Both Fox and CNN denounced Trump's claim that continuing to count votes would be illegal. On Fox, Chris Wallace said, "This is an extremely flammable situation and the president just threw a match into it. He hasn't won these states ... the president doesn't get to say he won states ... there's no question that all these states can continue to count votes." On CNN, Jake Tapper declared, “what the president just said is undemocratic and false and premature."
Now the battle begins, first just to complete voting counts, which will shift blue in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And the Senate is still up in the air, with only the more predictable flips being called--a Dem loss in Alabama (I'm sad about Doug Jones, actually), and two Dem gains, in Arizona and Colorado. It's all especially terrible for those of us from states like California, where we are hostage, election after election, to the whims of a few perennial swing states, many of which are also bad at counting.
I have some early thoughts on the Edison Research exit poll posted at the New York Times. It confirms David Sirota's take, especially the first and last items, "Democrats' weak economic message hugely helped Trump," and "A large percentage of Americans have lost their minds."
1. Let's start with the economy (Trump in red, Biden in blue)
This one is extremely annoying.
People whose main issue is the economy went with Trump by 4:1! These aren't necessarily the people who know the most about economics (obviously). "The economy" seems to have become a proxy for pro-business ideology--tax cuts, deregulation, etc., rather than being a chance to evaluate policy performance. This is a massive failure for the Democrats, and confirms both of Sirota's points above.
No less absurd is the Republican vote for the guy who addresses public safety by endangering it.
A bit more on the economy: incumbents always do very well with people who think the economy is good (for them). Covid-19 and economic inequality notwithstanding, over 40 percent of respondents say they're better off than 4 years ago. The surprise to me is that only a fifth of respondents say they are worse off now. A third of even those people voted for Trump, again confirming the point that Biden didn't have a strong enough message to beat Trump with the 50 percent who think the economy is not so good or poor (below).
Finally, union households. They are only a fifth of respondents, and Trump gets a percentage of them that should embarrass Democrats, or unions, or both. Forty percent of union families voted for guy whose appointees have done serious damage to the status of unions, quite deliberately.
2. Race and Gender
One story was that whites were still largely Trumpers but that white women had had enough. This was wrong. 55 percent of white women stuck with Trump. For me, this is big surprise number 2.
3. College.
Another story was the educational divide: non-college people were said to resent the rule of experts and B.A. know-it-alls. Trump was to lose the college crowd, especially women, but score big with the non-college crowd.
Trump hung on to white women and won a narrow victory with white women college grads. College curbs but doesn't eliminate white enthusiasm for a president who so clearly elevates money and power over knowledge that he makes George W. Bush look like William Faulkner. The most anti-intellectual president in modern history still gets half of white college grads -- and slightly more women than men.
The main surprise here is among white men, where college cuts their Trump support two-thirds to under half.
4. Party Identity.
The red state / blue state dichotomy is a tedious cliché. That doesn't make it wrong. What seems to be happening is that D v. R isn't about parties anymore, but breeds of American.
Note two things. First, the major parties each only have a third of the electorate. Second, they each had nearly 95 percent candidate loyalty. There are not so much two parties as two Americas. I dislike writing that stupid sentence but it seems to be true.
The question for Trump gets the same numbers: the other party's candidate inspires concern or fear in 90 + percent of either party. And that's true even for an "Uncle Joe" moderate like Biden.
A silver lining is tentative vindication of people like Sanders and Warren who tried to talk the Democrat establishment out of their faith in moderation and the centrist voter. There's going to be hell to pay for the strategists who spent millions on white "persuadables" instead of on first-time Latinx voters, for example.
Party also beats region. West and East are more Democratic as we already knew, but not by a landslide. Biden got nearly half of the South, the same as his score in the Midwest. We now have country vs. city parties--confirmation of a trend people have analyzed for years.
5. Pandemic politics
This exit poll confirms that in America, there is no independent reality--only a party line.
Equally embarrassing is the failure of rocketing Covid infection rates to make many people rethink Trump's performance. The same goes for the split on reopening vs. containment. Democrats did not break through the wall on the basic point that if Covid isn't contained the economy won't rebuild. There's lots of bad news here about the country's epistemic competence.
This polls has huge gaps on issues and better data will be flooding out. And as of noon in London the count is far from over.
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