7 ms·

What's more surprising is how close this was given the past four years.

malnourish 6y ago
Close in the Electoral College, where it matters; quite distant in the popular vote. The gap is estimated to be about 4 million more votes for Biden at this time, it is also the most votes for a president in US history. e: I will concede that it is not "quite distant", though it may not end up close in the EC when it's all said and done either.
- 1over137 6y ago
  4 million is not a lot in country of 330 million. The popular vote was close to 50/50.
  - malnourish 6y ago
    According to Nate Silver: > Biden is likely to wind up with one of the higher percentages of votes as a share of the U.S. population that we’ve seen in a long time Referencing this tweet, text copied below as well https://twitter.com/jtlevy/status/1324408585590329345 https://twitter.com/jtlevy/status/1324408585590329345 [credit: Jacob T. Levy] vote share * turnout Reagan 1984: 53.3*58.8= 31.3% W Bush 2004: 50.7*56.7=28.7% Obama 2008: 52.9*58.2=30.8% Biden 2020, estimated: 51*66 = 33.7% counted so far: 50.5*60.3=30.4% (as of 2020-11-05)
  - tzs 6y ago
    It's probably going to be quite a bit more than 4 million. There are still several heavily blue states that have a lot of votes left to count. California, for example, has only counted 77% of their votes. New York has counted 84%. Illinois has counted 89%. I just caught the end of some discussion of this on NPR. Based on the number of votes left to count in the various states and how they are expected to turn out, there is a good chance it will end up at around 8 million. Also, it probably makes more sense to look at it out of the number of voters, or the number of people who could have voted, rather than out of the whole population.
    - BlueTemplar 6y ago
      The impressive thing is how the election is going to be decided by a measly -100k to +170k (mean +35k) Biden lead in Pennsylvania !
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    It's currently 4 million of 145 million votes, since not all 330 million people are voters, and that number will go up since the outstanding votes are in large, overwhelmingly Democratic states.
Udik 6y ago
That's because, despite all the "it's Russia's fault" hysteria, Trump more or less represents about 50% of Americans- as these elections have just shown. The scary part (to me, as a European) is that this means that a good chunk of the other 50%, while certainly despising Trump, cannot be ideologically that distant- they live in the same country and immersed in the same culture after all.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  The US is a very large country and a lot of legal powers are left to individual states. It's like saying that Poland represents the same views as Germany in Europe because they're both in the EU.
- mmastrac 6y ago
  Or alternatively, the team that chose Trump has disenfranchised so many of the other team (and relied on the ancient electoral college) that their undersized votes have outsized effects.
- mrgordon 6y ago
  Actually about 30% of America voted for Trump so I wouldn’t rush to give him another 20%+.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  Also he is a sitting president with a decent economy. It takes a lot for an incumbent to not win re-election at that point. Somewhat sane coronavirus response and Trump would have an easy victory.
  - makomk 6y ago
    It's probably impossible for Trump's coronavirus response to have been seen as sane or reasonable, regardless of what he did. For example, Biden very publicly claimed without basis that Trump's China travel ban actually made things worse, whilst meanwhile here in the UK one of the avenues of attack on our government (which is seen as Trump-like) is that our scientists reckon that not introducing a ban on travel from China almost exactly like Trump's made things worse. Trump gets attacked for not imposing a centrally-mandated lockdown, ours gets attacked for imposing too much centralized command and control and not leaving things up to regions. And so on and so forth. Also, no matter how much Covid testing either the UK or US does, it's always described as though it's falling behing the rest of the world regardless of facts. (I wonder if that will magically fix itself once Biden takes office.) And as for hoping to get good outcomes overall... look at what's been happening throughout Europe. It would take something more like a miracle than a basic, workable response of the kind you could expect from a government of typical competence to get good enough results that it wouldn't be seen as a failure. France, run by someone the entire media spun as basically the anti-Trump, has been reporting about half as many cases a day as the entire US with a rather smaller population and they don't seem to be slowing down. The coronavirus pandemic seems close to a no-win scenario. Even most of the success stories (which, I should note, always seem to be countries very different to Europe and the US) are a lot messier and more ambigious than they look from the million-mile foreign press view.
rv-de 6y ago
As if 50% of the US population is going through some kind of collective psychosis. Just looking at how a significant portion of his fans act and look on those rallies. Dressing up with jumpsuits having flags and his face allover or wearing stupidly huge hats with a motto printed on it. As if they are on some comic con where Trump is some sort of super hero. Carrying assault rifles like they can't wait to save the world from imagined threats, dressing up like Romans with shields and helmets. Totally delusional. This level of celebrated infantilism I've never seen anywhere else so far. There are nuts everywhere but that many?
throwaway829 6y ago
Yeah, no new wars in the middle east and troops are coming home. How can a president win reelection with that kind of record? Luckily CNN will save democrazy.

