Joe Biden is likely to become the next president of the United States, winning from 315 to 360 electoral votes. Beyond the Electoral College, Biden could defeat Donald Trump by 6 million votes if exit polling of early voting accurately reflects a “Blue Wave” election in 2020.
I’m willing to now concede, Biden has a 93 percent chance of winning, and models seem to suggest at least 330 electoral votes are in the 80 percent confidence range, state-by-state.
RealClearPolitics’ poll of polls suggests 357 electoral votes for Biden, to 181 for Trump.
FiveThirtyEight models suggest 325 highly likely electoral votes for Biden.
Other sources fall within the range of 315 to 360, as well.
How is 2020 unlike 2016?
I have two answers to that:
1. We have seen that Donald Trump is not up to the task, despite my initial hope that his desire for popularity would lead him towards compromises and good governance. I imagined he just might be pragmatic, since he doesn’t actually run things.
2. Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton, and that’s helping him with a lot of voters.
Trump might have still won against a weak Democratic candidate. Moderate independents and third-party supporters might not have voted for a more progressive Democrat or even skipped the election.
Time and again, colleagues with libertarian Republican or blue-collar Democratic roots mentioned how difficult the choice might have been without Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. I certainly would have struggled to support Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. That truly would have been a choice between a horrible person and potentially bad policies. And even then, Trump supports some bad policies, too, that violate my core principles.
Yes, there was sexism towards Hillary Clinton. But, look to the U.S. Senate, House, or many governorships. Women can and do win in both parties. No, there was something more that doomed the Hillary Clinton effort. Hillary Clinton was a poor candidate. She didn’t visit swing states often enough during the 2016 campaign. She assumed an air of entitlement, which never helps a candidate win over swing voters.
Donald Trump should have lost, yet I wrote repeatedly that he could win. That’s because many of his supporters wanted to demonstrate their loathing for the establishment. His core of support still considers Trump an outsider, someone fighting a mysterious establishment, the Dark State that runs our nation.
With Biden, the Democrats have gone all-in on the establishment, obviously.
They’ve also chosen politeness, empathy, and a certain decency that Joe Biden conveys.
He’s not a perfect candidate. The Biden campaign has lacked energy. Most people seem to be voting against Trump. That makes 2016 a referendum on Trumpism, if not the entire Republican Party.
Polling seems to suggest Biden is carrying men over 65. He’s winning the white, working-class voters by a significant 7 to 10 points. Biden is winning every single voter group in most polling demographics. His lead with some groups is smaller than that of Hillary Clinton, notably Cuban-American voters and some other regionally concentrated minorities. But, those are small groups and Biden still leads with them.
In a mere ten days, I anticipate President-Elect Joe Biden to deliver a national address, reassuring us “normalcy” might be returning to the White House.
I will speak out against bad policy ideas. I won’t be celebrating the election of Joe Biden, but I will be celebrating the fall of Donald J. Trump.
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