fivethirtyeight--2020-11-07--How Trump Changed America

How Trump Changed America

At 10:37 p.m. on Tuesday , November 8 , 2016 , I wrote myself an email : I ’ d been watching the 2016 vote returns in our office .
At 9:35 p.m. Donald Trump ’ s chance of winning the election was 26 percent according to our model ; by 10:09 p.m. it had moved to 44 percent .
At 10:31 p.m. a blog post of mine went up about the radical shifts among voters without a college education in Michigan .
Still , it took someone saying it out loud to arrange all those particulate results and blog @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just one direction : Trump was going to win the election .
The few minutes before and after I sent that email are caught in amber for me .
I collected my thoughts in the copier room and then went back out to the lobby where my co-workers were seated and quietly typing .
Along with the rest of America , I would spend the next four years trying to make sense of that night .
Trump changed our conception of what was possible in American democracy and American institutions .
Unless democracy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a second term .
On Saturday morning , the major networks declared that Joe Biden had won Pennsylvania , giving him enough electoral votes to become the president-elect .
But I have no doubt that the effects of Trump ’ s presidency will ripple through American life for years , if not decades .
Trump didn ’ t create partisanship or the idea that racism is a decent electoral strategy , but he elevated both .
He revealed fundamental weaknesses in the way Americans consume politics , and he seemed to make everyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is difficult to imagine that history will look favorably on Donald John Trump after he leaves office on January 20 , but I feel certain that history won ’ t be able to stop looking .
Trump changed politics .
But how exactly ?
Yes , there were the rallies , the calls for swamp-draining , and all the broken political norms .
But at the root , I think , Trump revealed how very hollow we are willing to let things get .
Over the course of the past five years , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of honesty or intellectual heft — and tens of millions of us were relatively unbothered by that .
Take the major political happenings of 2017 , for instance .
When the Republican House passed a bill to “ repeal and replace ” substantial parts of Obamacare — the phrase was repeated ad nauseam by Trump and others — Republicans held a celebration in the Rose Garden .
They rolled cases of beer into the halls of Congress .
But there was and never has been a Republican plan to “ replace ” Obamacare @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ repeal and replace.
” So did seemingly every Republican .
Then every cable show .
I ’ m certain I ’ ve uttered it professionally .
We repeated the phrase so much it would be easy to think Trump had some sort of plan .
He didn ’ t .
Of course , Trump wasn ’ t the first politician to serve rhetoric instead of substance .
But the lack of even an attempt at some concrete policy was remarkable .
My high school English teacher used to say , “ Image @ @ @ @ @ @ @ image or idea ( and make it vague enough ) and people will project onto it what they will .
This is the heart of many a savvy PR strategy — just ask Beyoncé .
The great lesson politicians of all stripes have taken from the Trump era is that you can have all the policy ideas in the world but they don ’ t matter if you can ’ t convey a resonant enough message to a broad enough swath of people .
Of course Mexico wasn ’ t going to pay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a triumphant idea to grasp onto .
What a succinct articulation of a set of cultural , racial , economic and political values !
The hollowness of the Trump era also required him to obfuscate the plain facts of things happening before our eyes .
When Trump ordered the travel ban in early 2017 — a thinly veiled attempt to cloak his much-touted campaign plan for a “ Muslim ban ” in something like respectability — his staff insisted that it was not what we all thought it was .
“ It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s not a Muslim ban , ” the White House ’ s then-press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters .
The seven countries singled out were all majority-Muslim , and during the campaign Trump had said : “ Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country ’ s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.
” Trump had only called it a “ ban , ” Spicer said , because that ’ s what the press had called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of truth ensued , just one battle in the country ’ s four-year war of semantics .
Trump perfected the strategy of retrofitting facts to one ’ s preferred narrative .
Up until the Trump era , partisans had made studious attempts to craft their arguments in at least a simulacrum of fact .
Trump didn ’ t bother much with that , and it turned out , the vast majority of Republican voters didn ’ t mind .
The rest of the country got angry but grew accustomed to his new rules @ @ @ @ @ @ @ faces were pushed down into a steaming bowl of fact , evidence and expert testimony during Trump ’ s 2019 impeachment trial , “ Republicans raged against the process and sought to offer benign explanations for Mr. Trump ’ s conduct , ” as The New York Times wrote .
Judging by the loss of the presidency , it seems that Trump ’ s strategy of optimism-despite-the-dire-facts ran aground as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the country .
The crisis required the government to make difficult choices , and perform its most basic duty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , everything broke .
You can ’ t rally or spin your way out of a pandemic .
In the 3 a.m. hour of November 9 , 2016 , I watched Trump ’ s victory speech .
“ Now it ’ s time for America to bind the wounds of division .
[ We ] have to get together , ” Trump intoned after congratulating Clinton for a “ hard-fought campaign , ” sounding a note of uncharacteristic grace .
I rolled over and slept for a couple of hours .
I watched @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before this year ’ s election .
This time , I found myself staring at Mike Pence , standing to Trump ’ s right , smiling beatifically .
Somehow he reminded me of Hans Holbein the Younger ’ s dour Thomas Cromwell .
Maybe there ’ s something about the jowls of the 20th-century Indiana native that recalls the 16th-century Putney boy turned consigliere to England ’ s King Henry VIII .
More likely it ’ s the conversations I had with my father about Henry and Cromwell .
During the summer we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Light , ” the final book in Hilary Mantel ’ s trilogy about Cromwell , and for a while , it came up often in our phone calls .
Henry , my father pointed out , was an incredibly strange man .
Most historians cloak the king ’ s wild decisions to marry , divorce , and behead his various wives — not to mention change the state religion ( resulting in the deaths of countless others ) — in the distancing language of realpolitik .
But I think Dad sort of cut @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ strange.
” Power does things to your brain ; the tyrant is usually an odd duck .
As Henry ’ s most powerful adviser , Cromwell was cannily attuned to the king ’ s capricious moods and to the dynamics of the palace — never taking too much credit for the king ’ s “ work.
” Yet Cromwell was never at ease , even as his wealth and influence grew .
Not to spoil the ending , but the guy was eventually executed .
Pence , however , survived at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could say the same for the rest of the Republican Party , at least for now .
Control of the Senate remains unclear , and the president found more supporters in 2020 than in 2016 — he even made inroads with Cuban American voters and seems to have picked up support from Black voters , particularly men , though we won ’ t know for sure for some time .
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed dismay at his party ’ s loss of college-educated , suburban and female voters , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GOP are worried the party is headed in a bad direction .
The results of the election don ’ t change the reality that the Republican Party and its ideals have been subsumed by Trump the individual , and have taken on his shallow contrarianism as its North Star .
But Trump ’ s great insight was understanding and accepting that the GOP ’ s base didn ’ t care all that much about the party elite ’ s core ideology : taxes , small government , free trade .
Rather , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had so cleverly carved out : guns , political incorrectness , anti-abortion sentiment , etc .
Trump won the GOP primaries by giving the people what they wanted .
He blamed Mexicans for woes that were better attributed to the changing nature of the world economy , which left some places in America far behind , the result of complex decisions and electoral choices over decades .
The GOP under Trump embraced the conspiracy theory as campaign rhetoric , reversed platform positions and generally abandoned its ideological core .
What was left was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; the Republicans had “ repeal and replace.
” The mainstream press had facts ; the GOP had a retort of “ fake news.
” And scientists had proof of climate change , while the GOP called efforts to reverse it “ extremism ” without offering an alternative solution .
The contrary impulses of Trump ’ s GOP revealed its full impotence when COVID-19 struck .
As health professionals worked to discover best practices in the midst of a pandemic , Trump and his party succumbed to their default instincts of questioning “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ genius has always been in the PR department , realizing the seductive power of thumbing your nose at authority .
The doctors said masks were good , but Trump and other Republicans called them an impingement on liberty .
Increasing scientific evidence showed the simple act of wearing a mask is a way to help control the pandemic , but Trump ’ s chief of staff Mark Meadows said , “ We ’ re not going to control the pandemic , ” just before the election .
More than 230,000 Americans have died @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and beat the novel coronavirus , he told the country that it wasn ’ t such a bad disease after all .
Contrarianism has real-world effects .
Deadly ones .
When the crisis finally hit with full force ( the president having known about its lethal potential for months despite publicly playing down its potential impact ) , Pence was charged with heading up the White House ’ s COVID-19 task force , a group now inextricably linked to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans .
Like the GOP at large @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a president , abandoning his responsibilities to the American public in the process .
Cromwell had to deal with some unpleasantness too , overseeing the executions of friends and innocents .
He did so in the name of king and country , the deaths a necessary cleansing .
On October 27 , the White House released its “ science and technology accomplishments from the first term.
” The top accomplishment ?
“ ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.
” That day alone , 983 Americans died .
So what is America after Trump ?
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that ’ s for certain .
Estimates vary , but all signs point to the 2020 election having the highest voter participation rate in over 100 years .
It ’ s easy to see that participation simply as electoral .
But the Trump era has also brought a lot of politics into our daily lives .
That ’ s in part because of how many issues have been caught up in the net of partisanship .
Addressing racism and sexism is not necessarily the purview of one party or another .
Yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ After the # MeToo movement upended the silence surrounding America ’ s endemic sexism and the normalization of sexual misconduct , Trump said it was “ a very scary time for young men in America.
” After Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players knelt during the national anthem in protest of police violence and social injustice , Trump said team owners should say , “ Get that son of a bitch off the field right now.
” As some Americans feared that cancel culture had run amok , Trump said it was “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are different ways to look at those changes in American life that Trump has decried , though .
The # MeToo movement awakened men and women alike to the pervasiveness of sexism in American life .
Protests against police violence went from the streets of America ’ s cities to its sporting arenas and its suburbs .
And the looming threat of “ cancel culture ” pushed many Americans to rethink what they and their loved ones say , and how they should say it .
So now our political engagement is often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why-don ’ t-we-kidnap-the-governor-of-Michigan kind of engagement .
People speak in the vapid vernacular of the partisan internet .
We are quicker to see enemies than we are to see persuadable minds or future allies .
We are a cynical bunch , not very sure that we ever had much in common in the first place .
At 1 a.m. on November 9 , 2016 , I wrote yet another email to myself : “ Prayer of St. Francis is really the journalist ’ s prayer and the prayer of our time.
” I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ G ] rant that I may not so much seek … to be understood as to understand.
” I think I knew things would only continue to be ugly and cynical , but I think I had hoped that the world would surprise me .
Mostly , it has not .
Seeking to understand rather than be understood requires a suppression of ego that takes practice .
Lots of us are out of practice .
And this election has given us more information that we still need to process and understand .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s relatively simple to reveal the ugly truths of the world — and to develop anger around them .
It can be painful to realize your brother is a chauvinist , your cousin is bigoted toward religious people , or your mother is a racist .
And that pain can drive us into the harbors of the like-minded .
It ’ s harder to grapple with how to convince people to change the way they think about things , or to just go on letting them think what they think , not allowing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worst beliefs .
That ’ s a radical act of acceptance , and some might say a radical act of love .
It ’ s not an easy thing .
It might actually be the hardest thing .
So what is America after Trump ?
A nation figuring out how — and whether — to engage and whom to love : the stranger or the self ?
I know the cynic ’ s prediction of which we ’ ll choose , but pure cynicism is boring .
I ’ m rooting for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @

