VanRamblings will update the site tomorrow afternoon, with updated election results
10:30pm PST | U.S. Election Night Update
The electoral and College of Electors map of the U.S. | 10:30pm | November 3rd, 2020
Joe Biden addresses the U.S. electorate from Delaware late on 2020 election night
With many of the battleground states undecided, the Presidential race appears to be headed into a prolonged count, where the outcomes in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania won’t be known until Friday, as these states, and others, continue a count of the millions of mail-in ballots that flooded into each of these states over the course of the past month.
Still, turnout across the U.S. was robust, reflecting the sense of urgency attending a presidential election conducted under an extraordinary shadow — a deadly pandemic, economic collapse, and a debate over racial justice.
President Trump and challenger Joe Biden battled early into Wednesday morning with no clear winner, as major contests remained too close to call and prospects grew that a decision in the presidential race would await an ongoing count of votes cast before election day. Trump misspelled the word polls in a tweet in which he asserted, without evidence, that Democrats were trying to steal the election, tweeting, “We will never let them do it.”
Misrepresentation: “Votes cannot be cast after the Poles are closed!”
The race to 270 College of Electors votes remains a nailbiter, late in the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 4th.
While President Trump is projected to win Ohio and the big battleground state of Florida, his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, insisted early Wednesday that “we believe we’re on track to win this election.” Biden cited Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, where many votes — including an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots — were still being tallied in the bitterly contested presidential election that may take days to resolve.
“It ain’t over till every vote is counted,” Biden said. Around the same time, Trump fumed that “we are up BIG, while baselessly accusing Democrats of “trying to STEAL the Election,” as per the since deleted tweet above.
VanRamblings will continue our coverage of #USElection2020 tomorrow afternoon, and through until the last ballot is counted across the U.S, — and perhaps beyond that date (likely, this Friday, November 5th), as President Trump disputes the vote count in Pennsylvania, and has served notice that he intends to take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Nonetheless, VanRamblings remains confident that Democratic Presidential contender Joseph R. Biden will emerge victorious, at the end of the day, and go on to become the 46th President of the United States of America.
9pm PST | U.S. Election Night Update
As of 9pm, ABC News projects Republican wins in Florida (25 College of Electoral votes), Kentucky (6), North Carolina (9) and Ohio (12), with Democratic flips from 2016, wins in 2020, adding Arizona (9) & Kansas (3).
At 9pm, CNN calls California (55), Oregon (7) & Washington (12) for Biden.
7:30pm PST | U.S. Election Night Update
As of 7:30pm PST, the crucial battleground states of North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Virginia are too close to call. Based on the reported votes as of this hour, if Trump takes Michigan tonight, he wins the election, and returns to the White House.
The American networks have projected that Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden will win easily in Colorado, as the state has turned bluer with each passing election cycle. Meanwhile, the six combined electoral votes at stake in both North and South Dakota will go for Trump. Meanwhile, in good news for the Democratic Party, voters under 30 years of age across the Midwest are swinging towards Joe Biden in big numbers. In Connecticut, with seven electoral votes at stake in, Joe Biden wins easily.
CNN calls Michigan — which went for Trump in 2016 — for Joe Biden. Biden will also take the four electoral votes in New Hampshirey. Arizona, North Carolina & Iowa are projected to turn blue. As of 7:50pm, Joe Biden is projected to pick up the 20 electoral votes in Illinois. VanRamblings will update the site at 9pm PST, when more outstanding votes are counted.
A feeling of alarm and fear about the future of American democracy, from voters across the political spectrum, has voters in its hoary grip, more worried about the state of their country in 2020 than about themselves.
Early on, some thought the catastrophe of Trump’s 2016 election could be a catalyst for aesthetic glory. “In times of artistic alienation, distress is often repaid to us in the form of great work, much of it galvanizing or clarifying or (believe it or not) empowering,” wrote New York magazine’s Jerry Saltz.
Since assuming power on January 20th, 2017, as Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times, Donald Trump has made the whole world darker …
“There is no escaping it: America is on the ballot (today) — the stability and quality of our American governing institutions, the country’s alliances, how Americans treat one another, and our government’s basic commitment to scientific principles and the minimum decency that we expect from our leaders.
Four more years of a president without shame, backed by a party without spine, amplified by a TV network without integrity, and the cancer will be in the bones of every institution that has made America America.”
What has the Trump presidency taken from Americans?
Innocence? Optimism? Faith?
Trump snuffed out American confidence, flickering but real, that as a people Americans could go only so low, and forgive only so much.
With Donald Trump in power the past four years, Americans went lower — or at least a damningly large percentage of Americans did. Many Americans gave Trump a bye on his florid cruelty, overt racism, rampant corruption, exultant indecency, the coddling of murderous despots, the alienation of true friends, the alienation of truth itself, and the disparagement of invaluable institutions and degradation of essential democratic traditions.
American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, Sam Harris: ‘The Key to Trump’s Appeal’
Throughout the past months, polls from across America have consistently showed that about 44% of voters approved of Trump’s job performance — even after he’d concealed aspects of his coronavirus infection from the public, shrugged off the larger meaning of it, and established the White House as its own superspreader environment, and cavalierly marched on.
Forty-four percent of Americans support the worst President in American history, and will blithely cast a ballot for him today, if they haven’t already.
What in God’s name have so many of our American neighbours become?
We’ll pretty much know the answer to that question by 7:30pm PST.
Of course, there’s a good chance we won’t know who won the presidential election by later on this evening, given that more Americans than at any time in their country’s history voted by mail this year, due to the pandemic — not unlike many British Columbians last month — and as mail-in ballots take longer to count than ballots cast at polling places, and because each state has its own rules for how votes are to be counted and reported, some states will report results sooner than others … and yada, yada, yada …
In fact, key battleground states have been counting mail-in and advance voting ballots for weeks, and by 7:30pm west coast time, we oughta know close to the final voting count in those states, as MSNBC political analyst Steve Kornacki, and NBC’s Meet the Press host, Chuck Todd, suggest below.
MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki on What to Expect On Election Night As Polls Start To Close
Chuck Todd: “I’ll Be Watching Florida, Georgia & North Carolina tonight” …
Ninety-five per cent of the entire vote in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina will be counted by 7:30pm west coast time tonight.
Here’s the crew from Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com on when we can expect election result returns in every state in the union. And this …
If Biden wins any one of the battleground states above, he wins the election — and Trump is not only consigned to the dustbin of history, but is staring down the prospect of spending years in jail, given that he’ll no longer be able to use Justice Department staff as his personal lawyers.
Per journalists in the New York Times: “Seldom far from Mr. Trump’s thoughts, however, is the possibility of defeat — and the potential consequences of being ejected from the White House. In unguarded moments, Mr. Trump has for weeks told advisers that he expects to face intensifying scrutiny from prosecutors if he loses. He is concerned not only about existing investigations in New York, but the potential for new federal probes as well, according to people who have spoken with him.”
Should Democratic presidential contender Joseph R. Biden not secure an undisputed win tonight across Florida, North Carolina and Georgia, and leave us having to await the vote count in Pennsylvania later in the week, in tomorrow’s VanRamblings we’ll write a bit about the College of Electors, and how this is the final deciding body which chooses the next President.
Here’s hoping Biden sweeps the board tonight, to become #USPrez46.
