“The political polling profession is done. It is devastating for my industry.”
— GOP pollster Frank Luntz, quoted by Axios, after serious polling misses in the 2020 election.
“The political polling profession is done. It is devastating for my industry.”
— GOP pollster Frank Luntz, quoted by Axios, after serious polling misses in the 2020 election.
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien says the president plans to “immediately” request a recount in the battleground state of Wisconsin, where the race remains close, the AP reports.
President Trump is complaining on Twitter again about counting votes:
“They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!”
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Wisconsin has not been called yet, but Joe Biden remains ahead of Donald Trump by 20,697 votes.
Former Gov. Scott Walker (R) called Biden’s lead a “high hurdle” for Trump to overcome in a possible recount.
Former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) told Fox Business that “there’s no way” Trump can overcome his current deficit in Wisconsin, and Biden is going to win the state.
Roughly one quarter of non-white voters cast their ballots for Trump, according to an Edison exit poll.
National Review: “If the poll is an accurate reflection of final results, Trump will have won over more non-white voters than any Republican since Richard Nixon, who won 32 percent of the non-white vote in 1960 but lost to John F. Kennedy. Trump will also have improved on his performance in the 2016 election when he won 21 percent of the non-white vote.”
“Representatives of the U.S. Postal Service were called before a federal judge on Wednesday after the agency’s failure to comply with a court-ordered sweep of facilities to locate some 300,000 ballots that had reportedly entered the postal system and not been scanned for delivery to election authorities,” the AP reports.
Multiple sources close to President Trump tell ABC News that they believe he has at least one clear but complicated path to re-election.
Trump would need to hold Pennsylvania, Georgia and pull off a win in Arizona but they admit will be tough.
Use the interactive map to test this scenario.
Some findings from a post-election Public Opinion Strategies (R) survey:
Joe Pompeo: “It was around 2:30 a.m. when all hell broke loose. That’s when President Donald Trump did the unhinged, dangerous, Democracy-destabilizing thing that we all hoped we wouldn’t have to see him do, giving a speech at the White House in which he prematurely declared victory even as millions upon millions of legitimate votes were still being counted. The goal, in all of its authoritarian bluster, was to get out in front of a result that might not land in his favor. But anyone who was still awake and glued to their screens as the propaganda unfolded got a fast and forceful reality check.”
“The networks quickly and aggressively called bullshit on Trump’s remarks, either breaking away from the speech or butting in with fact-checks.”
Twitter flagged two of President Trump’s tweets, including one that alleged a “surprise ballot dump” in key battleground states where he’d previously been leading.
“With Nevada elections results too close to call the morning after Election Day, there will be a one-day pause in the releasing of any new vote totals,” the Las Vegas Review Journal reports.
“Joe Biden is projected to receive more votes for president than any other candidate in U.S. election history,” The Week reports.
“With many precincts still reporting results, he had already gathered 69,165,955 votes on Wednesday morning, compared to former President Barack Obama’s 2008 popular vote total of 69,498,516.”
David Graham: “Surveys badly missed the results, predicting an easy win for former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic pick-up in the Senate, and gains for the party in the House. Instead, the presidential election is still too close to call, Republicans seem poised to hold the Senate, and the Democratic edge in the House is likely to shrink.”
“This is a disaster for the polling industry and for media outlets and analysts that package and interpret the polls for public consumption, like FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times’ Upshot, and The Economist’s election unit. They now face serious existential questions. But the greatest problem posed by the polling crisis is not in the presidential election, where the snapshots provided by polling are ultimately measured against an actual tally of votes: As the political cliche goes, the only poll that matters is on Election Day.”
“The real catastrophe is that the failure of the polls leaves Americans with no reliable way to understand what we as a people think outside of elections—which in turn threatens our ability to make choices, or to cohere as a nation.”
“This isn’t law, this isn’t politics, this is theater. And let’s be blunt: it’s the theater of authoritarianism.”
— ABC News correspondent Terry Moran, quoted by CNN, on President Trump’s false claim of victory in the election last night.
“President Trump said he will go to the U.S. Supreme Court because he wants ‘all voting to stop,’ as he tries to hold on to early leads in key battleground states,” Bloomberg reports.
“He won’t be able to go there immediately and it’s not clear he has a legal argument that could affect the outcome of the election.”
“Cases typically work their way to the nation’s highest court after a ruling by a local judge and then other appeals courts. In 2000, it took more than a month before the Supreme Court issued the landmark Bush v. Gore ruling that ultimately decided that year’s election.”
Dan Balz: “For four years, President Trump has sought to undermine the institutions of a democratic society, but never so blatantly as in the early morning hours of Wednesday. His attempt to falsely claim victory and to subvert the election itself by calling for a halt to vote-counting represents the gravest of threats to the stability of the country.”
“Millions of votes remain to be counted, votes cast legally under the laws of the states. Until they are all counted, the outcome of the election remains in doubt. Either he or former vice president Joe Biden could win an electoral college majority, but neither has yet done so, no matter what he says. Those are the facts, for which the president shows no respect.”
“A president who respected the Constitution would let things play out.”
Jim VandeHei: “Now, whatever the resolution, close to half the country is going to feel robbed. Many of them will be angry, and will refuse to accept the winner as the legit president of all the people.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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