At 10:37 p.m. on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, I wrote myself an email:
“Nate [Silver] and Micah [Cohen] just told me Clinton is probably going to lose, that she’s an underdog … collapse in the Midwest.”
I’d been watching the 2016 vote returns in our office. At 9:35 p.m. Donald Trump’s chance of winning the election was 26 percent according to our model; by 10:09 p.m. it had moved to 44 percent. At 10:31 p.m. a blog post of mine went up about the radical shifts among voters without a college education in Michigan. Still, it took someone saying it out loud to arrange all those particulate results and blog posts in a line that pointed in just one direction: Trump was going to win the election.
The few minutes before and after I sent that email are caught in amber for me. I collected my thoughts in the copier room and then went back out to the lobby where my co-workers were seated and quietly typing. Along with the rest of America, I would spend the next four years trying to make sense of that night. Trump changed our conception of what was possible in American democracy and American institutions. Unless democracy is perverted, he will not serve a second term. On Saturday morning, the major networks declared that Joe Biden had won Pennsylvania, giving him enough electoral votes to become the president-elect.
But I have no doubt that the effects of Trump’s presidency will ripple through American life for years, if not decades. Trump didn’t create partisanship or the idea that racism is a decent electoral strategy, but he elevated both. He revealed fundamental weaknesses in the way Americans consume politics, and he seemed to make everyone in America care about it. It is difficult to imagine that history will look favorably on Donald John Trump after he leaves office on January 20, but I feel certain that history won’t be able to stop looking.
Trump changed politics. But how exactly?
Yes, there were the rallies, the calls for swamp-draining, and all the broken political norms. But at the root, I think, Trump revealed how very hollow we are willing to let things get. Over the course of the past five years, Americans were exposed to few political conversations of honesty or intellectual heft — and tens of millions of us were relatively unbothered by that.
Take the major political happenings of 2017, for instance. When the Republican House passed a bill to “repeal and replace” substantial parts of Obamacare — the phrase was repeated ad nauseam by Trump and others — Republicans held a celebration in the Rose Garden. They rolled cases of beer into the halls of Congress. But there was and never has been a Republican plan to “replace” Obamacare. Trump just kept repeating the phrase “repeal and replace.” So did seemingly every Republican. Then every cable show. I’m certain I’ve uttered it professionally. We repeated the phrase so much it would be easy to think Trump had some sort of plan. He didn’t.
Of course, Trump wasn’t the first politician to serve rhetoric instead of substance. But the lack of even an attempt at some concrete policy was remarkable. My high school English teacher used to say, “Image evokes emotion.” Convey a powerful enough image or idea (and make it vague enough) and people will project onto it what they will. This is the heart of many a savvy PR strategy — just ask Beyoncé. The great lesson politicians of all stripes have taken from the Trump era is that you can have all the policy ideas in the world but they don’t matter if you can’t convey a resonant enough message to a broad enough swath of people. Of course Mexico wasn’t going to pay for the border wall, but what a triumphant idea to grasp onto. What a succinct articulation of a set of cultural, racial, economic and political values!
The hollowness of the Trump era also required him to obfuscate the plain facts of things happening before our eyes. When Trump ordered the travel ban in early 2017 — a thinly veiled attempt to cloak his much-touted campaign plan for a “Muslim ban” in something like respectability — his staff insisted that it was not what we all thought it was. “It’s not a travel ban. It’s not a Muslim ban,” the White House’s then-press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. The seven countries singled out were all majority-Muslim, and during the campaign Trump had said: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” Trump had only called it a “ban,” Spicer said, because that’s what the press had called it. Circular arguments about the nature of truth ensued, just one battle in the country’s four-year war of semantics.
Trump perfected the strategy of retrofitting facts to one’s preferred narrative. Up until the Trump era, partisans had made studious attempts to craft their arguments in at least a simulacrum of fact. Trump didn’t bother much with that, and it turned out, the vast majority of Republican voters didn’t mind. The rest of the country got angry but grew accustomed to his new rules of politics. When congressional Republicans’ faces were pushed down into a steaming bowl of fact, evidence and expert testimony during Trump’s 2019 impeachment trial, “Republicans raged against the process and sought to offer benign explanations for Mr. Trump’s conduct,” as The New York Times wrote.
Judging by the loss of the presidency, it seems that Trump’s strategy of optimism-despite-the-dire-facts ran aground as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the country. The crisis required the government to make difficult choices, and perform its most basic duty of protecting the public. But instead, everything broke. You can’t rally or spin your way out of a pandemic.
In the 3 a.m. hour of November 9, 2016, I watched Trump’s victory speech. “Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division. [We] have to get together,” Trump intoned after congratulating Clinton for a “hard-fought campaign,” sounding a note of uncharacteristic grace. I rolled over and slept for a couple of hours.
I watched that same speech again a few days before this year’s election. This time, I found myself staring at Mike Pence, standing to Trump’s right, smiling beatifically. Somehow he reminded me of Hans Holbein the Younger’s dour Thomas Cromwell. Maybe there’s something about the jowls of the 20th-century Indiana native that recalls the 16th-century Putney boy turned consigliere to England’s King Henry VIII. More likely it’s the conversations I had with my father about Henry and Cromwell. During the summer we each read “The Mirror & the Light,” the final book in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about Cromwell, and for a while, it came up often in our phone calls. Henry, my father pointed out, was an incredibly strange man. Most historians cloak the king’s wild decisions to marry, divorce, and behead his various wives — not to mention change the state religion (resulting in the deaths of countless others) — in the distancing language of realpolitik. But I think Dad sort of cut through the mess when he called it “strange.” Power does things to your brain; the tyrant is usually an odd duck.
As Henry’s most powerful adviser, Cromwell was cannily attuned to the king’s capricious moods and to the dynamics of the palace — never taking too much credit for the king’s “work.” Yet Cromwell was never at ease, even as his wealth and influence grew. Not to spoil the ending, but the guy was eventually executed. Pence, however, survived at the elbow of his strange king.
You could say the same for the rest of the Republican Party, at least for now. Control of the Senate remains unclear, and the president found more supporters in 2020 than in 2016 — he even made inroads with Cuban American voters and seems to have picked up support from Black voters, particularly men, though we won’t know for sure for some time. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed dismay at his party’s loss of college-educated, suburban and female voters, a sign that the highest levels of the GOP are worried the party is headed in a bad direction. The results of the election don’t change the reality that the Republican Party and its ideals have been subsumed by Trump the individual, and have taken on his shallow contrarianism as its North Star.
But Trump’s great insight was understanding and accepting that the GOP’s base didn’t care all that much about the party elite’s core ideology: taxes, small government, free trade. Rather, they connected with the cultural signifiers the party had so cleverly carved out: guns, political incorrectness, anti-abortion sentiment, etc. Trump won the GOP primaries by giving the people what they wanted. He blamed Mexicans for woes that were better attributed to the changing nature of the world economy, which left some places in America far behind, the result of complex decisions and electoral choices over decades. The GOP under Trump embraced the conspiracy theory as campaign rhetoric, reversed platform positions and generally abandoned its ideological core.
What was left was that contrarianism. The Democrats had Obamacare; the Republicans had “repeal and replace.” The mainstream press had facts; the GOP had a retort of “fake news.” And scientists had proof of climate change, while the GOP called efforts to reverse it “extremism” without offering an alternative solution.
The contrary impulses of Trump’s GOP revealed its full impotence when COVID-19 struck. As health professionals worked to discover best practices in the midst of a pandemic, Trump and his party succumbed to their default instincts of questioning “the establishment”; Trump’s genius has always been in the PR department, realizing the seductive power of thumbing your nose at authority. The doctors said masks were good, but Trump and other Republicans called them an impingement on liberty. Increasing scientific evidence showed the simple act of wearing a mask is a way to help control the pandemic, but Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows said, “We’re not going to control the pandemic,” just before the election. More than 230,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, but after Trump contracted and beat the novel coronavirus, he told the country that it wasn’t such a bad disease after all.
Contrarianism has real-world effects. Deadly ones. When the crisis finally hit with full force (the president having known about its lethal potential for months despite publicly playing down its potential impact), Pence was charged with heading up the White House’s COVID-19 task force, a group now inextricably linked to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Like the GOP at large, Pence bolstered the fragile self-image of a president, abandoning his responsibilities to the American public in the process. Cromwell had to deal with some unpleasantness too, overseeing the executions of friends and innocents. He did so in the name of king and country, the deaths a necessary cleansing.
On October 27, the White House released its “science and technology accomplishments from the first term.” The top accomplishment? “ENDING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC.” That day alone, 983 Americans died.
So what is America after Trump?
We are more engaged with politics than ever, that’s for certain. Estimates vary, but all signs point to the 2020 election having the highest voter participation rate in over 100 years. It’s easy to see that participation simply as electoral. But the Trump era has also brought a lot of politics into our daily lives. That’s in part because of how many issues have been caught up in the net of partisanship. Addressing racism and sexism is not necessarily the purview of one party or another. Yet partisanship lives loud within us now. After the #MeToo movement upended the silence surrounding America’s endemic sexism and the normalization of sexual misconduct, Trump said it was “a very scary time for young men in America.” After Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players knelt during the national anthem in protest of police violence and social injustice, Trump said team owners should say, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now.” As some Americans feared that cancel culture had run amok, Trump said it was “driving people from their jobs.”
There are different ways to look at those changes in American life that Trump has decried, though. The #MeToo movement awakened men and women alike to the pervasiveness of sexism in American life. Protests against police violence went from the streets of America’s cities to its sporting arenas and its suburbs. And the looming threat of “cancel culture” pushed many Americans to rethink what they and their loved ones say, and how they should say it.
So now our political engagement is often a seething, partisan sort. A why-don’t-we-kidnap-the-governor-of-Michigan kind of engagement. People speak in the vapid vernacular of the partisan internet. We are quicker to see enemies than we are to see persuadable minds or future allies. We are a cynical bunch, not very sure that we ever had much in common in the first place.
At 1 a.m. on November 9, 2016, I wrote yet another email to myself: “Prayer of St. Francis is really the journalist’s prayer and the prayer of our time.” I was thinking of this part: “[G]rant that I may not so much seek … to be understood as to understand.” I think I knew things would only continue to be ugly and cynical, but I think I had hoped that the world would surprise me.
Mostly, it has not. Seeking to understand rather than be understood requires a suppression of ego that takes practice. Lots of us are out of practice. And this election has given us more information that we still need to process and understand.
Once we get rolling, it’s relatively simple to reveal the ugly truths of the world — and to develop anger around them. It can be painful to realize your brother is a chauvinist, your cousin is bigoted toward religious people, or your mother is a racist. And that pain can drive us into the harbors of the like-minded.
It’s harder to grapple with how to convince people to change the way they think about things, or to just go on letting them think what they think, not allowing their humanity to be defined by their worst beliefs. That’s a radical act of acceptance, and some might say a radical act of love. It’s not an easy thing. It might actually be the hardest thing.
So what is America after Trump? A nation figuring out how — and whether — to engage and whom to love: the stranger or the self? I know the cynic’s prediction of which we’ll choose, but pure cynicism is boring. I’m rooting for a change but planning for a stasis.
Biden is set to be president. What comes next? | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-07--Biden Wins — Pretty Convincingly In The End

