV's which would put Biden at 269 and Trump at 270.

I think you have a math error somewhere as your electoral votes for Biden and Trump add up to 539 and there are only 538 electoral votes available.

You're right, GA, WI, and AZ losses would have led to a 269-269 tie, which almost certainly would have re-elected Trump.

On the flip side, I really don't understand why Texas goes for someone like Trump.  He has been so divisive here (literally tearing communities apart, if you don't support him) and, on top of all that, our coronavirus situation is total crap.  You would think Americans would ultimately want an effective President that keeps our grandparents safe, not an entertainer that pretends we are almost done with this virus (while it continues to get worse).

The Latino vote also blows my mind.  As long as Trump simply says he is anti-abortion, he gets them to vote against the much more immediate issues such as refugee family separation, Obamacare, DACA...

Trump has been an ugly mirror to look in to these last 4 years...

[Montecarlo]

@EscapeVelocity2020

Speaking of ugly mirrors, how about implications that Latino's are easily manipulated.  Sounds ugly to me.

Edit: I'm sure you are a nice person and you didn't mean anything sinister, but this is the kind of off-hand, casual racism that needs to be called out.  How dare Latinos vote against your expectations!?  It's offensive.

On the flip side, I really don't understand why Texas goes for someone like Trump.  He has been so divisive here (literally tearing communities apart, if you don't support him) and, on top of all that, our coronavirus situation is total crap.  You would think Americans would ultimately want an effective President that keeps our grandparents safe, not an entertainer that pretends we are almost done with this virus (while it continues to get worse).

The Latino vote also blows my mind.  As long as Trump simply says he is anti-abortion, he gets them to vote against the much more immediate issues such as refugee family separation, Obamacare, DACA...

Trump has been an ugly mirror to look in to these last 4 years...

[GuitarStv]

I don't think the argument was race specific.  Anyone who votes on a single issue is easy to manipulate.

[Samuel]

I don't think the argument was race specific.  Anyone who votes on a single issue is easy to manipulate.

I think you misspelled "persuade".

[OtherJen]

I don't think the argument was race specific.  Anyone who votes on a single issue is easy to manipulate.

It was not race-specific. I'm Mexican-American. An appalling number of my relatives voted for Trump because "Democrats want to kill babies." An appalling number of white people of my acquaintance (I grew up conservative Catholic) voted for Trump for the same reason. Hard data demonstrating that since 1973, 1) Roe v. Wade has stood even after GOP supermajorities in the House and Senate and a simultaneous GOP president and 2) abortion rates tend to go down in Democrat administrations do absolutely nothing to demonstrate that they are being taken advantage of by a party that will use anything to buy their votes. In fact, I've been told that I'm going to burn in hell for even suggesting that the GOP doesn't seem to actually want to do anything about abortion beyond big talk.

[ender]

It was not race-specific. I'm Mexican-American. An appalling number of my relatives voted for Trump because "Democrats want to kill babies." An appalling number of white people of my acquaintance (I grew up conservative Catholic) voted for Trump for the same reason. Hard data demonstrating that since 1973, 1) Roe v. Wade has stood even after GOP supermajorities in the House and Senate and a simultaneous GOP president and 2) abortion rates tend to go down in Democrat administrations do absolutely nothing to demonstrate that they are being taken advantage of by a party that will use anything to buy their votes. In fact, I've been told that I'm going to burn in hell for even suggesting that the GOP doesn't seem to actually want to do anything about abortion beyond big talk.

This is pretty conclusively true at this point.

Personally, I think the GOP also knows if they do it removes a major incentive they have to attract voters.

[EricEng]

Not responding to if you are right or wrong, but the bigger picture is that the EC is totally outdated.  I am exhausted with living in a state where my 'protest vote' is meaningless.

Well if it is any conciliation Texas demographics are changing steadily.  Give it another 10-20 years and Repubs will never win a presidential election again if we are still doing EC instead of popular vote.  Texas will either be solid blue or it will be the only swing state that matters.  38 EC becomes 76 point swing.  It will drown out everything.

Republicans need to move away from EC if they want a future long term.

