fortune--2020-10-30--Why everyone’s so angry about Google’s new app icons

This is the web version of Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the top tech news. To get it delivered daily to your in-box, sign up here.
Earnings and mergers and lawsuits, oh my. But this Friday morning, let’s turn the lens around and consider big tech from a more personal, day-to-day perspective.
When the pandemic hit and collaborating remotely became critical, Google was well positioned. It had the leading email service, popular productivity software with realtime collaboration built in, and a variety (some would say too much variety) of text, audio, and video communications apps. But it wasn’t Google that grabbed the big spotlight. It was mostly newer players like Zoom, Slack, Asana, and even Microsoft Teams.
Back at the Googleplex, however, big changes were afoot. Javier Soltero, brought in last year from Microsoft, was overseeing a reimagining of Google’s productivity and communications line up. Unveiled a few weeks ago but not yet fully rolled out, Soltero’s effort to modernize and better integrate all the apps is called Google Workspace. Eventually, you’ll be able to start a new document from inside the Chat app or go the other way around and kick off a chat or video conference while writing a document. Soltero shouldn’t be underestimated: He was one of the brains behind the brilliant Acompli app that Microsoft bought and integrated (sort of) into Outlook.
One part of Soltero’s latest effort has ignited some controversy, though. That was the decision to rebrand all of Google’s mobile apps with new multi-colored icons. I found myself nodding in agreement with some of the Twitter outrage over the confusing and similar-looking new icons. The somewhat satirical account Killed By Google may have had the most succinct summary of what was wrong:
Ars Technica reporter Ron Amadeo offered a simple solution: Just use the icons from Android 6 Marshmallow, circa 2015. “Every single icon here is an improvement over the current icon. We need to go back.”
There were also some fans. Stockholm designer Daniele Tottle loved the consistency and visual linkage of all the apps. Brand adviser Jennifer Volmer praised how the similarity of the new icons hints at the collaboration capabilities among the apps. Google says the new designs were developed via “a rigorous process” that included tests “specifically for findability and contrast ratios.”
I also checked in with some top design and usability experts. Former Twitter principal designer Josh Brewer, who’s now making design app Abstract, was pretty harsh in describing exactly what my brain was feeling. The new icons are “lacking in differentiation to the point that I now have to pay more attention to make sure I am launching the app I think I am—aka increasing cognitive load,” he says, adding that the changes throw out years of accumulated brand loyalty.
But Jared Spool, who co-founded the Center Centre design school, predicted it would all blow over. “Designers like to have opinions and changing icons is a great way to get them to share opinions,” he says. “But, in the long run, it won’t make a difference in the actual usage of the products.”
Maybe my weekend project should be figuring out the new way to change icons on the iPhone in iOS 14? We’ll all adapt sooner or later, both Jared and Josh predict. In the meantime, reduce the cognitive load on your brain, and have a great weekend.
Aaron Pressman
@ampressman
aaron.pressman@fortune.com
NEWSWORTHY
Stock reports hey, the milky way. Earnings? Did anyone mention earnings? It was a mostly disappointing tsunami of quarterly reports from our top tech targets on Thursday. Apple sold fewer iPhones than expected (which seems dumb and obvious since iPhone sales were pushed to October, but whatever). Apple's stock price, previously up 57% in 2020, dropped 4% in pre-market trading on Friday. Facebook brushed off the big ad boycott but conceded that it lost 1 million users in the U.S. and Canada. Facebook's stock, already up 37% this year, fell 2% in pre-market trading.
Amazon said pandemic buying boosted sales and its revenue shot up 37% to over $96 billion. But a conservative forecast for the fourth quarter spooked investors and the e-commerce giant's shares, up 74% in 2020, lost about 2% in pre-market trading. Twitter had it worst of all after it added only 1 million new users in the quarter, short of analyst estimates by about 8 million. Its stock price, previously up 64%, dropped 15% in pre-market trading. Google was the lone bright spot. With ad spending on the rebound, sales rose 15% to $38 billion. Google shares, up 16% in 2020, jumped another 7% on Friday morning.
It's good to be the king. Streaming giant Netflix announced YAPH (yet another price hike). Standard service goes up $1 to $14 per month and premium rises by $2 to $18 for new and existing users.
Cell tower power. While we all fret about our 5G coverage or lack thereof, T-Mobile and Verizon are doing something about it. T-Mobile said it added about 200 more cities to its mid-band 5G network, the most usable fast flavor of 5G. And Verizon added four new cities to its home Internet 5G program: Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, and San Jose.
Born of sweated genius and collared by a clown. In an interesting weighting of its results, Consumer Reports said Tesla's autopilot was the best automated driving assistant on the roads, narrowly beating out GM's Cadillac's Super Cruise system. But the magazine said the Cadillac system was far superior in safety by reminding drivers to maintain their attention. So Super Cruise won the top ranking overall.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci has been one of the sharpest critics of big tech and her perspective on the big tech CEO hearing this week, The Problem With (All) The Tech Hearings, is definitely worth a read.
We don’t need to keep up these charades. We need to start getting our act together, as a society, so we can tell tech companies what to do.
Of course, the challenge is that these tech tools further break our public sphere and our politics, making it harder to fix all this. But that’s where we are.There is no avoiding this dilemma. I don’t want to hear another apology, another ‘we willdobetter’ promise from any CEO. The real problem is that these men testifying today have emerged as unelected, unaccountable referees of our public sphere,.Until we address that, until we take back our power as the public, we will be left with more rounds from the World Wrestling Federation.
FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE
A few great long reads I came across this week:
After Going All-In on Amazon, a Merchant Says He Lost Everything (Bloomberg)
Barak Govani says he was kicked off the site after being falsely accused of selling fakes. Accounts like his prompted a House panel to accuse Amazon of mistreating its merchants.
What next for Uber? Inside the fight for its future (FT Magazine)
As the company faces a critical public vote, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi on cleaning things up and the challenges of a gig economy revolution.
The Fall of Best Made: Why the Enigmatic Axe Company Was Sold for Parts (Inside Hook)
What’s left of Peter Buchanan-Smith’s trendsetting outdoor brand?
World Series 2020: The oddest of World Series ends with the most 2020 moment of the season (ESPN)
In this oddest of years, this most peculiar of baseball seasons, there was perhaps no more telling snapshot of the United States, circa 2020, than a COVID-19-positive man sitting on the ground, maskless, next to a cancer survivor, maskless as well, with indelible grins spread across their faces. Sports is and always will be a metaphor for society.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Twitter and a Supercell billionaire are backing a new A.I.-focused venture capital fund By Jeremy Kahn
The second most important executive at Airbnb? By Lucinda Shen
Netflix is testing an audio-only feature that’s similar to podcasts By Jonathan Vanian
Jiko raises $40 million to become a most unusual challenger bank By Robert Hackett
The U.S. economy just grew at its fastest quarterly pace ever—but doubts loom about the rest of the year By Lance Lambert
(Some of these stories require a subscription to access. Thank you for supporting our journalism.)
BEFORE YOU GO
Beth Harmon is the fictional creation of novelist Walter Tevis from his 1983 novel The Queen's Gambit about an orphan chess prodigy. But, wow, has actress Anya Taylor-Scott brought Harmon's character to life in the new Netflix mini-series adaptation of the book. We have not quite binge watched to the end, but highly recommended.


fortune--2020-10-31--How a new regulation would let businesses avoid the law by classifying employees as independent cont

How a new regulation would let businesses avoid the law by classifying employees as independent contractors

Bettors think Trump can still pull off an upset—and they see him ahead in Florida

In my industry—construction—the issue of classifying workers as independent contractors gained critical significance long before anyone spoke of the “gig economy.”
Over the past several decades, many industries have shifted from using employees to using independent contractors. This is because independent contractors cost less than employees do.
Why? Businesses relying on independent contractors do not pay minimum wage rates, overtime, benefits, workers’ compensation insurance, unemployment insurance, or payroll taxes. They take on virtually no entrepreneurial risk. That risk is borne instead by the independent contractor—the worker—and ultimately American taxpayers.
It is hard to understand why the Labor Department is proposing a regulation that makes it easier for more businesses to classify their workers as independent contractors instead of employees. In my experience, this will undermine the entrepreneurs who create American jobs and provide economic stability for working families in favor of those who pass their business risks on to individual workers and taxpayers.
Construction is largely a project-based industry in which the lowest bid wins the work. Labor costs can amount to 50% or more of a project’s cost. If my company’s bid is accepted and our estimates are wrong, anticipated profits can quickly turn to a loss.
But our employees get paid for every hour worked. They get overtime pay when their work exceeds 40 hours in a week. Payroll taxes are remitted, and appropriate workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance premiums are paid.
Honest employers bear these risks. This is the way it should be in a competitive, free enterprise system that extolls entrepreneurial risk and job creation.
Contrast this with a business model that treats the individual members of its workforce as independent contractors. In this independent contractor model, the business hired to perform the work employs few or none of the workers. Instead, each worker is treated as an independent business.
The model requires a steadfast insistence that the individual workers are independent business operators—even though it often flies in the face of reality—because it justifies the evasion of the additional costs associated with overtime, workers’ compensation coverage, unemployment insurance, and the other basic securities offered by employers to employees since the 1930s.
Businesses using this model will always achieve a cost advantage.
How much of an advantage? The Ohio attorney general has estimated that classifying employees as independent contractors provides a 20% to 30% labor cost advantage against law-abiding employers. When competing against a company like mine that pays middle-class wages, pays overtime, sets aside money for unemployment and workers’ compensation, sponsors registered apprenticeship programs, and offers a retirement plan and health benefits, the independent contractor model can offer a 50% cost advantage.
It should not be surprising that some businesses fully support the Labor Department’s rule reinterpreting federal law to institutionalize and encourage the independent contractor model. But our society is sure to regret these revisions. The answer to America’s economic challenges is not to encourage more companies to evade the costs and risks associated with employees.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed how the independent contractor model leaves workers and taxpayers in the lurch during tough times. Taxpayers are subsidizing the independent contractor model to an unprecedented degree since Congress created a new, 100%-taxpayer-funded unemployment insurance system for independent contractors. Eleven million “self-employed” people—many of whom should be treated as employees—are dependent on this program while the companies they work for pocket money that should have been set aside to cover these costs.
Under current law, the independent contractor model is prone to abuse. In many cases, it is patently unlawful. But the penalties for violating these laws are often insignificant. To people without scruples, the threat of minor sanctions is greatly outweighed by the advantages that systematic worker misclassification provides in bidding work, ensuring big profits, and avoiding entrepreneurial risk.
The Labor Department should not encourage this cowardly vision of entrepreneurship in America’s workplace laws. It is a disservice to the nation’s workers, taxpayers, and real job creators.
Scott Casabona is president of the Signatory Wall and Ceiling Contractors Alliance.


