Posts on Wednesday, November 4, 2020
The numbers are in—for Election Night ratings, that is. Despite people being stuck at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, viewership of the 2020 presidential election coverage on Tuesday was down by a whopping 20% compared to 2016, according to Nielsen estimates. About 56.9 million tuned in across 21 networks during the primetime hours of 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. EDT this year as votes poured in for Joe Biden and President Trump. That’s a far cry from the 71.4 million people who watched during that same time frame in 2016, when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential race.
Police clashed with an unruly mob of protesters in Lower Manhattan Wednesday night as demonstrators created carnage, set a fire in the street and one even spat directly in the face of an officer. The confrontations resulted in the arrests of 20 people after a peaceful protest in Washington Square Park took a violent turn once they worked their way through the West Village after 7:30 p.m. Earlier “Count The Vote” chants were replaced with anti-police sentiments, inexplicable outbursts at outdoor diners and the setting of rubbish fires.(Snip) “F–k your dinner,” some chanted as they passed the Waverly Place eatery.
Casar responds after Houston police chief
blames Austin City Council for Democrat
losses in Texas replies
blames Austin City Council for Democrat
losses in Texas replies
AUSTIN — The Austin City Council—and two members specifically—are being blamed by the head of police in Houston for a weak showing of Democrats in Tuesday’s statewide elections.
In a tweet on Tuesday night, Houston Police Department Chief Art Acevedo said, “Texas Democrats can thank “socialist democrats and defund the police crowd” led by @GregCasar, @JimmyFlannigan and the rest of the Austin City Council. Fact, Americans and Texans want better policing, not de-policing, and they don’t want anything to do with any form of socialism.” Casar, who Acevedo specifically named in the tweet, replied Wednesday, “After last night’s election, Austin is now the only big Texas city with no elected Republicans
Voters in Texas sustained the Republican majority in the state’s House of Representatives despite millions of outside dollars poured into races.
Texas Democrats promised 2020 would be the year Texas turned blue, the Texas Tribune reported on Wednesday. “But 2020 proved another disappointment for the state’s minority party as Republicans remained dominant in Texas, appearing poised to maintain victories in all statewide offices and both chambers of the Legislature,” the Texas news outlet reported. “In what has become a familiar refrain, Texas Democrats pointed to 2020’s narrow losses as symbolic victories — signs that the state will one day change in their favor.”
Dave Carney, chief political consultant
Conservative podcast host Steven Crowder’s election night coverage garnered millions of views on YouTube, more evidence of a growing trend of viewers looking to sources other than the establishment media for important news and commentary.As of this writing, Crowder’s election night coverage streamed on YouTube has amassed 8.1 million views. His coverage of election updates and news the following day attracted another 3.1 million views online. The impressive showing may be a bell-weather for the future of media as newcomers compete with legacy media corporations.Crowder’s election night stream topped all but two of the networks covering the election on cable.
In a surprise move on Tuesday night, Fox News, alone among networks, called Arizona for Joe Biden over President Donald Trump, royally ticking off the Trump campaign, reportedly and perhaps understandably.The network made the call with Biden ahead by 7 percentage points in the race, but with hundreds of thousands of votes yet to be counted in the state, something that chief White House correspondent John Roberts noted when talking to anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, who seemed perplexed by the call.It made for great TV
At this hour, we don’t know how the presidential race will shake out, but we know that this will not be the sweeping rebuke of President Trump that Democrats wanted, and, in many cases, confidently expected. That other morning newsletter, from Politico, writes this morning: Tuesday was an abject disaster for Democrats in Washington. To imagine the amount of soul searching and explaining the party will have to do after Tuesday is absolutely dizzying. The infighting will be bloody — as it should be. We fielded text after text from Hill Democrats Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning with existential questions about their leadership and the direction of their party.
As of this writing, it appears that Democratic Party machines in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are trying to steal the election.As reporters and commentators went to bed early Tuesday morning, all three states were too close to call, but President Trump led former Vice President Joe Biden by comfortable margins—far beyond what had been predicted in the polls. None of the networks called these states because enough mail-in ballots remained uncounted that it could swing either way, but Trump’s position looked good.Then, something strange happened in the dead of the night.
More Info on the Funny Numbers in
Michigan, Thousands of Votes May
Now Be Coming Back to Trump,
James replies
Michigan, Thousands of Votes May
Now Be Coming Back to Trump,
James replies
We reported earlier about some of the problems going on in Michigan over the tabulation of the votes.One big issue was in Antrim County, a heavily red pro-Trump county, that suddenly was reported as having gone heavily blue. Local people and others familiar with the make-up of the county knew immediately something was screwy in the reported totals. It immediately prompted an investigation today, as we reported earlier, with the county clerk admitting that something was clearly “skewed” about the totals. The investigation is ongoing but they did obviously discover that the votes were wrongly given to Biden, that the actual vote tabulations didn’t match that.
CONCORD, N.H. — The way one pundit sees it, Democrats threw a fastball at Republican Gov. Chris Sununu’s head only to have him snatch it out of midair and hurl it back at them. And he will enter his third term with some more players on his team.
Democrats who have controlled both chambers of the state Legislature for the last two years tried to use the governor’s record number of vetoes to their advantage during the campaign. Instead, Sununu successfully incorporated their attacks into his own message, said University of New Hampshire political science professor Dante Scala.
