So, just like 2016, I decided to analyze 2020's election night coverage. I know the race wasn't called that night, but I do remember it and I kind of remember my reactions at the time and the overall trajectory of the night. It uh....wasn't a good night for me. As those who read my 2020 coverage may recall, I vastly overestimated democrats' chances due to being led to believe that right wing pollsters were poll bombing averages and as such, went into 2020 very overconfident that the democrats were gonna win. Here was my prediction at the time.
Yeah, I literally was looking at it like, remember 2016? Trump overperformed by 2-3 and Biden's ahead by 5, look at how much Trump would have to overperform to win! I feel very stupid in retrospect. In reality, this should have been my REAL prediction:
I know in the final results, I was wrong on the same amount of states, but this one felt more...right. I wouldnt vastly overestimate democrats' odds, and my expectations would be a bit more tempered. This is important to understand my own state of mind as the night went on. With that said, let's begin.
Hour 1
The vibe of 2020 was a lot different than 2016. In 2016, everything was ho hum, normal election night. In 2020, it was like, the country is on fire. If you had to watch it in 2020, you probably were wondering wtf is going on. Like, what's COVID? Why is everyone wearing masks? Why are you giving disclaimers that the election isn't rigged? Yeah. You could already see early signs of election denialism and what turned into the January 6th big lie here. I know in retrospect there were a lot of memes being shared with trump supporters being rather aggressive toward Biden campaign buses and the like. I mean, it was getting scary then. 2020 Trump feels closer to the Trump I know than the Trump of 2016.
The signs of a Biden underperformance where there. Despite the numbers I was looking at (see the "O" prediction above, O means original, C means corrected), Trump approval was still relatively high, around 46%. Trump still had robust support well into 2020.
The COVID pandemic feels like a different world. I mean, it really slaps you in the face. Everyone's wearing masks, there's talk of COVID and how it affected the election and voting. Everything feels wild. ANd of course, the high mail in voting boosted turnout, and the boosted turnout fed Trump's big lie election denialism. Bleh. I dont like this channel any more, can I watch something else? No, you cant watch something else, this is for science I guess.
Hour 2
One major shift I notice from 2016 is in 2020, everything is very idpol-ey. Ya know, "woke 1..." Well that and democratic consultant brains. Everything is what about latinos, what about suburban women, what about the black vote, and it makes me roll my eyes. I hate how identity based voting is, and the need to appeal to every single constituency and their super special idpol needs. I like to run based on IDEAS. Sure we can discuss what appeals to who, but idk, it kinda slapped me in the face this time around.
One demographic that did stand out to me is the "mom" demographic. Normally moms are relatively apolitical, and as discussed recently, a lot of them trend conservative due to fear of danger to their kids driving them to authoritarianism. But ironically, this cycle, COVID seemed to drive them to Biden. Just something worth discussing. Could be a reason he won. Trump was so dangerous and reckless it actually pushed some normally conservative demographics to Biden. We know now that his coalition was much broader than that, it was young people, it was disaffect voters, it was everyone, but yeah, just an interesting thing to point out.
ANother interesting thing was the heavy use of nate silver's model with the cringey graphics. I almost forgot about that, but not gonna lie, I did find it cringey. His model was different than mine. More fundamentals and "expert opinion" based, rather than just based on polls (mine is the equivalent of his "lite" model), but he similarly overestimated Biden due to the same "trafalgar effect" I was trying to control for, causing it to be a lot more off. Given silver was pretty off in 2016, it feels 2 for 2 here. No wonder some say polling doesnt mean anything given these models. It's not that it doesn't, but yeah, it goes to show that more complexity doesnt mean better. While I cant say I was more accurate than him given my own original prediction at the time, I wasnt worse either. We quite frankly made the same errors, to the point that I felt the need to retroactively issue a second "prediction" using my normal methodology showing what it SHOULD have been at the time.
Anyway, in the first 2 hours, there wasnt a ton to report. A bunch of red states went red, a bunch of blue states went blue. For the first 2 hours, it was hard to know where the energy was going. Although the florida call was the first red flag of my prediction being wrong. While this wouldnt have been AS huge of a deal in my corrected prediction, the OG prediction had Biden up by 3 there, so seeing it quickly get counted and it going Trump +3 was a bad sign. That means I was off by as much as 6 or so. Which...could mean we're seeing 2016 unfold again. No, not again. Not fricking again...
Hour 3
In 2020, this is where I started to panic. It was easy to understand why. Florida went Trump quickly. There was a HUGE red mirage in Georgia. North Carolina subsequently got called for Trump too. It wasnt looking good in Arizona. Those early states set the vibe for the night, and it's clear, relative to my prediction, where the energy was going, and that was Trump. Trump was overperforming again. And if he overperforms that much, he could do 2016 again, so by this point, in the real world, I was kinda panicking. I know I didnt vote for Biden. I once again had a grudge against the democrats over the primary and the centrist crap. But eh....I felt pretty confident in Biden winning going in, and by this point, that confidence was evaporating.
