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With help from Renuka Rayasam and Tyler Weyant
WAITING FOR 270 — Joe Biden, who has broken the record for most number of votes cast for a presidential candidate, needs just six electoral votes to win the presidency. For the latest results, head to our 2020 Elections homepage.
DON’T COUNT TRUMP OUT — Donald Trump has always found a way to win even when he’s lost. He insists he’s won when he hasn’t. Losses that loom, he pushes off. He argues any opposition into submission. In business, he made a habit of succeeding without succeeding, and it’s held true, too, in politics. In 2016, of course, he won (the Electoral College) even though he lost (the popular vote). He is, as I once put it, “the most successful failer of all time.”
Here, then, on this wait-and-see evening of election week (month? months?), signs point to an eked-out win for Joe Biden. And yet.
It’s too early to declare a winner. But let’s assume Biden holds his leads in Arizona and Nevada. That would get him to 270 electoral votes. Even if on the other side of any recounts, court fights and ongoing ballot tallies that outcome is made official, a one-term Trump seems poised to exit the White House with a new sort of sway.
The much-anticipated, practically existential 2020 election, after all, did not produce the repudiation of Trump and his coarse personal style and politics of division that (slightly more than) half the country craved. The rips in the national fabric he’s spent the last five years showing and sowing are only more stark.
With Trump at the top of the ticket, Republicans look like they’ve held the Senate and picked up seats in the House, and he not only held his base but built on it, already getting 5 million more votes than he did in 2016 and scrambling calculations of conventional wisdom by making unexpected inroads with Black and Latino voters. Even in a loss, Trump’s clout and support has somehow grown.
In North Carolina, for instance, the race was all about the suburbs, said the experts — who believed well-educated, well-off and turned-off Republicans and unaffiliateds could be Trump’s undoing in swing states all over the nation. But in northern Mecklenburg County, where I live, in every suburban precinct around me, and in mine, too, Trump relative to ’16 did not worse but better.
The urban centers of Charlotte and Raleigh voted against Trump even harder than they had four years back. But in the state’s four bellwether counties, Trump did better. In Robeson County, which picked the winner the last three times, he did a lot better (51 percent to 59). Ditto for three of the four swing counties that voted in ’16 for Trump and for Democrat Roy Cooper for governor. He did better.
It’s not just here. I checked the counts in some counties in which I’ve spent time reporting these last four years. In Wisconsin’s Pepin County, which in ’16 voted for a Republican for president for the first time in half a century, Trump won again — but by more.
In Pennsylvania’s Bucks and Cambria counties, two very different pieces of political terrain, more suburban and more rural, respectively, Trump late tonight — with some votes still out — was doing better in both. His margin was up in Cambria. And in Bucks? He lost close in ’16; this time, he’s winning.
The last few weeks heading into this election, I pre-reported a pair of stories — one to run if Trump was reelected, another to run if he wasn’t. I called Trump biographers and former staffers and political professionals from both parties. The conversations I had for a Trump win? It doesn’t actually matter that it looks like Trump’s going to lose. It’s all still true.
“He makes it incredibly easy to be for or against him,” said Sam Solovey, a contestant on the first season of “The Apprentice.” “He reduces us to these divisions.”
“Lincoln was suited to his time, Washington was suited to his time, and Donald Trump, who doesn’t deserve to be in the same sentence with those two people, was suited to his time,” said Trump biographer Tim O’Brien. “And that’s what we have to understand. He is a reflection of us.”
“We have grown so far apart from each other,” said former Trump administration staffer (and no longer “Anonymous”) Miles Taylor. “I mean, Washington, D.C., is not broken — the American people are broken.”
Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out at [email protected] and [email protected], or on Twitter at @michaelkruse and @renurayasam.
Around the Nation
SOMEWHERE IN MIDDLE AMERICA — Senior politics editor Charlie Mahtesian emails the Nightly:
Biden has won Michigan and Wisconsin. He is likely to win Arizona and Nevada. If he does that, he’s at 269 electoral votes.
What gets him to 270 electoral votes, the threshold that delivers the presidency, is Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.
Nebraska is one of two states that allocate Electoral College votes by congressional district. Biden carried the Omaha-based 2nd, so he picked up the electoral vote attached to it.