“Again and again we heard, ‘Sununu’s being an obstructionist,’ but
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Wednesday launched a transition website as he neared the 270 electoral votes needed to defeat President Trump.The site, buildbackbetter.com, features only a homepage topped with an image of the former vice president. It says “Biden-Harris Transition” against a solid blue background.“The American people will determine who will serve as the next President of the United States. Votes are still being counted in several states around the country,” an unsigned message on the site says.“The crises facing the country are severe — from a pandemic to an economic recession,
PHOENIX -- Ballot counting continued all day Wednesday in Maricopa County and throughout Arizona. Maricopa County Election officials say all of the ballots cast in person on Election Day at all 175 polling locations in Arizona's largest county have been counted. More than 167,000 Maricopa County voters reportedly cast a ballot in-person on Election Day. At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Maricopa County dropped results from about 76,000 ballots, meaning there's about 500,000 ballots remaining to be counted in Arizona. Roughly two-thirds of the remaining votes to be counted come from Maricopa County, home of Phoenix, which Trump won four years ago
Democrat Joe Biden edged closer to a potential upset in Georgia - and to a White House win - coming within 1 point of President Donald Trump in the traditionally red state Wednesday night.As the race narrowed, Trump's campaign announced that they had filed a lawsuit in the state, alleging that a GOP poll observer witnessed 53 late absentee ballots added to a pile in Chatham County, where Savannah – a Democratic-leaning urban center - is located. 'We will not allow Democrat election officials to steal this election from President Trump with late, illegal ballots,' Deputy Campaign Manager Justin Clark said. More totals from Georgia are expected Wednesday night.
Former VP Joe Biden is week and fragile and old. He couldn’t remember where he was on many occasions. He slurred words and blundered constantly not making sense on many occasions. He was lost.Below is an example of only one such incidence at a campaign event this summer: (Tweet/Video) As a result Biden’s campaign had no excitement at all. He tried bringing in stars but even that failed with around 30 people at a Biden – Bon Jovi rally a few weeks ago:
President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is assembling an “all-star” legal team to spearhead legal challenges in battleground states such as Michigan, according to a Wednesday report.Just The News’ John Solomon reports. Among the lawyers the president is activating include his private attorney Jay Sekulow, who will help campaign lawyers with matters before the Supreme Court as well as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, officials said. Sidney Powell, the lawyer for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, may also be called upon, officials said.
They blew it again. After muffing it spectacularly in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was supposed to cruise to easy victory over Donald Trump, pollsters and the media should be ashamed by how wrong they got this year’s election.Even after their cross-their-hearts-hope-to-die promises to fix flaws in their methodology — which always errs in their preferred, liberal direction.Like Clinton, Joe Biden was supposed to be a sure winner — possibly in a landslide victory over President Trump. Polling “guru” Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight gave Biden a whopping 89 percent chance of winning. RealClearPolitics’ compilation of polls showed Biden with
Polling data from Tuesday night suggests President Trump earned the highest share of the nonwhite vote for any Republican candidate since 1960.
Political strategist Adrian Gray posted preliminary data showing Trump earning 26% of the “non-white” vote, which would register as the highest share since 1960, with many states across the country still tallying votes. NBC exit polling shows Trump winning 26% of the nonwhite vote compared to 72% for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
New York Times columnist Charles Blow said he was devastated by exit polls showing President Trump increasing his share of votes among black men and other minorities from 2016.
“This is so personally devastating to me: the black male vote for Trump INCREASED from 13% in 2016 to 18% this year. The black female vote for Trump doubled from 4% in 2016 to 8% this year,” Blow tweeted, accompanied by exit polling data from the New York Times.
President Trump may not earn four more years in the White House, but he gave the Republican Party perhaps something far more valuable: lessons on how to win elections for decades to come.
As results from Florida began trickling in Tuesday night, a dramatic shift was taking place within the Republican coalition. Polls predicted a narrow race there, with some giving Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden a lead by as much as 5 points. But after Miami-Dade County's results finalized — the first votes in the state to be counted — it became clear that Trump's numbers with minorities were some of the best in GOP history.
President Trump vows to fight on as contested battleground states are declared for Democratic challenger Joe Biden, and many Republicans are ready to man the barricades with him as long as there remain legal options to pursue.
“President Trump should not concede under any circumstances until we know the final and fair vote tally in each of these critically close states,” said conservative strategist Chris Barron. “We elected Trump because he is a fighter — for far too long, Democrats would fight like hell after elections to make sure their votes were counted, while spineless Republicans simply whimpered
GREENSBORO, N.C. — “Being somewhat of a student of history, certainly feels good to make history,” Robinson said.
Newly elected Lt. Governor Mark Robinson defeated Democratic challenger Yvonne Holley to become North Carolina's first Black lieutenant governor.
The Republican took 52% of the vote compared to Holley’s 48%.
“Ordinary folks like myself we can achieve these things," he said. "It's one of the things I’ve tried to inspire people, these offices are not closed off."
The Trump campaign has declared victory in Pennsylvania, claiming that the math is on their side to win the Keystone State.
Several members of team Trump and the Trump family posted declarations of victory on Twitter. President Trump has also declared on Twitter, “We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead.”
Trump continued, “Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact, there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots as has been widely reported!”
