Joe Biden is going to win.
I have been wrong before. I will be wrong again. And maybe I’m wrong today. But we do not have any significant data to suggest Donald Trump was ever in a position to win reelection, or that he is closing the campaign with any sort of momentum needed for a come-from-behind victory.
We were patronizingly informed that we need to understand this news from the future. How biased was the information we were fed? The polls? The elite media? We knew they were biased, but they seem to have been far more biased this time around.
Four years ago, we did have such data. In the RealClearPolitics national polling average, Hillary Clinton’s lead shrunk nearly six percentage points between Oct. 18 and Nov. 3, before ticking up a bit at the end....
Were the polls more wrong this time? With so much pressure to get it right after failing last time, the polls were even more wrong, and the commentators leaned into lecturing us about how Trump is toast, rejected forever, by a new America that wasn't going to stomach that nasty Trumpism anymore.
Biden’s lead has been, and is, strong, sturdy and stable. His battleground state advantages are smaller than his national margin, but they are still leads in most states and Trump is not aggressively closing the gaps....
Without forward movement, he can’t get [to 270 electoral votes]. Now, what is the point of making so certain a prediction? Why not allow for the possibility that the polling industry has collectively missed the mark? Why not just wait and see what happens? Because we all should understand that Trump’s defeat has been long in the making, and was starkly visible to the naked eye for months.
Starkly visible to the naked eye for months!
Do not embrace any spin that he could have won if only the pandemic didn’t spike in the last week, if only he stayed on message in the last week, if only his campaign spent its war chest more wisely, if only there was more coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story, or if only there was more coverage of the third quarter GDP number. I fully expect these excuses and then some, though I expect the claim that Trump would have won if not for the pandemic to be repeated most of all....
Oh, there will be excuses, but not the kind of excuses Bill Sher was "fully expect[ing]."
[Republicans] should accept that Trump lost this race a long time ago because he did not take governing seriously, and because he tried to divide a nation that, in its heart, does not want to be divided.
Yeah, accept it, Republicans. With the tables turned, will Democrats and never-Trumpers accept it? No, the standards of when you must accept electoral outcomes will be completely different if Trump has won.
In turn, for the GOP to remove the stain of Trump from its reputation, Republicans will have to show their seriousness of purpose by working with President Biden on good faith compromises, and by rejecting the corrosive politics of polarization.
We'll see if Democrats set aside their refusal to respect (what looks like) a second victory for Trump and if they will make "good faith compromises, and... reject[] the corrosive politics of polarization." Do they have to show their "seriousness of purpose" or will the advice from pundits like Scher be completely different because the Democrats didn't take over?
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68 comments:
Actually the odds seem to favor Biden at this point. But quite a nail-biter.
I agree with your points, AA. Unfortunately, I think Biden is looking better and better in the EV count.
600,000 votes ahead in Pennsylvania with 1.4 million votes outstanding.
And for some reason they are waiting until Friday to complete the count.
Nothing fishy at all.
things to keep in mind
if Jo Biden ends up winning, by ONE Vote... That will be considered a Mandate
if Trump ends up winning, by Michigan and Wisconsin and Penn... That will be a stolen election
Congratulations are on order for you people... even if Trump loses Biden effectively lost the election.
Trump already won. If Biden won, they wouldn't shut up about it. It would be a graphic on every TV channel. Vote fraud is a felony. Enforce the law.
I'm not certain about a second victory for Trump, but they were way off.
And way off on the Senate and the House. So they need to evaluate if their own wishful thinking is leading them in the wrong direction.
I can't think of the last time- internationally- the polls have been right. And they've been wrong in the same direction Every Single Time.
The Left will memory hole these kinds of columns. The NYT is ready to redefine Latinos as whites, at least the Florida ones, so that they don't have to change their narrative of poor brown people voting Dem.
Where do you see Trump getting a victory?
He lost WI, likely lost AZ, and is about to fall behind in Michigan.
You are counting unhatched chickens, just like this person you criticize.