fortune--2020-10-31--A journalist-turned-detective on how corporate America depends on private sleuths

In the late 1990s, Tyler Maroney worked as a reporter for Fortune. But a chance encounter with an employee of Kroll, the large corporate detective agency, set him off on a new career as a private investigator. After working for Kroll and later another investigations firm, The Mintz Group, he went on to found his own detective agency, Quest Research and Investigations (QRI), based in New York.
Now, Maroney has written The Modern Detective (Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House), in which he reflects on his career as a PI, detailing his pursuit of corporate fraudsters, missions to conduct due diligence for blockbuster mergers and acquisitions, and even how he helped free an innocent man from prison.
Maroney seeks to demystify the job of private investigators and debunk myths ingrained from television and pulp fiction. He argues that the modern detective is a vital cog in corporate life and can be a force for good in society.
Fortune spoke to Maroney via Zoom to ask him about his new book and his career. (The questions and his answers have been edited for length and clarity.)
One of the arguments you make in the book is that private detectives have become indispensable to the functioning of large corporations and to corporate America. Why do you think that’s true?
Private detectives are brought into projects throughout the entire life cycle of a company’s existence. Before a company is even formed, often investors will hire private detectives to conduct due diligence on the executives who are going to run that company, so that they understand who they’re going into business with. Then, down the line, when companies are up and running, they may get involved in legal disputes—whether it’s alleged vendor fraud, or a lawsuit with a competitor over a contract or trade secrets, for instance—and private detectives are brought in with outside counsel in that case, to help collect facts to resolve those disputes. Later on, when companies identify issues internally, such as a situation where they may have an employee they suspect is involved in, say, expense account fraud—so private detectives are brought in to investigate that. If it turns out that there is some material, criminal behavior going on, then there’s a referral made to law enforcement, often in conjunction with outside counsel. So my point is, whether it’s a kind of plain-vanilla due diligence or a bet-the-company controversial dispute, there’s a role for private detectives to play that is not “espionage” but simply gathering facts to help the business become more profitable and run effectively.
You say you wrote the book as a kind of corrective to the popular view of the private investigator as, at best, amoral, or, at worst, a sort of immoral force in the world. But so often we hear about private investigators who have run amok, or have been used to silence the critics of some powerful person or corporation. In light of that, how can you justify your view that that’s not really what private investigation is all about?
I acknowledge that there are people in my field who engage in that kind of behavior. There are countless stories in the media, yes. But the word corrective is a good one, because I very much set out to write a book that laid out 10 narratives, 10 chapters that describe the work of private investigators that is moral, effective, and useful on behalf of a whole range of clients. I try to make the argument that the worst among us are not representative of who we are, even if they get the most attention in the media. One of the points I try to make in the book is that in the United States, the industry is regulated. So each state has its own licensing regime. And there are very explicit rules against tactics like pretexting, which is essentially using deception, to get someone to speak to you.
In your experience, how do most corporations manage their relationship with private investigators? What kind of oversight do they exercise?
It depends on the company and the assignment. We are hired by outside counsel, the general counsel’s office, the head of security, audit committees, and so forth, depending on the assignment. I’m glad you asked about oversight, because I often feel that our clients who hire private investigators could do a better job of investigating their own investigators, so to speak. By which I mean, knowing who you are hiring and why you are hiring them. And not only that, but asking what they plan to do: Who do they plan to interview? What documents do they plan to collect and how will they digest that information and present it? It’s not uncommon for private detectives to tell their clients that they are going to disappear for a few weeks and come back with a report describing what they’ve done. I feel that that’s a mistake. I think there should be more transparency that’s built into the relationship between companies and private detectives, because if that happens, there’s no danger of clients being caught off guard by a detective who’s done something immoral or even illegal.
But isn’t it the case that many times these companies don’t want to actually know what it is the private detective is up to? Don’t they use private investigators in part to have plausible deniability about whatever tactics that the investigator might use?
Yeah, I don’t deny that at all. In fact, going through outside counsel is a very standard way of engaging private detectives. I often recommend it, because we then become agents of the outside counsel, and our communications and information become legally privileged. If it’s in anticipation of litigation, for instance, or in the course of litigation, then that can be important. Sometimes there are even more elaborate work-arounds. I mean, private detectives are sometimes hired by a family member of an executive at a corporation, for instance, or by, you know, some other LLC, that is not traceable back to the company. I completely concede that that happens. Having said that, our firm works hard, and many of the men and women I’ve worked with over the years do everything they can to avoid those dynamics.
Private investigator and author Tyler Maroney
How has technology changed your job? You have this great chapter in the book where you talk about working with a digital forensics expert to find information hidden on the work computer of an employee suspected of illicit activity. How much of the work of a private investigator these days is Columbo versus sort of Mr. Robot?
I try to combine Columbo and Mr. Robot every day. And it’s not an easy melding. There’s so much technological innovation these days, whether it’s on the dark web, or cryptocurrencies, for example, or the explosion of social media and disinformation campaigns. If we are not keeping up with technological innovation, we cannot serve our clients properly. For example, we are often hired by companies who have been victimized by what appear to be short-sellers and tweets online that are posted anonymously that essentially seem to be bad-mouthing a company. And the assignment is to unmask who’s behind that Twitter account and see if it can be connected to, say, a short-seller. And to be able to understand where information lives online, where information that is deleted may still live online, and to follow digital footprints is an incredibly valuable skill.
How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your work?
In the United States, private investigators have actually adapted pretty well. The reason is that so much information lives online. And not just social media, but I’m referring to the kinds of documentation that we seek out every day, whether it be a court record or a property deed or a filing with the [U.S. Patent and Trademark Office] or a news report or regulatory filings. So the ability to access information online has not changed. We often do what we call “doorstepping” in the industry— showing up at someone’s house [unannounced]. But we found that, kind of ironically, since everyone is at home these days, they actually welcome the opportunity to talk to people, and we have found that they will pick up the phone and or agree to use technology like Zoom and WhatsApp or some other video platforms. People are kind of getting bored from being home, and I find that people are actually willing to talk to us just as much as they ever have.
What is the line between due diligence and corporate espionage?
I would push back a little bit on the use of the term corporate espionage as opposed to competitive intelligence. Espionage often means using some kind of deception or stealing information, whereas competitive intelligence is often gathering information about a competitor. That job is less about hacking into your competitor’s email system than it is about tracking down and interviewing a few dozen former employees of the company, or former vendors of the company, or legal adversaries of the company, or obtaining documentation about the financing of the company that might be publicly available but hard to find. I would even say this is a necessary component of business dealings, because as we all know, many companies don’t want to do very much to disclose their own vulnerabilities. Oftentimes, private detectives are brought in to figure out if a company is being forthcoming and honest in its public filings.
This story has been updated to clarify that Maroney worked for The Mintz Group prior to founding QRI and to correct the length of time he has spent as an investigator. It is just over 15 years, not two decades.


fortune--2020-10-31--Xi Jinping’s ‘carbon neutrality’ bombshell leaves China in a climate conundrum