Even if you knew in advance about the “ blue shift ” that would occur in states like Pennsylvania — and we did know in advance about it !
— it ’ s been hard to make enough of a mental adjustment for it this week .
Numbers flashing across a TV ticker have a certain magnetic power and certitude to them .
It was easy to forget that Joe Biden would gain ground once mail votes were added to the tallies because such votes were overwhelmingly Democratic this year in Pennsylvania and most other states .
But just because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ red shift that occurred in states where mail votes were counted first — that doesn ’ t mean the presidential race was all that close in the end .
Joe Biden ’ s win was on the tighter side of the likely range of outcomes suggested by polls , but it was a thoroughly convincing one judged on its own merits .
So put aside your anxieties of the past few days and the premature media narratives that have been circulating since Tuesday night .
Suppose , instead , that you ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trips in the Grand Canyon ( sounds pleasant , doesn ’ t it ? )
and woke up to this map : It ’ s not a landslide , by any means , but this is a map that almost any Democrat would have been thrilled about if you ’ d shown it to them a year ago .
Biden looks to have reclaimed the three “ blue wall ” states — Pennsylvania , Michigan and Wisconsin ( ABC News has announced that Biden is the “ apparent winner ” in Pennsylvania and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hillary Clinton ’ s loss .
He may also win Arizona ( he would become the first Democrat to do so since 1996 ) and , in the opposite corner of the country , Georgia ( the first Democratic winner there since 1992 ) .
Additionally , Biden easily won Nebraska ’ s 2nd Congressional District , which could be a thorn in the side of Republicans going forward .
He also ran far ahead of Clinton in rural northern states such as Maine , Minnesota and New Hampshire .
Extrapolating out from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ winning the popular vote by 4.3 percentage points and getting 81.8 million votes to President Trump ’ s 74.9 million , with a turnout of around 160 million .
This is significant because no candidate has ever received 70 million votes in an election — former President Barack Obama came the closest in 2008 , with 69.5 million votes — let alone 80 million .
That may also be a slightly conservative projection , given the blue shift we ’ ve seen so far and the fact that late-counted votes such as provisional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ d probably bet on Biden ’ s popular vote margin winding up at closer to 5 points than to 4 , and 6 points isn ’ t entirely out of the question either .
The margin is also a bit more impressive in the context of our highly polarized political era , which has tended to produce close elections .
If I ’ m right about the popular vote margin , Biden ’ s win would come via the second-largest popular vote margin since 2000 , exceeding Obama ’ s 3.9-point margin against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Obama ’ s 7.3-point win over John McCain in 2008 .
Biden also defeated an elected incumbent , which is relatively rare .
Since World War II , five elected incumbents who sought reelection have won it — Dwight Eisenhower , Richard Nixon , George W. Bush , Bill Clinton and Obama .
Trump is now the third sitting president to lose his reelection bid in that time , along with Jimmy Carter and George H.W .
Bush .
What about the polls ?
Didn ’ t they show a wider margin for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden led in the final national polls by around 8 points .
So we ’ re probably going to wind up with a polling error of around 3 to 4 points , both nationally and at the state level .
( Although that will reflect a combination of states like Georgia , where the polls were spot-on , and others like Wisconsin , where there were big misses . )
This is , of course , a subject on which we ’ ll have more to say in the coming days .
For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say that pollsters will have some questions to answer , especially about how they missed in the same direction ( underestimating Trump ) in some of the same states two elections in a row .
At the same time , this election ’ s polling error may wind up being fairly normal by historical standards .
Indeed , the final polls miss by around 3 points , on average , in presidential elections .
The error this year may be somewhat wider than that , but we should wait for all the votes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ substantially in some states before results are certified .
In any case , Biden ’ s ability to survive a polling error of the size that sank Clinton was precisely the reason he was a fairly heavy favorite in our forecast .
Biden won ( or is likely to win ) several states — Georgia , Wisconsin , Pennsylvania , Arizona — by margins that will probably be between 0 and 2 percentage points , in contrast to Clinton , who lost Wisconsin , Michigan , Pennsylvania and Florida by margins of 1 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s 89 percent chance of winning the Electoral College included the possibility of nail-biter wins in critical states — although , again , it ’ s hard to know if this race would be regarded as that much of a nail-biter if not for the timing of ballot counting and the blue shift .
The bigger problems — both for Democrats and for the polls — were in races for Congress .
There weren ’ t necessarily any huge upsets in the Senate ; it ’ s just that Democrats lost most of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ winners have been projected so far , Democrat Sara Gideon is the only Senate candidate favored in our forecast to have lost , and she had only a 59 percent chance of beating Sen. Susan Collins , according to our final forecast .
Gideon , however , is likely to eventually be joined by Cal Cunningham in North Carolina , who had a 68 percent chance , although the polling in that Senate race had tightened in the closing days of the campaign following a Cunningham sexting scandal .
Republican Joni Ernst held @ @ @ @ @ @ @ although Ernst was a narrow favorite in our forecast .
Democrats do retain a chance at a Senate majority , or more likely a 50-50 split in which Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be the deciding vote .
Democrats currently hold 48 seats , but there are two runoffs in Georgia on Jan. 5 that are sure to attract hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising .
I ’ m a little too exhausted to prognosticate about the Georgia runoffs all that much , but Democrats are at least mathematically alive here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to win .
They also retain some outside chances at winning a Senate seat in Alaska , where mail votes have not yet been counted .
But Democrats underperformed in the U.S. House , where they ’ ve lost almost every toss-up race that has been projected so far and Republicans have made a net gain of five seats and counting .
It also appears as though Democrats will underperform in the House popular vote relative to the presidential vote and the generic ballot , where Democrats led by about 7 percentage points @ @ @ @ @ @ @ miss ( although the House popular vote can take a long time to finalize ) .
In that sense , the election could be described as more of a repudiation of Trump specifically than of Republicans writ large .
Biden did have some shortcomings , however .
One major one was his apparent underperformance among key groups of Hispanic voters , especially Cuban Americans in South Florida and Mexican Americans in South Texas .
As you can see in this chart from The New York Times , there were huge shifts toward Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the addition of Georgia and Arizona in their column , Democrats ’ Electoral College coalition is somewhat fragile if it doesn ’ t contain Florida or Texas .
It ’ s not clear yet what the tipping-point state will be in this election — but mostly likely it will be Arizona or Wisconsin , where it appears as though Biden will win by around 1 percentage point .
That could mean there ’ s around a 4-point gap between the roughly 5-point popular vote victory that we eventually expect from Biden and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a bigger Electoral College disadvantage than Clinton had in 2016 ( 3 points ) .
Still , this brings up one last point : This is the seventh election out of the past eight in which Democrats have won the popular vote for president .
If American elections were contested on the basis of the popular vote , this race could probably have been called fairly early on Tuesday night , and we could all have gotten a lot more sleep the past few days .
But don ’ t let bleary eyes @ @ @ @ @ @