In America's winner take all system, there is a line down the middle and land on the blue side, even if by the tiniest of margins, and it's a mandate, we were right all along, you should have listened to us, now all you can do is compromise with us, by which we mean give in to us on every issue we care about. Land on the blue side, by even the tiniest of margins and it's, you don't have a mandate, you just barely won, and you probably stole it anyway so we will fight you tooth and nail every step of the way because we care about the system more than we care about ourselves.
Dear Mr. Scher,
My Ass.
I invite our readers to follow the tag for Bill Scher and see what I mean.
And yes, it is the constant "We are democrats and Republicans need to understand what we tell them" that absolutely grinds.
Michigan is Trump's.
AA, best to use accurate terminology. They weren't "polls" simply taking the objective temperature measures of would-be voters. They were manipulation devices. Lucy pulling Charlie Brown's teed-up football comes to mind.
Russ Feingold stated the Democratic response during the Wisconsin recalls - "It's not over until we win."
i think did the smart thing - I watched a lousy movie and did not check any news and went to bed early. I had hoped Trump would win and give America 4 more years. But I expected him to lose. So I was pleasantly surprised to hear this morning that Trump may win! God Bless America!
MikeR said...
Actually the odds seem to favor Biden at this point. But quite a nail-biter.
11/4/20, 6:54 AM
Actually the fraud seem to favor Biden at this point. But quite a nail-biter.
There is one thing we can be certain about at this point. There is no reason to pay attention to pollsters. The average person, even if they had been asleep for the last year, would give you a more accurate prediction. The polls are where you go if you don't want to know what voters will do. Pollsters are what we call "experts", which now means a person with less insight than the average person.
I will just say that it seems pretty sus to me that every state in which Trump had a sizable lead stopped counting in the middle of the night, while other states were called for Biden before counting had begun.
Looks like Biden will take MI, WI, and PN
Early data dump
https://twitter.com/gummibear737
It looks like Biden will squeak by -- probably 270-268 (though some of the percentage reporting data don't appear reliable or specific enough to know for sure).
Yes the polls were wrong, except for a few not included in RCP like Big Data (Rich Baris) and Trafalgar. The mainstream national polls, including media and college, all predicted significant margins favoring Biden in virtually all the so-called battleground states, and they were wrong. Baris and Trafalgar both said battlegrounds would be "within the margin of error" close, and they were right.
As of 7:00 EST most of the votes in Michigan still to be counted are in Wayne County (I.e., Detroit). Biden has won, not yet, but eventually.
The purpose of the Wuhan Flu plandemic was to 1) destroy the economy as much as possible for the election, and 2) make an excuse to enable massive voter fraud.
The last 9 months have been a psyops operation to prepare the country to accept the voter fraud.
Imagine how much Trump would be winning by if big tech and the MSM didn't have their entire body weight on the scales covering for and boosting Biden.
At this point, I would not consider a Biden victory legitimate. And that has nothing to do with Trump declaring that he won last night. When Twitter and Facebook censored the laptop story, any legitimacy Biden could've had was utterly destroyed, and that's just one of a dozen factors that could each independently destroy his legitimacy in the eyes of any conservative. That it is even possible for Trump to win given the depths of the collusion and conspiracy and 6 months of fake polls and psyops arrayed against him and to every conservative voter is astounding.
"Congratulations are on order for you people... even if Trump loses Biden effectively lost the election.”
It’s a pyrrhic victory at best. Biden is wounded, probably senile, and the R’s have kept the Senate so that laptop is going to be thoroughly examined, the Democrats have had their majority cut in the House severely. Harris, who will be POTUS by 2022, has shown herself to be a weak candidate, and she will find it very difficult to get much done. SCOTUS majority is secure.
I think that 2024 is setting up quite nicely for the Republicans, and the Democrats are effectively held in check in the meantime. I thought I would be depressed by a Trump loss, but strangely I am not. This realignment that Trump has engineered can be expanded on with a less divisive candidate, but God bless him, Trump was the right man at the right time to finally pin Hillary’s then still beating political heart to the bottom of the coffin.
Oh yeah, 2018 was a fluke, and Republicans are learning how to compete in California under the new rules. Not to mention, identity politics has been shown to be a paper tiger, as Trump did extraordinarily well among “non-whites.”
And who knows? Trump might still pull it out.
