It's today then ... (Trump thread)

[Lorne Malvo]

I still reckon Trumps got it in the bag. I'd fucking love to be wrong but if the past four years have taught me anything, it's to always expect the worst-case result to be a given.

[SuperBacon]

He sounds like I used to after waking up after a weekend long bender, utterly defeated. Fox seem to be distancing as well, and he seems to be attacking them more than ever.

Hilarious that he talks about the campaigns as 'seasons', the silly cunt really does think his life is one big TV show doesn't he?

 

[The Gaffer]

Sounds like one of those Shawn Michaels phone ins during those month block of Raw tapings in '96 where he'd be just sitting backstage balls deep in the somas, rambling on. 

[Kfogg1991]

This is crazy i can't actually believe it's tonight!!! I was honestly toying with the idea of setting my alarm for around 3am However at the moment we have our youngest boy sleeping in bed with us as he just refuses to go in his cot. So i keep waking up at different stages during the night so i will keep checking in on the bbc news website ext as the night get's closer to morning. 

That article about trump losing and facing multiple charges for his various crimes and accusations is genuinely making tonight even more exciting and imperative that Joe Biden wins this tonight.

Right so politics isn't my strong suit at all in terms of in depth knowlege, Am i right in thinking that trump can still win it based on the states that vote him back in as a majority? I'm rewatching fahrenheit 11,9 as we speak and that opening of hillary's reception and everyone thinking they had it in the bag compared to trumps miniscule reception that had all the atmosphere as a joint funeral for jimmy Saville/Ian Watkins/Rolf harris then the news hits he has won. 

 

I can't imagine there will be a repeat tonight surely not 

[SuperBacon]

12 minutes ago, Kfogg1991 said:

joint funeral for jimmy Saville/Ian Watkins/Rolf harris then the news hits he has won. 

Wait a minute....H from Steps is dead? 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Kfogg1991 said:

Am i right in thinking that trump can still win it based on the states that vote him back in as a majority?

The overall result is determined by the Electoral College. There, each state has its own electors who ultimately decide which candidate receives that state's Electoral College votes. It's supposed to be whichever candidate won the popular vote in that state, but electors have the power to override the popular vote and do whatever the fuck they want, because America. Each state has a different number of electoral votes to dish out, so it's more important to win certain states than others. The polls would have to be very wrong for Trump to win enough of the most valuable states to secure his re-election, but anything is possible right now.

[stewdogg]

Just got sent this on WhatsApp. Maybe Donald can help out with future cup draws?

 

 

[David]

For me, Trump isn't really the concern. He's a moron, but everyone knows what he is. He was never winning a second term, he's an anomaly really. Right place, right time, was never supposed to even get that far.

What worries me is that for some reason people assume that if and when he loses it'll be all roses and rainbows, as if the type of people who voted for Trump somehow magically go away, or become Democrats.

I reckon there'll be a Trump 2.0 along pretty shortly, looking to win the votes of those folks who maybe aren't happy with the new President and the sex or colour of his running mate. A candidate every bit as bad, but twice as nasty. Who's more politically savvy. Who won't empty his brain on Twitter, and who knows how to "do" politics more than Trump.

Trump is just the beginning. He's the opening act. The main event is maybe four years away.

Hopefully I'm wrong though, and America ends this chapter in its history and moves on. I don't see it to be honest.

[The Gaffer]

5 minutes ago, David said:

I reckon there'll be a Trump 2.0 along pretty shortly, looking to win the votes of those folks who maybe aren't happy with the new President and the sex or colour of his running mate. A candidate every bit as bad, but twice as nasty. Who's more politically savvy. Who won't empty his brain on Twitter, and who knows how to "do" politics more than Trump.

[David]

21 minutes ago, Gay as FOOK said:

That would actually be pretty cool 😂

[JNLister]

So here's what to look for if you watch on TV.

The Very Basics

• If Biden wins huge, we could get an "official" call during tonight.
• If Biden wins clearly/comfortably it may well be clear tonight but won't be "officially" declared and he won't do a victory speech.
• If its a very close result either way, we probably won't know the winner for several days.

