Some early hot takes, just for you, on a Monday that looks and feels a lot better than the last one.
1. The presidential race wasn’t that close
The order the ballots were counted in (and all the surrounding chaos and drama from Donald Trump) made for a seemingly nail-biting vote count. But as the numbers continue falling into place, it turns out that the race just wasn’t that close.
President-elect Joe Biden currently has a lead of over 4-million in the national popular vote, and that’s expected to reach seven million when New York, California, and other states finish their counts. Hillary Clinton won by 3 million in 2016.
Biden will ultimately get 80-82 million votes. Barack Obama held the previous record for largest vote total at 69,498,516. Biden will crush that record by around 12 million votes.
Of course, we don’t live in a real democracy. The popular vote doesn’t decide anything. But looking at the state level, it also wasn’t that close.
Once again, votes are still being tallied. But Biden will win with
the same 306-232 electoral vote count that Trump notched in 2016, except
that his margins in all the critical battlegrounds will have all
improved. Let’s look at the seven core battleground states we always
knew would decide this thing (remembering, as always, that final vote
totals could shift slightly as provisionals and other late-arriving
ballots are counted, and I’m also rounding numbers for simplicity).
| State | 2016 | 2020* |
|---|---|---|
| Arizona | Trump +91K | Biden +17K |
| Georgia | Trump +211K | Biden +11K |
| Florida | Trump +112K | Trump +371K |
| MIchigan | Trump +11K | Biden +148K |
| North Carolina | Trump +173K | Trump +75K |
| Pennsylvania | Trump +44K | Biden +45K |
| Wisconsin | Trump +23K | Biden +20K |
Florida got away from Biden, as the Cuban and South American Latino vote bought the “socialism” crap. But beyond that, Trump’s margins were sliced away everywhere else. And given how narrow his 2016 victory was, he had zero room for erosion.
Michigan wasn’t close. And while most of these other states were close, the thing is, Biden won more of those states than he needed to. With Michigan locked down, he had multiple paths to 270, and he nailed several of them.
And while the white Midwestern states are looking increasingly
sketchy for Democrats (bye bye Ohio and Iowa, for a while), a new Sun
Belt coalition is arising—with Arizona, Texas, and Georgia moving
dramatically in our direction, both demographically (the Latino and
Black populations of these states are growing dramatically) and
politically, as the massive suburban landscapes in these states turn
blue.
2. Presidential voting isn’t about ideology, it’s cultural
Biden wasn’t my guy. He may have been like eighth on my list. When nominated, many on the left claimed that Biden would fail because of his inability to rally leftists to the Democratic cause. Instead, he crushed all previous vote records. And that’s because no one cared whether Biden embraced the Green New Deal or not. No one cared about his legislative record or his heath care plan or anything else. They only cared that he was the warm body running against Donald Trump, period, the end. And as we saw, that was the most powerful vote motivator in history.
That said, we just saw how powerful Trumpism is.
In 2016, 63 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. Many of those were deplorables, as you’d expect. But some people took a look at how that piece of shit treated the White House and the American people, and flipped teams. They’re called “white college-educated suburban women.” And not all of them flipped! Not even a lot of them! But enough of them.
But here’s the thing: As of the latest count, 71 million Americans voted for that a-hole on Tuesday, and that will continue to grow as votes are counted. When all is said and done, about 10 million people who didn’t vote for him in 2016 took a gander at the past four years and though, “Yup, I wants me more of that!”
And those people didn’t vote on ideology. Just like Biden voters came out irrespective of his policy positions, Trump voters came out despite the GOP. They didn’t care about smaller government and lower taxes for billionaires and pretending to care about family values. And they didn't care what Trump himself said—not about the number of TVs on Air Force One, and how poorly he was treated by everyone, and his multiple affairs, and admitting on tape that he lied to the nation about the pandemic, or anything else.
The votes were cultural. That’s important, particularly in
moments like now when you have the various factions of the Democratic
Party sniping at each other about “socialism” and whatever else. None of
that shit mattered outside of South Florida. This was a new front in
the culture battles.
3. Hillary Clinton is vindicated
Hillary Clinton didn’t lose to a flawed and terrible candidate. Donald Trump is, objectively, the worst president in history.
So how good of a politician is Trump? So good that he didn’t just win the first time, but he almost won again after breaking pretty much everything, and got 10 million new people to vote for him (plus however many he needed to replace any defectors, like those college-educated suburban white women).
I was as strong of an Elizabeth Warren partisan as anyone, and loved Kamala Harris, and even Cory Booker won me over in the end. Bernie Sanders undoubtedly had one of the most dedicated and loyal support bases around. And I suspect that had any of them been nominated, we’d be looking at a second Trump term. Black voters in South Carolina looked at Trump, saw their white neighbors, and knew that he was an even bigger threat than most of us realized. And as much as so many of us hated it at the time, they selected the one candidate we ran who was boring enough, inoffensive enough, and known enough to present as best a challenge as possible to Trump.
In other words, while I'd never have believed it at the time, I think those Black South Carolina voters saved us.
So no, Hillary Clinton didn’t lose to the worst candidate in history. She almost beat the best candidate in history.
4. The reason the polls were off: the Hidden Deplorable
The polls were off in 2016.
The polls were right in 2018.
The polls were off in 2020.
