Impact2020: November 5, 2020
In today’s Impact2020 briefing, we take a look at where the race between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden stands as key states continue to count ballots, why some private GOP polls came closer to the actual result than the public surveys, the GOP’s legal maneuverings, and how Nancy Pelosi’s House majority shrunk.
On the Ground
Where things stand
As of early Thursday afternoon, the Associated Press has called 264 electoral votes for Joe Biden and 214 for President Donald Trump. Four states, where ballot counting continues, remain uncalled: Georgia (16 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (20), Nevada (6) and North Carolina (15).
To reach the necessary 270 electoral votes to win, Biden would need to win just one of the remaining four states, while Trump would need to carry them all.
Follow along with the results on the McClatchyDC website.
Polling misfire
Many of the public polls of the 2020 election were wrong, overestimating Biden’s support in key battleground states. But some private pollsters claim they saw it coming, report McClatchy’s David Catanese and Alex Roarty.
“Many Republicans claim that for the most part, they forecasted … Trump in a much closer contest than the media and public believed,” write Catanese and Roarty.
“We had it a lot closer than the public polls. It showed pretty much what’s occurring right now,” said Brent Buchanan, a Republican pollster who helped conduct 62 surveys for the Trump campaign over the final six weeks before Election Day. “When you have good data, you shouldn’t be surprised.”
Pollsters like Buchanan pointed to several explanations for the imprecise results: “A misread of who is likely to vote. An overreliance on party registration. Failing to reach voters where they’re most likely to respond — via text and email — in favor of a phone call.”
Catanese and Roarty also note: “This year’s miss comes amid a turbulent period for the polling industry, which already saw trust in its surveys shaken after misjudging Trump’s support in 2016. Those errors appear to have been only magnified four years later, with the president significantly overperforming his pre-election numbers, even as he still trails … Biden nationally and in several key battleground states.”
On a new episode of the Beyond the Bubble podcast coming later today, the Miami Herald’s Bianca Padró Ocasio and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Bud Kennedy join McClatchy’s Kristin Roberts and Alex Roarty to further discuss the 2020 polling miss, as well as why Hispanic voters swung towards Trump in Florida and Texas. Available on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts.
Taking to the courts
As Biden is essentially one state away from the presidency, Trump has launched legal challenges in several key battleground states, McClatchy’s Michael Wilner reports.
In Pennsylvania, the campaign filed a lawsuit “to halt ballot counting in the state, and another on allegations that Republican poll observers were thwarted on Election Day,” Wilner writes. “They also said they will attempt for a third time to challenge a decision at the U.S. Supreme Court that allowed ballots received in the state after Election Day to be counted.
In Wisconsin, GOP legal teams “are searching for what they characterize as ‘irregularities’ that could delegitimize a vote increasingly trending toward” the Democratic nominee.
In Michigan, the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit “asking for a halt to the vote, claiming that ‘numerous’ vote counting locations denied their officials ‘meaningful access’ to observe the opening of ballots.”
In Georgia, his campaign and the state Republican Party filed a lawsuit “asking a court to require all Georgia counties to separate late-arriving ballots, claiming unverified incidents of fraud after the president fell within one percentage point of Biden in the state,” Wilner writes.
And in Nevada, Trump and the state GOP planned to file a lawsuit alleging that 10,000 people cast a ballot despite no longer living in the state, the Nevada Independent’s Riley Snyder reports.
Credit: Matt York, AP
House miscalculation
Last month, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and independent handicappers were predicting Democrats would add 10 to 20 seats to their House majority. Instead, the party is on pace to lose seats, David Lightman reports for the Sacramento Bee.
“Current projections say Democrats will have around 230 seats. With 218 needed for a majority, that means Pelosi could afford to lose a dozen votes, assuming Republicans stick together as they usually do,” Lightman writes. That means “Democrats next year could have the smallest House majority of any party since the 2003-05 House.”
Democratic incumbents, generally more moderate members, lost races in Minnesota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Iowa, South Carolina and Florida. In California, freshman Democrat Rep. TJ Cox was losing narrowly in a race too close to call.
Pelosi is still almost certain to remain speaker, but “she’s now going to have to deal with a fresh message from voters that could make it harder to pass economic relief and other measures.”
Trail Mix
Battleground state watch
The Charlotte Observer’s Tim Funk explains how Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Trump could both win in North Carolina.
North Carolina’s election results won’t be official for another week, Simone Jasper and Will Doran note in the Raleigh News & Observer.
Thousands of military ballots are still arriving in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, “which are critical to the outcome of the presidential election and will be counted well into next week,” McClatchy’s Tara Copp reports.
The Miami Herald’s David Smiley, Alex Daugherty and Bianca Padró Ocasio explore how Miami’s rightward shift changed the face of Florida politics.
But it wasn’t just Miami-Dade County that cost Biden: the Miami Herald’s Aaron Leibowitz, Ben Wieder, and Bianca Padró Ocasio lay out how Trump made gains across Florida.
The Texas Tribune’s Alex Samuels and Patrick Svitek examine how Biden’s underperformance along the Texas border has raised questions about Democrats’ outreach there.
Battle for the Senate
Georgia Sen. David Perdue is preparing for his race against Democrat Jon Ossoff to advance to a runoff as the Republican fell slightly below the 50% threshold Thursday, Greg Bluestein and Mark Niesse report for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The AP has not called and Democrat Cal Cunningham has not conceded and the North Carolina race that could be a “majority maker” in the U.S. Senate, Brian Murphy reports for the Raleigh News & Observer.
Bryan Lowry details for the Kansas City Star how Roger Marshall’s successful Senate campaign in Kansas overcame Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s shadow and the pandemic. (A note: We mistakenly listed the wrong first name for Marshall in yesterday’s newsletter. We apologize for the error.)
Lowry also writes that “in what amounts to an admonishment of” Trump, GOP Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri said that states should ensure they count every legal vote in the 2020 election.
Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell, who said he believes he’s in a good position to maintain his role as Senate Majority Leader, declined to condemn Trump’s comments questioning the integrity of the election, Daniel Desrochers reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Number of the Day
3.5 million
That’s how many more votes nationally Biden had than Trump as of early Thursday afternoon, per the AP.
It’s not over
Credit: Shelly Yang, Kansas City Star
Protesters chanted “save our hope, count every vote” in Kansas City on Wednesday evening as the presidential race remained undecided.
With races winding down, we’re nearing the end of this newsletter, but if this email was forwarded to you, please consider signing up here and joining us for our final stretch.
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 12:48 PM.