On Sept. 22, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a bombshell environmental declaration to the United Nations General Assembly. China, the world’s largest producer of green- house gases, would begin reducing its overall emissions after peaking in 2030—and by 2060, Xi said, the nation would achieve carbon neutrality.
Xi’s pledge broke through the pandemic-dominated news cycle, pitching China as a global leader in environmental responsibility. But it didn’t affect the goings-on at the Hohhot Jinshan power station.
There, on the fringes of the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia, hundreds of workers are building two new power generation units to supply more electricity to the 2 million–plus residents of Hohhot, the regional capital.
The 5 billion yuan ($735 million) project, which broke ground May 31, will more than triple Hohhot Jinshan’s energy capacity to 1,920 megawatts once the units go live in October 2022. And it will all be fueled by coal, one of the world’s dirtiest energy sources.
The Hohhot project is no outlier. Provincial governments in China green-lit more coal-plant projects in the first half of 2020 than they did in 2018 and 2019 combined—17 gigawatts in all, enough to power several million homes.
That fact helps illustrate one of China’s vexing paradoxes: The planet’s biggest investor in green-energy technology is also “addicted” to coal, as Li Shuo, a Beijing-based policy adviser for Greenpeace China, puts it.
Energy security concerns and entrenched industrial interests, Li continues, have made it “very difficult to get rid of the dirty little rock.”
It’s a habit China needs to kick. Since 2006, when it overtook the U.S., China has been the world’s largest carbon polluter. A carbon-neutral China would lower the projected global average temperature in 2060 by 0.2 to 0.3 degrees Celsius, a meaningful impact, climate researchers estimate.
But for China to reach carbon neutrality, coal’s share of its power generation mix would need to fall to 12%, from 62% today, according to energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. And China’s quest for a greener energy economy has repeatedly taken a back seat in recent years to maximizing economic growth.
The country’s coal consumption declined from 2013 through 2017, during a national campaign to fight air pollution—then rebounded, as pressure to mitigate an economic slowdown took precedence. Today, large-scale infrastructure projects like coal plants are helping jump-start economic activity that slowed early this year because of the coronavirus.
The coal surge also reflects a tension between the needs of regional leaders and the goals of the Beijing government. Coal project approvals boomed after 2014, when the authority to permit new construction passed from the central government to provincial leaders. For the latter, the projects are a surefire way to boost jobs and GDP in the short run.
“As a local governor, that’s your legacy,” Li says.
A desire for self-reliance also keeps coal paramount in China’s energy mix, says Gørild Heggelund, a senior research fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway who studies China’s energy and climate policy. China’s huge coal reserves mean industries needn’t rely on other countries to meet their energy demands.
By contrast, for its second-largest energy source, oil, China is highly dependent on imports. Energy security “tops the leadership agenda,” says Heggelund.
The irony is that even as it has nurtured its coal industry, China’s government has outpaced most others in promoting renewables.
China is the world’s largest producer, exporter, and installer of solar panels and wind turbines. In 2019, it invested $83.4 billion in renewable energy capacity, more than any other nation. (The U.S. invested $55.5 billion that year.)
Renewables accounted for 8.9% of China’s total electricity generation in 2018. Factor in hydropower and nuclear power, and China’s share of energy from non- fossil-fuel sources rises to about 30%.
Impressive as its growth has been, however, renewable energy hasn’t reached critical mass in China—in part because wind and sunshine are less reliable than coal, and in part because the privately owned enterprises that dominate the renewable sector lack the clout and connections that state-owned coal giants enjoy.
Tipping the balance in favor of green energy will require dramatic steps. In order to reach the goals Xi announced, China needs to stop building new coal plants, accelerate the phaseout of existing ones, and table the construction of recently permitted projects.
Coal projects are a surefire way to boost jobs in the short run. “As a local governor, that’s your legacy.” Li Shuo, Beijing-based policy adviser for Greenpeace China
The most challenging part of the shift will be “the social transition that comes with it,” says Prakash Sharma, Asia-Pacific head of markets and transitions for Wood Mackenzie. Coal-rich provinces like Shanxi and Inner Mongolia—the home of the Hohhot Jinshan plant—will face extensive job losses and short-term economic decline.
Sharma expects the government will try to preserve mining jobs by retrofitting coal-fired power plants with carbon capture and storage technology, which lessens the amount of waste carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere. But that technology hasn’t yet been proven to work at a scale that can match China’s consumption needs.
So how will China reconcile its climate goals with its energy reality? For now, observers are looking to the next five-year plan, the central government’s latest round of reforms and economic growth targets, which will be publicly available in March 2021. Climate activists hope the plan will include specifics that weren’t included in Xi’s UN speech.
Li, of Greenpeace China, says the government needs to set a “much higher” target for renewable energy use and an absolute carbon- reduction target.
As for coal-fired plant construction, Li says, “This needs to be immediately put on the shelf.”
A version of this article appears in the November 2020 issue of Fortune with the headline “A Carbon Conundrum”


fortune--2020-10-31--How Taiwan’s COVID response became the world’s envy

While many countries around the world are hitting new highs in coronavirus cases, Taiwan has achieved a different kind of record — 200 days without a locally transmitted case.
Taiwan holds the world’s best virus record by far and reached the new landmark on Thursday, even as the pathogen explodes anew in Europe and the U.S. Taiwan’s last local case came on April 12; there has been no second wave.
What did this island of 23 million people do right? It has had 553 confirmed cases, with only seven deaths. Experts say closing borders early and tightly regulating travel have gone a long way toward fighting the virus. Other factors include rigorous contact tracing, technology-enforced quarantine and widespread mask wearing. Further, Taiwan’s deadly experience with SARS has scared people into compliance.
“Taiwan is the only major country that has so far been able to keep community transmission of Covid eliminated,” said Peter Collignon, an infectious disease physician and professor at the Australian National University Medical School. Taiwan “probably had the best result around the world,” he said, and it’s “even more impressive” for an economy with a population about the same size as Australia’s, with many people living close to one another in apartments.
Taiwan will likely be among the few economies to grow this year, with the government in August forecasting that the gross domestic product will expand 1.56% in 2020.
Still, Taiwan isn’t out of the woods yet. The government confirmed three more imported cases Thursday, from the Philippines, U.S. and Indonesia, and in the past two weeks has recorded more than 20 imported cases. Also, others that fought the virus well initially, like Singapore and Japan, later had spikes in cases.
What countries with surging infections can take away from Taiwan’s experience is that nothing works without contact tracing those who have tested positive and then quarantining them, said Chen Chien-jen, Taiwan’s former vice president and an epidemiologist, in an interview.
Also, as it’s not easy to make people stay in quarantine, Taiwan has taken steps to provide meal and grocery delivery and even some friendly contact via Line Bot, a robot that texts and chats. There is also punishment — those who break quarantine face fines of up to NT$1million ($35,000).
Here is how Taiwan has achieved its milestone:
Border Control
Taiwan began shutting down to non-residents shortly after the pandemic broke out in January and has kept tight control over its borders since.
“Taiwan’s continual success is due to strict enforcement of border control,” says Jason Wang, director of Stanford University’s Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention. That includes symptom-based surveillance before travelers board flights and digital fence tracking via cellular signals to ensure their compliance with a 14-day quarantine, he said.
Masks, Distribution
The decision to stockpile and have central distribution of face masks played a key role in Taiwan’s success. The government early in the pandemic stockpiled all domestically produced face masks and banned export. Within four months, companies increased production from 2 million to 20 million units a day, enabling the island to ration masks to residents on a regular basis.
Contact Tracing, Quarantine
Taiwan has world-class contact tracing — on average, linking 20 to 30 contacts to each confirmed case. In extreme situations, such as that of a worker at a Taipei City hostess club who contracted the virus, the government tracked down as many as 150 contacts. Then, all contacts must undergo a 14-day home quarantine, even if they test negative.
So far, about 340,000 people have been under home quarantine, with fewer than 1,000 fined for breaking it. That means 99.7% have complied, according to Chen. “We sacrificed 14 days of 340,000 people in exchange for normal lives for 23 million people,” Chen said.
SARS Experience
The painful lessons of past epidemics paved the way of Taiwan’s success in fighting Covid. It began building an emergency-response network for containing infectious diseases after its experience with SARS in 2003, when hundreds became ill and at least 73 died, for the world’s third-highest infection rate. Taiwan later experienced pandemics like bird flu and influenza H1N1. As a result, its residents are acutely aware of disease-fighting habits like hand-washing and mask wearing.


fortune--2020-10-31--Did battleground states see the swift economic recovery that Trump promised?

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
As Joe Biden and Donald Trump make their final plea for votes, they’re visiting battleground states with sharply different economic realities.
Case in point: While the unemployment rate in September in Iowa sits at 4.7%, Nevada has a jobless rate of 12.6%. Nationally, the jobless rate is at 7.9%.
Trump has a 54% chance of taking Iowa, while Biden has a 90% chance of getting a win in Nevada, according to FiveThirtyEight. But just because a state is doing better economically doesn’t mean it’s favored for Trump. The results are all over the broad. Nate Silver’s poll aggregator gives Trump the edge in two battleground states with higher jobless rates, Ohio (8.4%) and Texas (8.3%). While some states with lower jobless rates, in particular, Wisconsin (5.4%) and Minnesota (6.0%), are currently projected to go for Biden.
How did these economies get so divided?
A lot of it boils down to what types of jobs make up the state’s economy. Look no further than tourism-heavy Nevada which saw its jobless rate soar from 3.8% in February to a staggering 30.1% in April. While Nevada has since improved to a 12.6% jobless rate, it will struggle to fully recover until Las Vegas tourism business has returned to normal—something that is unlikely to happen until the pandemic is under control.
The economies in industrial Midwestern states were hard hit in the spring when factories saw their production lines halt. They’ve yet to fully dig themselves out of the mess. The unemployment rates in Ohio (8.4%), Pennsylvania (8.1%), and Michigan (8.5%) are all above the national 7.9% figure. FiveThirtyEight gives Trump a 55% chance of carrying Ohio, but in Pennsylvania and Michigan that chance is just 14% and 4%, respectively.
The recovery is much more swift in rural Midwestern states with heavy agricultural economies—which have rebounded relatively quickly. The jobless rate in Minnesota surged from 3.1% in February to 9.9% in May at the height of shutdowns. But as the state reopened its economy over the summer, it fell to 6.0% as of September. But that recovery is hardly aiding Trump in the polls: Biden has a 93% chance of carrying Minnesota.
And it isn’t just battleground states. The highest jobless rates can be found in Hawaii (15.1%), Nevada (12.6%), and California (11%). The lowest are in Nebraska (3.5%), South Dakota (4.1%), and Vermont (4.2%).
It might take years for these high unemployment economies to fully rebound. Overall U.S. employment rose by 661,000 in September, bringing the total number of jobs added since May to 11.4 million, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics‘ Friday jobs report. But that marks a downshift from the 1.5 million jobs added in August and 1.8 million added in July. If the U.S. continued to add 661,000 jobs per month, it would take 16 months to reach pre-pandemic employment levels.


