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| A plausible Biden/Harris landslide victory, one possibility |
I haven't been paying close attention to the 2020 elections in the United States because I've been so busy with work and some family projects. Today I checked up on the Senate and House races, and studied the map to see how the Presidential election is likely to go. Here is a summary of what I've learned.
Will the Democratic Party take control of the Senate. Probably yes. Here is how:
In the Senate, The Republican challenger Tuberville will defeat Jones and take back a seat for the Republicans in Alabama. It is very unlikely that Jones can hold his seat, but it would not be a miracle if he somehow did.
But the Republican incumbents Collins in Maine, Tillis in North Carolina, Gardner in Colorado, and McSally in Arizona will all lose their seats to the Democratic challengers (Gideon in Maine, Cunningham in North Carolina, Hickenlooper in Colorado, and Kelly in Arizona). This gives the Democrats four new seats. Colorado and Cunningham are the closest of these races; Maine and Arizona are pretty obviously going Democratic.
The result is a net shift of three seats from Republican to Democratic. The Republicans will control 50 seats and the Democrats will control 48. Two independents caucus with the Democrats, so the Senate will be split 50-50, with the Vice President casting the deciding vote.
There are four races to watch which, if the Democrats win any one of them, they could get up to 49 seats and put the Republicans down to 49 seats, so that the two independent Senators would give the Democrats a 51-49 advantage. Here are those races:
Iowa, where the Democratic challenger Greenfield could possibly defeat the Republican incumbent Ernst. If this happens, the Democrats will have the majority in the Senate without needing the Vice President to break tie votes. Iowa is the tightest and most significant Senate race if you think the Democrats are pretty sure of taking Colorado and North Carolina (and of course they will take Arizona and Maine).
Montana, where the Democratic candidate Bullock might possibly defeat the incumbent Daines, is another opportunity for the Democratic Party. Bullock would be a conservative Democrat, and his chances of actually defeating Daines are not very good. It's still a close race, however.
In Georgia, Ossoff could possibly defeat the Republican incumbent Perdue, but I’m not counting on it. The Republicans are spending a lot of money to keep Perdue in office, but if the Democrats pull off a landslide in the Presidential race, maybe Ossoff could win in Georgia.
In South Carolina, Harrison has a slight chance of defeating Graham. It would be a huge victory for the Democrats to take a seat in South Carolina. It is not likely, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility.
So, if you hope Democrats really get control of the Senate, be looking to the returns from South Carolina, Georgia, Montana, and Iowa. Iowa is the best chance for giving Democrats control (assuming they win in Colorado and North Carolina as well as their fairly certain wins in Arizona and Maine).
If you want Republicans to keep control of the Senate, you need to hope that somehow the Democrats don’t win in Arizona, or Maine, or North Carolina, or Colorado. In all four of those races, it looks like the Republicans will probably lose, but the races are close enough to imagine that the Republicans might hold on to one or more of those seats. So, the Republicans can still hold out hope. Republicans often point out that polls tend to underestimate support for Republican candidates, but most polling experts have tried to improve their sampling remove the systematic bias that made the 2016 elections such a surprise.
If the Democrats totally dominate the election, they could even pick up the seat in Kansas where Bollier seems pretty far behind the Republican Marshall, but an upset does look possible. Likewise it’s within the realm of possibility that Jones, the Democratic incumbent in Alabama, could somehow keep his seat against the Republican challenger Tuberville, but that seems unlikely. I've seen claims that the Democrats could pick up a seat in Texas, Kentucky, or Mississippi, but those all seem unlikely to me. Democratic Party supporters are certainly hoping they could win those long-shot races.
In the House, the only district I really care about is my own Illinois 13th district, where the Democratic challenger Betsy Londrigan has a good chance of defeating incumbent Republican Rodney Davis. I think she will.
