I have been reading Brendan O'Neill on Spiked:
Biden got 74 million votes, the highest popular vote in history. But Trump got nearly 70 million votes which makes his vote the second highest. So that means this election had a record turn out and the American people have become more engaged (or even enraged) by politics than ever before.
Even more significant, O'Neill says that Trump got 7 million more votes than he did in 2016. That particular statistic deserves serious consideration. Trump's base, the 'blue collar' clearly still believe that he speaks on their behalf in a way that the political class do not. Four years ago I wrote here that 'I don't like Trump and I don't trust him but... when the honeymoon period is over and the promised jobs for the rust belt States are slow to appear...'
In fact the jobs have appeared and, as the journalist Andrew Sullivan has written:
In fact the jobs have appeared and, as the journalist Andrew Sullivan has written:
"One of the more revealing results from the polls this year came in the answers to the core question made famous by Reagan: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” In previous campaigns to re-elect the president, Reagan was re-elected in a landslide with only 44 percent saying they were better off, George W. Bush won with 47 percent and Obama succeeded with 45 percent. For Trump, a mighty 56 percent said they were better off now than when he took office."
It is also revealing to see who voted for Trump; Sullivan writes:
"Trump measurably increased his black, Latino, gay and Asian support. 12 percent of blacks — and 18 percent of black men — backed someone whom the left has identified as a “white supremacist”, and 32 percent of Latinos voted for the man who put immigrant children in cages, giving Trump Florida and Texas. 31 percent of Asians and 28 percent of the gay, lesbian and transgender population also went for Trump. The gay vote for Trump may have doubled! We’ll see if this pans out. But it’s an astonishing rebuke of identity politics and its crude assumptions about how unique individuals vote.
"This was far from the Biden landslide I had been dreaming about a few weeks back. It was rather the moment that the American people surgically removed an unhinged leader and re-endorsed the gist of his politics. It was the moment that Trump’s core message was seared into one of our major political parties for the foreseeable future, and realigned American politics."
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/trump-is-gone-trumpism-just-arrived-886
The print media and TV broadcasters around the world have declared Biden to be the new President elect but Trump is not going to concede and intends to challenge the validity of postal ballots in, I think, four States. Covid19 has been the excuse used for so many people being encouraged to cast their votes by mail.
According to CNBC, 69 million votes were cast one week before election date...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/27/2020-elections-nearly-67-million-votes-cast-in-trump-biden-race-.html
If that is correct it amounts to approximately 50% of all votes cast although The Guardian has the figure at 93 million and the NYT says 101 million early votes. That last figure is very hard to believe as it represents 72% of all votes cast. Really? Were the polling stations unusually quiet this year?
All of this is just speculative because, as I understand the US system, it is the Electoral College who will announce the winner on December 14th, five weeks from today. Biden's win will not be official until then. In the next five weeks Trump will pursue his case on the validity or otherwise of postal ballots through the courts. It seems unlikely that he will succeed but win or lose, the US seems to be broken beyond repair and what happens next is in the lap of the gods.
And a furher thought on the postal ballots. This video from Joe Biden is rather strange and disturbing: In what context did he say this and when and why?*
*(Ed.: I think he fell over his tongue, not for the first time.)
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