Now Down To Just A Few
Hundred Thousand Ballots In
Pennsylvania -- Pres. Trump's
Margin Should Hold replies
Hundred Thousand Ballots In
Pennsylvania -- Pres. Trump's
Margin Should Hold replies
There are 9 million registered voters in Pennsylvania for 2020.
In 2016 there were 6.12 million votes cast.
As of 6:00 pm ET on 11/4, both the NYT and Decision Desk are reporting 6 million votes have been counted in Pennsylvania. That is only 120,000 fewer than were counted in total in 2016. Here are the historical voter participation rages for Pennsylvania for the last 5 elections:
2016: 8.72 million registered voters, 6.12 million votes — 70%
2012: 8.51 million registered voters, 5.74 million votes — 67%
I’m teasing you a little with that headline. Obviously it wasn’t a good night for George-Conway-style Never Trumpers who wanted nothing less than a landslide repudiation of the president. Four hundred Biden electoral votes, Republicans crushed downballot, Trump collapsing into heaving sobs during his concession speech and calling Biden “daddy.” Not a good night for those people. But for less hardcore Never Trumpers who wanted the president beaten but also wanted a check on the Biden administration so that AOC didn’t end up setting policy, things are shaping up pretty nicely. A Biden win is still in doubt, as is a Republican majority in the Senate
California voters gave Uber and Lyft a big win in the fight over the future of gig economy workers, approving Proposition 22, but it is not only the tech giants and freelancers delivering people and food who expect major repercussions from the ballot decision.
Independent contractors across the country might breathe a sigh of relief in that California voters sent a message to the state’s legislators that AB 5, the law which was enacted to classify freelancers as employees, is widely unpopular. Other states, including New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York and Illinois, have been among those considering crafting legislation to force
Ironic, isn’t it? This could be Trump’s finest hour.
As befits the already awful year of Our Lord, 2020, the presidential election is going to come down to a nasty street fight of lawyers, public relations spin, and positioning involving four states. Donald Trump has won all four, and now he must successfully defend all four wins from the very mail-in shenanigans he (and all of us) predicted would happen months ago. This is flesh and blood people versus theoretical pieces of mail. The people must win this.
Bernie Sanders accurately predicted much of the election night chaos with striking precision during a segment that aired last month on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.” Asked about how vote-counting might play out, the Vermont senator said several key Rust Belt states would still be tallying largely Democrat-cast mail-in ballots days after polls closed — opening the door for President Trump to claim victory when it’s actually too soon to tell. “You’re going to have a situation, I suspect, in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, other states, where they are going to be receiving huge amounts of mail-in ballots,”
Demands Arise for PA Attorney General
to ‘Step Aside’: He’s Trying to ‘Steal
Pennsylvania from Trump’ replies
to ‘Step Aside’: He’s Trying to ‘Steal
Pennsylvania from Trump’ replies
Calls for Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) to “step aside” are rising after he urged voters to seek election help from Democrats, mere days after stating that “if all the votes are added up in PA, Trump is going to lose.” Shapiro drew strong reactions across social media after encouraging voters to seek election help from Democrats on Election Day. “Need help with your mail in ballot, finding out where to vote, or something else?” Shapiro wrote on social media. “Call the @PADems Voter Assistance Hotline. Someone will answer and help you out. Call 1-833-PA-VOTES”:
House Democrats are asking themselves one question after Tuesday’s election stunner: What the hell happened?
In the House, bleary-eyed Democrats were still sorting out the wreckage when they awoke Wednesday with dozens of their members’ races still uncalled and not a single GOP incumbent ousted — an outcome that virtually no one in the party had predicted in a year in which Democrats were going on the offense deep in Trump country. Even with tens of thousands of ballots still to be counted, shell-shocked Democratic lawmakers, strategists and aides privately began trying to pin the blame:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) could once again see her speakership challenged following a lackluster showing of House Democrat candidates in Tuesday’s 2020 election.The Hill reports: Stung by their party’s disappointing showing at the polls Tuesday, two moderate House Democrats say they and other centrists are privately discussing a plan that was unthinkable just 24 hours earlier: throwing their support behind a challenger to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The two Democrats told The Hill on Wednesday that they were reaching out to their colleagues about backing one of Pelosi’s top lieutenants, Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), for Speaker.
The Democrats, Big Tech, the media and some state election leaders are working together to steal this election from President Trump. The President is winning and he has an easy way to win.All night last night the media got together and failed to call big states that showed Trump winning. The President led in Florida and Texas for hours, but the media would not call these states for Trump. This way the media could keep the narrative alive that Joe Biden was leading in the race.President Trump won by more than 3% in Florida and 6% in Texas
Police were caught on camera arresting a qualified nurse as she tried to take her 97-year-old mother from a care home after nine months of isolation to be looked after by family.
Former Coronation Street actress Leandra Ashton wept as officers arrested her 73-year-old mother, Ylenia Angeli, before putting her dementia-sufferer grandmother into a patrol car to be sent back to the facility. Ylenia, who is an occupational health nurse(Snip) 'When the rules - like so many in this period of our history - are purporting to be in place to 'protect' but yet are causing untold damage to physical and mental health then you start breaking the rules.
