Election Night Coverage
The Open Thread
Hi everyone - I hope all my American subscribers voted!
As to tonight, I assume that everyone will be watching four different channels, talking to their friends, having an extra cocktail, etc.
So the plan is to leave this story open for edits and comments from everyone.
I expect to update when necessary, though you won’t get a new notification email every time I add something. I thought an hourly or half-hourly or even more frequent “PING” tonight might get irritating.
So if you leave the window open and occasionally re-fresh, you can keep up if you wish to on a regular basis.
And I’m serious about comments - chime in whenever.
And thanks for subscribing and let’s see what happens….
FIRST UPDATE
From the earliest returns a few thoughts…
If Trump keep Virginia within 8 points, even if he loses it will show a national trend that Harris may have problems.
As to the big DC suburbs in Virginia, Harris needs a two-to-one victory there. These are government workers and they want to keep their jobs.
Indianan, Kentucky, and Florida seem to be trending about the same as they did in both 2016 and 2020 – Trump has already been called the winner in two of them.
As for Georgia, watch carefully – Atlanta, like most big cities across the country for whatever reason tend to report results if ever…lol – Trumps needs to take at least 55% outside of the metroplex, in which all of us has changed planes.
That number is needed to for Trump to make sure that Atlanta doesn’t do what happened last time.
UPDATE TWO:
A fun Tweet, courtesy of Matt Taibbi:
So, so far:
Every state as gone as expected, no change there.
But a couple of notes: Biden beat Trump in Rhode Island by 60-40 – right now, Kamala leads Trump with (give or take) two-thirds of the vote by 52 to 45.
She’ll win the state, but that margin (like the margin in Virginia) is much smaller than expected.
That does not bode well for a national sense of the election…
Watch both states – the margin is an indicator for the swing state that matter.
NEW UPDATE
The Black Male Vote –
At this point, it seems that while Trump may not win the demographic nationally, certain indicators show that he will do better amongst Black men than any other Republican for a very long time.
One county in North Carolina, which is 48% black, is called Anson County It has not voted for a Republican since the post-civil war Reconstruction Era, until tonight.
The increase in this demographic could also be playing a role in how close Virginia is. As noted earlier, Harris – to illustrate her potential national (swing state) popularity – she needed to win Virginia by about 10 points.
Two thirds of the vote is in and she is still behind Trump. By the way, in the super Democrat, super government employee counties in northern Virginia, Harris is pulling about 9 points less than Biden.
Oops…
Is it done?
At this point it is quite possible – looking at the national margins/numbers, Harris may - looks like she needs a 3 million vote margin here – to not be even able to bitch about being the “popular votes” winner like Hillary did after she lost her election.
As to California, conrgrats to Nathan Hochman and the folks behind Prop 36 – those are done deals!
I’m trying to be calm enough to make it through because it’s going to be a long, long, night and maybe even days depending on the amount of cheating!