For Republicans, the returns were mixed on Nov. 3.
Though he carried burdens unrivaled by a president since Herbert Hoover -- a plague that has killed 230,000 Americans in eight months and crashed the economy to depths not seen since the '30s - Donald J. Trump amassed 72 million votes, the largest total in Republican Party history.
Biden’s thin margins in the decisive states; third party vote declines; Senate aligns more closely with presidential partisanship; Republicans demonstrate down-ballot crossover appeal.
— Joe Biden is on track to exceed Barack Obama’s 2012 popular vote margin, but his victory in the key states is even narrower than Donald Trump’s in 2016.
— Less than 2% of the national vote went to candidates other than Biden and Trump, a significant change from 2016.
— Assuming nothing changes, as many as 94 of 100 senators in the next Congress will share the same party as the state’s presidential winner.
— The ability to generate crossover support helped Republicans perform surprisingly well in both Senate and House races.
We, the 71 million Americans who voted to reelect Donald J. Trump, do not forgive.
Yale University has fancy dining halls. They pay no property tax.
Local restaurants struggle to compete, but their tax burden makes that hard.
Think back to one year ago this month. America was at peace. American troops were coming home from the hotspots around the world. Incomes and jobs were skyrocketing, and Americans had made more wage and salary gains in three years under President Donald Trump than in the previous 16 years under Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama. The swamp was being drained.
"In victory, magnanimity... in defeat, defiance."
At this writing, two days after the election, Joe Biden appears to be six electoral votes away from winning the presidency.
1. This was not a good night for conventional polling. My review in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal of a book on the history of "polling failures" took perhaps too positive a view of contemporary polling. I find it remarkable that polling has been as accurate as it has been in a country where the completion rate for pollsters' contacts is below 10% -- but it got worse this week. The Real Clear Politics average of recent polls showed Joe Biden with more than 51% of the popular vote and Donald Trump with 44%. As this is written, Biden has 50% of the tabulated national popular vote, which will probably rise as California's data comes dribbling in, but Donald Trump has 48%. So, the current 1.9% Biden plurality is far lower than the polls' 7.2% Biden plurality.
Donald Trump may end up losing the 2020 election in the Electoral College, but he won the campaign that ended on Nov. 3.
Buckle up. No matter what happens on Election Day, as I've warned for months, we are in for a long and wild ride. Over Halloween weekend, businesses in every major city across the country boarded up their windows and police departments prepared for "civil unrest."
Joe Biden has said he wants to be president of ALL the states and that he doesn't see red states and blue states. But his economic policies are a de facto war against the high-growth red states of the South and the Sunbelt. We are talking about states such as Texas, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona.
On the last days of the 2020 campaign, President Donald Trump was holding four and five rallies a day in battleground states, drawing thousands upon thousands of loyalists to every one.
If the final election returns, when they finally come in, match the current polls, Joe Biden's Democrats will win a trifecta: the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress.
Of the presidents in the modern era, many have been dealt a difficult hand by history, but perhaps none more so than Donald Trump.
And how we’re thinking about the presidential race with five days to go.
— Georgia’s two Senate races move to Toss-up.
— They may be the only two races we leave in Toss-up when we release our final election picks on Monday.
— The concept of Occam’s Razor — the idea that the simplest explanation is sometimes the likeliest explanation — might be a useful framework to use when assessing the presidential race.
Ready or not, here they come. The ground troops of the anti-Donald Trump resistance aren't just biding their time until Election Day for Hidin' Joe Biden. Hell no. They're making their direct action checklists and checking them twice. They're training for instigating.
Worried about Tuesday?
Remember: The most important parts of life happen outside politics.
Why is the stock market so high? I get asked this riddle every day.
If Joe Biden loses on Nov. 3, public interest in whether his son Hunter exploited the family name to rake in millions of dollars from foreign donors will likely fade away.
It will not matter, and no one will care.
Several weeks ago, presidential opinion polls showed Joe Biden with a double-digit lead over Donald Trump, like the supposed lead Hillary Clinton enjoyed four years ago. Despite prognostications of an almost certain Clinton victory, reality provided a different story ending.
Will the big media be right this election cycle, or are they repeating their folly from the last election?
