Here We Go Again

There were many who believed that the panic porn surrounding Covid-19 would disappear after the election.

They could not be more wrong.

It appears that the Covid-19 panic porn has accelerated into an even higher level in the last two weeks.

It is true that confirmed cases have increased drastically over the last several weeks.

Source: CovidTracking.com

Some of that is due to increased testing which is now up to almost 1.7 million tests per day.

Let's put that in context.

That is equivalent to one out of every 194 people in the United States being tested in a single day.

Or one out of 27 people in the United States being tested in one week.

For further perspective, consider that less than 1 million lab tests have traditionally been given each year to diagnose the flu. We are now doing almost twice that in a single day to test for Covid.

Source: CovidTracking.com

Hospitalizations are also rising. This is a major concern. Where will we be in a month if this continues as there is typically a lag of a couple of weeks that follows rising case counts.

Several states (notably those run by Democrats) have reacted to the rising case counts by imposing a new round of lockdown measures.

Oregon's Governor Kate Brown has ordered all business offices to work from home, restaurants and bars limited to take-out only, social gatherings are limited to no more than six people, all gyms and indoor sports facilities closed etc. Schools will remain open in Oregon.

Oregon has had a mask mandate in all indoor spaces since July 1.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has instituted a range of similar Covid measures in that state but also closes all high schools and colleges.

Michigan has had a mask mandate since July 10.

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has also implemented a strict lockdown for two weeks that includes much or what is being done in Oregon and Michigan but which will also close indoor malls. Indoor gatherings can no include more than five persons.

New Mexico has also had a mask mandate since May. That order has included wearing a mask outdoors in public spaces.

Daily Covid cases in New Mexico
Source: CovidTracking.com

What impact does it appear that the mask mandate has had on the spread of Covid in New Mexico?

I would love for it to be proven that masks really worked. It would give us something that we really could believe in right now. I wear one when required but how can one believe what we have been told in looking at what is going on right now?

As I have written before, there was not one credible study in the last 100 years (before everyone started mandating their use in late Spring/early Summer) that showed that face masks were effective in preventing any virus transmission in the general public. 

This included this paper from the CDC that was published in May of this year.

"Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza."

How many times have we been told that if everyone wore a mask that the virus would be eliminated within 4-6 weeks?

Mask mandates have been in place throughout a good part of the country for at least five months. I have been in several areas of the country over the last several months and I do not see anyone that is not wearing a mask while shopping etc. I see more and more people wearing masks outside taking a walk even as cases increase.

At one point does someone look at the facts in this pandemic and conclude that the prior research was actually correct?

Dr. Richard Feynman was considered by many to be the most influential scientist in the post-World War II era. We hear a lot today about "following the science". Feynman had several things to say about following the science while he was alive.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

"It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong."

If science is to progress, what we need is the ability to experiment, honesty in reporting results—the results must be reported without somebody saying what they would like the results to have been—and finally—an important thing—the intelligence to interpret the results.

The latest outbreaks indicate how Covid (like all respiratory viruses) is prone to seasonality when people are more likely to be indoors.

Everyone should keep the three V's in mind to minimize their risk.

Venue- avoid smaller, confined inside venues.

Ventilation-you always want to be in places that are well ventilated. Outdoors is best.

Vocalization-avoid places where a lot of people are talking or singing. 

You also should recognize that risks are small when exposure to any contact is short. The longer the exposure to anyone the greater the risk. Passing someone in the same aisle at the grocery store presents almost no risk. Talking and cavorting at a bar with 30 strangers for 3 hours is a lot of risk.

Considering all of this it should be no surprise we are seeing the current increase in cases. The rise in cases is most pronounced in the Upper Midwest right now. That area of the country lagged the rest of the country in cases earlier (less community immunity) and colder temperatures have driven more people indoors in the last month.

This is a heat map to show where new cases were coming from at the end of July. Notice that most cases were grouped around areas of the country with very hot temperatures where most people were spending less time outdoors and more time inside in air conditioned environments.

The Upper Midwest was having few cases in July as was the case in the Northeast that saw so many cases in the Spring.

Source: https://www.savi.org/2020/10/09/animated-map-of-new-u-s-covid-19-cases-over-time/

Here is a heat map as of November 8, 2020. Notice how the pattern has reversed.

Source: https://www.savi.org/2020/10/09/animated-map-of-new-u-s-covid-19-cases-over-time/

To this point, although alarms are being sounded, hospital capacities are not being threatened despite what you may be seeing and hearing in the media.