Close in the Electoral College, where it matters; quite distant in the popular vote. The gap is estimated to be about 4 million more votes for Biden at this time, it is also the most votes for a president in US history. e: I will concede that it is not "quite distant", though it may not end up close in the EC when it's all said and done either.

1over137 6y ago
4 million is not a lot in country of 330 million. The popular vote was close to 50/50.
- malnourish 6y ago
  According to Nate Silver: > Biden is likely to wind up with one of the higher percentages of votes as a share of the U.S. population that we’ve seen in a long time Referencing this tweet, text copied below as well https://twitter.com/jtlevy/status/1324408585590329345 https://twitter.com/jtlevy/status/1324408585590329345 [credit: Jacob T. Levy] vote share * turnout Reagan 1984: 53.3*58.8= 31.3% W Bush 2004: 50.7*56.7=28.7% Obama 2008: 52.9*58.2=30.8% Biden 2020, estimated: 51*66 = 33.7% counted so far: 50.5*60.3=30.4% (as of 2020-11-05)
- tzs 6y ago
  It's probably going to be quite a bit more than 4 million. There are still several heavily blue states that have a lot of votes left to count. California, for example, has only counted 77% of their votes. New York has counted 84%. Illinois has counted 89%. I just caught the end of some discussion of this on NPR. Based on the number of votes left to count in the various states and how they are expected to turn out, there is a good chance it will end up at around 8 million. Also, it probably makes more sense to look at it out of the number of voters, or the number of people who could have voted, rather than out of the whole population.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    The impressive thing is how the election is going to be decided by a measly -100k to +170k (mean +35k) Biden lead in Pennsylvania !
- gamblor956 6y ago
  It's currently 4 million of 145 million votes, since not all 330 million people are voters, and that number will go up since the outstanding votes are in large, overwhelmingly Democratic states.

Udik 6y ago

That's because, despite all the "it's Russia's fault" hysteria, Trump more or less represents about 50% of Americans- as these elections have just shown. The scary part (to me, as a European) is that this means that a good chunk of the other 50%, while certainly despising Trump, cannot be ideologically that distant- they live in the same country and immersed in the same culture after all.

marcinzm 6y ago
The US is a very large country and a lot of legal powers are left to individual states. It's like saying that Poland represents the same views as Germany in Europe because they're both in the EU.
mmastrac 6y ago
Or alternatively, the team that chose Trump has disenfranchised so many of the other team (and relied on the ancient electoral college) that their undersized votes have outsized effects.
mrgordon 6y ago
Actually about 30% of America voted for Trump so I wouldn’t rush to give him another 20%+.
kmonsen 6y ago
Also he is a sitting president with a decent economy. It takes a lot for an incumbent to not win re-election at that point. Somewhat sane coronavirus response and Trump would have an easy victory.
- makomk 6y ago
  It's probably impossible for Trump's coronavirus response to have been seen as sane or reasonable, regardless of what he did. For example, Biden very publicly claimed without basis that Trump's China travel ban actually made things worse, whilst meanwhile here in the UK one of the avenues of attack on our government (which is seen as Trump-like) is that our scientists reckon that not introducing a ban on travel from China almost exactly like Trump's made things worse. Trump gets attacked for not imposing a centrally-mandated lockdown, ours gets attacked for imposing too much centralized command and control and not leaving things up to regions. And so on and so forth. Also, no matter how much Covid testing either the UK or US does, it's always described as though it's falling behing the rest of the world regardless of facts. (I wonder if that will magically fix itself once Biden takes office.) And as for hoping to get good outcomes overall... look at what's been happening throughout Europe. It would take something more like a miracle than a basic, workable response of the kind you could expect from a government of typical competence to get good enough results that it wouldn't be seen as a failure. France, run by someone the entire media spun as basically the anti-Trump, has been reporting about half as many cases a day as the entire US with a rather smaller population and they don't seem to be slowing down. The coronavirus pandemic seems close to a no-win scenario. Even most of the success stories (which, I should note, always seem to be countries very different to Europe and the US) are a lot messier and more ambigious than they look from the million-mile foreign press view.

rv-de 6y ago

As if 50% of the US population is going through some kind of collective psychosis. Just looking at how a significant portion of his fans act and look on those rallies. Dressing up with jumpsuits having flags and his face allover or wearing stupidly huge hats with a motto printed on it. As if they are on some comic con where Trump is some sort of super hero. Carrying assault rifles like they can't wait to save the world from imagined threats, dressing up like Romans with shields and helmets. Totally delusional. This level of celebrated infantilism I've never seen anywhere else so far. There are nuts everywhere but that many?

throwaway829 6y ago

Yeah, no new wars in the middle east and troops are coming home. How can a president win reelection with that kind of record? Luckily CNN will save democrazy.