Even if you knew in advance about the “blue shift” that would occur in states like Pennsylvania — and we did know in advance about it! — it’s been hard to make enough of a mental adjustment for it this week. Numbers flashing across a TV ticker have a certain magnetic power and certitude to them. It was easy to forget that Joe Biden would gain ground once mail votes were added to the tallies because such votes were overwhelmingly Democratic this year in Pennsylvania and most other states.
How Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won a historic election | FiveThirtyEight
But just because of that blue shift — and the red shift that occurred in states where mail votes were counted first — that doesn’t mean the presidential race was all that close in the end. Joe Biden’s win was on the tighter side of the likely range of outcomes suggested by polls, but it was a thoroughly convincing one judged on its own merits.
So put aside your anxieties of the past few days and the premature media narratives that have been circulating since Tuesday night. Suppose, instead, that you’d been on one of those weekslong rafting trips in the Grand Canyon (sounds pleasant, doesn’t it?) and woke up to this map:
It’s not a landslide, by any means, but this is a map that almost any Democrat would have been thrilled about if you’d shown it to them a year ago. Biden looks to have reclaimed the three “blue wall” states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (ABC News has announced that Biden is the “apparent winner” in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin ) — that were central to Hillary Clinton’s loss. He may also win Arizona (he would become the first Democrat to do so since 1996) and, in the opposite corner of the country, Georgia (the first Democratic winner there since 1992). Additionally, Biden easily won Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which could be a thorn in the side of Republicans going forward. He also ran far ahead of Clinton in rural northern states such as Maine, Minnesota and New Hampshire.
Extrapolating out from current vote totals, I project Biden winning the popular vote by 4.3 percentage points and getting 81.8 million votes to President Trump’s 74.9 million, with a turnout of around 160 million. This is significant because no candidate has ever received 70 million votes in an election — former President Barack Obama came the closest in 2008, with 69.5 million votes — let alone 80 million. That may also be a slightly conservative projection, given the blue shift we’ve seen so far and the fact that late-counted votes such as provisional ballots often lean Democratic. I’d probably bet on Biden’s popular vote margin winding up at closer to 5 points than to 4, and 6 points isn’t entirely out of the question either.
The margin is also a bit more impressive in the context of our highly polarized political era, which has tended to produce close elections. If I’m right about the popular vote margin, Biden’s win would come via the second-largest popular vote margin since 2000, exceeding Obama’s 3.9-point margin against Mitt Romney in 2012 but lagging behind Obama’s 7.3-point win over John McCain in 2008.
Biden also defeated an elected incumbent, which is relatively rare. Since World War II, five elected incumbents who sought reelection have won it — Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Obama. Trump is now the third sitting president to lose his reelection bid in that time, along with Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush.
What about the polls? Didn’t they show a wider margin for Biden? Yes, they did — Biden led in the final national polls by around 8 points. So we’re probably going to wind up with a polling error of around 3 to 4 points, both nationally and at the state level. (Although that will reflect a combination of states like Georgia, where the polls were spot-on, and others like Wisconsin, where there were big misses.) This is, of course, a subject on which we’ll have more to say in the coming days. For now, it’s safe to say that pollsters will have some questions to answer, especially about how they missed in the same direction (underestimating Trump) in some of the same states two elections in a row.
At the same time, this election’s polling error may wind up being fairly normal by historical standards. Indeed, the final polls miss by around 3 points, on average, in presidential elections. The error this year may be somewhat wider than that, but we should wait for all the votes to be counted because margins may shift substantially in some states before results are certified.
In any case, Biden’s ability to survive a polling error of the size that sank Clinton was precisely the reason he was a fairly heavy favorite in our forecast. Biden won (or is likely to win) several states — Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona — by margins that will probably be between 0 and 2 percentage points, in contrast to Clinton, who lost Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida by margins of 1 percentage point or less. Biden’s 89 percent chance of winning the Electoral College included the possibility of nail-biter wins in critical states — although, again, it’s hard to know if this race would be regarded as that much of a nail-biter if not for the timing of ballot counting and the blue shift.
The bigger problems — both for Democrats and for the polls — were in races for Congress.
What Trump revealed about America | FiveThirtyEight
There weren’t necessarily any huge upsets in the Senate; it’s just that Democrats lost most of the toss-up races. Among races where winners have been projected so far, Democrat Sara Gideon is the only Senate candidate favored in our forecast to have lost, and she had only a 59 percent chance of beating Sen. Susan Collins, according to our final forecast. Gideon, however, is likely to eventually be joined by Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, who had a 68 percent chance, although the polling in that Senate race had tightened in the closing days of the campaign following a Cunningham sexting scandal. Republican Joni Ernst held off challenger Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, although Ernst was a narrow favorite in our forecast.
Democrats do retain a chance at a Senate majority, or more likely a 50-50 split in which Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be the deciding vote. Democrats currently hold 48 seats, but there are two runoffs in Georgia on Jan. 5 that are sure to attract hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising. I’m a little too exhausted to prognosticate about the Georgia runoffs all that much, but Democrats are at least mathematically alive here in a state that Biden appears likely to win. They also retain some outside chances at winning a Senate seat in Alaska, where mail votes have not yet been counted.
But Democrats underperformed in the U.S. House, where they’ve lost almost every toss-up race that has been projected so far and Republicans have made a net gain of five seats and counting. It also appears as though Democrats will underperform in the House popular vote relative to the presidential vote and the generic ballot, where Democrats led by about 7 percentage points. That looks like a significant polling miss (although the House popular vote can take a long time to finalize). In that sense, the election could be described as more of a repudiation of Trump specifically than of Republicans writ large.
Biden did have some shortcomings, however. One major one was his apparent underperformance among key groups of Hispanic voters, especially Cuban Americans in South Florida and Mexican Americans in South Texas. As you can see in this chart from The New York Times, there were huge shifts toward Trump in these areas:
Indeed, even with the addition of Georgia and Arizona in their column, Democrats’ Electoral College coalition is somewhat fragile if it doesn’t contain Florida or Texas. It’s not clear yet what the tipping-point state will be in this election — but mostly likely it will be Arizona or Wisconsin, where it appears as though Biden will win by around 1 percentage point. That could mean there’s around a 4-point gap between the roughly 5-point popular vote victory that we eventually expect from Biden and his margin in the tipping-point state, a bigger Electoral College disadvantage than Clinton had in 2016 (3 points).
Still, this brings up one last point: This is the seventh election out of the past eight in which Democrats have won the popular vote for president. If American elections were contested on the basis of the popular vote, this race could probably have been called fairly early on Tuesday night, and we could all have gotten a lot more sleep the past few days. But don’t let bleary eyes obscure Biden’s accomplishment.