fortune--2020-10-31--More than 8 years behind schedule, Berlin’s new airport opens today amid an epic crisis in air trave

More than 8 years behind schedule, Berlin’s new airport opens today amid an epic crisis in air travel

Berlin’s new international airport is opening today, with special Lufthansa and easyJet flights landing together to mark the occasion.
The timing could hardly be worse. For one thing, we’re in the middle of a pandemic that has shut down most international travel. The main terminal at Berlin Brandenburg Airport Willy Brandt (usually known as BER) may have the capacity to take up to 27 million passengers a year, but it will start operational life as a relative ghost town.
However, the opening is also notable for being a whopping eight and a half years late. BER’s schedule has become a long-running and somewhat tragic joke in and beyond the German capital, having been extended repeatedly for a variety of face-palm-inducing reasons.
Litany of errors
First, BER’s opening was canceled because of an incompetently designed fire protection system. It subsequently emerged that the system’s chief planner was not actually a qualified engineer, though his business cards claimed he was. “Everyone thought I was an engineer,” said Alfredo di Mauro, who was only a technical draftsman. “I just didn’t contradict them.”
Di Mauro was fired, as was the airport’s technical director, when a host of other flaws came to light. Some escalators were too short; cabling had been incorrectly installed; there weren’t enough check-in desks.
The federal and state governments running the project were urged to rip it down and start again, but they did not, and more trouble ensued: more fire-system flaws; a key contractor, Imtech, going bust; the biggest tenant—Air Berlin—also going bust; thousands of lights that could not be turned off, leading to monumental energy bills for an unopened airport; sliding doors with no power supply, requiring the reopening of walls; sagging ceilings in the parking garages; arrival and departure boards that wore out and needed replacement—years before the actual opening.
There was even a problem with the trees planted near the terminal. Around 600 had to be dug up and replanted, though reports differ as to whether this was because they were in the wrong place or because they were the wrong kind of tree.
BER’s budget started at €2.8 billion ($3.3 billion). It ended up costing over €4 billion more than that. The reasons included not only incompetence but corruption too. A department head was jailed in 2016 for taking bribes from Imtech, the contractor that went bankrupt.
Not the only one
The BER debacle has been viewed around the world as a grimly hilarious counterpoint to the stereotype of Germans as being extremely efficient and well-organized. This is understandable, given the international nature of major airports. (BER is Germany’s third-largest hub, after Frankfurt and Munich.)
But to those within the country, it is by no means the only recent example of major construction projects going way over schedule and budget.
Another notable example is that of Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie concert hall, known popularly as Elphi. Originally scheduled to open in 2010 at a cost of €77 million, the facility was finally inaugurated in 2017, having cost a total of €866 million to build—almost all of which was paid for by Hamburg’s taxpayers.
Jacques Herzog, one of the star architects, subsequently described the initial €77 million estimate as “absurdly low”—a common problem with publicly funded projects, which need political backing at the start. But nonetheless, Elphi ended up as a triumph, known for its superb acoustics as well as its striking, nautical look.
Stuttgart 21—a massive revamp of the southwest German city’s main rail station and surrounding area, to enable the passage of long-distance trains—is another story. From its approval in 2007, the project faced massive opposition from local protesters over environmental concerns. One of its many delays was caused by the need to resettle some endangered lizards, which set everything back by a year and a half.
The Stuttgart scheme was initially supposed to cost €4.5 billion and open last year. The current plan is to get it operational at the start of 2026, with the bill running as high as €8.2 billion.


fortune--2020-10-31--As states face budget shortfalls, cannabis and sports betting could flourish

On Election Day, voters in five states will decide ballot initiatives that would legalize cannabis use either recreationally (Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota) or medicinally (South Dakota and Mississippi). Meanwhile, those in Louisiana, Maryland, and South Dakota will vote on initiatives that would legalize sports betting, to varying degrees, in their own states.
The ballot measures speak partly to changing public attitudes toward both marijuana use and gambling, activities that remain criminalized in large swaths of the country. Yet, both have been gradually accepted in jurisdictions across the U.S. Despite the continued federal prohibition of cannabis, recreational adult use of marijuana is now legal in 11 states plus the District of Columbia, while the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse a federal ban on sports betting in 2018 has seen the practice now allowed in 22 states plus D.C.
If those numbers were already expected to swell in the coming years, the coronavirus pandemic could further motivate more states to adopt measures legalizing cannabis and sports betting. Across the country, states are experiencing historic budget shortfalls as a result of the pandemic, which has devastated the American economy and drained government coffers of the tax revenue they rely on. In the two nascent, newly liberalized industries, there is an opportunity for states to begin making up some of those deficits by legalizing, regulating, and taxing them.
“There’s definitely a growth opportunity for sports betting” in the wake of COVID-19, according to Chris Altruda, a sports betting industry analyst at Pennbets.com, who described the industry as a “low-maintenance” solution for states looking for additional tax revenue.
Likewise, the cannabis industry provides “an economic opportunity, and a way to build some stimulus” for jurisdictions now in need of funding, according to Bridget Hennessey, vice president of government relations at Weedmaps. “You’re seeing across the country that there’s some appetite for this.”
New York governor Andrew Cuomo recently reiterated his interest in legalizing marijuana in his state, which expects to run a budget deficit of nearly $60 billion over the next two years due to the pandemic’s economic impact. As New Jersey appears likely to pass its own recreational measure this November—becoming the first mid-Atlantic state to legalize cannabis in the process—the onus will fall on neighbors like New York to follow suit, or else risk losing revenue from customers willing to cross the Hudson River to purchase products.
“With New Jersey coming online, it will put pressure on neighboring states. That is tax revenue that neighboring states are missing out on,” says Robert DiPisa, co-chair of the cannabis law group at New Jersey-based law firm Cole Schotz. “I do think it’s going to create a domino effect.”
Likewise, state lawmakers are increasingly considering legal sports betting, even though tax revenues from that industry are limited compared to most recreational cannabis markets. But a regulated sports gambling market can still generate millions of dollars annually for state coffers—meaningful funding for departments and programs in need of every dollar they can get.
“I talk to legislators fairly regularly, and it’s definitely the case that many are looking for sources of [tax] revenue,” says Cory Fox, vice president of government affairs at online sports gaming company FanDuel. “They’ve been thinking about [sports betting] for a number of years. There’s general public support for it, and there’s a regulatory framework that they can take from other states.”
In Maryland, for instance, a ballot measure in November’s election that would permit sports betting in the state would earmark the generated tax revenue for public education. Similarly, Colorado passed its own sports betting law last year by promising that proceeds would fund the state’s management of its water supply. Legalization “seems to be an easier sell to the public if you say, ‘We’re going to take this [tax] money and put it toward something specific,’ rather than just putting it toward a general fund,” Altruda notes.
Of course, not even the most bullish advocate for either industry believes legalizing cannabis or sports betting alone will alleviate states’ budget strains, such are the multibillion-dollar shortfalls facing many post-pandemic. “Cannabis taxes aren’t going to save any state budgets,” says National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) spokesperson Morgan Fox. “But everything helps. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars [of tax revenue] in these states with regulated [marijuana] markets.”
The states with the most mature recreational cannabis markets see hundreds of millions of dollars a year in tax revenue from the industry—with California, the largest recreational market in the nation, generating more than $1 billion since the start of 2018. By contrast, the $25.8 billion wagered legally on sports in the U.S. since 2018 has generated only $231 million in tax revenue for state and local governments, according to the American Gaming Association (AGA).
Indeed, there are those in both industries who are wary of taxes that may prove too burdensome for operators and consumers alike. NCIA’s Fox notes that cannabis sales taxes “have to be set at a rate where they’re low enough to compete with the unregulated, underground market” that continues to operate. And AGA spokesperson Casey Clark described sports betting as “a low-margin business” that “is not the panacea that is going to solve everyone’s budget issues.”
But for the most part, both industries are thrilled to be in the position they are now: gradually embraced by dozens of state jurisdictions and counting, at a time when the local economies across the country can use any jolt they can get.
“The pace at which these reforms are happening at the state level are only increasing,” Fox says, noting that roughly 250,000 people are employed by the legal cannabis industry in the U.S. “Aside from tax revenue, regulated cannabis markets create tens of thousands of new jobs, and we certainly need that.”
A similar sentiment exists on the sports gambling side. “There’s some momentum and opportunity to be had with the budget shortfalls,” says AGA’s Clark. “This is something that we want to get right. It’s not a speed-to-market opportunity. We have to make sure the right policies and frameworks are in place.”


fortune--2020-10-31--Boris Johnson announces another partial lockdown for England as COVID-19 cases surge