[FIPurpose]

Hmm. I kind of got the opposite conclusion. Biden only won by a few thousand votes in a few states. There are not enough centrist voters in swing states to reliably vote for a moderate candidate. Biden won this time, but what happens in 4 years if it's Biden vs Trump again? All it would take would be a small economic hiccup and a lot of those centrists will start shuffling back over to Trump.

Biden's coalition is not strong. It wasn't strong enough to produce a Dem Senate. Biden's bare minimum appeal won't be good enough in 2024 to win an election. So the Dems need to start planning today on how to start building a real coalition with real policies and taking down the GOP. (Doug Jones had a pretty interesting take on this recently as well. If Democrats can't even protect a Senate seat from a Football Coach who doesn't even know the branches of government, are they putting in any effort?)

The more that I think about it, the more impressed I am with the Biden win.  BIden unseated an incumbent when the market was near an all-time high and just ~6 months into a national emergency. That combination should have been insurmountable against any other President. Somehow Biden won a majority of votes, and the popular vote by a wide margin.

Consider the other elected one-term presidents, George HW Bush, Carter, Hoover and Taft. All but Hoover were impacted by a strong running of 3rd party candidates. Only Roosevelt beat Hoover and also won a majority of the popular vote.  All were defeated during a recession or depression  (to be fair, unemployment spiked during March for Trump, but has rebounded along with the markets and polling showed a net positive for Trump in the months before the election. ). Also of note - Bush, Carter and Hoover lost to challengers who would come to define their party for decades to come (Clinton, Reagan and Roosevelt, respectively). 

I’ve got no idea whether Biden will step down after 4 years (possible, given his age), and whether there will be a Biden/Trump rematch.  But generally speaking the incumbent has a couple percentage points advantage.  Biden (and the broader Dem party) will also benefit from the ongoing demographic shifts in our country.  And Trump (should he be the challenger) will have to overcome the image of the loser of 2020.  I think the GOP’s best chance will be a deep recession in 2024.  Who knows if that will happen.  Whomever challenges in 2024 will need to win back Georgia and AZ, as well as hold onto Florida and NC while winning back at least one more state (possibly PA).

One thing that I forgot to mention is that in your list of 1-term presidents, if you go back just a little further you get to Grover Cleveland who won, lost, and then won again being both the 22nd and 24th president. And I honestly don't think it would take too much going wrong in a Biden admin for him to turn out to be a Benjamin Harrison. Though it may also be a mistake to think that Trump is anywhere close to being as popular as Cleveland was. Whereas Cleveland won the popular vote 3x in a row, Trump has now lost it 2x in a row. Even if he ran in 2024, I can't imagine him being anywhere close to ever winning the PV.

[WhiteTrashCash]

@EscapeVelocity2020

Speaking of ugly mirrors, how about implications that Latino's are easily manipulated.  Sounds ugly to me.

Edit: I'm sure you are a nice person and you didn't mean anything sinister, but this is the kind of off-hand, casual racism that needs to be called out.  How dare Latinos vote against your expectations!?  It's offensive.

On the flip side, I really don't understand why Texas goes for someone like Trump.  He has been so divisive here (literally tearing communities apart, if you don't support him) and, on top of all that, our coronavirus situation is total crap.  You would think Americans would ultimately want an effective President that keeps our grandparents safe, not an entertainer that pretends we are almost done with this virus (while it continues to get worse).

The Latino vote also blows my mind.  As long as Trump simply says he is anti-abortion, he gets them to vote against the much more immediate issues such as refugee family separation, Obamacare, DACA...

Trump has been an ugly mirror to look in to these last 4 years...

Why does anyone think there is such a thing as a "Latino vote". Latinos are dozens of nationalities and multiple races and ethnicities. What would ever possibly make someone think that they would all vote the same because they come from places where people spoke/speak Spanish?

[sui generis]

Not responding to if you are right or wrong, but the bigger picture is that the EC is totally outdated.  I am exhausted with living in a state where my 'protest vote' is meaningless.

Well if it is any conciliation Texas demographics are changing steadily.  Give it another 10-20 years and Repubs will never win a presidential election again if we are still doing EC instead of popular vote.  Texas will either be solid blue or it will be the only swing state that matters.  38 EC becomes 76 point swing.  It will drown out everything.