When is either Nate Silver, or the people who give him so much prominence going to realize that he is too invested in the outcome to rationally analyze electoral politics? He came from sports and there is a saying in sports “Think like the fans, sit with the fans."
As for the column, it was just bog standard voter suppression aimed at Republicans. It’s just business.
If Trump loses, the gloat that "all the polls were way off" won't matter one little bit. It would not even be a small consolation. I am not confident here.
THEOLDMAN
"With the tables turned, will Democrats and never-Trumpers accept it?"
Well, they aren't, so they won't have to.
At this late date, the question is absurd: progs never accept defeat, as demonstrated these past 4 years. What else were the collusion hoax and the impeachment fiasco about?
Let's give Trump AK. Then he needs 54 more. That means he has to run the table on MI, PA, NC, and GA.
Give Biden NV and WI. Then he needs 16 more. Which is one of MI, GA, or PA.
Michigan is his best bet.
Most of the election sites have called AZ for Biden, but still show FL, PA, NC and GA as tossups. They aren't, Trump is well ahead. It comes down to Wisconsin, Nevada and Michigan. Biden has a narrow lead in the first two and Trump has a narrow lead in the last. Trump wins the election if he takes any one of these states. Biden needs all three.
Good comments Althouse, but note how effective the narrative is. Lots of previous comments above stating how despite Trump's lead, Biden looks better?
So, here we are
Unlike you guys, we don’t scream in psychological pain when we lose an election. We get on with our lives and look forward to the next bout. We don’t spend every waking minute believing that we should be in control of our neighbors.
Sure, Chuck and gadvly, or Mutt and Jeff, will be around to crow, but Trump just destroyed that party they they were fantasizing about building from the ashes of a destroyed, in the wilderness, Republican Party. And there are a lot of Republicans who were elected on Trump's coattails last night, even in losing. The Lincoln Project people better save that money they grifted, because they have lost any influence in the Republican Party, but they can buck up, as the Democrats are now the party of war, and those neocons, they love to send deplorables off to die in their game.
And who knows? Trump may still win. This could all be one more illusion foisted on us by the media that pretended that Biden didn’t meet with people who gave his son many millions of dollars and that Biden was ahead by 11 points.
I think Biden will win and Kamalalala will be our first laughing President. Very disappointed. But I'm not going to riot, loot, or threaten people while wearing black things on my body. I'll still get up everyday, write, work, and play. And I'll probably drink more. And I'll hide my cash in a safe place. Like a Bolivian bank.
Well, what have we learned?
1) If the media pounds negative stories at a President at a 94% clip for 4 years, it has an effect.
2) The media, acting as a state censor, can have a huge effect on an election by hiding a major story of corruption about one of the candidates.
3) Democrats can win with a Sack O'Potatoes as their candidate if they still own the polling places and election officials in the key states. Not saying there's skulduggery in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Detroit, Michigan, and Chicago, but there's skullduggery.
4) Wuhan virus is hard to beat.
5) Look for ammo and guns to fly off the shelf over the next couple of months, even more than they already were.
6) Anyone who says they are a 'pollster' should be viewed with the same pity as someone who calls themself an 'activist' or 'journalist'. Smile at them as if you understand and feel for their situation, but keep on walking away.
As has been said before: the Left sees political violence as a dial they can turn up and down as politically expedient (and they have had it turned way up since June). The Right sees political violence as a switch - either none whatsoever (as has been the case throughout) or This Is War. The Democrats appear determined to force that switch on, via one Act Of War after another, complete with gaslighting and projection blaming us for every last bit of it. Enough is enough. The Left using the Wuhan Flue to change all the election rules to steal this election WILL be the last straw for most of this country. Bank on it.
I'm prepared to graciously accept defeat. These late votes never favor the Republicans. I won't even claim that the election was stolen, even though I know that bad things do happen in Philadelphia. This is the way that our systems work here in America. Hopefully we can make them better in the future.
"Biden Will Win. Republicans Should Understand Why."
For another post, what does it mean to say, that "Biden" wins? I have yet to hear a Dem explain why Biden, the actual man, is a good choice. Biden is not Trump and Biden is Dem -- OK. But Biden as in Joe Biden? Like, the man who introduced his granddaughter as his dead son, and by the wrong name?