For example, here is a chart that shows hospital capacity utilization in the continental USA and compares it to average utilization for the period 2016-2018. Some states have seen increases in hospitalizations compared to historical averages but most capacities are well below 80%.

Interestingly, New Mexico hospital utilization right now is below historical averages despite the aggressive measures the Governor is instituting in that case.

Source: https://twitter.com/justin_hart/status/1327741002262593536

In my home state of Ohio, hospitalizations have been fairly steady over the last 21 days despite the increasing case trend in the state.

Deaths are actually running below the 21 day trend rate Ohio but you likely don't get this perspective from the news.

Ohio reported case 21 day trend
Source: https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/current-trends

Ohio hospitalizations 21 day trend
Source: https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/current-trends

Ohio Covid deaths 21 day trend 
Source: https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/current-trends

It will be important to keep an eye on the hospitalization and deaths numbers in the next several weeks to see if these numbers follow the rise in cases.

The other thing that is in play right now concerning hospitalizations is that we continue to see almost no cases of seasonal influenza this year. It is almost as if the regular flu has been wiped out by Covid.

Thus far, flu tests are showing miniscule .17% positivity rates. That compares to an average of 2.58% for the previous five years at this point in the flu season.

Source: https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1327317018316574721

We are seeing the same thing in other countries.

The CDC estimates that influenza was responsible for as many as 740,000 hospitalizations in the United States last year.

To put that in context, Covid thus far has resulted in just over 500,000 hospitalizations in nine months.  If flu cases remain down by 90% as they are right now, Covid cases will merely be replacing what normally would be flu-related hospitalizations.

Where have you ever seen that Covid hospitalizations in the last year are actually lower than flu hospitalizations were last year in any news reporting?

As I have written before, Covid is nothing to trifle with. It is highly contagious and it can be deadly to those in vulnerable groups.

However, the reaction to this pandemic is not commensurate with the actual risk it poses to the human race. 

It is being hyped by exaggerated case and death counts and it has been unnecessarily politicized by both sides.

What would I do if I were President of the United States to put this all in better context?

Mandate that all testing use no more than a 32 cycle threshold. Most labs today are using cycle thresholds in the 40 range. Lowering the cycle threshold would significantly reduce the number of false positive cases that are being found that have no effect on the spread of the disease. Any virus material found in cycle thresholds above this level is dead material that is not infectious. This would allow scare resources in the medical and public health communities to solely focus on true cases that are contagious. The number of confirmed cases would drop immediately by as much as 90%.

Mandate that reported deaths only include those resulting from Covid and not deaths with Covid.  A significant number of Covid deaths are not resulting from Covid but are deaths where it has been determined that there has been a positive Covid test with the decedent sometime over the last several months.

For example, would we count someone as dying from the flu if they had the flu in September and died of a heart attack in November? That is what is occurring with regard to Covid deaths.

Here is the latest CDC data on Covid deaths including what are referred to contributing factors.

26,557 Covid deaths which also list cardiac arrest as another factor?

20,864 with Sepsis?

10,443 with Malignant Neoplasms?

7,919 with intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events?

When did we ever classify deaths as being from the flu when they were actually from cardiac arrest, cancer, a sepsis infection or a poisoning or accident?

The reporting of Covid deaths is giving us a distorted view of the risks of the virus and feeding a false narrative.

These actions would not cure Covid but it would allow the public to put this pandemic in better perspective. At this point a good portion of the people in this country have lost all perspective of the risks that Covid involves.

Make no mistake, it is much more dangerous than the seasonal flu. However, it far less deadly than almost every other pandemic we have faced in history.

Even with the expansive definition of what is considered a Covid death, over 90% of the deaths in the United States of those over age 75 since the pandemic began have had absolutely nothing to do with Covid.

The overall survival rate from Covid for all people 75 and older and older (22.6 million people) is 99.4% since the pandemic began.

For the population at large it is 99.93%.

In September I asked the question when will all of this end? I wrote this at that time.

I am often asked when will it end?

When will we take off the masks, gather in restaurants, attend concerts and the theatre and have our children back in school?

I don't know the answer to that.

I do know that it will not occur until we stop counting and reporting cases and deaths every day.

As long as every case and every death is reported daily there is no hope of returning to normal.

It is impossible for the human brain to operate normally if it is being told that there is something to fear whenever they turn on the television, listen to the radio or check their social media feeds.