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-07--Biden Won — But The Deep Partisan Divide In America Remains

Joe Biden is the apparent winner of Pennsylvania .
On Saturday morning , the major networks declared that he had won there , giving him enough electoral votes to become the president-elect .
But let ’ s go back to late Tuesday night for a moment … Once it was fairly clear that Biden would likely win the presidential election but in more of a drawn-out nail-biter than many polls had suggested , and that Democrats would keep their majority in the U.S. House but lose seats and perhaps not win control of the U.S. Senate , people in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the 2020 race .
Many of these arguments focused on flaws or shortcomings in the Democratic approach to 2020 — even though they had just pulled off the somewhat rare feat of unseating an incumbent president .
Some analysts argued that Democrats are too liberal , particularly on racial issues ; others argued that Democrats are insufficiently liberal , particularly on economic issues .
There is renewed criticism that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are bad at crafting a narrative for the party and recruiting candidates for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the party is not doing enough to appeal to Hispanic voters .
There are also questions about why polls appeared to understate the depth of Trump ’ s support ( again ) .
And , finally , there are questions once again about whether the broader political media is missing something in telling the story of American politics .
After all , the media has often cast Trump as an ineffective president , particularly in dealing with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus , and yet nearly half of the country ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of these arguments could be true .
All of them could be true ( except the mutually exclusive ones ) .
But here ’ s another take , or perhaps an anti-take : At the least , the unique nature of the vote in 2020 — in particular , that the counting is taking and will take longer than usual — means we won ’ t know many of these answers for some time .
And , moreover , Tuesday wasn ’ t particularly unusual , at least in the context of modern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans , including the vast majority of Asian , Black and Hispanic voters , backed the Democratic Party ’ s presidential candidate .
A slightly smaller bloc , including the majority of white Americans and the overwhelming majority of white evangelical Protestants , backed the Republican Party ’ s candidate .
Democrats carried states on the West Coast and in the Northeast , the GOP was dominant in the South and the Great Plains .
Democrats were very strong in cities , the GOP in rural areas ; the suburbs were somewhat more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it appears that a majority of voters in only one state chose a senator from a different party than in the presidential race ( Republican Sen. Susan Collins won in Maine , which Biden carried easily . )
In short , what made Tuesday surprising to observers was that the pre-election polls may have understated the size of Red America by a few percentage points nationally and overstated Biden ’ s standing in some swing states .
But an election where Democrats won the popular vote by several million votes but fairly narrowly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 .
The list of states that Biden won but Barack Obama lost in 2012 ( maybe Arizona and maybe Georgia ) is short , as is the list of states that Obama won in 2012 but Biden lost ( Florida , Iowa , Ohio ) .
The election being decided by Pennsylvania , Michigan and Wisconsin was probably what we expected in January 2020 , even though it looked as though Biden might expand the map far beyond that in November 2020 .
Obviously , there were some big shifts in 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lost Georgia by 8 percentage points in 2012 ; Biden is slightly ahead there .
Four years ago , Trump won about 34 percent of the vote in Miami-Dade County , but around 46 percent this year , a huge increase .
Most importantly , it is very notable , if not surprising , that Trump managed to get nearly universal support from Republican voters and win over nearly half of the total electorate despite his history of breaking with democratic values and his being in charge of the U.S. government while more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So , I ’ m not arguing that people should have expected what happened on Tuesday .
I did not .
I expected it to be somewhat clear by 11 p.m. on election night that Biden had won .
I expected Democrats would gain control of the Senate and win House seats .
None of that happened .
I want to know more about what polls may have gotten wrong ( though we ’ ll have to wait for all the votes to be counted before really diving into that ) .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each party may have affected the results and other factors that may have shaped the election .
Some of the initial post-election criticisms of Democrats and the political media may be right .
But the most obvious conclusion from the 2020 elections is that we are still divided between two entrenched political coalitions in America .
This has basically been true since at least the 2000 elections .
Those two coalitions show up in polling on a ton of issues .
I am not suggesting that these coalitions are of exactly equal size @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in seven of the last eight presidential elections ) .
Nor am I suggesting that these coalitions are permanent and unchanging , or that the parties and candidates can ’ t do things to shift these dynamics .
Maybe Democrats would have done better at the congressional level with different candidates or a different message .
Perhaps Republicans will dominate elections in the future without the unpopular Trump weighing down the party .
Alternatively , perhaps Trump is a uniquely talented politician and Democrats will be able to win more elections if he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But I do know that at least 42 states and the clear majority of Americans voted for the same party at the presidential level in 2020 as they did in 2016 .
The most important story may be not what changed electorally in 2020 , but how and why so much did not change .

Perry Bacon Jr. (perry.bacon@fivethirtyeight.com)