Republicans need to move away from EC if they want a future long term.

I would NOT count on this, as if the 2020 election and it's total overestimate of a blue shift in TX didn't tell us we can't count on demographic change to benefit one party.  You can't count on any monolithic Latino vote or younger voters to be or stay liberal, or anything like that.  It's not inevitable.  It will take a lot of successful work, which the Dems aren't really good at.

[Poundwise]

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

So a total of 55k votes separated the Biden win over Trump. In 2016, Trump won with

WI: +22k
MI: +11k
PA: +44k

So a total of about 77k votes.

By the electoral college standards, Trump won with a bigger margin in 2016 than Biden did this time. So unless you want to claim that Trump's 2016 win was by some equally huuuge margin, then you're kidding yourself. This was an extremely close election that could just have easily become our country's biggest popular vote upset. So yes, Biden's position is extremely precarious.

The only way out of this mess is by getting the country to move to a popular vote election. Because Joe Biden winning by an additional +700k in CA over Hillary Clinton means diddly squat if 10k WI decide they don't like Joe that much to back him again.

Couple of points:
- why didn't you include Biden's win in PA? (currently at 67331, I believe)
- the popular count is far from complete. New York just STARTED counting absentee ballots last week.

[FIPurpose]

Uhh Not taking away from Biden's Popular Vote total which is impressive, but in terms of how close this victory was, Biden won by 3 states WI, AZ, and GA. If Biden lost those states, then he would have lost the election: The total difference in votes as of today is about

AZ: +11k
WI: +20k
GA: +14k

So a total of 55k votes separated the Biden win over Trump. In 2016, Trump won with

WI: +22k
MI: +11k
PA: +44k

So a total of about 77k votes.

By the electoral college standards, Trump won with a bigger margin in 2016 than Biden did this time. So unless you want to claim that Trump's 2016 win was by some equally huuuge margin, then you're kidding yourself. This was an extremely close election that could just have easily become our country's biggest popular vote upset. So yes, Biden's position is extremely precarious.

The only way out of this mess is by getting the country to move to a popular vote election. Because Joe Biden winning by an additional +700k in CA over Hillary Clinton means diddly squat if 10k WI decide they don't like Joe that much to back him again.

Couple of points:
- why didn't you include Biden's win in PA? (currently at 67331, I believe)
- the popular count is far from complete. New York just STARTED counting absentee ballots last week.

1. See above, AZ, WI, and GA alone would have had Biden lose the election and they were the closest states. (Those states flipping would have caused an electoral college tie, which I believe 90% chance Trump would've won.)

2. Popular vote doesn't matter when determining who becomes president. That's my whole point here.

[Montecarlo]

2. Popular vote doesn't matter when determining who becomes president. That's my whole point here.

Seems to matter to me

Edit: sorry for large image.  Opening in new tab appears to work the best

[FIPurpose]

2. Popular vote doesn't matter when determining who becomes president. That's my whole point here.

Seems to matter to me

Edit: sorry for large image.  Opening in new tab appears to work the best

Isn't this a perfect example of correlation does not equal causation. Popular vote and ECV are correlated, the popular vote does not determine the president. You can read that part in the rules. Also you can see from that chart that winning with a 0 ECV margin at -4% is also basically right in line with that chart. Soooo.... this didn't really say anything.

[FIPurpose]

Also this chart basically would remain unchanged whether Biden's ECV outcome was anything from -50 to +200 which was basically all possible outcomes.

[wenchsenior]

Not responding to if you are right or wrong, but the bigger picture is that the EC is totally outdated.  I am exhausted with living in a state where my 'protest vote' is meaningless.

Well if it is any conciliation Texas demographics are changing steadily.  Give it another 10-20 years and Repubs will never win a presidential election again if we are still doing EC instead of popular vote.  Texas will either be solid blue or it will be the only swing state that matters.  38 EC becomes 76 point swing.  It will drown out everything.

Republicans need to move away from EC if they want a future long term.