Hour 4
Yeah, it seems like I'm off by about 4 points on average. My model only gave room for up to 5. So yikes. Basically, Georgia has a red mirage going on where i really doubt that it could actually even up. We lost florida and were off by 6 (4 in my revised prediction). We're losing North Carolina and Ohio. It all comes down to the rust belt it seems, and Trump is overperforming there too. At this point, its very possible Trump could repeat 2016. Biden CAN still win, but I was getting 2016 flashback vibes by this time of night. We were losing. The guy overperformed again, and my model was even more off. Again, this was in large part because of my attempts to weight the polling averages myself and yeah, it excluded a lot of pro trump polls. My revised prediction was closer on margins, but I would not be any more confident if I sat here with that on election night. I only had a 62% chance of a Biden victory in my revised prediction, and that gives even less room for a Biden victory if Trump overperforms. Even if I was off by, say, 2, that still puts us in a similar situation. So yeah, very nervous night at this point. Not the layup I expected.
Toward the end of the hour, we start seeing more talk of the mail in vote, and how that's expected to lean democratic and that's what the election is gonna come down to. So at this point, it's clear we're not gonna know that night, and we gotta lock in for the next few days. So...yeah. Even if things look bad now, they could get better, it's really a question of whether it's gonna be enough. I wasn't feeling super confident.
Hour 5
If anything, it feels like a Biden second wind. While Trump is ahead, we are reassured that all is not lost, because the mail in vote has yet to be counted and is heavily democratic. So while Trump did start out ahead, his averages were shrinking and it was unclear who the winner was going to be. We wouldn't know that night, and it might take several days to know who wins.
We also get a clearer vision of what the swing states actually are. In 2020, the map had a lot of swing states, but it seemed clear a lot of states like Ohio and Florida, which in the 2000s were major bellweathers, were now read leaning. The states left by this point were Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. ya know, the 7 swing states as we know them today.
Considering I just did the 2016 coverage previously, and given how that map represented the Obama era of maps....it does seem pretty clear that 2016 was a realignment. States like Virginia and Colorado became more reliable blue states. Florida and Ohio went red. Georgia and Arizona were reliable red states and are becoming more purple. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan were more reliable blue states and are also now purple. The Trump era represents a realignment for better or worse. It's not necessarily the realignment I hoped for, which was Bernie Sanders heralding the end to Reaganism and a second New Deal era,but yeah. Rust belt and florida are becoming more red, sun belt is becoming more blue, and states are meeting in the middle.
These changes are still ongoing. While 2024 represented a shift back to the right, in 2026, we're seeing what happens when republicans drop the ball bad enough where a lot of normally lean R to soft safe R states are now tossups. We clearly seem to be in a post 2016 era, and 2020 seemed to represent a big of a map shift leading to the map we now follow today, while the pre 2016 map is mostly DOA.
Now, again, I know I've been ambivalent on the realignment stuff, sometimes wondering if 2016 was THE realignment, or whether the REAL realignment is still yet to happen, with 2016 marking the beginning of an awkward transition. I think that's still yet to be seen. Given the increased popularity of DSA and the loss of conservative momentum in the second trump administration, the state of the realignment is unclear. We could be seeing MAGA implode, and the rise of the blue tea party in these mid terms. We could be seeing a 2010 style tea party taking off here, which could impact 2028. While right now, 2028 looks like a boring Harris rematch, a lot can change between now and then. It depends who runs and what the mood of the country is.
Anyway, another thing that stood out to me about hour 5 was the discussion of Trump's "stand back and stand by" comments. I mean....YIKES. We all know what THAT meant now. And uh...yeah. This is what makes me so nervous about 2026 and 2028, I think this dude will try to delegitimize the results, especially since they probably won't go his way. Like really, I try NOT to godwins law here, but I keep comparing the dude to hitler for a reason. I think there's a legit historical parallel here. And I think he's gonna try to try something.
Hour 6
The final hour got really cringey. We got a discussion about how Americans are oh so divided, and how this election has been so contentious and how people are tearing up each others' yard signs....and....I'll be blunt. I'm so sick of this rhetoric. We keep doing this "both sides" bullcrap about how "oh we're so divided, why can't we just come together?" First of all, because we disagree, and second of all, because we have (and had) a lunatic as a president. All night, we had the dark undercurrents of Trump's comments and the media's repeated need to point out that the election wasn't being stolen and the president was full of crap. Let's stop acting like both sides are at fault here. There's a reason I attack Trump even harder than Romney. I just ripped romney to shreds in a post I made just before this, and I finished it up by saying "hey, at least the guy isnt a fascist and hes a patriotic american." It's a low bar, but it's something he has over Trump. Trump was literally stoking the flames all election cycle, setting up the pretext for his "big lie", and we're gonna act like it's a both sides thing? Bull, freaking, crap.