I'm attracted by those who ask: who is the biggest loser? It's tempting to say Biden or his ventriloquist, even if he is sworn in as Pres. Pelosi doesn't want him to take over with his dementia, and the R's will have the Senate. Lots of Trump haters think Trump is eminently beatable, and yet ... they went along with nominating Biden/Harris to keep the peace within the party.
I picture Hillary in a room somewhere, sipping wine, a bit like Dreyfus in the old Pink Panther movies: one eye twitching: "Clouseau!", er, "Trump! Russia! Trump! Russia!"
Nate Silver has had a nice run based mostly, I believe, on his good results in 2008. It may be time to pack it in. Who will pay him for his shit any more?
Althouse you stopped blogging pre-election last night by telling us that you would “like gracious winners and losers, all united in love for our beautiful country.”
Then, overnight, Biden made a statement that fulfilled your hope; gracious to the American people and urging patience. Then Trump made a reckless statement that defied your wish; unjustifiably claiming a premature victory, suggesting fraud and promising litigation. Like Trump has always done.
As you start blogging today, I’d have thought that would be your starting place.
Althouse, in the future, please stop treating polls as news. It is clear now that the Democrat news media who fancy themselves as defenders of science are anything but. Polling is supposed to be scientifically verified sampling but there is obviously no consideration for the scientific method. When they get something wrong, there is no attempt to figure out why they are wrong. Your trust in them is cute but naive.
I find it odd that in MI, they stopped counting in Wayne County but nowhere else. Now, this morning, with all counties in MI completed BUT Wayne, they have started back up. I'm sure it wasn't so they would know how many votes Biden needed to win MI. Nothing shady about that.
"Then Trump made a reckless statement that defied your wish; unjustifiably claiming a premature victory, suggesting fraud and promising litigation. Like Trump has always done."
Josh Shapiro, Democrat Attorney General of Pennsylvania, *the guy in charge of overseeing this election*, proclaimed at least two days ago that "when all the votes are counted, Trump will lose".
That didn't bother you at all, did it Chuckles?
Chuck- were you paid by Project Lincoln, or did you just volunteer for them? How are you feeling about their results?
You see a big future for yourself in the Repubican Party that you were hoping would be a smoldering ruin after last night, Chuck? Or are you hoping for a job in the Harris Administration?
The media, acting as a state censor, can have a huge effect on an election by hiding a major story of corruption
I guess if you sit on a story of major corruption until October, you take the risk that the story won't gain traction in time. I have *no* sympathy for Trump and Guilliani.
Hell if they could have blown the whistle early enough they maybe could have spared our country the embarrassment of the Biden candidacy. But, they kept it close to the chest (like the Dems did with the Billy Bush tape) because they wanted to face Biden in the general election and save the story for "maximum impact." Whoops!
Maybe these guys should start to think about cleaning up corruption as the ends in and of itself instead of reserving allegations of corruption to use as a political weapon.
Sure, sure. Everything is predictable.
Until it isn't.
I think Biden will win and Kamalalala will be our first laughing President. Very disappointed. But I'm not going to riot, loot, or threaten people while wearing black things on my body.
Why not?
I'm prepared to graciously accept defeat.
Why?
I won't even claim that the election was stolen ...
Why not? You don’t think the Democrats are counting on people like you to get away with it?
You saw how they suppressed the story how they went after bannon with a phony indictment.
If Republicans "accept" the last 4 years of psyops, collusion, projection, sabotage of the economy and outright voter fraud, we will deserve the chains that will rest on us forever.
We'll see if Democrats set aside their refusal to respect (what looks like) a second victory for Trump
Really, it looks like a victory for Trump? Based on what?
I'd rather wait until we know who won the election before doing a post-mortem on Bill Scher's analysis.
I find it odd that in MI, they stopped counting in Wayne County but nowhere else. Now, this morning, with all counties in MI completed BUT Wayne, they have started back up. I'm sure it wasn't so they would know how many votes Biden needed to win MI. Nothing shady about that.
+ 1
Blogger MayBee said...
Chuck- were you paid by Project Lincoln, or did you just volunteer for them? How are you feeling about their results?