How then will it all end?

People must feel confident before things can return to normal.

However, how can people feel confident when they are inundated every day with numbers without any context and they are told they are going to die if they don't wear a mask? And every trip to the store and every virtual school session reinforces that narrative.

It will not end until we stop counting.

The counting will also most assuredly not stop anytime before November 3.

That is something you can definitely COUNT on.

November 3 has come and gone and the counting has actually accelerated.

Here we go again.

Where it will stop nobody knows.

In the meantime, keep your wits about you and put all of this in the proper context.

No one else is going to do it for you.

Not Tony Fauci. Not Joe Biden. Not Donald Trump.

The Covid Election Effects

A narrative I often hear is that if Covid had not happened President Trump would have won the election in a landslide.

I challenged that narrative in a blog post I wrote in October in which I pointed out that Trump's poll numbers versus Biden were not any different before Covid than they were two weeks before the election.

The fact is that the media narrative opposing Trump over the last four years had been so repetitive and relentless that the President faced an uphill battle no matter the circumstances.

It is true that if you say anything long enough people will believe it even if the facts are totally the opposite. That is what propaganda is and why it has been used so effectively throughout human history.

Trump could have personally cured Covid, lowered the unemployment rate to 1% and won two Nobel peace prizes (one for his Middle East progress and another for reuniting North And South Korea) and he would have still be vilified by the mainstream media.

I believe the President's handling of the Covid situation had very little effect on the election results.

This seems to be borne out in the exit polls.

Covid came in third when voters were asked what the most important issue was for them. Only 17% listed it as the issue that mattered most. 35% said it was the economy. 20% cited race relations.

51% of voters in the exit poll thought that U.S. efforts to contain the pandemic were going very well or somewhat well.

41% of voters said their family's financial situation was better than four years ago against only 20% who said they were worse off.

Interestingly, 44% of voters said that the Covid pandemic had caused them no financial hardship at all. These voters split for Trump 60%-38%.

18% of voters stated that Covid had caused them severe financial hardship. These voters supported Biden 69%-29%. However, how many of those voters understood before they voted that many of Biden's advisors are strongly urging him to lockdown the economy again. This is something that Trump categorically stated he would never do again.

Here is a voter who is a well known liberal activist who seems to have been living under a rock for the last several months. This is a woman who went to Yale and was a Rhodes Scholar and was an adviser to both Bill Clinton and Al Gore. If she was not aware of where Biden stood on lockdowns how many of those Biden voters who have been hurt so badly by Covid were aware?

None of these poll results indicate that President Trump's actions in dealing with Covid were determinative issues in the election.

I believe that most voters understood that Covid was largely outside of President Trump's or any other politicians control. Those voters who blamed Trump for anything to do with Covid most likely were never with him to begin with no matter what the circumstances.

This is not to say that Covid did not have a significant impact on the election.

It did have three very distinct effects. They just did not involve the President's handling of the pandemic.

First, the fact that President Trump contracted the virus had an effect on the election. That kept Trump off the campaign trail for almost two weeks. This had a major effect because it did not allow the President to be out campaigning at the rallies that he was so good at.

His illness also caused the debate commission to cancel the second debate even though there was no scientific justification to do so. Trump had met the CDC guidelines for the return to normal activities to participate in that debate but the commission refused to sanction his appearance. They would only allow a virtual debate that Trump was not interested in doing.

The failure to have this debate hurt Trump. In particular, the cancellation meant that foreign policy issues, which was to be the focus in the third debate, were never discussed. This prevented Trump from highlighting the many successes he had in this area---the defeat of ISIS, greater funding by NATO allies, the Mideast peace deals, the move of the Israel embassy to Jerusalem, getting Mexico to deploy troops to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent illegal aliens from attempting to get into the U.S. etc.

Finally, I think there is a good possibility that Trump's performance in the first debate might have been hampered due to the fact that he was in the process of coming down with Covid. He was diagnosed two days later so his body may have been in the early stages of battling the virus during the debate.

Second, the fact that we were living in a Covid world allowed Joe Biden to hide in his basement and avoid campaigning. This also allowed him to avoid the media. Trump's illness gave Biden an even better reason to avoid campaigning.

By doing this Biden was able to avoid risking the gaffes he is so famous. Covid also allowed the Biden campaign to hide the fact that the former Vice President simply did not have the strength and stamina to conduct the normal campaign we would expect of someone who is running for President.