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a partial lockdown for England in a bid to contain a resurgent coronavirus outbreak that’s spreading faster than the government’s worst-case projections.
The lockdown will start on Thursday, pending a vote in parliament, and last until at least early December, Johnson said on Saturday in a televised press conference. All but essential shops will close, as will restaurants and bars, though schools and universities will remain open.
The prime minister also announced that state payments will be made to furloughed workers of as much as 80% of their wages through the new lockdown period. Existing assistance measures had been due to end this weekend and be replaced by a less generous program.
“We know the cost of these restrictions, the damage that they do, the impact on jobs and livelihoods and people’s mental health,” said Johnson. “No one wants to be imposing these measures anywhere.”
“But we’ve got to be humble in the face of nature,” Johnson said. Data suggested hospitals in parts of England could run out of capacity in a matter of weeks, he said, and deaths could reach several thousands per day.
The announcement of new restrictions came on the same day as official data showed that virus cases in the U.K. since the pandemic began had surpassed 1 million.
The measures are in line with those taken by other governments in Europe, where infections are also spiking heading into winter. They’re less restrictive than the months-long curbs put in place earlier this year, when schools were closed, and are designed to allow people to keep working.
Still, it represents a significant — and politically risky — change of tack for Johnson, who for weeks has pushed back against another lockdown, calling it the “nuclear” option that could be economically “disastrous.”
He focused instead on a 3-tier system of restrictions in England to target localized outbreaks, even as governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which set their own virus-fighting policies, opted for tougher measures.
Johnson spoke alongside Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance and England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty after meeting with his cabinet.
The “prevalence of this disease has been going up extremely rapidly over the last few weeks.” Whitty said. He cited a rise in Covid patients in the hospital and warned, “if we do nothing, the inevitable result is that these numbers will go up and they will eventually exceed the peak that we saw in spring.” Vallance said models showed that deaths could potentially be twice as high as the first wave of the pandemic.
The volte-face risks vindicating opposition Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer’s calls for a “circuit-breaker” lockdown, but the data left Johnson with little choice. Cases across the U.K. jumped by nearly 22,000 on Saturday while deaths rose another 326. Britain has Europe’s highest death toll from Covid-19 with more than 46,000 fatalities.


fortune--2020-10-31--Who is voting? Who is winning? Early vote only offers clues

As early voting breaks records across the U.S., political analysts and campaigns are reviewing reams of data on the voters, looking for clues to key questions: Who is voting? And who is winning?
On one level, the answers can be simple. Registered Democrats are outpacing registered Republicans significantly — by 14 percentage points — in states that are reporting voters’ party affiliation, according to an Associated Press analysis of the early vote.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Many Americans’ choices don’t align with their party registration. Meanwhile, polls show Republicans have heeded President Donald Trump’s baseless warnings about mail voting, and large numbers intend to vote on Election Day. That means the early Democratic surge could give way to a Republican surge on Tuesday.
The picture is further clouded by the unprecedented nature of how Americans are voting. While Democrats are hungry for signs that key parts of their coalition — young voters, Black voters, new voters — are engaged, comparisons to 2016 are difficult.
Here’s a closer look at what we know — and don’t know — about early voters:
Early voting spikes
As of Friday afternoon, 86.8 million people had voted in the presidential election. That’s 63% of the total who cast ballots in the 2016 race. Most election experts think the United States will see 150 million to 160 million ballots cast in 2020, which would mean that we are likely more than halfway through voting. In one state, Texas, more votes have already been cast than in all of 2016.
Democrats have a big lead in the early vote over the GOP — 47% to 33% — according to the AP analysis of data from the political data firm L2.
That doesn’t mean Democrats are going to win. But it does increase the pressure on Republicans to have a similar advantage — or higher — on Election Day.
New voters are showing up
The big turnout question in all elections is: Which side is bringing in new voters? The data shows Democrats are accomplishing that — but not necessarily as dramatically as some of the big overall numbers might suggest.
More than 1 out of 4 of all ballots — 27% — were cast either by new or infrequent voters, according to AP’s analysis. Those are voters who have never voted before or voted in fewer than half of the elections in which they were eligible. It sounds like a big number, but it’s not too much greater than past years. The Democratic data firm Catalist found that, in 2016, roughly one quarter of the electorate didn’t vote in the previous presidential election.
Still, the number may well grow, as new and infrequent voters tend to vote close to, or on, Election Day. And even small increases in the tight battlegrounds can make a difference.
A rise in that number appears to be good news for Democrats. Forty-three percent of the infrequent and new voters are registered Democrats, compared to a quarter who are Republicans. The remaining third are registered as independents or with a minor party — a group that tends to favor Democratic candidates.
The voters are clustered in the Sunbelt, particularly in states such as Florida, North Carolina and especially Texas that Democrats hope to win by mobilizing large chunks of the electorate that sit out most contests.
“Democrats are already expanding their electorate,” said Tom Bonier of the Democratic data firm TargetSmart. “That would certainly appear to be favorable for Biden — to be taken with the caveat we’ve heard a million times before, that we don’t know how many other voters will come out on Election Day.”
Black voters holding steady
Biden’s fate may be tied to strong turnout among Black voters in the battleground states. So far, about 9% of the early vote has been cast by African-Americans, about on par with the 10% of the electorate Black voters made up in 2016, according to a Pew Research estimate of voters in that election.
Black voters are tracking closely with their share of the electorate in several battlegrounds. In North Carolina, they are 21% of both all early voters and all registered voters. In Georgia, they make up 30% of the early vote and 32% of registered voters.
A slight drop in Black voter turnout from the elevated numbers of 2008 and 2012 played a role in Democrats’ 2016 loss, and the party and its supporters are watching carefully to see what happens this time.
The data so far is ambiguous. There’s been a surge in the older African-American vote. Black voters 65 and older are already one of the most reliable voting demographics, but according to TargetSmart data they have already surpassed their numbers in six key battlegrounds — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Texas.
At the same time, according to data from the Service Employees International Union, younger, less reliable Black voters comprise a larger share of the Black vote right now than in 2016. That’s a sign of greater engagement in the segment of the electorate that dropped off in 2016.
Organizers say Black voters are reeling from the pandemic and economic collapse, which have hit African-Americans hardest, and the country’s racial reckoning. That’s motivating them to overcome persistent obstacles to voting, said Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union.
“Black and brown communities have faced these multiple crises,” Henry said. That’s stiffened their resolve to vote, she added.
The SEIU union says 3 out of every 4 black voters have not voted yet in Pennsylvania. The union is shifting resources to its Pennsylvania turnout operations because it is concerned Black voters have been slower to return mail ballots.
Democrats hope for bright spot in young voters
As of Friday, AP’s analysis showed 11.3% of early votes have been cast by voters between the ages of 18 and 29. That’s up slightly from this point in 2016, when 9.6% of the early vote was cast by people under age 30, according to TargetSmart.
And in the Sunbelt battlegrounds of Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, young voters are turning out at a hefty rate of 30% or above, according to AP data.
That’s again a good sign for Democrats, but a very preliminary one. Young voters lean Democratic, and when Democrats rush to the polls, it’s not unexpected that their numbers would be higher.
Young voters showed up in never-before-seen levels in 2018, with 36% of those who were eligible participating, according to the U.S. Census. That helped Democrats win control of the House of Representatives.
Young voter advocates were concerned about the pandemic causing a sharp drop in voter registrations among 18- and 19-year-olds who just became eligible to vote.
However, young voters are still a larger share of the registered voter population in almost all states than they were in 2016, according to the Center for Information Research and Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. That’s a reflection of both population growth and the increased registration that led to 2018.
Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor who runs the site ElectProject.org and carefully tracks the early vote, cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from changes in the youth vote from 2016. “Youth turnout is up,” he said. “Everything’s up. That’s what happens when you have a high turnout election.”
Will high turnout sway the outcome?
Republicans argue that predicted record turnout won’t matter much in battleground states.
When all the votes are counted, the Trump campaign predicts that the turnout rate in battleground states in 2020 will be similar to in 2016.
“It is pretty predictable what they’ve brought into the electorate,” Nick Trainer, the Trump campaign’s director of battleground strategy said of Democrats. “We will bring our own new voters into the electorate ourselves, and it will all come out in the washing machine.”
That’s a sharp break from several election experts, who see signs in both the early vote numbers and polls of voter enthusiasm in battlegrounds.
John Couvillon, a Republican pollster who tracks the early vote, said the Trump campaign is being too dismissive. “I heard the same kind of attitude in 2008, when Republicans were in denial about the impressive early vote turnout Obama was generating,” Couvillon said.
McDonald notes there’s no way to know until Election Day.
However, he noted that, if turnout is low, that’s not necessarily good news for Trump given the big early vote lead that Democrats have banked. It would mean the president’s campaign would need to win Election Day by an even larger margin.
“They better hope they’re wrong,” McDonald said.


fortune--2020-10-31--MLK was arrested before the 1960 election. Nixon and JFK’s reactions offer lessons for Trump and Bid

MLK was arrested before the 1960 election. Nixon and JFK’s reactions offer lessons for Trump and Biden