I would NOT count on this, as if the 2020 election and it's total overestimate of a blue shift in TX didn't tell us we can't count on demographic change to benefit one party.  You can't count on any monolithic Latino vote or younger voters to be or stay liberal, or anything like that.  It's not inevitable.  It will take a lot of successful work, which the Dems aren't really good at.

100% agree with this.  Texas is nowhere near close to flipping or even becoming a consistent swing state (though I could see swing state status becoming a thing in ~20 years....maybe), despite the tiresome talk about it year after year after year by Dem strategists.  Our city (home to a major university) went 2:1 Trump:Biden, and even the traditional 'blue' counties in the Trans Pecos and Rio Grande Valley mostly went red this year.  There are simply too many evangelicals and socially conservative Catholics (including a lot of the LatinX vote) in Texas for it to be in play any time soon.

[nereo]

Hmm. I kind of got the opposite conclusion. Biden only won by a few thousand votes in a few states. There are not enough centrist voters in swing states to reliably vote for a moderate candidate. Biden won this time, but what happens in 4 years if it's Biden vs Trump again? All it would take would be a small economic hiccup and a lot of those centrists will start shuffling back over to Trump.

Biden's coalition is not strong. It wasn't strong enough to produce a Dem Senate. Biden's bare minimum appeal won't be good enough in 2024 to win an election. So the Dems need to start planning today on how to start building a real coalition with real policies and taking down the GOP. (Doug Jones had a pretty interesting take on this recently as well. If Democrats can't even protect a Senate seat from a Football Coach who doesn't even know the branches of government, are they putting in any effort?)

The more that I think about it, the more impressed I am with the Biden win.  BIden unseated an incumbent when the market was near an all-time high and just ~6 months into a national emergency. That combination should have been insurmountable against any other President. Somehow Biden won a majority of votes, and the popular vote by a wide margin.

Consider the other elected one-term presidents, George HW Bush, Carter, Hoover and Taft. All but Hoover were impacted by a strong running of 3rd party candidates. Only Roosevelt beat Hoover and also won a majority of the popular vote.  All were defeated during a recession or depression  (to be fair, unemployment spiked during March for Trump, but has rebounded along with the markets and polling showed a net positive for Trump in the months before the election. ). Also of note - Bush, Carter and Hoover lost to challengers who would come to define their party for decades to come (Clinton, Reagan and Roosevelt, respectively). 

I’ve got no idea whether Biden will step down after 4 years (possible, given his age), and whether there will be a Biden/Trump rematch.  But generally speaking the incumbent has a couple percentage points advantage.  Biden (and the broader Dem party) will also benefit from the ongoing demographic shifts in our country.  And Trump (should he be the challenger) will have to overcome the image of the loser of 2020.  I think the GOP’s best chance will be a deep recession in 2024.  Who knows if that will happen.  Whomever challenges in 2024 will need to win back Georgia and AZ, as well as hold onto Florida and NC while winning back at least one more state (possibly PA).

One thing that I forgot to mention is that in your list of 1-term presidents, if you go back just a little further you get to Grover Cleveland who won, lost, and then won again being both the 22nd and 24th president. And I honestly don't think it would take too much going wrong in a Biden admin for him to turn out to be a Benjamin Harrison. Though it may also be a mistake to think that Trump is anywhere close to being as popular as Cleveland was. Whereas Cleveland won the popular vote 3x in a row, Trump has now lost it 2x in a row. Even if he ran in 2024, I can't imagine him being anywhere close to ever winning the PV.

As you said, Cleveland was popular in a way Trip had never been. The absolute best Trump has ever been able to muster is a narrow win in the EC while losing the popular vote. His trend has been downward, and he’s never managed a net positive favorsbility rating past his inauguration bump.
Hard to see how he reverses this remarkably steady trend. A recession or strong liberal third party candidate might do it. But it sees to me the GOP would be far better served with someone more popular and with less baggage. Nikki Halley perhaps.