We saw in the last week of the campaign that President Trump forced Biden out of his basement in response to Trump's massive rallies. However, the contrast between the tens of thousands of those at Trump's rallies and the row of cars at one (or maybe two) Biden rallies per day spoke volumes.

Covid helped Biden enormously because it gave him a pass to not campaign and not have to answer questions from the media every day. Therefore, many in the voting public were never allowed the opportunity to fully vet the candidate as is the usual case.

I have no doubt that if Covid had not occurred that Biden's weaknesses would have been easy for the voter to see and understand. Covid allowed Biden to avoid the scrutiny he should have had as a candidate for the highest office in the land.

Third, and most important, Covid allowed almost all states to allow and greatly liberalize the use of mail-in balloting. This was done despite the fact that in many states it was not properly done through a change in law. It was also done without corresponding changes in the election systems and processes which are primarily designed for in-person voting on election day.

The result has been the chaos and uncertainty we have seen over the last ten days and the substantial questions that exist over whether the election results are legitimate or not.

Well over half of all the ballot cast in the election were by mail.

It also appears that the normal procedures for verifying signatures on the returned ballots were not followed.

Here is a tweet from the Chairman the Republican party in Georgia who asks a critical question. It is the same question I have asked about in other states.

How could you have a 3.5% rejection rate in 2018 with 230,000 mail-in ballots and a .3% rejection rate in 2020 with 1.2 million mail-in ballots?

It defies all common sense. That is especially true considering the number of new votes cast by mail by voters who had never done it before.

When you see numbers like this you have to wonder whether anyone validated these mail-in ballots as they came in?

None of this would have occurred but for Covid causing politicians to push and promote the use of mail-in ballots you could see were going to be problematic months in advance.

In fact, President Trump warned about the problems inherent in all of this mail-in voting back in May.

 Trump also warned in August that it could take weeks to get the election counts.

Right again.

All because Covid was used as cover to slant an election?

That is the biggest Covid effect of all.

Follow the Numbers, Not the Narrative

Election results involve a lot of data.

BeeLine likes data.

The 2020 election is a gold mine of data.

It is normal that the more data you have the easier it is to draw conclusions because certain patterns and trends reveal themselves and larger truths are confirmed.

I have scrutinized a lot of data the last few days attempting to understand the 2020 Presidential election results.

Many are questioning the integrity of the election results. Quite frankly, a lot of things have transpired that don't make sense looking at past elections and trends.

Here are a few.

How could Trump lose and yet House Republicans not lose one seat of an incumbent? Right now it appears that the GOP will actually gain at least 10 seats on the Democrats in the House.

How could Biden only win 3 out of the 17 bellwhether counties in the nation ( those counties that have voted for the winning candidate in almost every election since 1984) and still win the election? It is without historical precedent.

Source: https://twitter.com/bullshitman_org/status/1325588990762778624

How could Republicans pick up overall state legislative seats in the country and Trump lose?

How could Trump win Florida and Ohio so convincingly (two states that have been considered the most reliable bellwhether states nationally) but lose?

How could Trump gain the largest share of minority votes in any election in over 60 years, and Biden lose the largest share, and still lose?

The answer you typically hear to these questions is that voters favored Republicans on the issues but did not like President Trump personally.

Let's look at some data to see if this holds true by looking at some select high profile U.S. Senate races by comparing President Trump's vote percentage in those states compared to the Senate candidate.

These states all involved incumbent Republican senators.

Kentucky                Trump  62.1%       McConnell  57.8%

South Carolina        Trump 55.1%        Graham  54.5%

Arizona                   Trump 49.0%        McSally  48.8%

Montana                  Trump 56.9%        Daines  55.0%

North Carolina        Trump  50.1%       Tillis  48.7%

Iowa                        Trump  53.2%       Ernst  51.8%

These numbers certainly do not fit the narrative that Trump was a drag on the Republican ticket.

In fact, it appears that Trump was most likely responsible for helping all of these Republicans.

Yes, you can look at a state like Maine and see that Susan Collins retained her seat as a Republican Senator in that state with 51.1% of the vote while Trump only garnered 44.2%. However, that was only one percentage point lower than Trump got in 2016. In the meantime, Trump also increased his actual vote total in the state by 7% compared to last time.

Also consider New York. Trump lost that state by a 21.3% margin in 2016. He only lost by 12% in 2020.

This hardly looks like any kind of repudiation of President Trump or his policies.

The narrative heading into the election was that Trump was struggling with women voters and that would cost him the election. 