And then Trump came on, and started going on about how he won and he was up so much and they're stealing it from him and blah blah blah. Like...bro, you know how badly this crap has aged even now? Were not even out of the trump era here since Biden won, and then Trump won reelection in 2024 (and unlike him, I'll admit that he won fairly in 2024). And looking back, this is why i turned so hard on this guy, going from treating him as an imbecile to an actual threat against liberal democracy. Because he lied, he stoked up his supporters, he MADE them violent, and then we wanna go on about division? Screw that. This guy was screaming fire in a crowded movie theater more or less and his words had consequences. And he was investigated thoroughly, and yes, he did commit crimes against the constitution. It's baffling we let this guy run again, that we let him win again, and that he's president again, after that happened. And that's why I fear for the 2026 and 2028 elections. Because he's gonna get DESTROYED and he won't accept the results, and he's gonna try this crap again, and possibly succeed, because now he has his administration staffed with loyalists and yes people who wont serve to check his power. It's scary. The future of democracy here is literally scary.
Conclusion
So what can we conclude? First of all, the big takeaways I came away with on election night were 1) Trump winning in 2016 was NOT a fluke, and that Trumpism is here to stay and 2) trying to control for the trafalgar effect in polling clearly backfired.
There was also another conclusion I reached at the time. That if Biden barely won in this environment, that the democrats would likely lose in 2024. This sadly proved accurate.
Even worse, looking at this night now, I get a dark sense of forboding of what was coming. In 2016 the energy was different, Trump was an unknown element, he was elected seemingly because people were pissed off at the economy and democrats for failing to bring about the kinds of changes that they wanted. But in 2020, a big story of the night was him being a sore loser and spreading election conspiracies. And we didnt even realize where that was going. Especially me. But then January 6th happened, Trump turned more fascist, and now he's basically hitler lite. And again, I hate making a comparison to that guy since hyperbole is so overdone, but I'm serious on this. This guy is basically our hitler. He's eroding our democracy. He eroded peoples' faith in it through 2020, he incited an insurrection in 2021, and now he's staffed his second term with loyalists and is probably laying the groundwork as we speak for a coup this year. THIS. IS. SCARY. Like, i'm not joking. This isn't the same ho hum "Bush is a fascist" crap that people tried to pull in the 2000s, or "Obama is a communist", no, this is real. Again, look at how i treated romney, and how i treat trump. I'd at least be charitable enough to romney to admit that the guy is a patriot. I might not like him, but I dont have to like anyone in a free country. And thats the point. The reason I elevate trump to an even higher level of rhetoric here is because he doesnt want us to be a free country. And that should scare the bejesus out of everyone.
Anyway, the final takeaway that I want to discuss again here is the fact that Trump was a realignment. And that the map has fundamentally changed. We can see a trend from 2016 to 2020 and 2020 to 2024 and beyond. Some states have urbanized, and went from being red to purple to blue. Others have turned from purple to red, or blue to purple. Trump, and Trumpism is realigning this country. And it isnt a good realignment. Even if I do bash the democrats for failing to motivate people to vote for them and being low energy, this realignment is not a positive realignment for democrats so far. Republicans have largely outflanked us, making the electoral map more competitive again. However, the real question is....how do the parties adjust to a post Trump world? The big realigner has that magic, that charisma, but what about after him? Is Trump even the big realigner? Or is he a small realigner who ultimately implodes his own coalition? What awaits us in 2028 and beyond, provided our democracy perseveres that long? Is Trumpism over? His numbers arent looking that good as his second term behavior is increasingly unstable, erratic, and ill advised. He's tanking the economy, he got us into a war no one asked for, his approval rating is like -19 last I checked (like 39% approve, 58% disapprove). And that's the thing. One thing I noticed on here is that Trump still had a robust approval rating, and that the gap was more 46-52 or something. He lost at 46-52. What happens to him and his coalition at 39-58? That's a net 13 point shift. No wonder texas might go blue this year.
We also gotta wonder if the DSA wave happening this year is just some localized fluff that will burn out quickly, or if the democrats are having a tea party moment. That's the thing. Was Trump 2016 THE realignment? Or was it just an awkward 12 year transition period before we get to the real one in 2028? Again, if you dont think it cant happen, look at 1968. New deal coalition imploded, we saw coalitional shifts in 1972 and 1976, and by 1980 we got the real deal.
It's hard to say. But yeah. At the very least, the main leg of the 6th party system died in 2016. Trump did realign us for better or for worse, the real question is if it will stick, or if trumpism will go down in infamy. Quite frankly, it DESERVES to go down in infamy. This guy is so bad that he makes the likes of Buchanan, Hoover, and Carter look good. His january 6th stuff and fascist tendencies are themselves disqualifying, and his second term reminds me of portal 2 when wheatley is in charge and everything is falling apart. We'll see I guess. Anyway, that's 2020. Idk if I should do 2024 next or maybe go back to 2012. I kinda did give my live reaction to 2024 and it does feel kinda...fresh to me. Im not sure it's worth doing 2024 or if I should go back and do past elections.
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