[Montecarlo]

2. Popular vote doesn't matter when determining who becomes president. That's my whole point here.

Seems to matter to me

Edit: sorry for large image.  Opening in new tab appears to work the best

Isn't this a perfect example of correlation does not equal causation. Popular vote and ECV are correlated, the popular vote does not determine the president. You can read that part in the rules. Also you can see from that chart that winning with a 0 ECV margin at -4% is also basically right in line with that chart. Soooo.... this didn't really say anything.

I would argue that there is definitely a causative effect going on here!

[Montecarlo]

I suppose you could argue the EC vote and the popular share a common cause, instead of one causing the other, but that’s splitting hairs imo

[FIPurpose]

2. Popular vote doesn't matter when determining who becomes president. That's my whole point here.

Seems to matter to me

Edit: sorry for large image.  Opening in new tab appears to work the best

Isn't this a perfect example of correlation does not equal causation. Popular vote and ECV are correlated, the popular vote does not determine the president. You can read that part in the rules. Also you can see from that chart that winning with a 0 ECV margin at -4% is also basically right in line with that chart. Soooo.... this didn't really say anything.

I would argue that there is definitely a causative effect going on here!

I would say that an R^2 of .83 barely even counts as a good correlation.

[Montecarlo]

2. Popular vote doesn't matter when determining who becomes president. That's my whole point here.

Seems to matter to me

Edit: sorry for large image.  Opening in new tab appears to work the best

Isn't this a perfect example of correlation does not equal causation. Popular vote and ECV are correlated, the popular vote does not determine the president. You can read that part in the rules. Also you can see from that chart that winning with a 0 ECV margin at -4% is also basically right in line with that chart. Soooo.... this didn't really say anything.

I would argue that there is definitely a causative effect going on here!

I would say that an R^2 of .83 barely even counts as a good correlation.

That’s rather subjective.
How high does R-squared have to be?

[FIPurpose]

I would say that an R^2 of .83 barely even counts as a good correlation.

As someone who often spends days trying to build predictive models out of a bunch of variables which are individually correlated at only R^2 of 0.3-0.4, I'd be thrilled to find a single variable than explained more than 4/5ths of the total variance.

FIPurpose, you seem to feel very strongly about something right now in this thread, but it's genuinely not clear to me what it is. You attribute Biden's underperformance relative to Obama to not being able to have the same ground game in the middle of a nationwide pandemic, but then turn around and say you're worried about his performance in 2024 (where, if he did run, the pandemic would no longer be an issue). You're arguing the popular vote doesn't matter, which would mean the democrats need to adjust their strategy to better compete in individual states (realistically that would mean midwestern states like Iowa and Ohio, while shoring up their leads in the states Biden and Obama won, but Clinton lost, or maybe trying to figure out how to better appeal to voters in the southern Atlantic coast: NC, GA, and FL), but at the same time that the only solution is abolishing the electoral college (but it's not clear how we get from here to there). You're saying that the democrats losing a race in Alabama is a sign they need to be doing things differently, but it's not clear to me what kind of changes you'd have the national democrats make to be more competitive in statewide elections in Alabama.

Any now you're getting in disagreements about how good an R^2 it takes to qualify as a good correlation, which is an argument that, trust me, does no one any good and is unwindable by any side.

What, exactly, is it you're trying to convince us all of right now?

You're mixing and matching a lot of different threads of conversation that different people have had with me the past couple days and smashing them altogether. So let me straighten it out:

1. My statement does say that Pop. Vote and ECV margin are well-correlated, obviously they're correlated. You need votes in order to win the EC, but that really is only indirectly related to the national popular vote. You don't have to look beyond 2016 and 2020 where Biden outperformed Clinton by +2% in the popular vote but had 30% more ECV.

2. Biden was never going to have a ground game, pandemic or not. It's a weak excuse to say that you can't take some reasonable precautions and still do some door knocking or voter canvassing. Biden could be weak in 2024 for several reasons: he'll be way old, if he never delivered any economic relief to the rust belt, if he dies will the Dems be stuck with a Kamala run, if there's even a small down swing. The fact is that a lackluster Biden vs. a lackluster GOP candidate is a 50/50 shot in my book. And the GOP don't even have to win the popular vote, they only need to win back those 50k votes in GA, AZ, and WI. (Though the numbers will be different after the Census tabulations).

