General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOh, holy cow look at the popular vote numbers..
Google "2020 popular vote". The numbers as of yesterday (Sat., 11/7, at the Associated Press) have Biden up about 4.5M votes over Trump - about a 3% difference.
3% in any other race is considered decisive. It doesn't trigger recounts and SoS's are very confident certifying elections with that margin.
Also, 75.2M votes for Biden is being described as a record and "the highest number of votes for a presidential candidate ever". I don't think that's significant. There are more potential voters in this election than in any other of the past. You can't have 75M votes for a candidate in the Reagan era, or the Eisenhower era or the Taft era. So, relating absolute vote numbers today to any past election is not meaningful.
What's important is voter turnout as a percent of registered voters. This election, it's looking to be close to 66%. That's more than most presidentials this century. But, that's still over a third of Americans eligible to vote who just can't find the time or energy to do it. That is a huge problem in my opinion. Fuck the non-voter.
If only presidentials were popular votes instead of EV's. In other words, actual democracy. We'd be killin' it.
SlogginThroughIt
(1,977 posts)SomedayKindaLove
(529 posts)He might pick up another million in California alone.
spooky3
(34,444 posts)NotAPuppet
(326 posts)final numbers for CA? The popular vote could be even higher for Biden if thats the case.
Wounded Bear
(58,648 posts)woodsprite
(11,913 posts)Tribetime
(4,692 posts)We need 100% paper ballots
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,853 posts)Despite others poo-pooing the exit polls, I'll use the CNN exit poll (which explicitly states it includes absentee and early voters) to guesstimate the final popular vote result.
Shermann
(7,413 posts)That's sobering. This was closer than it should have been, but the electoral jigsaw puzzle pieces fell in a better orientation this time.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,853 posts)Not a LOT better like I anticipated, but CNN was pretty close in 2016 too after applying some algebra to their numbers.
Clinton was slightly behind or ahead in the popular votes until the West Coast votes were all counted, if my memory is correct. Then Trump complained about supposed illegal Hispanic voters out there, with no support of the accusations as usual.
Clearly fogged in
(1,896 posts)the turnout was high, and higher numbers there is a goal. We cannot miss this opportunity now to shift gears though. Efforts could be steered keeping the present voters, new and old.
EarlG
(21,947 posts)It's a shame we still have to listen to the media entertaining the Republicans talking point of, "yes, but have you seen how many votes TRUMP got! He got more than last time!"
Sure... cuz like, you know how after the Super Bowl all anyone wants to talk about is how many points the losing team scored.
There was massive, massive turnout this time around, and guess what? Way more of that massive turnout went to Democrats than went to Republicans.
TigressDem
(5,125 posts)In a way it makes what they say seem to make a weird kind of sense.
WHY did so many people vote? In the middle of a pandemic.
With all the fear of what could go wrong with their vote, why did so many more than EVER before VOTE?
It has to be fraud is their conclusion.
When in reality the MAJORITY of the United States of America was PETRIFIED of getting FOUR MORE YEARS of being DUMPED UPON by the Dictator In Chief.
WE THE PEOPLE were more afraid of DUMP destroying the country than dying of Corona by voting in person, having our vote lost in the mail by overworked postal workers.
WE THE PEOPLE decided that sheer numbers was our only defense against the INSANITY of legalized injustice for ALL except the top 1%.
WE THE PEOPLE VOTED IN RECORD NUMBERS - THAT'S WHY BIDEN WON.
END
of
FRICKEN
Story.
Metatron
(1,258 posts)Others are uneducated. It's easy to denounce nonvoters, but that doesn't really move them to register and then vote.
And, there was a pandemic. I think as long as the party genuinely breaks the data down and is able to analyze on both the micro and macro levels, and learn from this election, we will be in good shape to win in 2022.