If activists are agile and alert, there is abundant energy to be tapped in an election year. Focused passions can force candidates preferring to stay on the sidelines of controversial issues, particularly concerning race, to move. Social movements can use such energy to heighten the stakes of the election for their cause, and that was at no point clearer than in 1960, the year Southern Black college students began their fabled sit-in movement and changed everything.
Martin Luther King Jr. did not lead the student sit-in movement, but supported it because the students inspired him. King wisely got on board in a way that certainly neither presidential candidates Richard Nixon nor John F. Kennedy were at first bold enough to do. Yet the sit-in students managed, three weeks before Election Day, to force their new movement into the campaign, and perhaps, as events played out, to even decide it.
In today’s presidential year, one marked by civil rights protests ever since a Minneapolis police officer knelt on the neck of George Floyd, we are seeing echoes of those consequential turns of events 60 years ago playing out now. In the era of Black Lives Matter, the 2020 candidates are once again being challenged by activists demanding equal justice. A new generation of activists is looking for candidates to respond with awareness and compassion to the demand for equal treatment—most fundamentally, for Black citizens to not be killed simply for living their lives.
In 1960, 31-year-old King moved home to Atlanta searching for strategic direction after the Montgomery bus boycott’s success. After the sit-ins swept through the South, Atlanta students pressured King to go to jail with them, believing King getting arrested would force the presidential candidates to talk about civil rights. Student activists were not excited about either Nixon or Kennedy, though many Black Americans such as Daddy King, the minister’s father, did support Nixon. Republicans hoped Nixon could garner half of the Black vote, aiding his way to victory.
It was a hard decision for King to get arrested with the students, having never spent a night in jail before Oct. 19, 1960. What neither King, nor the students, understood was that a previous minor driving ticket would be used by a judge in neighboring DeKalb County to sentence King to four months hard labor in Georgia’s notorious state prison.
This was an October surprise that both candidates were pushed to respond to—in Kennedy’s case, by his civil rights staffers Louis Martin, Harris Wofford, and Sargent Shriver, and in Nixon’s case, by his Black surrogates like Jackie Robinson and Eisenhower White House aide E. Frederic Morrow.
Students expected Nixon would speak out for King, but the Vice President was eyeing white Southern Democratic votes and stayed silent. In contrast, Kennedy risked those votes by calling Coretta Scott King to express sympathy and had his brother Robert Kennedy call the judge in Georgia.
After King was released following a perilous nine days behind bars, Kennedy’s Black advisor Louis Martin, on leave from the Chicago Defender, had the audacious idea to distribute what became an estimated 2 million pamphlets through Black churches on just what Kennedy did and Nixon did not. The Democrats swung back a critical seven percentage points of the Black vote from the previous presidential election and Black voters were the difference in nine states in a historically close election. The Black vote has never again been anywhere near in doubt as it was in the fall of 1960.
This year, a pivotal moment in the jump in Biden’s lead was the handling of the protests arising from the killing of George Floyd. Black Lives Matter is a movement that is self-intentionally less identified with one charismatic leader such as King, given the decentralized groups of activists across the country. In this, it echoes the sit-in movement before King’s imprisonment increased the national sense of him as the leader of the civil rights movement. As well, Biden, being pushed by activists as Kennedy was, articulated a message of bringing people together to address systemic racism. Trump did not bother with the silence of Nixon, and was ready to condemn the movement, as in the more-than-symbolic attack on demonstrators in Lafayette Square in Washington.
Again, echoing Kennedy’s outreach to Coretta Scott King, after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., Biden called and listened to the Blake family, stating a commitment to national change in a meeting with them, even in the face of Trump choosing Nixon’s late-1960s “law and order” response to protest in the streets.
Yet Trump is not unmindful of the power and impact of the Black vote. Black speakers at the Republican National Convention showed Trump’s desire to cut into the roughly 90% Black support Democrats received in 2016, seeking to create a contrast on criminal justice and economic opportunity. Meanwhile, the Biden campaign is seeking to raise turnout levels in this potentially determinative voting bloc, particularly among young Black men. And the need to quickly respond to events, as in 1960, keeps arising, as we’re seeing now in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. The police shooting of a Black man, Walter Wallace Jr., has led to protests in Philadelphia in the final days of the campaign.
There are lessons from 1960 on how candidates can boldly seize an opportunity to signal the kind of leader they would be on issues of racial inequality for the next four years. However, expectations have certainly risen for politicians since 1960—those concerned with injustice today want not just moral gestures, but policy plans and a commitment to enact them.
Paul Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick are the authors of Nine Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King’s Life and Win the 1960 Election, which will be published in January 2021.


fortune--2020-10-31--Theft of $2.3M from GOP shows how campaigns are juicy targets for hackers

When the Wisconsin Republican Party disclosed this week that hackers had stolen millions of dollars from its account—funds designated for President Trump’s re-election—Oren Falkowitz was not surprised.
A former NSA hacker who now runs cybersecurity company Area1, Falkowitz says political campaigns’ record levels of fundraising this cycle—and campaigns’ habit of boasting about the money they raise—has made them a prime target for cyber criminals. He points in particular to the popularity of Democratic and Republican parties’ respective fundraising platforms, ActBlue and WinRed, and tweets like this one:
In the case of the theft of the Wisconsin GOP, it’s unclear precisely how the hackers stole the money. Party chairman Andrew Hitt told the Associated Press the incident began with a phishing attack that allowed the hackers to pose as vendors. The party then paid $2.3 million worth of invoices from the fake vendors, wiping out much of its coffers.
The Wisconsin GOP did not respond to a request for further details about the attack, but Hitt’s description suggests it’s likely the hackers took over the email accounts of legitimate vendors and tricked party officials into paying the invoices.
In his comments to the AP, Hitt also said he was unaware of any other state GOP groups being targeted by similar attacks—a claim Falkowitz says is improbable
“Everyone is a ‘target.’ To say that one is unaware of people, or organizations being targeted is to be totally unaware of what the threat in cyberspace is,” he said.
Falkowitz says lax email security is what makes such phishing-based scams possible. And while anti-phishing software can help detect such scams, many in the political world are not using it. A recent report by Area1 revealed that few of the hundreds of election officials surveyed were deploying anti-phishing tools and many said they were conducting business using their personal emails.
While hackers posing as vendors is one threat to political campaigns, Falkowitz warns there’s also a risk of criminals taking over the emails of party officials to request money from ActBlue or WinRed.
Both ActBlue or WinRed provide plug-and-play donation tools for candidates and allied political causes, letting them easily add a “Donate” button to their websites. The platforms collect contributions from millions of small donors and then wire money to the various candidates and groups. And while they work to secure their own operations from hackers, they view securing campaigns as the role of the national parties.
“It is standard for groups of our size and nature to see attempted phishing attacks on a regular basis. We have a range of technical protections in place and conduct regular employee education on the topic. We are not aware of any successful attacks,” said a spokesperson for ActBlue who described campaign security as “not in our purview.’
WinRed, which handles donations for the Wisconsin GOP, did not respond to a request for comment about this week’s hacking incident.


fortune--2020-10-31--Why surveying the American public can help us change capitalism

The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the need for business leadership more clearly than ever. Americans increasingly trust business leaders to serve as societal leaders. And inequality and racial injustice have put a fine point on how urgent the challenge is. As a result, the stakeholder capitalism movement is gathering real momentum.
But changing capitalism isn’t easy. It needs new voices at the table, new narratives, and a better grasp of what value creation means. And it necessitates the development of new systems for defining what drives business success, for gathering data, and for measuring and reporting performance.
JUST Capital has carved out a unique role in this transition by providing a credible and unbiased assessment of how America’s largest corporations are doing on the stakeholder criteria of greatest importance to the public, as well as the tools, products, and programs that actually drive change.
As last Saturday’s Fortune op-ed illustrates, our approach is not without its critics. We welcome such feedback and see our strategy—like stakeholder capitalism itself—as a work in progress. One thing that’s abundantly clear is that building a stakeholder-led economy is not a competition. It’s a movement, with complementary parts, including CEOs and business leaders, investors, workers, civil society, policymakers, and more.
The B Corp initiative championed by op-ed author Christopher Marquis is certainly an excellent option for any business wishing to commit to a stakeholder-based pathway. But the B Corp route doesn’t work for every company. Indeed, this is the point. No single initiative, organization, or project can upend shareholder primacy. It will take the entire ecosystem, working together, to drive real change.
For our system to evolve, we first must rethink what business leadership means. Focusing on short-term returns to shareholders or measuring success solely on the P&L statement is clearly no longer enough. But how else might we measure it? To answer this, JUST Capital turns to the American people.
(Read, “In a time of crisis, Americans send a clear message to Corporate America: Focus on workers.”)
It’s vital that the public feels that stakeholder capitalism reflects their priorities because a movement isn’t credible without real people’s values. It isn’t a perfect science, but by partnering with the best public opinion research groups to reach a representative sampling of Americans, we feel confident that we are capturing many of the key issues. We rarely use polling to assess the efficacy of corporate practices. Instead, our polling ensures we stay rooted in the experiences of everyday people, rather than dealing in academic hypotheticals.
Case in point: For the fifth year in a row, Americans said the most important action a company can take is to pay a fair and livable wage. With tens of millions of hardworking people still reliant on food stamps to feed their families, this makes sense. But without our survey work, it might not have been so apparent. This year, we’ve also used polling to get the public’s guidance on how companies should be responding to COVID-19, racial equity, and our democratic processes.
When it comes to accurately measuring corporate stakeholder performance, the challenges are many and varied.
One is getting to the truth on how companies are performing, as opposed to what they’re saying. For many of the issues we’re trying to measure, there is no definitive data source and no standardized way of reporting, which means you have to use proxies or estimates, to piece together the best possible analysis. We try to tell a balanced story, but it’s an inherently messy, inefficient process.
Another issue is relativity. Fundamentally, we’re assessing company performance relative to one another. We find the best players on the field, rather than assess where the field is going. Which is why the work of organizations like B Lab, which are working to move the whole field, is so valuable. Our work also doesn’t address every societal challenge. Overall, rankings are a blunt tool. The fact is that company stakeholder performance, like company financial performance, is uneven.
Finally, there is the challenge of actually driving change. We see the work we do as a resource for the broader movement. It shed light on what companies actually did in the early days of COVID-19. It creates investment products that can drive capital toward companies that are better performers. It investigates the correlation between top performers and market performance. And it drives transparency and supports change, like advancing racial equity in the workplace. Recently we launched a new effort to ask CEOs to assess the financial health and security of their workers, because in this time, it’s no longer appropriate for CEOs to not have this information.
Ultimately, we believe the market will drive toward corporate stakeholder performance, as more and more people seek to buy from, invest in, work for, and otherwise support those companies that do right by their stakeholders. But this can only happen with clarity on what we’re driving toward, and that’s the work of JUST Capital and others in the coming years.
Martin Whittaker is the CEO of JUST Capital. Alison Omens is the chief strategy officer of JUST Capital.