3. You got lost in the popular vote talk. If you want the popular vote to mean something (and since Dems have won it 7 out of the last 8 elections, that seems like a pretty good strategy), then Dems need to push it. In fact there's a huge machine out there pushing the National Popular Vote Compact. Colorado just confirmed it this election and they are right around 200EV's so 70 more and we will have a National Popular vote.

4. Doug Jones comments are about the Dem's overall strategy is lacking. The Dem's need to follow GA's and Stacey Abram's lead. You can't just not invest in a state for 20 years and then think you can win it just because the winds change. Winning requires long-term investment not just in certain governor or senate races, but the whole way done the ballot. And outside of certain progressive candidate districts, that investment just isn't happening.

[EscapeVelocity2020]

@EscapeVelocity2020

Speaking of ugly mirrors, how about implications that Latino's are easily manipulated.  Sounds ugly to me.

Edit: I'm sure you are a nice person and you didn't mean anything sinister, but this is the kind of off-hand, casual racism that needs to be called out.  How dare Latinos vote against your expectations!?  It's offensive.

On the flip side, I really don't understand why Texas goes for someone like Trump.  He has been so divisive here (literally tearing communities apart, if you don't support him) and, on top of all that, our coronavirus situation is total crap.  You would think Americans would ultimately want an effective President that keeps our grandparents safe, not an entertainer that pretends we are almost done with this virus (while it continues to get worse).

The Latino vote also blows my mind.  As long as Trump simply says he is anti-abortion, he gets them to vote against the much more immediate issues such as refugee family separation, Obamacare, DACA...

Trump has been an ugly mirror to look in to these last 4 years...

Just to make you aware, I flagged your post as baiting and manipulative.  I could really care less about your obvious tactics to inflame some sort of race thing, but I’m not biting.  Sorry.

[nereo]

2. Biden was never going to have a ground game, pandemic or not. It's a weak excuse to say that you can't take some reasonable precautions and still do some door knocking or voter canvassing. Biden could be weak in 2024 for several reasons: he'll be way old, if he never delivered any economic relief to the rust belt, if he dies will the Dems be stuck with a Kamala run, if there's even a small down swing. The fact is that a lackluster Biden vs. a lackluster GOP candidate is a 50/50 shot in my book. And the GOP don't even have to win the popular vote, they only need to win back those 50k votes in GA, AZ, and WI. (Though the numbers will be different after the Census tabulations).

Alright, let’s just start with this one.  Why is it a foregone conclusion that ‘Biden was never going to have a ground game”?  I can’t say I agree with that.   I’m also not sold on “the fact” that Biden v. a lackluster GOP candidate would be 50/50.  To summarize what’s been said above - Biden defeated an incumbent at a time of global crisis when most democratic leaders are riding high, and he did it winning the highest share of the vote since FDR (at the peak of a global depression).  I don’t understand why you think ‘winning back’ those voters will be easier against an incumbent, and you seem to be forgetting that the close states shift in almost every election, even when one of the candidates is the same (see Michigan and Minnesota in 2016 vs 2020, for example)

Or alternatively the question can be reframed like this:  What makes you sure that Trump (if he does run in 2024, if not some other GOP candidate) will do BETTER than he did in either of his previous elections?

[EscapeVelocity2020]

Meanwhile, while I argue with some random person on the internet about Trump, Covid cases continue to surge in my locality.  Thanks Trump for being such an awesome President!  You have managed to kill more fellow Americans with your incompetence and narcissism than any actual war against a foreign aggressor.  I can only hope and pray that this Presidency ends before January since all you are doing now is adding to the domestic body count...  I would prefer that less Americans die, but Trump really does not seem to be paying attention anymore.   

[scottish]

This is interesting.   Trump has to front 7.9M USD if he wants a recount in Wisconsin.   If the recount costs less, they will generously refund the difference.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/16/politics/wisconsin-recount-estimated-cost/index.html

Will Trump put up or shut up?    I'd bet on neither.   No way he's going to spend almost 8M on a losing battle when he has pending financial troubles.    Instead he'll complain about it being unfair and a liberal conspiracy.