Joe Biden is the apparent winner of Pennsylvania. On Saturday morning, the major networks declared that he had won there, giving him enough electoral votes to become the president-elect. But let’s go back to late Tuesday night for a moment …
Once it was fairly clear that Biden would likely win the presidential election but in more of a drawn-out nail-biter than many polls had suggested, and that Democrats would keep their majority in the U.S. House but lose seats and perhaps not win control of the U.S. Senate, people in the political world started offering their deeper analyses of the 2020 race.
How Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won a historic election | FiveThirtyEight
Many of these arguments focused on flaws or shortcomings in the Democratic approach to 2020 — even though they had just pulled off the somewhat rare feat of unseating an incumbent president. Some analysts argued that Democrats are too liberal, particularly on racial issues; others argued that Democrats are insufficiently liberal, particularly on economic issues. There is renewed criticism that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are bad at crafting a narrative for the party and recruiting candidates for key races. There is frustration that the party is not doing enough to appeal to Hispanic voters.
There are also questions about why polls appeared to understate the depth of Trump’s support (again). And, finally, there are questions once again about whether the broader political media is missing something in telling the story of American politics. After all, the media has often cast Trump as an ineffective president, particularly in dealing with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, and yet nearly half of the country’s votes were cast for him.
Some of these arguments could be true. All of them could be true (except the mutually exclusive ones). But here’s another take, or perhaps an anti-take: At the least, the unique nature of the vote in 2020 — in particular, that the counting is taking and will take longer than usual — means we won’t know many of these answers for some time. And, moreover, Tuesday wasn’t particularly unusual, at least in the context of modern American electoral politics.
A plurality of Americans, including the vast majority of Asian, Black and Hispanic voters, backed the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. A slightly smaller bloc, including the majority of white Americans and the overwhelming majority of white evangelical Protestants, backed the Republican Party’s candidate. Democrats carried states on the West Coast and in the Northeast, the GOP was dominant in the South and the Great Plains. Democrats were very strong in cities, the GOP in rural areas; the suburbs were somewhat more split. As of right now, it appears that a majority of voters in only one state chose a senator from a different party than in the presidential race (Republican Sen. Susan Collins won in Maine, which Biden carried easily.)
In short, what made Tuesday surprising to observers was that the pre-election polls may have understated the size of Red America by a few percentage points nationally and overstated Biden’s standing in some swing states. But an election where Democrats won the popular vote by several million votes but fairly narrowly won the Electoral College almost happened in 2016. The list of states that Biden won but Barack Obama lost in 2012 (maybe Arizona and maybe Georgia) is short, as is the list of states that Obama won in 2012 but Biden lost (Florida, Iowa, Ohio). The election being decided by Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin was probably what we expected in January 2020, even though it looked as though Biden might expand the map far beyond that in November 2020.
Obviously, there were some big shifts in 2020 compared with past election cycles. Obama lost Georgia by 8 percentage points in 2012; Biden is slightly ahead there. Four years ago, Trump won about 34 percent of the vote in Miami-Dade County, but around 46 percent this year, a huge increase.
Most importantly, it is very notable, if not surprising, that Trump managed to get nearly universal support from Republican voters and win over nearly half of the total electorate despite his history of breaking with democratic values and his being in charge of the U.S. government while more than 235,000 Americans died of COVID-19.
So, I’m not arguing that people should have expected what happened on Tuesday. I did not. I expected it to be somewhat clear by 11 p.m. on election night that Biden had won. I expected Democrats would gain control of the Senate and win House seats. None of that happened. I want to know more about what polls may have gotten wrong (though we’ll have to wait for all the votes to be counted before really diving into that). I want to know how the strategies of each party may have affected the results and other factors that may have shaped the election. Some of the initial post-election criticisms of Democrats and the political media may be right.
But the most obvious conclusion from the 2020 elections is that we are still divided between two entrenched political coalitions in America. This has basically been true since at least the 2000 elections. Those two coalitions show up in polling on a ton of issues. I am not suggesting that these coalitions are of exactly equal size (Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections). Nor am I suggesting that these coalitions are permanent and unchanging, or that the parties and candidates can’t do things to shift these dynamics. Maybe Democrats would have done better at the congressional level with different candidates or a different message. Perhaps Republicans will dominate elections in the future without the unpopular Trump weighing down the party. Alternatively, perhaps Trump is a uniquely talented politician and Democrats will be able to win more elections if he isn’t on the ballot.
I. Don’t. Know.
But I do know that at least 42 states and the clear majority of Americans voted for the same party at the presidential level in 2020 as they did in 2016. The most important story may be not what changed electorally in 2020, but how and why so much did not change.
What Trump revealed about America | FiveThirtyEight


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-07--Biden Won — Pretty Convincingly In The End


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-09--Democrats Aren’t Sure Why They Didn’t Do Better In The House And Senate. It Might Not Be Clear For W

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast , the crew reviews the unresolved races in the 2020 election and @ @ @ @ @ are reacting to the results .

Democrats Aren’t Sure Why They Didn’t Do Better In The House And Senate. It Might Not Be Clear For Weeks.
In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew reviews the unresolved races in the 2020 election and discusses how the two parties are reacting to the results.


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-09--Politics Podcast: Where The Rest Of The 2020 Races Stand

Joe Biden is the president-elect , but our colleagues at ABC News have yet to project four states in the @ @ @ @ @ mention outstanding races in the House and Senate .
In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight @ @ @ @ @ reviews who is leading in the outstanding races and how the two parties are reacting @ @ @ @ @ also discuss what positive vaccine news could mean for Biden ’ s first term .
@ @ @ @ @ episode by clicking the “ play ” button in the audio player above or by @ @ @ @ @ the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform .
If you are new to podcasts @ @ @ @ @ .
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays .
Help new listeners discover @ @ @ @ @ a rating and review on iTunes .
Have a comment , question or suggestion for @ @ @ @ @ polling ” ?
Get in touch by email , on Twitter or in the comments @

Joe Biden is the president-elect, but our colleagues at ABC News have yet to project four states in the presidential contest, not to mention a number of races in the House and Senate. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew reviews who is leading in the outstanding races and how the two parties are reacting to the results. They also discuss what positive vaccine news could mean for Biden’s first term.
You can listen to the episode by clicking the “play” button in the audio player above or by downloading it in iTunes, the ESPN App or your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts, learn how to listen.
The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show by leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for “good polling vs. bad polling”? Get in touch by email, on Twitter or in the comments.


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-09--Remembering Alex Trebek, The Man With All The Answers

For decades , I ’ ve tuned into the trivia game show “ Jeopardy !
” for the facts .
On Sunday , the show lost its judicious leader , Alex Trebek , who died at age 80 after a battle with cancer .
Trebek had hosted “ Jeopardy !
” for my entire life .
He began in 1984 and hosted every episode since — save for April Fool ’ s Day in 1997 when he and Pat Sajak of “ Wheel of Fortune ” swapped places — more than 8,000 half-hour shows in all .
For many , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a day ends and a night begins .
It was also a way to get real facts , a brief respite from the “ alternative facts ” so prevalent over the past few years .
Trebek and the show — the two difficult now to divorce — were a beacon of democratic ideals , flattening the world for all to consume .
High and low , popular and obscure , new and old , holy and profane , Trebek put all of them on equal terms .
Look no further than the episode @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this past Friday , for example .
It featured clues about Rihanna , Madonna and Katy Perry , and clues about the city of Vaduz , the Russian navy and the German chancellor .
All were on the same game board — though Gene Wilder and the Cook Strait were worth more money than any of them .
“ Jeopardy !
” and Trebek have been a haven for facts as monuments of truth have crumbled in the public sphere .
The holder of the country ’ s highest office now baselessly disputes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and dangerous conspiracy theories are elected to Congress , and fact-checking is a booming industry .
Trebek ’ s performance hasn ’ t changed to combat the untruths of the last few years , in part because it already was a kind of totem to the value of fact .
Since 1984 , he has stood each weekday in a suit behind a podium with a sheet of notes and delivered more than 400,000 clues , each a minor daily inoculation against the creep of lies — or whatever you want to call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than a host , ” tweeted James Holzhauer , who set a series of unreal records on “ Jeopardy !
” last spring .
“ He was an impartial arbiter of truth and facts in a world that needs exactly that.
” The show ’ s eclectic and unpredictable subject matter is the result of an unassuming , wide-angle lens cast upon a large and complicated world .
We call the material Trebek delivered “ trivia , ” but few things are less trivial than turning a generous eye toward the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ splendor — and calling things by their right name .
The headline on a great 2014 profile of Trebek in the New Republic declared him the “ Last King of the American Middlebrow.
” This is true not in a pejorative sense but in a statistical one , as in the average between high and low .
Trebek ’ s essential demeanor — and therefore “ Jeopardy !
” itself — is stripped of pretension and pretext .
The show ’ s archive showcases its diverse interests , each of which was presented @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simply and equally in the iconic all-caps white text on a blue square .
Knowledge of the former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is worth the same as that of “ The Office ” actor Steve Carrell , as that of the toy Mr .
Potato Head .
The playwright Shakespeare is equal to the running back Walter Payton .
The element helium is as valuable as the airport Heathrow .
Trebek ’ s performance as host emphasized this egalitarianism .
His affect was steady and his pronunciation — of French , most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ took pre-show notes with diacritical marks to ensure that he ’ d get it right .
And at the same time he was , among other things , an underrated rapper , as Holzhauer joked , enthusiastically engaging with the repertoires of Lil Wayne , Drake and Kendrick Lamar .
“ I ’ m not too good at it , but I was getting into it , ” Trebek said after delivering the verses , and I believed him .
Moreover , Trebek ’ s performance didn ’ t just lack pretension , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lightly chastised three contestants , who had correctly answered clues about Molière and Thor Heyerdahl , for not knowing enough about football .
“ I have to talk to them , ” Trebek said disapprovingly before going to commercial .
The democratic nature of trivia had been thrown off-kilter , and Trebek had to correct it .
By all accounts , Trebek embodied these trivia ideals while also being a genuine and gracious human .
“ Alex wasn ’ t just the best ever at what he did , ” tweeted Ken Jennings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contestant , who won a record 74 consecutive times .
“ He was also a lovely and deeply decent man , and I ’ m grateful for every minute I got to spend with him.
” It was with this same ethos of decency and calm that Trebek announced , in March 2019 , that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer .
He said he “ wanted to prevent you from reading or hearing some overblown or inaccurate reports regarding my health.
” The rest of the short statement was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to fight the cancer and continue working .
“ Truth told , I have to , ” he said , with a characteristic pinch of humor .
“ Because under the terms of my contract , I have to host ‘ Jeopardy !
’ for three more years.
” I wish he were able to do so .
The show may go on , but it ’ s hard to imagine anyone personifying its ideals as well as Alex Trebek did .
Of course , the contestants on “ Jeopardy !
” just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who had all the answers .