fortune--2020-10-31--The 5 best things I bought in October to make working and living at home easier

My quest for making pandemic life a little less taxing through “Order Confirmed” emails continues.
Il Makiage Woke Up Like This foundation Rachel Schallom—Fortune
The Instagram ads have done it again. I was deeply skeptical that I could correctly pick a foundation shade via an online quiz, but after receiving approximately 13,562 social media ads for the company, I gave in and tried it. And through some act of magic, it truly is a perfect match. Il Makiage offers a 14-day trial period for just $5; you’re not charged the full price until after the trial if you decide to keep it.
Sharpie S-Gel pens Rachel Schallom—Fortune
Can office supplies solve all your problems? Probably not, but it’s worth a shot. I am thrilled with these Sharpie gel pens. I wanted a bit more weight than a standard ballpoint pen, and this gives me just a hint of that Sharpie feel without bleeding all over the place. Paired with Post-it’s Miami collection sticky notes, it’s a triumph to stay organized during busy days.
Patagonia fleece quarter zips Rachel Schallom—Fortune
During a long weekend at a cabin in Virginia, I decided I needed more fall gear and made an impulse purchase at Patagonia. I snagged two quarter zips: the Los Gatos 1/4-Zip Fleece ($99) and the Better Sweater 1/4-Zip Fleece ($119). Both are phenomenal for working from home and running errands, but the Los Gatos fleece gives me the warm feeling of when you first step into a hot tub and you feel enveloped by comfort. Have multiple people messaged me during a Zoom to ask if I’m wearing a fur coat? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.
Cards from Emily McDowell and Friends Rachel Schallom—Fortune
As much as I’d love to, it’s no longer responsible to run to the store every time someone I love has a moment to celebrate. Every few months, I buy a bunch of cards from Emily McDowell’s shop so I’m covered for birthdays, anniversaries, pregnancy announcements, engagements, and just surviving the day. The cards feature unique messages (example: “When this is over, I am totally invading your personal space.”) and are especially potent for extending love and care to those going through a rough time. The company recently rolled out sticker cards, which everyone needs right now.
1.7 quart OXO Good Grips POP Container Rachel Schallom—Fortune
No, I have not watched The Home Edit. But I have been keeping an eye out for small daily annoyances that I can optimize, and after a bag of rice spilled everywhere, I knew I should tackle the pantry. It’s important to measure your shelves—even though I knew I wanted to use these for rice and quinoa, OXO’s rice container doesn’t actually fit in my cabinet. There are, however, a ton of size options, so you should be able to find something that works.


fortune--2020-10-31--As Thailand’s economy shrinks, protesters question the $40 billion value of the King

On Oct. 14—the day before Thailand’s embattled government declared a state of emergency to prohibit mass gatherings in the capital—a royal motorcade passed through a crowd of protesters thronging around Democracy Monument in central Bangkok. The protesters had gathered to call for the prime minister’s resignation, but as royalty passed through, the crowd turned and jeered, “My taxes! My taxes!”
Thailand’s government has budgeted over $1 billion to finance the monarchy this year, despite the fact that King Maha Vajiralongkorn is one of the world’s wealthiest rulers, with an estimated $40 billion in assets. That wealth used to belong to the Crown—the institution, not the ruler—but Vajiralongkorn took control of the privy purse in 2018.
Although criticizing the monarchy is illegal in Thailand, with violators sentenced to 15 years in prison, Vajiralongkorn’s lavish spending and appropriation of the crown’s $40 billion portfolio has opened the monarch up to criticism. As his kingdom’s economy is set to contract 7.8% this year, protesters are making unprecedented demands to have the king’s taxes investigated.
The German
When Vajiralongkorn was officially coronated in 2019, three years after his father’s death, the new king was given Rama X as his regnal name. But among Thailand’s discontent, the king has another moniker—the German—because for the past ten years Vajiralongkorn has been living in Germany, some 9,000 miles away from his kingdom.
According to German media, as the pandemic raged this summer, the 68-year-old King Rama ensconced himself in a luxury hotel in the Bavarian Alps that was rented entirely for himself, a retinue of servants and a bevy of women. The hotel was given special permission to host the king and his entourage; other hotels in Germany were forced shut due to the pandemic.
In Thailand, too, business were forced to close as the Thai government enacted a strict lockdown, setting a nightly curfew for residents, banning the sale of alcohol, and limiting public gatherings. News of the absent King’s lavish lifestyle provided an unwelcome contrast to the suffering of his subjects—not least of all because Vajiralongkorn’s life of luxury is increasingly seen to come at the taxpayer’s expense.
The Crown
Until 2018, the wealth of Thailand’s monarchy was managed by the Crown Property Bureau (CPB)—a quasi-governmental agency managed by a board majority appointed by the king. Revenue generated by the CPB’s investments is exempt from taxation and is supposed to serve the royal institution—the Crown—rather than the king. But since succeeding his father as King in 2016, Vajiralongkorn has moved to consolidate his grasp on the Crown’s coffers.
In 2017, the King appointed his private secretary as chairman of the CPB’s board, ousting the Minister of Finance from the seat. The same year, the government passed an amendment to the Crown Property Act, giving the King full control of the CPB’s portfolio. In 2018, the CPB issued a statement confirming it had “returned” all its assets to the King so that he may manage the funds “at his discretion.”
The line between the king’s finances and the crown’s was always blurred, says Pavin Chachavalpongpun, an associate professor at Kyoto University’s Centre for Southeast Asian Studies. That ambiguity, Chachavalpongpun says, allowed the previous monarch to spend with impunity, while maintaining an image of frugality. But when Rama X became sole arbiter of the Crown’s wealth, he crossed that line.
“It has become too obvious that the King is doing this for his own self-indulgence,” Chachavalpongpun says, pointing to the King’s lavish lifestyle in the Bavarian Alps as proof. “It’s now easier to question the king’s spending because Vajiralongkorn cannot claim that what he’s spending is for the institution.”
The Taxpayer
The CPB’s assets—now the King’s—are estimated to be worth $40 billion, but due to Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws, critical discussion of the Crown’s portfolio is difficult. Included within the King’s new portfolio is over 16,000 acres of land—much of it prime real estate—and over 40,000 rental contracts with developers.
Bangkok’s popular Siam Paragon, Siam Discovery and Siam Center malls are all built on land leased from the Crown. The King’s portfolio reportedly includes at least $30 billion of property holdings in the capital alone.
The King also owns a 23% stake in one of Thailand’s leading lenders, Siam Commercial Bank, and a 33% stake in Thailand’s largest industrial conglomerate, Siam Cement Group. Taken together, the King’s shares in the two companies are worth roughly $9 billion.
According to the Financial Times, one of the protest’s more prominent figures, Parit Chiwarak, called on Thais to boycott the Siam Commercial Bank during a rally in September. “You are replenishing money for the German,” Chiwarak said, calling the bank a “money pot of feudalism.” The student leader has been arrested at least twice during this year’s protests.
ROI
There could be a silver lining to the King’s seizure of the CPB’s assets. Although revenue earned by the CPB is exempt from taxation, the King’s earnings are not. Any return on investment within the crown’s $40 billion portfolio should now be subject to tax, as the CPB stated in 2018 when transferring the assets.
However, the strict lèse-majesté laws that prohibit criticism of the King make demanding a review of the monarch’s tax payments a risky order. Any perceived criticism of the King is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. But protesters are defiant.
On Monday, a crowd of demonstrators marched to the German embassy in Bangkok and petitioned Berlin to investigate the King’s taxes. In particular, protesters question whether the King’s long-standing residence in Germany would make him liable to pay German inheritance tax on the wealth he received when his father, King Rama IX, died.
“In the past people believed the monarchy can do no wrong. More than that, it’s written in the constitution that the monarchy can do no wrong,” Chachavalpongpun says. “But the students are arguing that the monarchy can do wrong and, when it does, the people need to be able to complain about it.”


