So, it's been a rough week, and I haven't really updated this blog on the election results. Honestly, I've been saying it all along, this is not 2016. Biden is WAY ahead, it was razor thin and in 2016 Trump overperformed. Biden was performing way ahead of Hillary in the polls.
I was pretty confident going into election day that this would be an easy Biden win. I mean, he was 5-8 points ahead in the rust belt, he was 1-3 ahead in lots of southern "sun belt" states, it looked like a blowout. I expected it to be over quickly. Florida would come in, it was one of the early states to watch for...and it went red. Oh well, North Carolina's another state that looked like it would be good for Biden....and it went red. And then Georgia seemed red. And it looked like 2016 was unfolding again. I knew there would be a red mirage in the north before mail in ballots would be counted, but I honestly thought the south would carry it early. Trump's path of victory was narrow. If Biden could just take a few crucial states, it would be over before it started. I didn't want this to rely on the rust belt. And for a while there, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania looked awfully red. This was a nail biter.
Here we are a week later, and despite the orange moron throwing a tantrum, it's common knowledge Trump lost. But this election...scares me. I mean, it never should've been this close. The fact that Trump actually gained votes over 2016, even with higher turnout, scares me. And the fact that Biden underperformed like this, scares me. I cannot emphasize this enough. I'm SCARED. Legitimately afraid for the future of the country. Let's unpack what happened.
So, as we know, I predicted Biden to win by 351-187. Not only that, but I expected the leads to be very solid. Especially up north. PA ahead by almost 5%, Michigan and Wisconsin by 8+. I had those two as SOLID BLUE. As in, then going red would be outside of my 95% confidence range (which is actually 97.7% in a one tailed result like here). Instead, we basically are getting Biden 306-232.
The electoral college count was not far off. Well within the margin of error. My 95% confidence had Biden getting anywhere in between 242 and 438 electoral votes with 351 being the median prediction. You can see that demonstrated here. On a bell curve, I had Trump only having a 11.5% chance of winning, and this was at the 24th percentile or so. So an underperformance by Biden, but not a huge one.
No. The electoral college results I'm happy with. It's the margins that scare me. Look at the map I posted, or look up the results yourself. The rust belt got eviscerated. Biden lost Iowa and Ohio by 8 points. He barely carried wisconsin and pennsylvania. Michigan is only up by 2-3 or so. The polls were off massively. In the south the polls werent quite as skewed, but it still came down to days of counting in Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, all of which went to Biden by MUCH narrower margins than they should have. Not even getting into Pennsylvania. Here's a chart of the polling error relative to my predictions.
It should've never been this close. The polls predicted a decisive win, and this was an extremely narrow win. Biden did to Trump what Trump did to Hillary. Win by a handful of votes in a handful of states. As we can see, there was a systematic polling error in Trump's favor. Ignore Alaska, Montana, Missouri. They arguably shouldn't have been included in my analyses. Focus on the rust belt. Wisconsin was off by almost 8. Ohio and Iowa were off by 7. Most of this was within my 95% confidence, but when you're off by almost 8, you're at the outer bounds of that confidence.
That's why this election was so scary. Trump didn't overperform too too much in the electoral college. I mean, I only got 2.5 states wrong (Florida, North Carolina, ME2) and I will stand by my predictions based on the data at the time. It's the amounts that Trump overperformed on a state level. If Biden wasn't absolutely crushing Trump in the polls, Trump would've won again. He almost did.
Down ballot races were even worse. In the senate, we lost Iowa, not a huge deal. We lost North Carolina again. We lost freaking MAINE. How the heck did we lose MAINE?! I had Gideon up 5 points with a 89% chance of winning. Right now, the fate of the senate depends on two runoff races. I got the special elections wrong in Georgia, I thought it was going to be ranked choice voting but instead it was runoff voting. Perdue managed to narrowly avoid 50% causing him to go to a runoff election, and the other special election will go as planned. Democrats' best case scenario is a 50-50 senate with both. Otherwise Mitch McConnell is gonna stonewall Biden on everything. And honestly, I don't like it when the fate of the country depends on Georgia. Biden won by 0.2% there. I really question if the special election will pull it off.
Folks. This is the best the democrats could do. We have an orange dictator in the white house, and we barely beat him. I'm not surprised the sun belt went as it did, but the rust belt?! That scares me, and it does not bode well for the future of the country. People LIKE Trump. That's what scares me. I mean, Biden isnt great. I rip on him constantly. But at least he isn't Trump. Which isn't enough for ME to vote for him, but I'm also apparently 0.2% of the country. The fact is, 71 million people, 9 million more than last time, voted for the orange moron. After all those covid deaths. After him gassing protesters to do a photo op with a Bible. After him kidnapping American citizens off the street in unmarked vans. People. LIKE. Trump. This wasn't a low turnout election. In 2016, you could argue Trump won because of malaise. The people didn't like Hillary, Hillary only got 65 million votes. Trump got 62 million in the right places, it was a fluke. That's what I thought.
This time Trump got 71 million votes. And Biden broke records. Biden didn't narrowly win because democrats underperformed. Democrats had record turnout. The problem is, so did the republicans. And they turned out for Trump and the GOP. That. Scares. Me.
If we were up against anyone else but Trump, with his toxicity and incompetence, we would've gotten destroyed. And here's my fear. I've talked a lot about party realignments on here. Wanting to shift the country left ideologically. What if Trumpism IS the party realignment? What if the democrats only hope, as the rust belt shifts red, is the democrats pursuing centrism for another generation? What if Hillary blew it not only for 2016, but set in motion a line of events that are leading to the rise of fascism being popular in this country? What if this is just a 4 year reprieve before we get another Trump? Guys? I'm scared.
On the flip side, it's hard to say. I know a lot of democrats are screaming the "far left" like me cost the democrats the election, but honestly? Progressive POLICY seems popular. I mean, Florida simultaneously voted for Trump and raising the minimum wage. Several states voted for legalize marijuana. Nebraska voted to reign in payday loans. Heck it's only in the most traditionally liberal areas like California that conservative measures passed. And, perhaps the most damning thing of all for centrists, virtually all vulnerable lawmakers who supported medicare for all kept their jobs, whereas the more moderate candidates lost. Perhaps centrism really is the problem. The democrats sure did work hard to get that Kasich vote, and I found it alienating as heck. Maybe people do want change, but Trump sometimes seems more willing to offer solutions to every day problems than democrats. A horrible, horrible judgment call, given how regressive the right is, but that could just be how bad democrats suck at messaging.
I don't know. All I know is that while I am not really looking forward to a Biden administration, I am looking forward to getting the crapstain out of office.
And I hope progressives do actually hold Biden's feet to the fire. I mean, I don't want America to go to sleep again and ignore solutions. I want Biden to at least pass SOME decent measures. Even if it isn't everything I want I hope we can push him to the left and avoid the tone policers who insist centrism wins elections, because if I learned anything from this, it really really doesn't.
This was 2014 again. Pennsylvania votes out a crazy republican, and republicans win down ballot races across the country. I hope in 2024 we can actually get a decent candidate to bring solutions to the country. Maybe Andrew Yang or Nina Turner. I sure as heck don't want Kamala Harris or Donald Trump Jr.
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