That lone vote turns out to be enormously important at the moment. Under one very real scenario, it might decide the presidency. Thanks to Nebraska 2, Biden has a viable route to 270 even if he loses Pennsylvania and Georgia. As long as he wins Arizona and Nevada, he defeats Donald Trump 270-268.
And without the 2nd and its single electoral vote, we would be trapped even deeper into the vote-counting morass, obsessing over Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania as they inch closer toward court battles or possible recounts.
What’s most surprising about the 2nd is that it performed its civic duty in a most outdated fashion. Omaha-area voters measured the candidates up and down the ballot and did something that is happening less and less as the country becomes more and more polarized: They split their tickets.
At the same time voters checked off Biden’s name, they also checked off the name of their Republican congressman, Don Bacon.
You could say Trump ended up underperforming the generic Republican: Bacon beat progressive Kara Eastman 51-46 even as Biden beat Trump with the same voters, 55-44.
These Biden-Bacon voters look to have been a small but crucial demographic this cycle. They are the same kind of people who in Maine voted to reelect GOP Sen. Susan Collins but also to end Trump’s presidency, as both Collins and Biden carried the state. Republicans might hold the Senate as a result.
Nevada could be poised to hand the White House to Biden (as long as the Arizona results hold). If Nevada were to be called for Biden, the outcome in Pennsylvania — and Georgia and North Carolina — would no longer matter, except to give Biden some breathing room in the Electoral College.
All of it is due to Omaha. And Biden-Bacon voters.
NOT A VICTORY SPEECH — Biden addressed the country today and said he is on a path to winning the presidency, though he stopped short of declaring victory. He also pointed to the country’s record turnout. “Even in the face of the pandemic, more Americans voted in this election than ever before in American history,” he said.
THIS ONE HURT — In Texas politics, Democrats often cast narrow losses as victories, writes Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam. But this year’s high hopes that Biden would win Texas set up a demoralizing defeat for Texas Democrats. The state party had many of the elements they thought they needed: a relatively unpopular Republican president, massive voter turnout and competitive slate of down-ballot candidates.
Biden cut Trump’s margin of victory to 5.8 percentage points this year, from 9 points in 2016. He won 1.3 million more votes in Texas than Hillary Clinton did four years ago. That’s tighter than Trump’s margin of victory in Ohio. It took much longer than in any recent presidential election for a winner to be declared in Texas, but in the end Biden lost the state and its 38 electoral college votes. Here’s where Biden beat expectations — and where he didn’t:
Biden didn’t flip enough counties: He lost two suburban Dallas counties, Denton and Collin, that Trump won in 2016. These were two fast-growing counties that Democrats thought they could flip this year.
He lost ground in newly blue counties: Two years ago, Beto O’Rourke’s Senate campaign won several counties that had voted for Trump in 2016. Biden wasn’t able to hold onto Fort Worth’s Tarrant County, which O’Rourke narrowly won. Biden won Williamson County in the Austin suburbs by less than 2 points, for example, and O’Rourke won there by nearly 3 points. Biden won Hays County, also in the Austin suburbs, by about 11 points. O’Rourke won there by 15 points.
Biden didn’t make gains in traditionally Democratic counties: Biden won more raw votes in places like El Paso County and Travis County than Clinton did, but so did Trump. Biden’s biggest loss: The largely Hispanic counties along the border. Biden’s margins over Trump were far narrower than Clinton’s four years ago in many border towns: In El Paso County and Hidalgo County, the two most populous Texas border areas, Biden won 30,000 more votes than Clinton had, but Trump added more than 70,000 voters. Trump even eked out a narrow win in Zapata County in the Rio Grande Valley, a place where Clinton won more than 65 percent of the vote four years ago.
