Once again, election polling and reality diverge in the Trump era. Both Democratic and Republican strategists this morning find themselves reeling from dashed expectations. Democrats expected to do better; Republicans worse. Thom Tillis looks as if he will hang onto his Senate seat in North Carolina. Joni Ernst fended off a challenge in Iowa to retain hers. What looked like a tighter Senate race for Lindsey Graham in South Carolina was not. Graham will defeat Jaime Harrison by double digits after the most expensive Senate race in history.
The fate of the presidency still hangs in the balance. Neither the acting president nor Joe Biden have yet reached 270 electoral votes in states where results are clear.
Polls placed Biden ahead in Wisconsin by the high single digits. After Milwaukee County reported a block of absentee ballots early this morning, Biden leads Trump there (as I write this) by about 20,000 votes. In Pennsylvania, about 1.4 million absentee ballots remain to be counted. Trump leads the contest there by 615,000 votes with 75 % of the vote counted. Trump’s lead in Michigan is shrinking as votes come in from Wayne County, 18 % of the state’s voters.
How long will it take to know our fate? Philadelphia Commissioner Al Schmidt reminded CNN that he cannot count votes he does not yet have. The state can count ballots received up to three days after Election Day. This is a new phenomenon in that state.
The New York Times updated an earlier story examining that question:
Only nine states expect to have at least 98 percent of unofficial results reported by noon the day after the election. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia allow postmarked ballots to arrive after Election Day, so the timing will depend on when voters return them.
New York and Alaska will not report any mail votes on election night. (Rhode Island had also planned not to report mail votes that night, but its election board voted Monday to begin releasing them at 11 p.m.) Officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two key battleground states, have said full official counts could take several days.
The increase in mail voting could also lead to more provisional votes cast, increasing the number of ballots counted later. In many states, voters who have their eligibility to vote questioned at the polls may cast a provisional ballot, which is set aside and counted only when eligibility is later confirmed.
This is not the repudiation of Donald Trump for which Democrats and even many Republicans had hoped. The Trump boat rallies and truck trains signaled more support for the acting president than a lunatic conservative fringe. The flood of early voting that favored Democrats was not early advantage enough to overcome Election Day turnout for Republicans in many places. This race is closer than expected.
The Hub Project’s email this morning reminds readers that Biden still retains several paths to 270 electoral votes:
Biden has many pathways to win the Electoral College — Just as we expected going into Election Day, Vice President Biden has many more paths to victory than Trump.
NV + WI + MI = 270+
WI + MI + GA = 270+
WI + MI + PA = 270+
MI + PA + GA = 270+
You get the picture…
Early Wednesday morning, Biden claimed he was “on track” to win and commended people’s patience with letting the process play out. “Keep the faith, guys, we’re going to win this.”
Meanwhile, Trump declared himself the winner last night even while trailing in the electoral count. “We’ll be going to the Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.” Voting is over, of course. What still remains is to count the vote still coming in. Ever the entitled heir, Trump expects to be declared the winner on his say-so. He expects his lawyers and judges to win for him where he cannot count on his voters. He considers the Democratic process and the votes of millions of Americans incidental to his retaining power.
Here in the home of surgically precise gerrymandering, Republicans will retain control of both the North Carolina House and Senate. They will have control of redrawing districts next year that will stand for the next decade. Democrats and voting rights advocates will contest them in court for the next decade as they have for the last.
This is not where we hoped to be this morning.