Bear In Mind
There's no such things as official results on election night in the US. Individual states count their votes in different ways, but most take much longer than a night to complete the count, for example because they have to assess provisional ballots (where somebody isn't on the registered voter list) and in some cases, wait for postal votes that were sent before election day but delayed in the post. Instead the "wins" on the night are TV network projections, which I'll discuss later on.

Exit Polls

Unlike in the UK, the main purpose of US election polls isn't to try to quickly forecast the result. Instead it's more to get demographic data to analyse later, which is where you get stats like "Clinton did badly with working class white rural men". This year they'll be particularly limited as the people in polling stations today are likely very unrepresentative of voters overall. In fact some exit polls will actually include more traditional phone polling done in the past few days which is more representative but loses the advantage that you definitely know people in normal exit polls have indeed voted and not changed their minds.

In short, take no notice of any news about exit polls.

Results

Unlike the UK, votes are counted at individual polling locations (known as precincts.) Each county (a part of a state) collects the results from individual precincts and announces a running total. The state officials then gather together all these totals and calculate the overall winner in the state, often a matter of weeks later.

TV stations with time to fill will display all manner of running totals in states. Normally you should be very wary of getting too excited about these unless the station is doing a good job of explaining which type of precincts are already accounted for. (For example, if most of the votes counted so far are from city centres, the total will favour the Democrats and doesn't necessarily suggest they'll win overall.)

It's even more complex this year as you need to know if a running total is made up of votes cast on the day, early in-person voting (done before election day), postal voting, or some combination of these. That's because different types of votes are likely to lean more or less to a particular party than the state overall.

In short, don't take too much notice of any running vote totals unless the commentator/analyst is explaining how they affect expectations of the final state result.

Projections

The closest thing to official results on the night are network projections. They employ the American versions of John Curtice to keep an eye on a wealth of data combining known demographics in a state, exit polls and the actual reported precinct results. They will "project" a winner in a state (also known as "calling" a state) when they have enough data to be 99.5% confident that will indeed be the result. It's almost unheard of for a projection to turn out wrong, the last notable one being Florida in 2000 (which networks retracted shortly afterwards.) The people who decide the projections (usually branded "decision desk") are editorially independent even if the network has a clear political bias.

Only when a network has projected one candidate winning enough states to add up to the necessary 270 Electoral College votes will they call/project them as winning the Presidency. That's even the case if they've projected individual state results that make it absolutely obvious one person will win overall. Because many states will be slower than usual in counting this year, it's unlikely but not impossible a Biden win is projected/called on the night.

A Trump win would almost certainly rely on winning states that won't be called on election night, so it's virtually impossible he's projected the winner on the night. That's important to bear in mind if he claims victory. 

States To Watch

As noted, you need 270 electoral college votes to win. Clinton won states worth a total of 232. The final poll averages have Biden ahead by more than six percentage points in all of these states plus Wisconsin and Michigan, which would take him to 258. It's not impossible that he loses a state where he's that far ahead, but it would require a huge polling error, bigger than anything that happened in 2016, and to the point that it would have to involve a major structural problem with the way polls are done, rather than just being a case of polling only being an estimate.

If we take a six point lead either way as the threshold for a competitive state that could plausibly go either way, there's seven decent sized states potentially up for grabs. In order of how likely Biden is to win based on polling, they are Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio and Texas. (Iowa, plus a couple of places in Nebraska and Maine which aren't winner take all are in the close category, but don't have enough Electoral College votes to make much difference.)

Assuming Biden does indeed win the Clinton states, Wisconsin and Michigan, he only needs to win one of these seven states. Trump needs to win all seven. Biden was ahead in the final polls in five of the states.

While Pennsylvania should be the easiest for Biden to capture, it's also the one likely to take the longest (several days) to count enough votes to project a winner. Florida, North Carolina and Arizona are all likely to count quick enough that it's likely there'll be a projected winner on election night unless they are very close. If and when any of them are called for Biden, you can pretty safely conclude he's the next President, even if no networks "officially" call it.