SPLIT DECISIONS — A second kind of ticket-splitter emerged on Election Day: Voters who chose a presidential candidate and then went for a policy that their preferred candidate is likely to oppose. Some Trump voters went for ballot initiatives that legalized marijuana. A large chunk of Biden voters in California voted to deny employee status to their Uber drivers. And Trumpy Florida raised its minimum wage. Here’s what happened:
Drug policy: America’s drug laws changed drastically on Election Night. Five states legalized either recreational or medical marijuana, and one in three Americans now lives in a state where adult-use cannabis is, or will soon be, legal. New Jersey’s cannabis legalization is expected to start a domino effect of legalization among other northeast states like New York and Pennsylvania. Wins in Montana and South Dakota showed that red states can legalize weed, too. Other ballot measures, meanwhile, took drug policy further than cannabis: Washington, D.C. decriminalized psilocybin — or magic mushrooms — and Oregon decriminalized all drugs, even heroin and cocaine. The impact these decisions have on federal legalization will depend greatly on control of the Senate and, to a lesser extent, the White House. But it is likely that there will be greater legislative steps taken on marijuana policy in the next Congress than in the last — in the House, at the very least. — Natalie Fertig
Gig-based workers: The tech industry secured a landmark win in its home state of California, where app-based gig companies like Uber and DoorDash circumvented a new state labor mandate after spending more than $200 million to pass Proposition 22. They can now keep treating their workers as independent contractors and won’t have to make them employees. The outcome could influence gig economy fights in several other states, as well as a federal debate: House Democrats advanced a classification mandate that mirrors the California law tech companies just sidestepped. — Jeremy B. White
Minimum wage: A ballot initiative that will increase Florida’s minimum wage to $15 an hour passed — barely — with just over 60 percent of the vote on Tuesday. The vote on Amendment 2 was a blow to the state’s lifeblood tourism industry, which had waged a furious fight to torpedo it. Orlando lawyer John Morgan, who led the campaign to get the measure passed, said today that income inequality helped spark this summer’s political unrest and riots. Inability to earn a living wage, he said, destroys dignity. With Tuesday’s vote, Florida joins seven other states, including California and New York, to adopt a $15 minimum. Morgan predicted more would follow. “What we did yesterday would be a template for the rest of the country,” Morgan said. — Arek Sarkissian
Covid-2020
ELECTION WEEK, OR YEAR, OR WHATEVER — We warned you it might happen. Get ready for what could be days of uncertainty. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, campaigns editor Scott Bland breaks down what to watch for as votes continue to be tallied.
From the Health Desk
BREAKING DOWN THE COVID VOTE — Talk of Miami Cubans and Milwaukee suburbs has, momentarily, distracted us from the coronavirus. Yet the pandemic shaped how voters approached the choices before them — and Trump’s ability to pit the economy against the disease contributed to his strong showing, executive health care editor Joanne Kenen emails the Nightly. She writes:
Trump has depicted the choices in black and white. Fight the virus, or save the economy. Shut down the whole country, or throw open the doors. But like most things in life, it really isn’t either/or, although that kind of vivid, simple contrast can appeal to voters.
In fact, it’s impossible to bring back the economy when close to 100,000 people are getting infected every day and hospitals are overflowing. Millions of people are just not going out to eat, shop and watch ball games — and spend money — even where that’s an option. Until they feel safe — until they are safe — the virus will keep pounding the economy. On Election Day, 1,130 people died. And all signs are that it’s getting worse.
Nor is a total economic lockdown the only way to confront the virus. As public health officials keep reminding the president (until they get sidelined or tweet-swatted), there are proven, practical steps, including testing, contact tracing, masks, distancing and some targeted limits on high-risk businesses, gatherings and activities. Maybe we could even pay bars to stay closed, at least during the colder months, so they’re still there when we get past this. As far as I know, Biden hasn’t weighed in on the Save-Our-Bars idea, but he’s embraced the science of public health.
The exit polls, limited as they are, clearly show the economy vs. virus divide in our politics. Trump voters were more likely to say the economy, not the virus, was their top concern, and they were more likely to back Trump’s handling of the pandemic. More Democrats said it was important to contain the virus now, “even if it hurts the economy,” and they were much more likely to trust Biden to bring it under control.
These divisions perplex public health experts. Dr. Sandro Galea, the dean of Boston University’s School of Public Health, wrote in the Milbank Quarterly today that the results should teach the field humility “in how we think about the importance of health” and how to articulate a health-preserving message “through the political fog.”
The Global Fight
EUROPE WATCHES ITS UNCERTAIN ALLY — Trump may or may not be out of the White House — but his tens of millions of supporters aren’t going anywhere. And Europe today took somber note, bracing for hours, or days — if not years — of further uncertainty about its troubled transatlantic ally, chief Brussels correspondent David M. Herszenhorn writes.