With the unprecedented decision of key battleground states to suddenly stop counting votes on election night, it is apparent that Democrat efforts to steal back the White House are in progress. The counting was paused after it became clear that Trump had built large leads in both Michigan and Pennslyvania and after his voters had already debunked the media's scam that Joe Biden was going to win in a landslide. With the fate of the nation now hanging in the balance and the election in limbo, it is important to point out that lunchbucket Joe let the cat out of the bag with one of his trademark gaffes;
A Probable and Deserved Victory
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As I have a number of things to write tonight, this is an experimental foray into composing in advance the comment I would like to be able to write when the election result is known. This will not be altered even if the anticipated result is far from what actually occurs. The following is written before any of the polls have closed and is a wishful fantasy and will be followed by an epilogue when the result may be reasonably forecast.The campaign of 95 percent of the national political media of the United States on behalf of the Democrats has been the most odious, dishonest, and unprofessional chapter
The day after the presidential election dawned with the race uncalled. But even if Joe Biden squeaks out a close win, CBS This Morning on Wednesday conceded that the election wasn’t a good one for Democrats. Republicans will likely hold or expand their Senate majority. They have increased their numbers in the House and Donald Trump defied expectations in states like Ohio, Florida and North Carolina. Co-host Anthony Mason lamented, “They had hopes of taking the Senate. Those seem to be fading away.
The stock market supposedly hates uncertainty. So why is it soaring after an election night that upended expectations, humiliated polls, and created conditions for a drawn-out fight over ballot counting that could last for weeks?The Nasdaq Composite was up 4 percent Wednesday morning. The S&P 500 rose nearly 3 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average pushed up 2 percent. This is a very big day for investors and a very unexpected result following such an unexpected election night.One plausible explanation is that the market does not loathe uncertainty as much as people think.
LANSING, Mich. —Michigan’s Senate race between incumbent Democrat Gary Peters and Republican challenger John James was too early to call Wednesday morning, with many votes still uncounted.The contest may shape which party controls the Senate, where the GOP now has the majority.“It's pretty clear we're not going to know the results until sometime tomorrow," Peters said at an event in Pontiac on Tuesday night. “A number of jurisdictions are still processing this massive amount of absentee ballots. ... Stay tuned.”Addressing supporters gathered at his business in Detroit, James said: “There's still a lot of votes to be counted to be sure. But we're extremely excited and optimistic
Defiant President
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Election Day 2020 finally arrived. Anxiety across the country has reached a fever pitch about an election that may go down as the most divisive one since 1864, which was held during the midst of the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln ended up winning that election handily. But the 2020 election has turned out to be much closer than pundits in the media and pollsters predicted, despite a widening gender gap and the movement of suburban voters into the Democratic camp. The tidal wave for Biden that Democrats were hoping for did not materialize. Polls in some key states such as Florida turned out to be way off base.
Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) told reporters on Wednesday afternoon that opponent Sara Gideon called her to concede Maine’s Senate race.
While the race has not been called by the Associated Press, Gideon’s concession indicates that Collins will be reelected to a fifth term in the Senate. Collins has apparently won the race despite polls showing Gideon, currently Maine’s House speaker, with a competitive edge. Every Maine Senate poll collected by RealClearPolitics showed Collins trailing Gideon, right up to the last weekend before the election.
President Trump won the state of Texas with its 38 electoral votes during Tuesday night’s presidential election, including Zapata County, which he lost by a large margin in 2016 to Hillary Clinton.
Trump won Zapata County 52-to-47 percent over Joe Biden. The president lost the county in 2016 by 32 percent to Hillary Clinton’s 65 percent.
Zapata, a southern border county with a population of more than 14,000 people as of last year, has a 94.7 percent Hispanic population according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Republican leaders in recent years, including the Trump campaign, have ramped up their efforts to appeal to Hispanic voters, which helped Trump capture Florida
RALEIGH, N.C. — Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis is on track to survive a tough re-election challenge in North Carolina, potentially protecting the Senate from a Democratic takeover. Tillis declared victory over Democrat Cal Cunningham late Tuesday, when he held a lead of about 95,000 votes with 99.8% of precincts reporting. By the time all precincts reported results early Wednesday, Tillis led by 96,000 votes. Unofficial results showed him with 2.64 million votes and Cunningham with 2.54 million votes. More than 117,000 absentee ballots remain outstanding, but it's unclear how many will be returned. Tillis called the result "stunning," referencing polling
PITTSBURGH – With 85% of the vote in, Rep. Conor Lamb is trailing challenger Sean Parnell 57%-42%. Parnell has a 176,754 to 133,196 vote lead over Rep. Lamb. The Lamb campaign has told KDKA’s Meghan Schiller that he would not make a statement Tuesday night as the race is too soon to tell. (Tweet) For comprehensive coverage of all things election-related in Pennsylvania, visit KDKA’s 2020 Election Guide. For live results of all election races in Pennsylvania, visit KDKA’s 2020 General Election results page.
A nationwide push to relax drug laws took a significant step forward Tuesday as voters made Oregon the first state to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of street drugs such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. Meanwhile, five more states legalized marijuana for adults. (Snip) The Oregon drug initiative will allow people arrested with small amounts of hard drugs to avoid going to trial, and possible jail time, by paying a $100 fine and attending an addiction recovery program. The treatment centers will be funded by revenues from legalized marijuana, which was approved in Oregon several years ago. "Today's victory
Appearing on NBC’s Today show Wednesday morning, the network’s resident Democratic Party shill and senior Washington correspondent Andrea Mitchell was bewildered that President Trump, “who is deemed unacceptable,” could possibly be competitive in the still undecided election. Later on the show, Biden campaign surrogate and so-called “historian” Jon Meacham lamented that Trump voters refused to “change their minds.”