A donor; certainly not paid by them. Maybe Jeff Timmer was paid; that’s his business (political strategy and consulting). Jeff is the former Executive Director of the MI GOP. I’m extremely pleased with what the LP did. Money very well spent as far as I am concerned.
Feeling generally very good so far about the results. It may just be that anti-Trump Republicans in Michigan were the national cornerstone of this possible Trump defeat. Remember that personally, I did not vote for Gary Peters but I also refused to give John James my vote as well. He was too tied to Trump.
The big disappointment to me is that Trump-supporting GOP Senators, who sided with Trump in impeachment votes, didn’t get widely defeated. I was hoping for broad punishment at the polls for that. State voters seemed to follow their Presidential votes with their Senate votes. That’s not unusual, and so I shouldn’t be too disappointed. But I confess that I am, in that.
Some polls were way off in the pro-Biden direction. One poll I've been following is Economist/Yougov. The reason I've followed is that they publish lengthy information about their poll (crosstabs). I've been troubled for at least a month about the fact that their sample is 39% Dem, and 28% Rep. THe 2016 exit polls showed nearly an even split between D and R. And I kept reading about the R get out the vote effort, and new registrants being more R than D. I think the results, even if BIden wins the electoral college will show a national Biden margin of 1-2 points, not 10-11 points as Economist/Yougov showed consistently over the last month of the campaign. This does make me wonder if the Economist/Yougov poll was done in good faith, or whether they deliberately oversampled D to provide evidence of a Biden landslide.
So we got chaos which will make the results suspect no matter who wins. Fantastic.
Were the polls more wrong this time? With so much pressure to get it right after failing last time, the polls were even more wrong...
2016 convinced me that very few polls are taken with a genuine interest in "taking the public pulse." It seems obvious to me that their true purpose is as yet another means of shaping public opinion. Just like journalism--rather, what passes for journalism nowadays--is not about reporting facts to the public, it's about crafting a "narrative" (I've come to loath that word) to shape public opinion.
You are proud of what the Lincoln Project did with Lindsey Graham? You think that's money well spent?
You are looking at the Californication of our national politics. There will never be a Republican administration on a national level again. The Democrats have demonstrated that with disciplined fraud, ignored by a compliant media, they can manipulate any result they wish with total immunity. We will forever be a one party state on a national level, and the next step will be flipping as many red states blue on a permanent basis (Georgia, Arizona, perhaps Texas). It's over. There will never be a Republican politician on national level like Trump who can mobilize such a wildly varied group of American citizens. The Democrats, Big Media, and the Tech Masters of the Universe have achieved total domination of the political process, leaving the Republicans fighting for scraps on the local margins. Trump has been fighting this battle with very little support from Establishment Republicans or mainstream media. Now, the Democrats,when they assume totall control, will spend the next four years insuring that a charismatic outlier, not beholden to the Swamp, never occurs again.
The big disappointment to me is that Trump-supporting GOP Senators, who sided with Trump in impeachment votes, didn’t get widely defeated. I was hoping for broad punishment at the polls for that. State voters seemed to follow their Presidential votes with their Senate votes. That’s not unusual, and so I shouldn’t be too disappointed. But I confess that I am, in that.
Chuck the new life long Democrat.
Chuck the new life long Democrat.
Shorter Chuck: I'm a Lifelong Republican who just can't stand Trump, but I'm disappointed the Dems didn't take the Senate.
I was disgusted when I first looked online this morning. Disgusted, disgusted. Last night is proof that the media and their masters can succeed, at least with four straight years of propaganda, in mystifying and misleading the American citizenry. While it is a bit easier to view Mr Trump's loss, if that's what it proves to be, with a certain equanimity so long as the GOP holds the Senate (I haven't looked yet at the numbers, beyond the Times headline), that's not much of a consolation.
Oregon the vanguard has decriminalized the possession of personal-use quantities of heroin, the oxys, mushrooms etc-- a $100 ticket, apparently, or a few hours of counselling. Pft. After 20 years here, it may be time to move back to Montana, South Dakota or Ohio.
My biggest disappointment in the now clear Trump defeat is that the coup perpetrators will never be brought to justice. Their guilt is manifest, but the new DOJ will drop the investigation. Too bad because the system itself needed to be cleansed by punishing a few people "pour encourager les autres"!
tim in vermont said...