Aside from that, it’s very likely that the Democrats will pick up four seats to add to their majority (North Carolina’s 2nd and 6th districts, Georgia’s 7th district, and the 23rd district in Texas). There are about 26 seats that are toss-ups, and those are evenly split between Democratic and Republican seats. In Iowa the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Districts are likely to remain Democratic. Interesting toss-up races where I think the Democrats might pick up seats include the 21st, 22nd, and 24th districts in Texas; the 1st district in Ohio; the 5th district in Indiana; the 25th district in California; and the 10th district in Pennsylvania. I also think Democrats could pick up seats in a few districts that normally lean Republican, including my own (13th district in Illinois) as well as the 3rd district in Ohio, the Montana and Alaska all-state districts (Alaska and Montana only have one Representative), the first district in Minnesota, and the 3rd and 6th district in Michigan. Keep on eye on these races as returns come in on Election night.
In the Presidential Race, Biden and Harris are almost sure to win.
They will easily win in the “safe” Democratic states:
Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New York, New Mexico, New Jersey, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont.
That gives them 187 electoral college votes right there.
They will also win in some states that usually vote for Democrats, including: Colorado, Virginia, Maine’s 1st District, and Minnesota. That gives them an additional 33 for a total of 220.
They are also going to win some states where the races are a bit closer, including Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Maine’s 2nd District, Nebraska’s 2nd District, Michigan, and North Carolina. That will give them an additional 79 votes, so they end up with 299, and they only need 271 to win.
In addition, they could very well win in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Iowa. If they do that, they add 58 votes in the Electoral college, and end up with 357 electoral college votes. But, they don’t need any of those states if Florida is a clear win for Biden, and I think it will be.
But, suppose I’m wrong about Florida and North Carolina. That would knock them down to 255 votes before adding the “possible wins” in NH, PA, WI, OH, and IA. They would only need to win either Pennsylvania or Ohio to get from 255 to over 271. If they won Iowa and Wisconsin, they could lose both Pennsylvania and Ohio.
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| A close race with a Biden/Harris victory without winning Florida. One of many plausible outcomes in the upcoming Presidential election. |
I think Trump is going to win West Virginia, South Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, the 1st and 3rd districts in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Alaska. So, Trump is sure to get at least 191 electoral college votes. But, I’m not sure if he will win Georgia, Iowa, or Ohio. And, I think Biden and Harris have about an equal chance compared to Trump of winning in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Florida and North Carolina, which are supposedly too-close-to-call seem to me clearly likely to go for Biden and Harris. The states that lean for Biden but seem competitive for Trump such as Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona also seem very likely to go for Biden and Harris.
Factors to consider include: Democrats are more likely to have voted by mail, and in some places the mailed ballots will not be counted until after Election Day evening. So, in some races, Republicans might appear to be leading on Election Day evening, but Democrats will win after all the mailed ballots are counted. Some people are concerned that there will be malicious attempts to stop counting votes after Election Day, but I don't see how such attempts could be supported in courts.
Recent polls show that many Democrats expect rioting from White Nationalists if Trump loses, and many Republicans expect rioting from BLM and Anti-Fascists if Biden loses. Many Independents and non-affiliated people fear violence from both sides. Looking at the polls, I'm pleased to see that almost no one thinks their own side is likely to resort to violence if they lose. When polls show people telling the surveys "we will be violent if we lose" we know we are trouble, but when the fears are all directed at the "other side" the expectations of violence are less likely to be signals that actual violence will occur.
****** UPDATE AFTER THE ELECTION *******
A month before the election, in retrospect, I was too optimistic about Biden’s chances in several states. I was very confident that he would win Florida and North Carolina, and he lost both. In the weeks between when I posted this and election eve, I had learned enough about Florida to guess that Biden would probably lose it, but I remained surprised by Trump’s victory in North Carolina. I became less certain that Biden would win Ohio, but more hopeful (even confident) that Biden could win Wisconsin. By election Eve, I had a “pessimistic” projection that was only wrong about two states: I never guessed that Biden would win Georgia, and I never guessed that Trump would win North Carolina. My pessimistic projection, which was correct on 48 of 50 states, was based on an assumption that polling models were generally oversampling Biden supporters by about 5-percentage-points, and Trump would beat the polling forecasts by about that much. Since polls had Biden up by more than 5-percentage-points in critical states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and significantly up in Arizona and Nevada and North Carolina, I watched in the first hour that returns came back. At first, the returns apparel to show Biden far out-performing the polling in Ohio, Texas, and some other states, so I was pretty sure that polls had not been biased by more than 5-points in Trump’s favor. As the night wore on, and I could compare results in some states to the polling, it did appear that Biden was underperforming the polls by a significant amount, but not by such a great amount that the 5-percentage-point bias in polls would be exceeded in most of the critical battleground states. And, as I looked into where the votes had not been counted yet (mail-in ballots and big city areas), it was pretty clear that Biden would win in most of the close states. So, in other words, after about 8:00 pm on Election Day evening I was no longer in any doubt that Biden would win.