The difference? Donald Trump. In 2016 and 2020, Republicans overperformed the polling, primarily by turnout of more people than any models expected. This is particularly striking in 2020 given that Democratic turnout was also bonkers. It didn’t matter. There’s legitimately a hidden deplorable vote for Trump, one that only has turned out when Trump himself is on the ballot.
And you can imagine these people: It’s the assholes trying to run a Biden campaign bus off the road in Texas, or plotting to assassinate Michigan’s Democratic governor. These people live in meth country and have zero faith in institutions. Why the hell would they answer the phone for a pollster or join a polling panel? And they vote differently than other white people, so you can’t model them into the results. (Though, to caution, it’s early and people are still crunching numbers. Ann Selzer in Iowa seems to have caught them when no one else did, so maybe there is a way ...)
If you wonder where Trump might find 10 million new voters, the hidden deplorables were non-voters. Trump activated them. But, again, they vote only when Trump is on the ballot. When the final polling error is calculated, watch how it’s mostly on the Trump side of things—Biden was at 50-ish in the polling aggregates, with Trump lagging far behind. Final results will still show Biden around 51% and Trump not so far behind. There are your hidden deplorables.
So will the Republican Party still be able to get these voters to turn out with Trump out of office? He was unable to goad them to vote in 2018, when Democrats notched wave victories in that midterm election. He seemingly has to be on the ballot.
We won’t have to wait long to test out the hidden deplorable theory—the Georgia Senate runoffs in January will give us a quick look as to wether Republicans can maintain that hidden turnout. Because yes, Trump got a huge turnout boost in the Peach State, from nearly 2.1 million votes in 2016, to 2.455 million this year. And yet, despite that 350,000-vote boost, Democrats still won. Why? Because Democrats went from nearly 1.9 million in 2016, to 2.466 this year—a half a million vote increase!
Stacey Abrams, and every activist who worked so hard over the past four years to make that happen? Take a bow. (Also, stop asking for Abrams to be DNC chair. While she may end up in Biden’s Cabinet, her real goal is a 2022 gubernatorial rematch. That’s the reason she didn’t run for Senate.)
In any case, given that results are essentially tied right now, the winner of the two Senate runoffs, with control of the Senate on the line, will be the party that suffers the least drop-off. I will never assume that the hidden deplorables will crawl back to their caves, and we have to work as if every single one of them will turn out again. But regardless of what they do, we’ll have some early data on whether we have to worry about these voters in future cycles or not.
5. Holy shit, GEORGIA!
It’s great to see Arizona turn, and we need to work to turn it into the next Colorado—a safe blue state. Demographically and culturally, there’s no reason we can’t have a safe swatch of blue territory in the region: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico. The Texas project continues apace, with solid cycle-over-cycle gains. The state is a legit battleground moving forward.
BUT GEORGIA.
We’ve been talking about Georgia for about a decade, how demographically it should be a purple state. Six years ago I lamented the fact that the metro Atlanta region alone had over 750,000 unregistered Black voters, not to mention other potential Democratic voters like young white people, Latinos, Asians, and rural Blacks. Then we were gifted Stacey Abrams and she organized the work to enact real change, and it worked. Trump got out an extra 350,000 voters, and we still won, turning out over half a million new voters.
And we're not done in Georgia. Those two Senate races being decided in January will be the difference between two more years of Mitch McConnell and misery, or a Senate that will, at the very least, confirm Biden's cabinet. (Transformative change will have to wait until we get a bigger Senate majority, and 2022 will give us a chance to do that.)
The best part? There is early evidence that Georgia has maxed out its rural white support, while we still have a great deal of low-hanging fruit to register and turn out in the years ahead. With Abrams running for governor in 2022, she has every incentive to continue doing the hard work that has gotten the state to where it is today. And there is no reason to believe that Georgia can’t be the next Virginia—once a solidly Republican state, purpling, then becoming blue in the span of two decades.
6. White people will be white people
The exit polls are not final, so no one should read too much into them. But the preliminary numbers say that Trump won 57% of the white vote.
In 2016, Trump won 57% of the white vote.
In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney won 59% of the white vote.
In 2008, Republican nominee John McCain won 55% of the white vote. Remember? When racism was solved?
In 2004, President George W. Bush got 58% of the white vote.
Weird, huh?
Also, I’ll be watching numbers on young white men closely. Joe Rogan may present a long-term problem, like Rush Limbaugh.
7. “Defund police” may have been a net neutral
There is early evidence that the defund movement may have cost Democrats in certain areas—certainly in Southern Florida and maybe among Latinos in Texas. It was an easy attack line for Republicans to deliver.
But there is also early evidence of a massive surge in the youth vote: 53% higher, according to one analysis. Biden doesn’t win without that vote surge. And anti-police brutality protests were fertile ground for voter registration and engagement.
This is certainly one of those questions where proponents and critics can both find “evidence” to support their argument, but my early gut suspicion is that it helped us in the presidential race, and maybe hurt us down ballot in certain (white and Latino) areas.
The suburbs continued to move in our direction, so perhaps the issue didn’t have as much resonance in those areas as Trump hoped. But again, it’s early.
8. I can sleep again
Not to make this about me, because it’s not. But it sure was nice to be able to sleep again, huh? I’ll sleep even better if we win the Georgia runoffs, but it’s time for all of us to start thinking about our self-care routines again. It’s been a horrid four years, and not to overly rest before Georgia, but we need to take care of ourselves again.
Much more to come.
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