It’s a pyrrhic victory at best. Biden is wounded, probably senile, and the R’s have kept the Senate so that laptop is going to be thoroughly examined, the Democrats have had their majority cut in the House severely. Harris, who will be POTUS by 2022, has shown herself to be a weak candidate, and she will find it very difficult to get much done.
This is a fantasy. Dem institutional control was able to advance punitive leftism even under a Trump Presidency, why would a Biden Presidency be more difficult for them to manage?
Just a few areas off the top of my head:
Biden has already promised to roll back Devos' relatively weak attempts at sanity on Title IX, reinvigorating the campus Stasi Devos was never able to clear out.
Far left control of the Attorney General's office means sue and settle environmental tactics will resume. Even if they don't get the Green New Deal passed as legislation they will enact much of it through this illegitimate means. Limitations on fracking which support Russia and Iran will be first up.
Immigration law enforcement is effectively over.
Critical Race Theory will form the basis of government training and hiring. Under Trump The Department of Labor is a potential ally of those seeking to prevent race from being used in private sector hiring to support for that purpose. Left wing control converts it to an ally of race discriminators.
Government protection of violent left wingers will advance from limited leftist locations to the entire country through federal oversight of policing.
Federal police oversight will also allow the left to enact much of their defund the police initiative. The goal seems to have settled on segregating police duties so much of them can be assigned to social workers (at least on paper). These funds will instead go to support left wing political activists.
Any opposition to the 1619 Project which uses lies to convince young people (especially blacks) to hate America is over.
These are just a few impacts I can immediately think of. I'm sure there are dozens of others.
Trump did beat the point spread.
And the final results - if we can speak of such a thing - will show that the election could have gone either way in the Electoral College.
“‘I'd rather wait until we know who won the election before doing a post-mortem on Bill Scher's analysis.”
His “analysis” predicted a repudiation. It’s bullshit. This is a narrow loss best case, with the Democrats losing a lot of their buffer in the House. You should work on your ‘neutrality’ if you want to be a political blogger, as it is you are like “homer” broadcaster for a sports team who has no shot at the big time. Or like Nate Silver who can’t set aside his fervent political desires to dispassionately analyze numbers.
Nate is really good at predicted Democrat wins. He’s like the day trader who can only make money in an up market.
I have no doubt that Trump would have won a substantial victory were the election held on Nov. 3.
But it was held over a period of several weeks starting in early-to-mid October in most states, and will continue for another three days in Pennsylvania and maybe longer elsewhere. By Nov. 2, well over half as many early and mail-in ballots had come in as the total vote in 2016.
It is not an election so much as a running daily polling average. Doubly the case this year with the strong emphasis on early voting and whole new procedures for mail-in, presenting unprecedented volumes in many states, without good procedures to ensure the integrity of the ballots or the honesty of the count.
Talking about the polls on the day before the election is almost meaningless. It would be more approriate to quote the aphorism often attributed to Stalin, "It does not matter who votes, but who counts the votes."
What Nation on earth encourages their men to cry? Lesbian feminists in America does. What Nation on earth encourages their men to iDiot phone their humiliation. In the US, Republicans on College campuses have mastered the art.
Imagine that. 4 Republicans have a table on a College campus. One dissenter walks up and turns over the table, and the 4 Republicans pull out their iDiot phones to record the humiliation. Not one of the Republicans fights back. 4 to 1. Won't fight. But...but...they have iDiot phones! A knight in shining armor will come to rescue them!
Is it any wonder that women are dreaming about naming their 1st child, Mohammed?
Hercules, not that one though said...
Not one of the Republicans fights back. 4 to 1. Won't fight.
11/4/20, 8:33 PM
Curious, what would you suggest they do? Should one of them have punched her in the face?
Seriously, in the moment, what in the world could they do other than film it to be able to prove they did NOT strike her? That they did not resist. That they did not retaliate?
Any/all of which would/could be accused by the instigator and they would be hung out to dry by the school, no "trial" (show or otherwise), no mediation, no justice.
So, really, what would you suggest they do other than capture video of the incident?
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