“And I think it leaves big questions about what is the future of the Democratic Party?...here’s a party that is running against a candidate who is deemed unacceptable by traditional democratic, you know, standards,” Mitchell fretted early in the 8:00 a.m. ET hour. In disbelief that the election could be so close
It’s Not Over Yet
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Things didn’t go as well last night as I had expected, or as well as they started out. But the presidential election is still not over, and there are plenty of bright spots in the other races.
Most notably, Republicans in Arizona are saying that President Trump may yet win that state: If Trump carries Pennsylvania and Arizona, he wins the election, assuming Georgia doesn’t flip.
Litigation seems inevitable in some states. As I understand it–I haven’t had time yet to pin down the facts–Trump was leading in Michigan until, in the middle of the night, a large number of ballots were discovered, or added, or something,
Very Odd: Michigan Found
Over 100,000 Ballots
and Every Single One
Has Joe Biden's Name on It replies
Over 100,000 Ballots
and Every Single One
Has Joe Biden's Name on It replies
Michigan was set to be a state that went to Trump but miraculously, a bunch of early votes was found and every one of them was a ballot with Joe Biden’s name on it. When I say “every one of them” I mean every single one. Not one of these ballots had a Trump vote on them. This kind of thing is far from normal and is worth investigating. Twitter users also found this to be so unlikely as to be completely unbelievable.
This is not the outcome Democrats expected.
Despite many bold predictions of a rout in which Democrats gained (or re-gained) Trumpian red territory of 2016, as of early Wednesday only one state — Arizona — had flipped from red to blue. Six states remain outstanding: Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Assuming North Carolina and Georgia have slipped away from Biden — Georgia is not out of reach for him — and that Nevada remains blue, the best-case scenario for the former vice president is a 290-electoral vote victory.
Biden edges ahead in race for White
House as flood of mail-in votes pushes
him past Trump in Michigan replies
House as flood of mail-in votes pushes
him past Trump in Michigan replies
Joe Biden pulled ahead of President Trump in the critical battleground state of Michigan early Wednesday, putting him back on track to potentially narrowly win the presidential election after early setbacks. Biden inched ahead by 14,000 votes in Michigan as the Democrat notched huge margins in mail-in votes that were being counted after the president took a strong lead in votes cast on Election Day. Michigan awards 16 Electoral College votes.
With Biden taking the lead in the count in Michigan, and ahead in neighboring Wisconsin and Arizona, the Democrat was leading and strongly favored in enough states to win 270
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP and JOE BIDEN are locked in the tightest presidential contest in decades, with TRUMP threatening to drag the race to the Supreme Court. BIDEN is ahead by a sliver in Wisconsin, TRUMP is up in Michigan and Pennsylvania -- but it’s close, with plenty outstanding. Nevada is suddenly tight. Georgia is too close to call. We’ll get to this all in a minute. But let’s start with what we know:
TUESDAY WAS AN ABJECT DISASTER for Democrats in Washington. To imagine the amount of soul searching and explaining the party will have to do after Tuesday is absolutely dizzying. The infighting will be bloody
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, an ally of President Trump, blasted the commander-in-chief’s comments about claiming victory and threatening to ask the Supreme Court to halt more vote-counting. Christie said there is no evidence to back Trump’s claim that Democrats are trying to fraudulently steal the election away from him. “I talk tonight not as a former governor, but as a former US attorney. There’s just no basis to make that argument tonight. There just isn’t,” Christie told ABC News.
“The argument won’t even start in Pennsylvania until tomorrow, or Thursday or Friday,” Christie continued, pointing out that
My gut says that Donald Trump will snatch victory from the jaws of the pollsters. A great deal hangs on Pennsylvania, where Trump now leads by 600,000 but where 1.7 million mail-in ballots remain to be counted. There’s a 2:1 ratio of registered Democrats to registered Republicans among mail-in voters, and the pundits are saying that this will cancel out Trump’s lead. What they don’t consider is that a lot of registered Democrats in Pennsylvania will vote for Trump. Of course, getting the ballots counted fairly is a non-trivial problem.
Politico.com’s headline this morning reads, “Biden looks screwed even if he wins.” The
A Democratic drive to win control of the U.S. Senate appeared to fall short, with Democrats picking up only one Republican-held seat while six other races remained undecided early on Wednesday.Democrats defeated Republican Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona but lost the Alabama seat held by Democratic Senator Doug Jones.
To win the majority in the Senate, Democrats would need to pick up three Republican seats if Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is elected president and Senator Kamala Harris wields the tie-breaking vote as vice president.
But the Democratic path to victory narrowed sharply as results poured in and the final outcome may not
Donald Trump declared election victory on Wednesday morning despite the fact that millions of votes remain uncounted, calling the process a 'fraud on the American people' and claiming he would go to the Supreme Court to challenge the result.
Neither the President nor Joe Biden has yet reached the 270 electoral college votes they need to claim the White House and ballot counting will continue throughout the day.