Across the continent, many public figures reacted with dismay to Trump’s premature declaration of victory, his unfounded allegations of electoral malfeasance, and his simultaneous vow to fight the election result in the Supreme Court — saying they feared a crisis for democracy with potentially worldwide implications.
“What we are seeing now is that the election campaign, which was as hard-fought as could be and was fought with all means, is not over, but that it continues — that now the battle has begun for the legitimacy of the result,” the German defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said.
Nightly Number
Parting Words
SOUNDS OF QUIET JOY — And the undisputed winner, writes editor-in-chief Matthew Kaminski, is …
The establishment, naturally.
Wait, what do you mean? The election isn’t even decided. The country’s a mess, the world’s laughing at us, democracy is in peril, Covid’s out of control. Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?
Those are mere details.
If you insist, we can talk this through. No hyperventilating.
Whoever sits in the Oval or runs the Senate — let’s all so lightly pencil in one box blue (pending the inscrutable vote counting operation in Nevada) and the other red — this was a Restore The Status Quo kind of election.
The blues had no wave — you can come down from the barricades in Brooklyn and Portland now. In the redlands, the Republican disruptor-incumbent may be looking for new work in January. As much noise as the extremes of both parties make, the electorate again refused to give either a free hand to make Washington over. A split country will have a divided government.
The establishment likes status quos. Close your eyes, drown out the post-Election Day caterwauling and appreciate the quiet joy and inner peace of these avatars of the establishment:
1. Mitch McConnell. The old fox from Kentucky is on track to keep the reins of the Senate — and in a Biden Washington would become not just the most important Republican but arguably person in town. If Biden wants to get anything legislatively done, the road goes through McConnell’s chambers. The phlegmatic McConnell was always an awkward fit in Trump’s MAGA reality show and didn’t look heartbroken today that it might be ending; fellow Senate institutionalist Biden is someone he can work with if he wants to, and on his terms.
1.bis. Susan Collins. The ultimate centrist held her seat in a state Biden carried, going from GOP outsider to a coveted swing vote in the next Senate.
2. Wall Street loves the outcome (particulars to come, but who cares); the Dow closed up 367 points today. The Street knows the economy will get its stimulus shot that won’t blow as big a hole in public finances as it thinks Pelosi might have in mind. Taxes won’t go up, certainly not as high as feared with an All-Blue D.C. And Treasury Secretary Elizabeth Warren is a fading nightmare, along with any regulatory assault on America’s fat cats.
3. Ghost of the Democratic Leadership Council. The Clintons were MIA in this campaign, and yet their brand of politics — and their generation of advisors and peers — defines the currently dominant middle-of-road milquetoast Democratic Party of 2020. Even if Biden doesn’t secure this election, the revolution led by the Squad is a dream deferred for now.
4. Old GOP guard. Be prepared to hear often that the core religion of low taxes, limited government worked pretty nicely for the GOP in 2020, drawing in new constituencies (Hispanics, among others) and delivering good surprises for the Republicans in the House and Senate. The Trump Movement? The man’s Covid and Hunter histrionics and his uncontrolled narcissism not to mention poor taste — so goes the line from this crowd — is what’ll cost him his job. Good riddance. Time to get back to Republican basics. (Wall Street agrees.) They won’t say so openly, of course, until they know Trump is really gone for good.
5. Joe Biden — maybe, not just because he hasn’t actually won. As my colleague Ryan Lizza wrote this morning, his presidency could be destined for failure in a divided Washington. Another maybe: Joe (47 years of swamp dwelling!) Biden is the ultimate establishmentarian who can play the part mostly unshackled. He’ll swat away his harder left’s crazier (to him) ideas and work the middle. He did deals with segregationists, as he said; Mitch is a walk on Rehoboth Beach.
Reality is a mugger ready to pounce. Trump might yet win; or he’ll upend the 224-year-old institution of transfer of power, or simply find other ways to make traditional Republican leaders batty in his post-presidency. A new cohort of Democratic up-and-comers won’t lightly step aside for their old guard, or not for long. Disruption is a special on this era’s political menu. Yet for now, excuse the smug satisfaction over a messy outcome that, for some, marks a return to welcome normalcy.
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