fortune--2020-11-01--6 new books to read in November

6 new books to read in November

A page-turning debut novel that has already been optioned by Netflix for Shonda Rhimes to produce; a collection of short stories based on a popular web comic about impostor syndrome, anxiety, and every other possible feeling you have in 2020; and a trio of memoirs poised to tear up bestseller lists.
Here are six new books to consider reading in November.
Courtesy of Simon & Schuster
White Ivy by Susie Yang
Available Nov. 3
In her debut novel, Susie Yang takes the classic ideal of the American dream and turns it inside out. Filled with surprising twists and a nuanced exploration of class and race, White Ivy (Simon & Schuster) is a glimpse into the dark side of a woman who yearns for success at any cost. Already named as one of the best books of the year by multiple publications, White Ivy could soon be one of the next big hits to translate from the page to the miniseries after a seven-way bidding war, eventually won by Netflix. And TV mogul Shonda Rhimes is attached to executive produce the limited series.
Courtesy of Simon & Schuster
The Women I Think About at Night: Traveling the Paths of My Heroes
by Mia Kankimäki, translated by Douglas Robinson
Available Nov. 10
Fortysomething, childless, and feeling stuck, Finnish author Mia Kankimäki takes that big leap we all fantasize about but never have the guts to do: She quits her job, sells her apartment, and travels the world. In a blend of travelogue, memoir, and biography, Kankimäki recounts her travels through Japan, Kenya, and Italy, while retracing the steps of 10 remarkable female pioneers from history.
Courtesy of Penguin
One Life by Megan Rapinoe and Emma Brockes
Available Nov. 10
Megan Rapinoe has cemented her role as one of America’s greatest athletes, but beyond her massive professional success on the soccer field, Rapinoe has also become an icon and ally to millions. In recent years, she has become one of the faces of the equal pay movement, and she was the first white athlete to demonstrate public support for Colin Kaepernick and the Black Lives Matter movement by taking a knee during the national anthem in the face of consequences to her own career. In One Life (Penguin), Rapinoe discusses the obligation we all have to speak up and examines the impact each of us can have on our communities.
Courtesy of Crown
A Promised Land by Barack Obama
Available Nov. 17
It is not an understatement to say that this is the most anticipated book release of the season—if not the year. The former President of the United States is known for missing some of his publishing deadlines in the past, and this time was no exception. Although the publication date has drawn criticism for coming after Election Day on Nov. 3, there is no doubt that this, the first of three installments of Obama’s presidential memoirs, will become an instant bestseller and the subject of a million think pieces. A Promised Land (Crown) has been promised to be a candid look into the 44th President’s first term, from coming into office during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression (at that time) to the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Readers should note they can take their time in poring over the 700-plus–page book; no dates have been set for the publication of the second and third volumes.
Courtesy of Flatiron Books
No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality by Michael J. Fox
Available Nov. 17
There are few actors of his generation as universally beloved as Michael J. Fox. His two previous bestselling memoirs, Lucky Man and Always Looking Up, dealt with how the Back to the Future actor came to terms with his Parkinson’s diagnosis, always maintaining his trademark optimism and light. His new memoir reassesses this outlook, as events in the past decade presented additional challenges. In No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality (Flatiron Books), Fox shares personal stories and observations about illness and health, aging, the strength of family and friends, and how our perceptions about time affect the way we approach mortality.
Courtesy of Harper Perennial
Barely Functional Adult: It’ll All Make Sense Eventually by Meichi Ng
Available Nov. 24
Anyone who is not a millennial (and maybe some millennials, too) will roll their eyes at the oft-remarked phrase, “adulting is hard.” Well it is hard—especially in 2020. Those four numbers need no explanation, but this adaptation of a popular web comic series does a deft job of bringing dark humor and evoking poignant reflections about dealing with anxiety, impostor syndrome, relationships, and what it all means when you find yourself crying in the frozen food aisle for what seems like no good reason—but there is a good reason. (There’s no wrong reason, it turns out.)


fortune--2020-11-01--To win, Trump needs 11 million more votes than he got in 2016

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
Four years ago, Donald Trump became the second presidential candidate after George W. Bush in 2000 to lose the popular vote and take the White House. It’s a given that he’ll come up short in the national count this time, too. The outcome hinges on Trump’s ability to keep that deficit narrow enough to secure a second victory in the electoral college. In 2016, Trump prevailed with a relatively low number of total ballots, because third-party candidates amassed a far higher proportion than in most elections, and Trump got the maximum mileage imaginable from his haul by edging Hillary Clinton by less than a point in no fewer than three electoral vote-rich states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
To win reelection, Trump needs to immensely boost his performance in the popular vote. Paul Krishnamurty, a professional political gambler and elections expert for the U.K. betting site Betfair––the venue has booked $260 million on the election so far and expects that number to double in the days to come––reckons that Trump must raise his 2016 count of 63 million by roughly 11 million, or 17%, to stand a decent chance. That’s the net increase required, meaning as of today, Trump must squeeze enough new votes from his white, blue-collar, non–college-educated base and groups newly leaning his way to make up for his losses among seniors, independents, and disgruntled Republicans, and still add 10-plus million to his 2016 total. Trump can get part of the way by rallying his hard core of white working-class voters and notching gains with Latinos impressed by his handling of the economy and tough stance on Cuba.
“He seems to think he can get millions of working-class folks who weren’t enthused enough to vote for him the last time, to vote for him this time,” says Krishnamurty. “Some of them will, but it won’t be nearly enough.” Adds University of Florida professor Michael McDonald, who heads the United States Elections Project, an excellent source for voter turnout data: “Trump’s main strategy is attempting to make Biden appear unlikable, like Hillary Clinton. But that messaging is not getting through.” Trump can only win by somehow broadening his appeal in the last days of the campaign. He’d need to bring home millions of the graying Americans appalled by his management of the COVID crisis, and dampen the suburbanites’ surging enthusiasm for Biden. It’s unclear that claiming the former VP would undermine Social Security and Medicare, or his law and order message pledging to protect homeowners by quelling violence in the cities, get him anywhere near the giant gains in the popular vote needed for victory.
A major problem for Trump is that a big chunk of the electorate shunned both the Republican and Democratic standard-bearers last time because they found both of them intensely dislikable. Now, these onetime protesters are back supporting a major candidate because they deem one of the contenders likable, and they’re not suddenly warming to Donald Trump. In 2016, Trump won 63 million votes of the 137 million cast. His total was 3 million short of Clinton’s 66 million, and he trailed her share by 2.1%, 46.1% to 48.2%. The election was highly unusual, because 8 million, almost 6% of the total, went to third-party tickets, notably the Libertarian and Green candidates at 4.5 million and 1.5 million votes, respectively. That 6% is three times the 2% that usually goes to third-party tickets and write-ins and is the non–major-party share expected in this election.
“The 2016 Census reported that a high percentage of Americans didn’t want to vote for a major candidate, because they didn’t like them,” says McDonald. “So they took other options.” He notes that the James Comey letter drove home the narrative that Clinton was secretive and elitist. “It was one of these moments when people’s impressions crystallize,” he says. “But Biden’s approval numbers are much better than Clinton’s.” Trump is clearly trying to lure a big number of the 8 million rebel voters for whom the likability quotient is crucial by painting Biden as a bad guy. “The idea is to motivate people who like or don’t dislike Biden to hold their nose and vote for Trump,” says McDonald. That the strategy isn’t working is evidenced by Biden’s sturdy approval ratings, which in recent Gallup surveys exceeded Trump’s rating by 5 points.
It’s probable, though not certain, that turnout this year will far exceed that in 2016. Trump needs a scenario where sundry more ballots are cast, and where he gets a big proportion of the tens of millions of extra votes, to prevail. It looks now, however, like the lion’s share of the surge will go to Biden. The huge increase in early voting points to a big turnout. According to the Elections Project, 86 million Americans, two-thirds of the total number in 2016, have already voted either by mail or at polling sites. The volume in Texas already exceeds the 2016 total, and over 80% of the people who voted in North Carolina, Arizona, and Florida four years ago have cast their ballots. A Gallup survey from October finds that 69% of registered voters are “more enthusiastic than usual” about the race versus 50% in 2016.
Krishnamurty predicts that turnout could hit 155 million, an 18 million increase over the Trump-Clinton contest. He reckons that to win, Trump would need to get at least 47.5% of that vote to Biden’s 50.5%. (Don’t forget the roughly 2% forecast for mavericks and write-ins.) But just look at how many more ballots he’d need to collect. Of the 155 million votes cast, he’d need to win 73.6 million. That’s 10.6 million more than his 63 million in 2016. “Even at 73.6 million, I don’t think he’d win, but he’d have a shot,” says Krishnamurty. “I’ve been saying he wouldn’t win again from the day he was elected because he’s a divisive candidate, and successful Presidents are unifiers. He doubled down on the strategy of appealing to his base. He’s the greatest showman ever, but he went out and picked fights, and that’s what killed him with the seniors.”
It’s still conceivable that Trump can repeat the sorcery of 2016. But adding almost 11 million votes when he’s losing the 65 and over crowd and doing even more to rile suburban women? Trump needed a bridge to a much broader constituency that he never built, and now it’s a bridge too far.


fortune--2020-11-02--Biden is more likely to win red Montana than Trump is to win key midwestern swing states

This data scientist ’ s model shows Biden is still a 3-to-1 favorite to win—but he ’ s fading in @ @ @

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.
If you ask pollsters, they’ll tell you President Donald Trump’s path to reelection is both narrow and unlikely. As of Sunday, FiveThirtyEight gives Democratic nominee Biden a 89% chance of winning—compared to the 71% odds it gave Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The President does have a path if he can pull off upsets in a handful of states Biden is the favorite in, according to FiveThirtyEight. That includes Georgia (58%), Florida (64%), North Carolina (66%), Arizona (70%), and Pennsylvania (85%). Trump would also need to win everywhere he’s currently leading.
The hardest upset to pull off is Pennsylvania, where Trump only has a 15% chance of winning. The odds of that are as likely as Biden pulling off upsets in several deep red states. Biden’s odds of winning Montana (15%) and Alaska (15%) are about the same as Trump’s chances in Pennsylvania. And they’re greater than Trump’s chances of taking Michigan (5%) or Wisconsin (6%)—both states the Republican won four years ago by slim margins.
If Biden pulled off upsets everywhere he has at least a 15% chance of winning, he’d win in a 419 to 119 electoral vote landslide—a haul greater than any candidate since George H. W. Bush’s 426 electoral votes in 1988.
Simply put: A Trump win is as likely as a massive Biden landslide.
Then again, FiveThirtyEight was wrong five years ago. In 2016, Nate Silver’s media outlet had Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as the odds favorite in Florida (55%), Michigan (79%), North Carolina (56%), Pennsylvania (77%), and Wisconsin (84%). Trump would go on to pull off upsets in those five states and claim the White House.
In oder to pull it off, Trump would need state polling errors in the Midwest, Southeast, and Southwest. And just because Trump gets polling errors in his favor in one region doesn’t mean it will in other parts of the country. Four years ago, Trump outperformed polls in the Midwest but actually under-performed in the Southwest.
And if 2020 sees the exact same polling errors that happened in 2016, Biden would win by a hefty margin.