The election will come down to the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The lead keeps bouncing between the two candidates in each state. Pennsylvania has said will keep counting
After Last Night
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I went to bed at 2:00 a.m. (Central) thinking President Trump had won the election. The morning after the result is in doubt. It’s too damn close. The purpose of this post is to invite readers to weigh in with comments while we await additional results.
President Trump does not appear to have added any states to those he won in 2016 and appears likely to lose a few this time around. The PredictIt presidential election betting market has the president facing long odds for reelection.
Cocaine Mitch was not only reelected to a seventh term by a wide margin, he figures to remain Senate Majority Leader.
A week and a half ago, pollster Frank Luntz…
…told Fox News on Thursday night that if poll predictions are wrong about the 2020 election between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, his "profession is done" in terms of faith and confidence from the public.
It’s time to stick a fork into Frank, he’s done.
It may be uncertain who will win, what with Democrats shutting vote counting overnight in Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, in order to determine how many votes the need to “discover” so as to hand their Electoral College votes to Biden,
Twitter censored the Trump campaign Tuesday night, slapping a warning label on a tweet claiming victory in South Carolina. The Team Trump account posted that “President @realDonaldTrump wins #SouthCarolina!” shortly after 8 p.m., an hour after polls closed. Mr. Trump did win the state—unsurprisingly since no Democratic presidential candidate has won South Carolina in nearly a half-century. The 2020 Biden-Harris ticket made little effort to win the state and no handicapper saw a Democratic victory there. Still, the Silicon Valley giant decided that the victory claim was was premature because it hadn’t been called by enough legacy news organizations.
This is a subject I was harping on in my posts and on social media for the last few days and we’re drawing closer to having an answer. We still don’t know if Donald Trump will win a second term in the White House, but what was even more important was the fate of the Senate. Without the majority in the upper chamber, even with a Trump victory, the dynamic engine that’s been filling judicial openings across the country with constitutional originalists would be slowed to a crawl. Similarly, if the chamber is turned over to Chuck Schumer and his buddies, a potential Joe Biden presidency would run wild,
“This is the worst return on investment in the history of American politics,” Lindsey Graham quipped in his upbeat victory speech overnight. Graham meant the hundreds of millions of dollars that “all the liberals in California and New York” spent on Senate races in South Carolina, Kentucky, and North Carolina, among others. The same can be said about all of the effort and money poured into polling this cycle. Graham also took a shot at pollsters in the same breath, telling them, “You have no idea what you’re doing.” Fact check: mostly true. Count Washington Post columnist Gary Abernathy among the unimpressed.
Dems’ dream of adding states and
packing SCOTUS shattered by likely
GOP retention of Senate majority replies
packing SCOTUS shattered by likely
GOP retention of Senate majority replies
Our descent to banana republic status has been postponed. My nightmare scenario was that the Democrats would gain the power to add DC and Puerto Rico as states and pack the Supreme Court with enough new justices to approve anything they want, including limiting firearms to National Guard members, and deciding that whatever they call “hate speech” isn’t protected by the First Amendment. But for that to happen, they need to control the presidency (which may or may not happen), the House (which they appear to retain control of), and the Senate, which it looks like they have lost and therefore will be unable to abolish the filibuster.
We are told that we can't gather together even if we haven't tested positive for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
That's the word from the CDC and other bureaucracies and state governments, the former of which had also carved out an exception for protestors and rioters.
We can't go to church if we have no symptoms and haven't tested positive, nor can we go to indoor dining or many other places
For months we have been told that even if we are asymptomatic, we can be spreading the disease.
We close down businesses, sporting events, schools, and other things if so much as one person has tested positive.
Is the U.S. on track to see its first election utterly stolen in front of its eyes? The way Venezuela's Hugo Chavez used to do it in the face of huge, huge enthusiastic crowds protesting against him back in Caracas?
How else to explain strange doings like these? (Snip for tweet) Michigan, too, needs some extra time to count the ballots. And so did North Carolina. And so did all of the states where Trump was running ahead -- Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan... The counting suddenly shut down. Arizona went down a suspicious 90 minutes before the announcement that the state had flipped to Biden.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins was leading Democratic challenger Sara Gideon early Wednesday in a record-setting U.S. Senate race with national implications. With 85 percent of precincts reporting shortly after 2:30 a.m., Collins held a 51 percent to 43 percent advantage over Gideon while independents Lisa Savage and Max Linn were trailing far behind at 5 percent and 2 percent, respectively. Collins had led Gideon, who is speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, throughout the night but saw the gap shrink as more populous, left-leaning communities in southern and coastal Maine reported their results. The major question hanging over
After all the upheaval of the past year and the drama and turmoil of President Donald Trump's first term, Wisconsin once again went down to the wire in the 2020 election, with Democrat Joe Biden holding a lead of around 20,000 votes with almost all the unofficial returns in.
That is very close to Trump's winning margin in 2016.
Biden overtook Trump in early morning hours when the city of Milwaukee finally reported its roughly 170,000 absentee votes, which were overwhelmingly Democratic. Then late returns from Green Bay and the city of Kenosha added to his slender lead.
The final results aren’t in yet, thanks almost entirely to the Democrats’ push for universal mail-in voting, which have delayed results in three key states and made committing election fraud a lot easier. We will have plenty to say once we finally have election results.
But we do know a few things already.