For decades, I’ve tuned into the trivia game show “Jeopardy!” for the facts. On Sunday, the show lost its judicious leader, Alex Trebek, who died at age 80 after a battle with cancer.
Trebek had hosted “Jeopardy!” for my entire life. He began in 1984 and hosted every episode since — save for April Fool’s Day in 1997 when he and Pat Sajak of “Wheel of Fortune” swapped places — more than 8,000 half-hour shows in all. For many, watching Trebek was ritualistic — the way a day ends and a night begins. It was also a way to get real facts, a brief respite from the “alternative facts” so prevalent over the past few years.
Trebek and the show — the two difficult now to divorce — were a beacon of democratic ideals, flattening the world for all to consume. High and low, popular and obscure, new and old, holy and profane, Trebek put all of them on equal terms. Look no further than the episode of “Jeopardy!” that aired this past Friday, for example. It featured clues about Rihanna, Madonna and Katy Perry, and clues about the city of Vaduz, the Russian navy and the German chancellor. All were on the same game board — though Gene Wilder and the Cook Strait were worth more money than any of them.
“Jeopardy!” and Trebek have been a haven for facts as monuments of truth have crumbled in the public sphere. The holder of the country’s highest office now baselessly disputes legitimate election results, espousers of baseless and dangerous conspiracy theories are elected to Congress, and fact-checking is a booming industry.
Trebek’s performance hasn’t changed to combat the untruths of the last few years, in part because it already was a kind of totem to the value of fact. Since 1984, he has stood each weekday in a suit behind a podium with a sheet of notes and delivered more than 400,000 clues, each a minor daily inoculation against the creep of lies — or whatever you want to call them.
“Alex was so much more than a host,” tweeted James Holzhauer, who set a series of unreal records on “Jeopardy!” last spring. “He was an impartial arbiter of truth and facts in a world that needs exactly that.”
The show’s eclectic and unpredictable subject matter is the result of an unassuming, wide-angle lens cast upon a large and complicated world. We call the material Trebek delivered “trivia,” but few things are less trivial than turning a generous eye toward the world — in all its strange and diverse splendor — and calling things by their right name.
The headline on a great 2014 profile of Trebek in the New Republic declared him the “Last King of the American Middlebrow.” This is true not in a pejorative sense but in a statistical one, as in the average between high and low. Trebek’s essential demeanor — and therefore “Jeopardy!” itself — is stripped of pretension and pretext.
The show’s archive showcases its diverse interests, each of which was presented on the show’s giant board simply and equally in the iconic all-caps white text on a blue square. Knowledge of the former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is worth the same as that of “The Office” actor Steve Carrell, as that of the toy Mr. Potato Head. The playwright Shakespeare is equal to the running back Walter Payton. The element helium is as valuable as the airport Heathrow.
Trebek’s performance as host emphasized this egalitarianism. His affect was steady and his pronunciation — of French, most famously — was impeccable, and he took pre-show notes with diacritical marks to ensure that he’d get it right. And at the same time he was, among other things, an underrated rapper, as Holzhauer joked, enthusiastically engaging with the repertoires of Lil Wayne, Drake and Kendrick Lamar.
“I’m not too good at it, but I was getting into it,” Trebek said after delivering the verses, and I believed him.
Moreover, Trebek’s performance didn’t just lack pretension, it was anti-pretentious. He once famously lightly chastised three contestants, who had correctly answered clues about Molière and Thor Heyerdahl, for not knowing enough about football. “I have to talk to them,” Trebek said disapprovingly before going to commercial. The democratic nature of trivia had been thrown off-kilter, and Trebek had to correct it.
By all accounts, Trebek embodied these trivia ideals while also being a genuine and gracious human.
“Alex wasn’t just the best ever at what he did,” tweeted Ken Jennings, the show’s most famous contestant, who won a record 74 consecutive times. “He was also a lovely and deeply decent man, and I’m grateful for every minute I got to spend with him.”
It was with this same ethos of decency and calm that Trebek announced, in March 2019, that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He said he “wanted to prevent you from reading or hearing some overblown or inaccurate reports regarding my health.” The rest of the short statement was filled with facts, and he vowed to fight the cancer and continue working. “Truth told, I have to,” he said, with a characteristic pinch of humor. “Because under the terms of my contract, I have to host ‘Jeopardy!’ for three more years.”
I wish he were able to do so. The show may go on, but it’s hard to imagine anyone personifying its ideals as well as Alex Trebek did. Of course, the contestants on “Jeopardy!” just ask the questions. It was Trebek who had all the answers.


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-09--Democrats Needed A Big Blue Wave To Win The Senate, And It Looks Like They Didn’t Get It

At this time last week , it seemed like Democrats had a good chance to win control of the U.S. Senate ( FiveThirtyEight ’ s forecast put the odds at 3-in-4 ) .
There was a clear path .
Democratic Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama would likely lose ( he did ) , but Democrats were favorites to flip four GOP-held seats , turning the current 53-47 GOP-controlled Senate into a 50-50 chamber with Vice President Kamala Harris as the Senate president and tiebreaking vote .
There was even an outside chance that Democrats would win 52 , 53 or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ majority .
Biden is set to be president .
What comes next ?
| FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast Things aren ’ t looking so rosy for the Democrats now .
The party could still win that Senate majority , but it probably needs an unlikely sweep in Georgia .
A state that last elected a Democratic U.S. senator in 2000 would need to decide to elect two Democrats at the same time , as both the state ’ s Senate seats — the one that was normally scheduled election this year and a special @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by a 2019 retirement — head for a runoff on Jan 5 .
So what happened to Democrats ’ seemingly good Senate prospects ?
At root , it looks like the overall national political environment will end up being Democratic-leaning but not overwhelmingly so — votes are still being counted , so it ’ s hard to put an exact number on this yet .
The Senate ’ s structure gives it a Republican bias — the median seat is 6-7 percentage points more GOP-leaning than the nation , so Democrats need to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And while the party did well in 2020 , it looks it didn ’ t quite clear that bar .
The most obvious path for Democrats to win a majority was by gaining seats in Colorado and Maine , two states where Joe Biden was expected to win handily , and in Arizona and North Carolina , two states where Biden was narrowly favored .
After all , in 2016 , presidential and Senate races were perfectly correlated — no Senate candidate won a state where his or her party didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We ’ ll come back to the Maine race in a bit , but Colorado went as expected , with former Gov .
John Hicklenlooper comfortably defeating incumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner in a state Biden also won easily .
In Arizona , Democrat Mark Kelly ran a bit ahead of Biden and won that race over incumbent Republican Sen. Martha McSally even as Arizona remains too close to call at the presidential level .
But Democrat Cal Cunningham in North Carolina basically received the same percentage of the vote as Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a slightly lower percentage than preelection polls suggested it might be .
Biden looks likely to fall just short in the Tar Heel State , and Cunningham seems likely to lose to incumbent Republican Sen. Thom Tillis as well , although North Carolina is still counting votes and ABC News has not yet projected a winner in either race .
Meanwhile , although it looked like Democrats had a chance in redder states if there was a strong enough blue wave , those races ended up being out of reach .
Democrat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ran about even with Biden .
That wasn ’ t enough for either Democrat in increasingly GOP-leaning Iowa , and Greenfield lost to incumbent Republican Sen. Joni Ernst .
In Georgia , Democrat Jon Ossoff ran a bit behind Biden , but that was not a state Democrats were counting on for their route to a Senate majority .
Ossoff got 48 percent of the vote and incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue finished just below 50 percent , setting up a Jan. 5 runoff .
Republicans ended up winning easily in Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Carolina , all states where some pre-election polls showed fairly tight margins .
President Trump comfortably won all three states , and the Democratic candidates in these races , unlike GOP Sen. Susan Collins in Maine , were not able to appeal to voters who backed the other party ’ s presidential candidate .
OK , so what about Maine ?
It turns out Collins is good at politics .
A few Senate races have not yet been called , but so far , Collins is the only Senate candidate who won in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the presidential level .
How did she pull this off ?
It ’ s almost certainly the case that some voters backed Biden but also Collins .
And that makes sense : Collins has long tried to carve out her own brand as a moderate Republican and has sometimes acted on that .
In terms of voting records , the Maine senator was the Senate Republican least likely to vote in line with Trump ’ s positions .
She has broken with her party in some high-profile votes , most notably opposing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Affordable Care Act and Amy Coney Barrett ’ s confirmation to the Supreme Court last month .
In the run-up to this year ’ s election , Collins repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether she was personally voting for Trump .
All of those moves probably helped her in this left-leaning state , even if she annoyed Maine Democratic activists by voting for Brett Kavanaugh ’ s confirmation in 2018 and giving a speech ahead of that vote in which she bluntly denounced her critics .
So right now , it looks like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ North Carolina race where the result hasn ’ t officially been projected yet ) , Democrats 48 .
Let ’ s look closely at the other three .
It ’ s hard to imagine Alaska incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan losing in a GOP-leaning state against Al Gross , who is officially an independent but is being backed by Democratic Party groups .
That said , less than 60 percent of the expected votes there have been tabulated and the overwhelming majority of those left are absentee ballots , which are likely to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is not guaranteed , and it may be a while before an official winner is declared in that race .
But Georgia is the real story of the Senate now .
Incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler was appointed to her seat earlier this year , and she ran in a special election in which the top two candidates from either party would advance .
Democrats coalesced behind Atlanta pastor Raphael Warnock , who received the most votes of any candidate in this first round , about 33 percent .
He didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Loeffler had to pull ahead of GOP congressman Doug Collins to make it to the runoff , and she narrowly did ( 26-20 percent ) .
So it ’ s Warnock vs. Loeffler and Ossoff v. Perdue in Round 2 on Jan. 5 .
The Georgia races could be super close — at least going by the results of the November election .
In the race for the Loeffler seat , the total vote for the eight Democrats who got at least 0.5 percent support , including Warnock , was around 48.4 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans who got at least 0.5 percent , including Leoffler , was about 49.4 percent .
As of right now , Ossoff is around 47.9 percent of the vote , compared to Perdue ’ s 49.7 percent .
Biden is at 49.5 percent in Georgia , Trump at 49.3 .
I assume we at FiveThirtyEight will do many , many more stories about Georgia if those two races end up being the ones that will determine control of the Senate , so I will not delve too deeply here into how those races @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few days after the election , one story is clear — Democrats can probably only win a Senate majority with two wins in Georgia , which illustrates the decline of their once-bright Senate hopes .