As it turned out, the race was very close, and much closer than I had imagined, in Arizona (0.3 percentage-points), Pennsylvania (1.2 percentage points), and Wisconsin (0.7 percentage points). Michigan and Nevada ended up right around where I expected (Biden won by 2.8 percentage points in Michigan, 2.4 percentage points in Nevada). The states where I was totally wrong in all my predictions finally had Trump winning in North Carolina by 0.4 percentage points and Biden winning in Georgia by 0.2 percentage points.
Trump received almost 74 million votes, and Biden got 80.1 million (Biden won the popular vote election by 3.9 percentage points). I was surprised that Trump received (slightly) over 47% of the popular vote, as I expected him to win about 46 percentage points.
The aftermath of the election opened my eyes to the interpretation that about 30% of the American population has given up their rational thinking and joined a sort of cult of Trump, which does not really bear much relationship to traditional conservatism, but seems more in line with the American tradition we could trace to the Know Nothing Party, the John Birch Society, Charles Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh, the Ku Klux Klan, the Christian Identity Movement, and other sorts of reactionary populists who resisted diversity and viewed the world through a lens of conspiracy theories. It occurs to me that if the United had a multi-party system with a party of Trump populism, a traditional Conservative party (never Trump Republicans), a labor party (liberal Democrats), a centrist party (moderate Democrats), and the Greens and Libertarians, the Trump populist party might easily have the plurality. I'm just guessing here, but in a system with the six parties I've outlined, I guess the support for them might be like this (assuming there was no longer a dominant two-party system, which depresses support for Libertarians and Greens):
The American Right (about 48% of the population)
30% Trump Populism
5% Libertarians
13% Republicans
The American Left (about 52% of the population)
26% Moderate Democrats
6% Greens
20% Labor (Liberal and Radical Democrats)
Before the election aftermath, I had supposed that traditional Republicans who voted for Trump were about half of his support, and now that polling is showing how many people are believing Trump’s claims about the stolen election, I am realizing that those traditional (and reasonable) Republicans probably make up only about a third or less of the electorate who voted for Trump.
I tend to vote third-party, and I noticed that Howie Hawkins won only 0.3% of the national vote (nearly 400,000 votes). The Green Party should probably focus on running candidates in local elections and state legislature districts, and put fewer resources into campaigns for the US Senate or the Presidential Office. Back when the Green Party formed as a political party I thought it was a mistake, and thought the best way to promote the core values of the Green Movement was to work for them inside both the Republican and Democratic Parties, but now I think possibly Green Party candidates can do good services to their communities by running for school boards, county boards, city councils, and maybe when one of the two dominant parties has a “lock” on a state senate or house seat, the Green Party could offer an alternative so fewer races are uncontested. In the Illinois 96th House District a Green Candidate (John Keating) won 4.1% (1,607 votes) in a race against a fairly popular Democratic Incumbent (Sue Scherer, who won with 20,183) and a serious Republican challenger (Charles McGorray, who received 17,322 votes). Earning 4.1% is better than earning 0.5% (Howie Hawkins got 0.5% of the Presidential vote in Illinois). In Governor races Green Party candidates have done well in Illinois: Rich Whitney won 10.36% of the vote in the 2010 Gubernatorial race, but then dropped to 2.7% when he ran again in 2014.