The polls were wildly wrong, again. We wrote in this space a while ago that the so-called shy Trump voters were real and that they could have a big impact on the election. Whoever wins, we were right about that.
In one of the most-watched congressional races in the country, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX-21) has staved off Democratic opponent Wendy Davis. He emerged victorious by 52 percent and secured just over 230,000 votes.
Roy was outspent 2 to 1 in a race that featured national PAC’s intervening on both sides. Both Roy and Davis vastly outperformed the vote totals of the 2016 and 2018 races in the 21st Congressional District.
Two years ago, Roy escaped the “Beto Wave” by 2.6 percent in his first campaign. In this race, he outperformed the 2018 numbers by over 50,000 votes and 1.6 percent. Davis outperformed the 2018 nominee Joseph Kopser by 33,000 votes.
Democrats predicted they’d see a blue wave on down ballot races but as of Wednesday morning, those hopes have been dashed. Appearing on MSNBC, Politico’s Jake Sherman told viewers in no uncertain terms that the 2020 election was an “abject disaster” for Democrats waking up in Washington.
“There’s no other way to explain this,” he said. (Snip for tweet) The same message went out to readers in the Playbook:
TUESDAY WAS AN ABJECT DISASTER for Democrats in Washington. To imagine the amount of soul searching and explaining the party will have to do after Tuesday is absolutely dizzying. The infighting will be bloody --
“We finally flipped it.”
That was the reaction of Tom McCabe, the chairman of the Mahoning County Republican Party at a jubilant campaign headquarters on Market Street in Youngstown, Ohio. The win here not only helped propel Donald J. Trump to his easy victory in the Buckeye State, it also marked the first time a Republican won in this county in nearly 50 years. No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio, and only two Democrats have ever won the White House without it — Grover Cleveland and John Kennedy nearly 100 years later. Trump, who was called the winner of the state,
Identity Politics Hits the Wall
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As of this writing (midnight eastern) it is still too close to call. The upper midwest states will make the difference, and it may take several days (or several weeks of court cases) to determine the winner. But two things are clear already: there has been an even bigger epic failure of the mainstream polls than there was in 2016. A related point is that the high turnout—perhaps the largest since 1908—appears to have helped Trump and Republicans.
The second thing is a much bigger story. The data we have so far seems to indicate that Trump’s share of the white vote actually fell from 2016,
I know I should be writing about the election, but I think we could all use some comic relief. The New Yorker has published an excerpt of Obama’s much delayed memoir, A Promised Land, and one particular passage cries out for deconstruction. (snip) "Despite having grown up in Hawaii, I have never learned to sail a boat; it wasn’t a pastime my family could afford." (snip) Bill Ayers served as a merchant seaman before he got into the revolution business and infused his knowledge of the sea into his books as well as into Obama’s 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, on which Ayers served as literary first mate.
With Republican President Donald Trump leading Wisconsin in early returns for most of the night, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is now managing a razor-thin lead in the state after Milwaukee County delivered results from thousands of absentee ballots.
The race, however, still hangs in the balance, with absentee ballot results in Kenosha and Brown Counties still outstanding.
Absentee ballot returns are expected to arrive shortly from Brown County and Kenosha County.
Election night revealed a few disturbing items that should trouble freedom-loving Americans.
First that the race is even this tight speaks to disturbing number of Americans who are woefully uninformed. Second, Fox News has gone over to the dark side, or, rather, the left. And third, the level of coordination to make this race close is stunning.
That the senile and corrupt Joe Biden could finish so strong speaks to either the gullibility or unseriousness of far too many Americans. Biden obviously has mental acuity issues and has a history of corruption
President Donald Trump, addressing the uncertain election results early Wednesday morning, reminded the nation that he had predicted a contested result since Democrats had begun urging states to send mail-in ballots to millions of voters.Trump was leading in several key battleground states that had not reported final results because they were waiting to count absentee and mail-in ballots.In Arizona, Trump was trailing at the time he spoke, because Election Day votes had not yet been counted, while mail-in votes had. The Trump campaign insisted that it could still win Arizona and pushed back against Fox News, which had called the state for Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump allies have lined up to blast pro-Biden sections of the American media after predictions of a Democratic landslide crumbled and the race went down to the wire. The president's conservative cheerleaders took to the airwaves to lampoon U.S. commentators for consistently writing him off during the course of the campaign. Despite a strong showing in opinion polls and forecasts from pundits, Biden has failed to flip crucial battleground states such as Florida and Ohio blue. Biden supporters are cautioning that a rally for President Trump could be a 'red mirage' and that mail-in ballots will tip the balance for Biden when counted.
Former college football coach Tommy Tuberville has ousted Democratic Sen. Doug Jones from his U.S. Senate seat in Alabama.The New York Times called the race just after 10:00 p.m. with 34% of precincts reporting on Tuesday night. Tuberville was favored to win the seat in the deep red state. Before Jones, the seat belonged to former Sen. Jeff Sessions, who resigned from the Senate to serve as President Trump’s attorney general.According to Real Clear Politics, Tuberville has led Jones by no less than 8 points for the length of the race, and the latest poll conducted by Auburn University favored Tuberville to win the race by 11 points.