Note To The Nervous

There's obviously a risk of what Nate Silver euphemistically calls shenanigans with results being challenged in courts. The important thing to remember is that Trump can't simply rock up to the Supreme Court tomorrow morning and be all "Hey Amy, I can haz election win?"

He'd have to find some legal challenge that would likely involve disqualifying/not counting a batch of votes that was Democrat-heavy enough to change the overall state result. (That challenge would eventually end up in the Supreme Court.) He'd then have to do that in the right state or combination of states (which means multiple cases, all of which he eventually wins) to change the overall Electoral College result.

That means Biden would be more comfortable if he gets to around 300 Electoral College votes, which would mean even "losing" Florida via the courts wouldn't cost him the Presidency. Get to 320 and he could survive "losing" Florida and Pennsylvania and at that point Trump's team would have to throw in the towel, even if he doesn't concede.

There are other ways Trump could attempt to "steal" a win despite the vote outcome, but you're basically into guaranteed extended riots territory and it's unlikely the Republican establishment would get behind that.




 

 

Edited November 3, 2020 by JNLister

[Wideload90]

@JNLister succinctly providing the information we all need.

 

I was wrong on Brexit, Trump's first win and the Tory whitewash. I'm no longer believing that common sense prevails.

 

[Fog Dude]

19 minutes ago, JNLister said:

Bear In Mind
There's no such things as official results on election night in the US. Individual states count their votes in different ways, but most take much longer than a night to complete the count, for example because they have to assess provisional ballots (where somebody isn't on the registered voter list) and in some cases, wait for postal votes that were sent before election day but delayed in the post.

Results

Unlike the UK, votes are counted at individual polling locations (known as precincts.)

The only point I'd add to these two parts is that the UK is very much the outlier here. The rest of the world generally counts the votes by individual ballot box or polling district, and an official definitive result usually takes days or weeks to be declared. 

Anything else that seems odd in the remainder of that brilliantly informative post is probably just America being America though.

[JNLister]

14 minutes ago, Fog Dude said:

The only point I'd add to these two parts is that the UK is very much the outlier here. The rest of the world generally counts the votes by individual ballot box or polling district, and an official definitive result usually takes days or weeks to be declared. 

Anything else that seems odd in the remainder of that brilliantly informative post is probably just America being America though.

Yeah, we have the big advantage that our electoral and voting system and the scale of individual races (one constituency choosing an MP, averaging around 50,000 votes) are right at the size were it's practical to count the ballots in one go at one location by hand. We're also one of the few nations "quirky" enough to think "it's 10pm, this is a task that will take between three and five hours in most cases, so let's get cracking now rather than wait till the morning."

I've heard the people who do the exit polls in the UK dream of the idea of results being announced for individual polling stations as it would make their work far easier.

Nice geeky thread on UK exit polls vs US "projections" here: 

 

Edited November 3, 2020 by JNLister

[Fog Dude]

11 minutes ago, JNLister said:

Yeah, we have the big advantage that our electoral and voting system and the scale of individual races (one constituency choosing an MP, averaging around 50,000 votes) are right at the size were it's practical to count the ballots in one go at one location by hand.

I've heard the people who do the exit polls in the UK dream of the idea of results being announced for individual polling stations as it would make their work far easier.

 

The closest system is, understandably, Ireland. You have constituencies – albeit multi-member ones – of a similar size, candidates in rosettes and a returning officer on stage announcing a legally binding result as soon as possible. But even there, the preferential nature of the count means it can take a few days for all the seats to be filled. 

Everywhere else seems to find that system impractical and open to mistakes – if not a bit quaint and bizarre. When the entirety of Wyoming is one constituency (or "district" over there) it'd be a needless complication to get all the ballot boxes into one central location before you can start counting. 

I'd love there to be some way to find out the UK general election results by polling station after the fact, but I suppose it'd be seen as un-British to know how all your neighbours voted.

Edited November 3, 2020 by Fog Dude