At this time last week, it seemed like Democrats had a good chance to win control of the U.S. Senate (FiveThirtyEight’s forecast put the odds at 3-in-4). There was a clear path. Democratic Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama would likely lose (he did), but Democrats were favorites to flip four GOP-held seats, turning the current 53-47 GOP-controlled Senate into a 50-50 chamber with Vice President Kamala Harris as the Senate president and tiebreaking vote. There was even an outside chance that Democrats would win 52, 53 or 54 seats and have a real governing majority.
Biden is set to be president. What comes next? | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast
Things aren’t looking so rosy for the Democrats now. The party could still win that Senate majority, but it probably needs an unlikely sweep in Georgia. A state that last elected a Democratic U.S. senator in 2000 would need to decide to elect two Democrats at the same time, as both the state’s Senate seats — the one that was normally scheduled election this year and a special election to fill a seat left vacant by a 2019 retirement — head for a runoff on Jan 5.
So what happened to Democrats’ seemingly good Senate prospects? At root, it looks like the overall national political environment will end up being Democratic-leaning but not overwhelmingly so — votes are still being counted, so it’s hard to put an exact number on this yet. The Senate’s structure gives it a Republican bias — the median seat is 6-7 percentage points more GOP-leaning than the nation, so Democrats need to really overperform nationally to win the chamber. And while the party did well in 2020, it looks it didn’t quite clear that bar.
The most obvious path for Democrats to win a majority was by gaining seats in Colorado and Maine, two states where Joe Biden was expected to win handily, and in Arizona and North Carolina, two states where Biden was narrowly favored. After all, in 2016, presidential and Senate races were perfectly correlated — no Senate candidate won a state where his or her party didn’t win at the presidential level too.
We’ll come back to the Maine race in a bit, but Colorado went as expected, with former Gov. John Hicklenlooper comfortably defeating incumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner in a state Biden also won easily. In Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly ran a bit ahead of Biden and won that race over incumbent Republican Sen. Martha McSally even as Arizona remains too close to call at the presidential level.
But Democrat Cal Cunningham in North Carolina basically received the same percentage of the vote as Biden did. In both cases, that was a slightly lower percentage than preelection polls suggested it might be. Biden looks likely to fall just short in the Tar Heel State, and Cunningham seems likely to lose to incumbent Republican Sen. Thom Tillis as well, although North Carolina is still counting votes and ABC News has not yet projected a winner in either race.
Meanwhile, although it looked like Democrats had a chance in redder states if there was a strong enough blue wave, those races ended up being out of reach.
Democrat Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, like Cunningham, ran about even with Biden. That wasn’t enough for either Democrat in increasingly GOP-leaning Iowa, and Greenfield lost to incumbent Republican Sen. Joni Ernst.
What Trump revealed about America | FiveThirtyEight
In Georgia, Democrat Jon Ossoff ran a bit behind Biden, but that was not a state Democrats were counting on for their route to a Senate majority. Ossoff got 48 percent of the vote and incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue finished just below 50 percent, setting up a Jan. 5 runoff.
Republicans ended up winning easily in Senate races in Kansas, Montana and South Carolina, all states where some pre-election polls showed fairly tight margins. President Trump comfortably won all three states, and the Democratic candidates in these races, unlike GOP Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, were not able to appeal to voters who backed the other party’s presidential candidate.
OK, so what about Maine? It turns out Collins is good at politics.
A few Senate races have not yet been called, but so far, Collins is the only Senate candidate who won in a state that her party lost at the presidential level. How did she pull this off? It’s almost certainly the case that some voters backed Biden but also Collins. And that makes sense: Collins has long tried to carve out her own brand as a moderate Republican and has sometimes acted on that. In terms of voting records, the Maine senator was the Senate Republican least likely to vote in line with Trump’s positions. She has broken with her party in some high-profile votes, most notably opposing the GOP’s 2017 attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act and Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court last month. In the run-up to this year’s election, Collins repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether she was personally voting for Trump.
All of those moves probably helped her in this left-leaning state, even if she annoyed Maine Democratic activists by voting for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation in 2018 and giving a speech ahead of that vote in which she bluntly denounced her critics.
So right now, it looks like Republicans control 49 seats (including the North Carolina race where the result hasn’t officially been projected yet), Democrats 48. Let’s look closely at the other three. It’s hard to imagine Alaska incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan losing in a GOP-leaning state against Al Gross, who is officially an independent but is being backed by Democratic Party groups. That said, less than 60 percent of the expected votes there have been tabulated and the overwhelming majority of those left are absentee ballots, which are likely to be Democratic-leaning. So Sullivan’s victory is not guaranteed, and it may be a while before an official winner is declared in that race.
But Georgia is the real story of the Senate now. Incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler was appointed to her seat earlier this year, and she ran in a special election in which the top two candidates from either party would advance. Democrats coalesced behind Atlanta pastor Raphael Warnock, who received the most votes of any candidate in this first round, about 33 percent. He didn’t really have any strong Democratic competition. Loeffler had to pull ahead of GOP congressman Doug Collins to make it to the runoff, and she narrowly did (26-20 percent). So it’s Warnock vs. Loeffler and Ossoff v. Perdue in Round 2 on Jan. 5.
The Georgia races could be super close — at least going by the results of the November election. In the race for the Loeffler seat, the total vote for the eight Democrats who got at least 0.5 percent support, including Warnock, was around 48.4 percent. The total vote for the six Republicans who got at least 0.5 percent, including Leoffler, was about 49.4 percent. As of right now, Ossoff is around 47.9 percent of the vote, compared to Perdue’s 49.7 percent. Biden is at 49.5 percent in Georgia, Trump at 49.3.
I assume we at FiveThirtyEight will do many, many more stories about Georgia if those two races end up being the ones that will determine control of the Senate, so I will not delve too deeply here into how those races might shake out. But only a few days after the election, one story is clear — Democrats can probably only win a Senate majority with two wins in Georgia, which illustrates the decline of their once-bright Senate hopes.


fivethirtyeight--2020-11-09--Updates: Tracking The Unresolved 2020 Races

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