President Trump declared himself the likely victor of the presidential election in an early Wednesday speech and accused Democrats of attempting to tank his “phenomenal” results and help Joe Biden through fraud.“I want to thank the American people for their tremendous support. Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight. And a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we won’t stand for it,” Trump said in a speech from the White House East Room that began at 2:21 am. “We were getting ready for big celebration. We were winning everything, and all of a sudden
Demonstrators near the White House in what is now called Black Lives Matter Plaza unfurled a huge banner Tuesday evening reading “Remove Trump” as polls began to close across the nation on Election Day. Crowds gathered throughout the afternoon in the Washington, DC, plaza, which was renamed in June in the aftermath of violent protests, for what was billed as the first night of a week of protests, aimed at creating public pressure on President Donald Trump to leave office if the election result is still undetermined.Democrats and the media have suggested that Trump would not leave office if he lost the election, though Trump has repeatedly
Multiple Republican candidates running for the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday night upset the Democrat incumbents that they were running against.
Among the wins was Republican Carlos Gimenez, the former mayor of Miami-Dade County, who beat Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in Florida’s 26th Congressional District. WSVN 7 News reported: Gimenez beat Mucarsel-Powell 52% to 48% of votes, with 93% of the precincts reporting. In a speech to his supporters, the mayor said that he wants to work as a bipartisan congressman, unlike his opponent, he said, who’s only working solely for her party. …
Results from major swing states are pouring in as President Trump has notched victories in Texas, Ohio and Florida Tuesday night while Democratic nominee Joe Biden will take Arizona and Minnesota, the Fox News Decision Desk projects. But the results in multiple other major battleground states are still unclear after a contentious campaign that was rocked by the coronavirus pandemic. And Biden, in remarks to supporters, acknowledged a result of the election could take until Wednesday morning or later. "Your patience is commendable. We knew this was gonna go long ... maybe tomorrow morning
President Donald Trump has again won Ohio, the Associated Press declared early Wednesday morning.
Trump led former Vice President Joe Biden with 53% of the vote with more than 5.6 million votes counted.
Biden led early in the night when absentee ballots cast in-person and by mail were tabulated. Trump took the lead a little before 10 p.m. and the major cable networks projected a Trump win around midnight.
At least 221,500 absentee ballots and 47,100 provisional ballots were still outstanding.
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst will win Iowa’s Senate race, NBC News projected early Wednesday. The first-term senator is expected to defeat Democrat Theresa Greenfield, who acknowledged in a statement early Wednesday that she “came up short.” In a statement of her own, Ernst said she is “honored by the opportunity to serve Iowa for another 6 years.” The projected result further reduces the chances of Democrats flipping in the Senate in the 2020 election, after the GOP flipped Alabama’s Democratic-held Senate seat and notched projected wins in Texas, South Carolina and Kentucky. Democrat John Hickenlooper is projected to defeat Republican
FOX NEWS HATES THEIR AUDIENCE.
Boy, do they hate their audience. The New York Times correctly predicted a Trump victory in Florida at 7:30. The NY Times gave President Trump a 95% chance of winning the state.(Photo) Trump is now leading in Florida by nearly 400,000 votes in Florida. 91% of the vote is in. FOX News called Virginia for Joe Biden with 0% of the vote in. They later had to pull their call. But FOX News won’t call Florida for Trump! They don’t want to give President Trump the lead!
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R) is projected to win reelection to represent Texas’s 2nd District for another term in the House of Representatives.
The Associated Press called the race shortly before 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, fended off a challenge from Democrat Sima Ladjevardian, a Houston attorney, health care activist and Iranian immigrant who previously advised former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s (D) 2018 Senate campaign.
Crenshaw’s victory means he will serve at least another two-year term in Congress. He was first elected during the 2018 midterms, meaning this will be his second term.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden said he believed he was on track to win the election in a speech in Wilmington after midnight on Election Day with the 2020 race hanging in the balance. “We feel good about where we are. We really do. I’m here to tell you tonight that we believe we’re on track to win this election,” the former veep told a crowd of supporters with many key swing states still undecided. In an incredibly brief three-minute speech, Biden called on the nation to “be patient” with tens of millions of mail-in votes posted during the COVID-19 pandemic still uncounted.
Republican Maria Elvira Salazar is projected to defeat Democrat incumbent Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL) in Florida’s 27th Congressional District, according to reports. WPLG Local 10 News reported Salazar defeating the freshman House Democrat in the Miami-Dade district. With 92 percent of the vote reported, the New York Times showed Salazar leading the incumbent 51.4 percent to 48.6 percent: (Tweets) In 2018, Shalala defeated Salazar 51.8 percent to 45.8 percent. Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez (R) also unseated Democrat incumbent Debbie Mucarsel-Powell for Florida’s 26th Congressional District. Both wins result in a net gain of two for Republicans in the House. With 95 percent of the vote in,
GOP new comer Madison
Cawthorn wins North
Carolina congressional
seat vacated by Mark Meadows replies
Cawthorn wins North
Carolina congressional
seat vacated by Mark Meadows replies
Republican newcomer Madison Cawthorn on Tuesday night was called the winner of the U.S. House seat in western North Carolina that was vacated by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
Cawthorn, 25, thus became the youngest person elected to Congress since the late 1700s.
The candidate -- who first catapulted to GOP stardom after speaking at the Republican National Convention in August, getting up from his wheelchair at one point on stage -- defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. Moe Davis, D-N.C., to capture the 11th Congressional District seat, according to The Associated Press, which first called the election results.