Electoral College Pool

[silverscreenselect]

Georgia looks to be tightening, now that they're starting to tabulate the early/absentee ballots of some Democratic strongholds around Atlanta. Not sure that would make a difference. And the RNC head says that Nevada and Arizona are still in play, and will cement things for Mr. Trump.

The votes left in Georgia are mail-in and provisional ballots from the various urban and suburban districts around Atlanta and also Albany, Augusta, and Savannah. These should skew heavily Democratic, but I'm not sure if there's enough of them left to close the margin enough.

Actually, the margin is "less" in the Senate race between David Perdue and Jon Ossoff. Ossoff has no chance to overtake Perdue, but there's a Libertarian candidate who is getting over 2% of the vote. If Ossoff and the Libertarian can gain about 50,000 more votes, then there will be a runoff on the same day in January as the other Georgia Senate seat between Raphael Warnock and Kelly Lefler. Normally, runoffs in Georgia strongly favor Republicans, but if there are two races on the ballot with control of the US Senate at stake, you can expect a ton of money and heavy hitters on both sides to show up. A Democratic sweep in both runoffs would result in a 50-50 tie and control of the Senate with Kamala Harris serving as President of the Senate.

Overall, Biden is up by about 93,000 in Arizona and 7,500 in Nevada. There hasn't been an update posted in either state since last night. What's left in Arizona is mail-in votes that arrived this week throughout the state. Nevada allows mail-in votes to count if they arrive by Friday. So, what's left are election day mail-ins in Las Vegas and Reno plus anything else that arrives between now and Friday. In both states, these votes would probably skew Democratic, less so in Arizona because mail-in voting is somewhat popular among Republicans there.

Interesting that Trump wants to stop the counting of votes in Pennsylvania but keep it going in Arizona and Nevada. I wonder why.

[Bob78164]

WaPo has called Wisconsin for Biden [EDIT: Michigan now, also}, and Trump has asked for a recount (that's his right, though recounts seldom move the numbers much, hanging chads notwithstanding).

Mr. Trump has also filed suit to get Michigan and Pennsylvania to stop counting immediately -- in today's counting, his margin has shaved from a lead of about 700k to 350k in the Keystone State. Not sure what his logic is, these are ballots that were legally cast and on premises as the law has allowed.

Georgia looks to be tightening, now that they're starting to tabulate the early/absentee ballots of some Democratic strongholds around Atlanta. Not sure that would make a difference.

And the RNC head says that Nevada and Arizona are still in play, and will cement things for Mr. Trump.

Stay tuned tomorrow, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!

As Nate Silver points out, if counting stopped RIGHT NOW, Vice President Biden wins the Presidency with 270 electoral votes. Donny only wants counting stopped where he's ahead. He wants it to keep on going where he's behind. --Bob

[earendel]

My way-too-early prediction. Biden will win, narrowly squeaking out a victory. He will face a Senate that is still controlled by Republicans. They will thwart any initiatives he attempts. Biden will decide not to run for re-election, and Trump will try to pull a Grover Cleveland.

My reasoning is based on my disappointment that this election didn't repudiate Trumpism.

[silverscreenselect]

Biden will decide not to run for re-election, and Trump will try to pull a Grover Cleveland.

Trump may have to pull a Eugene V. Debs and run for President while in prison.

[SpacemanSpiff]

WaPo now has Trump's lead in Georgia down to about 15,000 votes, which matches the Georgia's Secretary of State's election site. Might get interesting there as well. (EDIT: WaPo now says there remain 55,000 votes to count there. Stay tuned.)

Actually, a scary scenario was presented in a WaPo article about potential current scenarios. If Biden gets GA and Trump flips NV and AZ (and gets PA and SC), we'd have the dreaded 269-269 scenario. That means the House gets to decide, where each state delegation gets one vote (and DC gets none), which likely favors Trump -- I'll admit I haven't tried to dig into that one, since I kind of prefer that my head not explode in "what-ifs".

[Bob78164]

WaPo now has Trump's lead in Georgia down to about 15,000 votes, which matches the Georgia's Secretary of State's election site. Might get interesting there as well. (EDIT: WaPo now says there remain 55,000 votes to count there. Stay tuned.)

Actually, a scary scenario was presented in a WaPo article about potential current scenarios. If Biden gets GA and Trump flips NV and AZ (and gets PA and SC), we'd have the dreaded 269-269 scenario. That means the House gets to decide, where each state delegation gets one vote (and DC gets none), which likely favors Trump -- I'll admit I haven't tried to dig into that one, since I kind of prefer that my head not explode in "what-ifs".

Republicans will control at least 26 state delegations in the new House. --Bob

[silverscreenselect]

WaPo now has Trump's lead in Georgia down to about 15,000 votes, which matches the Georgia's Secretary of State's election site. Might get interesting there as well. (EDIT: WaPo now says there remain 55,000 votes to count there. Stay tuned.)

Actually, a scary scenario was presented in a WaPo article about potential current scenarios. If Biden gets GA and Trump flips NV and AZ (and gets PA and SC), we'd have the dreaded 269-269 scenario. That means the House gets to decide, where each state delegation gets one vote (and DC gets none), which likely favors Trump -- I'll admit I haven't tried to dig into that one, since I kind of prefer that my head not explode in "what-ifs".

The Trump lead in Georgia is down to about 13,500 with 50,000 left. The way these late-counted votes have split so far, along with the areas where most of the remaining votes are, indicate that Biden has a good chance to catch Trump. Also of interest, the last vote count in the Senate race have put David Perdue below the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff. With remaining votes highly unlikely to favor him, that means that there will be a runoff for control of the Senate in January (assuming Biden wins the Presidency).

Nate Silver thinks that the remaining Nevada vote, largely in Clarke County, is unlikely to give Trump the extra votes he needs (the first batch of Clarke County votes this morning expanded the Biden lead from 7500 to 12,000. Rural votes knocked that spread down to about 11,000, but there are almost no rural votes left.

[silverscreenselect]

Not that it means anything, but Biden is on track to win the popular vote by a greater margin than by what Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012.

[silverscreenselect]

One thing that this election brings up is that deciding a presidential election by national popular vote isn't feasible with our current state of the law and technology. We're seeing how confusing it is right now with four states busily counting and updating and two other states pausing on updates until they get all the votes in sometime next week. Imagine now if the popular vote came down to 50,000 votes or so. You would have this same mass level of confusion and possible lawsuits in 51 different jurisdictions.

I don't like the current Electoral College, but a strict popular vote with over 150 million votes cast could be a recipe for disaster.

[SpacemanSpiff]

One thing that this election brings up is that deciding a presidential election by national popular vote isn't feasible with our current state of the law and technology. We're seeing how confusing it is right now with four states busily counting and updating and two other states pausing on updates until they get all the votes in sometime next week. Imagine now if the popular vote came down to 50,000 votes or so. You would have this same mass level of confusion and possible lawsuits in 51 different jurisdictions.

I don't like the current Electoral College, but a strict popular vote with over 150 million votes cast could be a recipe for disaster.

I would argue the opposite. Other than the Kennedy-Nixon one, which had a margin of about 100k, no other modern election has been south of 500k votes. A purely popular vote election would take out the Florida debacle of 2000, among others.

Now, do I think anything will change? Nope.