That’s a cynical take - in most democracies, you’d think it’s a good thing that voter turnout is higher as it speaks to an engaged populace, as opposed to an apathetic one. The sad thing is that I agree with you 
But people can justify it to themselves in different ways. I remember growing up in Louisiana during the race between Edwin Edwards and David Duke. Voters for Duke justified it by saying that they were voting against the crook, not for the racist.
I remember that race too, and my mom volunteered for the first time for the Edwards campaign. Those people who voted for Duke were, at best, tolerant and accepting of white supremacism.
(quoted by Procrustus, not written by Procrustus)
So let me see if I have this straight. We won’t know about Pennsylvania until sometime after 5 PM on Friday; and we won’t know about Nevada until Saturday or Sunday; and we don’t actually know about Arizona after all. So unless at least two of the other three remaining go for Biden in the meantime we’re not going to have even an unofficial call until at least late Friday night (and that’s leaving the lawsuits out of it.)
Or might we know about Pennsylvania (which has enough votes on its own to put him over) even before Allegheny County finishes counting, because they might announce the whole rest of the state sooner and the remaining margin may be greater than Allegheny’s remaining votes?
– in any case, I really need to go get something else done.
If anything, it sounds like these poor folks may be dragging their feet to ensure that they are NOT the tipping point.
Clark County NV registrar: “I am concerned for the safety of myself and my staff” (due to death threats).
This spreadsheet has been a balm. Thank you for sharing.
Although, the final spread will be larger. I think I saw Nate Silver or somebody like that estimate it will be about 4.3%.
Subconscious or not, I don’t see how you can call these people anything but racist.
Which would make more sense, since if Pennsylvania tips blue it’ll put Biden over on its own; so waiting doesn’t guarantee they’ll be the tipping state.
People are excellent at making justifications for their actions. We all do it.
It remains that you supported a given person and should not be surprised if you are called out for it. You (general “you”) can splutter a litany of excuses but you still supported the shithead.
I think this is a key point. The neoliberals starting with Clinton accepted the destruction of unions under Reagan, and replaced it with what I’d call “trickle-down” working-class support (patrician top-down handouts rather than collective empowerment of the working class). With no support from the neoliberals, the working class turns to the populist that speaks for them, and those who don’t embrace the racism part will still tolerate it for the empowerment of the group. Archie Bunker was a union member, after all.
Right wingers hate unions now. They’re convinced they caused offshoring and the death of american manufacturing. I don’t see them coming back in a big way any time soon.
Unless they are police unions. They love those.
When Barack Obama won in 2008 a friend of mine said “Everyone talks about how it was a blowout. He only got about seven percent more though, and that really isn’t a blowout at all.” He’s right; the Obama-McCain election was basically if you had 13 people, and 7 said Obama and 6 said McCain.
It used to happen that an election could be decided by double digits in the popular vote but that is not a thing anymore:
1948: Truman +4.5
1952: Eisenhower +10.9
1956: Eisenhower +15.4
1960: Kennedy +0.17
1964: Johnson +22.6
1968: Nixon +0.8
1972: Nixon +23.2
1976: Carter +2.1
1980: Reagan +9.7
1984: Reagan +18.2
1988: Bush +7.8
1992: Clinton +5.6
1996: Clinton +8.5
2000: Gore +0.5 (GWBush)
2004: GWBush +2.4
2008: Obama +7.2
2012: Obama +3.9
2016: Clinton +2.1 (Trump)
2020: Biden approx +3
The margins aren’t just thinning, but the EV allocations are getting much harder. States are VASTLY more polarized. For instance, in 1988, when Bush easily dispatched Dukakis and there was no substantial third party choice, only seven states gave him more than 60% of the vote, and only Utah was above 63. In 1996, when Clinton won pretty handily, only one blue state was more than 60% blue (not counting DC, which is crazy.) But in 2020 - a very close election where no one got a substantial majority of popular votes - at least seven states plus DC have gone over 60% for Biden, including an amazing 65.3% in the most populous state in the union, and ten are 60%+ for Trump.
I don’t have time to quantify this but it also seems most states are now fixed to a degree never true before. There were at least 35 states going in to the election where there was no reasonable chance at all they’d be anything other than what they were in 2016; we concentrate on the ones that might be, like Georgia or New Hampshire, but no one thought Trump would flip Connecticut or that Biden would flip Idaho. But the “blue here red there” thing wasn’t always like it is now… I mean, that started in 2000. Look at 1996. It looks nothing like the maps since 2000.
There probably is some level of racism going on, no doubt, but Trump voters include people who have voted for Obama and other Democrats in the past. I don’t think we will ever live in a country in which racism isn’t a factor that can be exploited politically. We can improve our democratic outcomes if we can get back to a point at which racism is something that is less pronounced. It’ll always be in the background, but I think the key is to make the more provincial Americans feel a little less threatened somehow.
How? I don’t know.
Yeah, I’m not saying the Dems should go back to the 1970s (Corbyn tried that in the UK and came up with complete failure). I don’t have an answer to that conundrum, except to focus on empowering economic messages in general.
True.
If what they feel threatened by is the inclusion of other people in our society, how do you make them feel less threatened without persecuting those they don’t like? Its not just a question of “how to go about it” – it is completely impossible.
Actually, @Sam_Stone is making a point many political scientists have made; voter turnout (in the absence of mandatory voting laws) is often a sign of other problems - a lack of faith in institutions, extreme hostility to the other side, stuff like that.
I don’t know if it’;s true, but it sounds like it might be. A person who believes the country is pretty good, and that the political candidate are all reasonably capable civil sevants, will be less motivated to vote. Turnout wasn’t higher in 2020 because voters just felt civic duty; it was specifically higher because they hate and mistrust one another. Biden voters felt Trump is an existential threat to the status of the USA as a democratic republic, and Trump voters feel Biden is a secret socialist who will make capitalism and Christianity illegal. I’m not bothsidesing it; Biden voters have good reason to think they’re right and Trump voters don’t. But that everyone feels that way isn’t good.
Wow, thank you for that. Have to admit that had not occurred to me.
I hope they remain safe.