I’m back today, and feeling… I don’t know. It’s hard to describe, it’s that feeling you get when not consumed with overwhelming doom and gloom. Time for an update on what happened since I went to bed last night, Election Night 2020
The possibility of a “Red Mirage” is looking very real. Due to Trump’s fuckery on mail-in voting, Republicans overwhelmingly waited until yesterday to vote. That’s why the early numbers were so damned depressing. But as the night went on, more and more states caught up on their mail-in vote counts.
Both candidates spoke last night. Biden was enthusiastic, calling for patience while every vote is counted. Trump declared himself the winner and demanded that all counting stop, and threatened to unleash the Supreme Court on states if they don’t stop right away.
Fuck you Trump, keep counting.
Overnight, Arizona was called for Biden. NPR’s map looks like this:
The solid states have been projected, the lighter ones are leaning one way or another. Biden holds a 238 to 213 lead. Overnight, more votes came in from Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan to push Biden into the lead there. The votes from those three states put him to, well, let’s do the math.
238 + Nevada (6) + Wisconsin (10) + Michigan (16) = 244 + 26 = 270.
Biden would win the election with that, before we get to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, or Georgia. But let’s talk about those.
Pennsylvania still has a lot of votes left to count from Pittsburgh and Philly. Somewhere in the neighborhood of over a million votes. Trump currently has a half million vote lead, but that’s before Pittsburgh and Philly. Bill Stepien, Trump’s current campaign manager, expects Biden to take the state by about 50,000.
Georgia still has a bunch of mail-in votes to count from Atlanta. There’s enough outstanding that it could flip Georgia, too.
North Carolina still has votes out in the mail system as well. That could flip things as well.
Also, let’s keep in mind that no state has completely finished, and we saw hundreds of thousands of ballots not being moved through the Post Office in places like Florida and North Carolina.
We won’t have a definitive answer for a few days at least, but the betting lines in Vegas put Biden as a clear favorite.
Today’s hashtag is #FuckYouKeepCounting from Rick Wilson over at the Lincoln Project.
I’ll be back throughout the day.
None of this is Normal 