Reagan still has one of the highest numbers. I think it’s reasonable to look at other factors – I just think this one is notable. Maybe convincing the opponents’ voters to stay home is a big part of a successful campaign, and by that measure, Biden’s wasn’t good. But in terms of encouraging one’s own voters to come out, Biden’s is one of the best in history.
The Wisconsin county that flipped blue and surprised me – Door County. Home to zillion dollar homes. (granted many are second homes). Maybe it was older folks (lots of retired folks) switching)
Having lived there a few years I always thought of it as very red (and not just due to cherries 
)
Brian
My parents, sister, and niece all still live there – they’re all liberal, and feel like they are totally surrounded by crazy Fox News nuts. So, I was really pretty surprised to see this (but pleasantly so).
I ended up on the e-mail list for Wisconsin Democrats after donating to the Princess Bride cast fundraiser. After that I got messages and e-mails from Mike Holmgren urging me to vote for Biden. I’m guessing he probably helped that number a little.
Given that Biden’s margin in the popular vote is likely to be slightly smaller to about the same as Clinton’s, I’d say that enthusiam for voting went up about the same on both sides. Or else how do you explain how close it is?
Following Pennsylania county by county, even a ballot drop from a Trump +54 county (in 2016) added to Biden’s totals. Finally allowing myself to think it feels like momentum…
Way too soon to be sure about final margins. There are still millions of votes to be counted. Based on what I’ve read, Biden’s margin will be considerably larger than Hillary’s.
In Trumpland, Mr. Donald Trump already won the election. He publicly claimed the win last night.
“This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrasment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election; frankly, we did win this election. [cheering] We did win this election. [cheering] So our goal now is to ensure the integrity, for the good of this nation - this is a very big moment, this is a major fraud on our nation - we want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at four o’clock in the morning and add them to the list, okay? [cheering] It’s a very sad moment, to me it’s a very sad moment, and we will win this, and we - as far as I’m concerned, we already have won. So I just want to thank you, and I want to thank all of our support, I want to thank all of the people that worked with us, and uh, Mr. Vice President, say a few words please…”
Trump-aligned social media is now focusing heavily on voter fraud.
~Max
This suggests the people buying into the right wing propaganda are victims. They are not. They are willing participants. Unless you can say they are mentally unstable such that they cannot tell right from wrong then they are responsible for their actions.
If so, you might have a point. But even if the margin is slightly bigger than Clinton’s, given the small difference already it’s hard to say that one side was particularly more motivated than the other, The difference in the end one way or another is likely to be less than 1%.
Based on what I’ve read, it will be considerably larger, not “slightly bigger”, than Hillary’s margin. But we’ll see.
I remember the Edwards-Duke race too; while I wasn’t living in Louisiana, I was connected to it for various reasons.
My recollection is that there were t-shirts that said, “Vote for the Crook.”
I remember “vote for the crook, it’s important”. Something like that. I was a middle schooler, but that was probably the start of my interest in politics.
They are certainly “victims” of their upbringing, surroundings, culture, etc. So many people I know talk about “escaping the cult” that their parents or family brought them up in, and many otherwise-rational people can’t/don’t escape.
Okay, just to sum up where things are right now as I understand it: nothing is certain, but right now, given the information we know, you’d rather be Biden than Trump. Is this correct?
Not to denigrate the Trump teams vaunted message discipline, but good job on crapping on the very people you need to get that messaging out!
I don’t think it’s even that vague. Based on the experts I’m following (Nate Silver, Nate Cohn, Jon Ralston, and a few others), Biden is more like 90+% likely to win based on what’s remaining. And we might have a call tonight, depending on how quickly the vote counts go in PA and GA.
At the end of the day you only have control over yourself.
If you are making the case they are who they are because it is all someone else’s fault you get into a tidy, self-reinforcing circle. It starts sounding like the mass murderer who claims it all was not his fault because his mom didn’t hug him enough and kids were mean to him in school so he became a dick and then people didn’t like him even more so he became a bigger dick and so on.
Maybe they need to take responsibility for the person they are. There are loads and loads of resources out there to help. Casually cruising through life being a shithead because you are in a cult is not really an excuse. Is it?
At FiveThirtyEight, they just posted that about 550,000 mail-in ballots remain outstanding in Pennsylvania and they need to break 60-40 for Biden. So far, they have broken about 78% for Biden.
I just did the math and if they continue breaking 78% for Biden, he ends up winning Pa. by a margin of about 2.6%…so, pretty similar to what the margin in Michigan has grown to.
Biden needs 63% of the remaining ballots to win Georgia. Of the votes counted and announced so far today he’s won 69.67%.