As I have stated before, I take all polls with a grain of salt. I am particularly skeptical of exit polls this year even though they supposedly made adjustments for the high number of mail-in ballots.

However, the exit polls this year actually showed that Trump gained with women voters compared to 2016.

Trump + 2 points better with white women

Trump +9 points better with black women

Trump +5 points better with Latina women

Women have generally been considered the power center of suburban politics.

One of the most interesting data points I have seen in the election results are the numbers that came out of the four suburban counties that surround Philadelphia (Delaware, Montgomery, Bucks, Chester).

For perspective, these four counties voted for Barack Obama by a margin of 123,327 votes over Mitt Romney in 2012.

In 2016, these counties voted for Hillary Clinton by a margin of 188,353 votes over Donald Trump.

In 2020 thus far, these counties have given Joe Biden a margin of 283,061 votes over Trump!

That is a margin of 95,000 more votes for Biden than Hillary had despite the fact that Trump got 55,000 more votes in 2016.

Keep in mind that Trump is only trailing Biden by about 46,000 votes in Pennsylvania right now.

Are we supposed to believe that Biden had a 160,000 greater margin over Donald Trump than Barack Obama did over Romney in these four counties?

However, in Philadelphia, Biden's margin was 22,000 less than Hillary and 47,000 less than Obama's.

I don't know about you but those numbers in the suburbs are very suspicious.

How do you also explain that when the overall women's vote nationally actually improved for Trump while women are supposedly the key to the suburban vote?

You have to also consider the fact that over 60% of the vote for Biden in those four counties were through mail-in ballots.

How many were ballots that did not conform to the law?

That is going to be the big question in the legal challenges that the Trump campaign is bringing in Pennsylvania and other states.

The other number that is particularly suspicious to me involves the turnout numbers in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin had approximately 3.6 million voters going into the election per the Wisconsin Election Commission. 

Wisconsin allows same-day registration so you can expect it might have been modestly higher.

However, we also know that at least 234,000 of those on the registration rolls of Wisconsin should have been removed before the election because there was clear evidence that they had either moved or died.

The Wisconsin Election Commission refused to follow the law and remove these names from the registration rolls before this year's election. In fact, they ignored a court order to do so. This guaranteed that the registration rolls were overstated and "dirty".  

Based on the numbers, Wisconsin should have had around 3.4 million registered voters if the rolls had been updated properly. Let's be generous and round that up to 3.5 million to account for same day registrations.

How many votes have been cast in the 2020 election for President in Wisconsin?

3,240,600.

That is 93% of registered voters if we use 3.5 million as the base.

It is simply not believable.

Those levels of voting are not even reached in countries that have mandatory voting laws and penalize or fine those who do not vote.

These numbers look even stranger when you consider that Trump improved his turnout in every county in Wisconsin compared to 2016. Biden underperformed in 57 counties compared to Obama in 2012.

However, in a few counties Biden performed massively better than Obama did.

Here are voter turnout numbers in the five selected counties in Wisconsin that Biden did massively better than Obama in.

Washington at 96.60%, St. Croix at 95.99%, Dane at 90.38%, Waukesha at 94.56%. Ozaukee at 94.96%.

In Washington, Biden outperformed Obama by 15%.

In St.Croix, Biden outperformed Obama by 16%.

In Dane, Biden outperformed Obama by 20%.

In Waukesha, Biden outperformed Obama by 32%.

In Ozaukee, Biden outperformed Obama by 38%.

Bear in mind, that in Milwaukee county Biden underperformed Obama by 4.6%.

How is it possible that Biden outperformed by such large margins in just a few counties? 

Why does this follow the same pattern as in Pennsylvania?

Something does not add up.

I am highlighting just a couple data points that do not seem to be consistent with the larger narrative.

There are hundreds of others out there.

Many seem to be related in some way to the massive increase in the numbers of mail-in ballots.

As I wrote back in August, utilizing mail-in ballots to the degree they were used this year was an invitation for fraud.

Moving to mail-in ballots when the entire voting system and infrastructure is geared to in-person voting is an invitation to fraud.

To insure the integrity of the election it would be necessary to have scores of people opening the mail, tabulating results and verifying signatures and voter id's against the registration rolls. It would be many times more laborious than the current system and require more time.

From what we are seeing and hearing, it appears little was done in many of these key swing states to insure that we had that integrity.

Let's revisit where we are and why no reasonable person should believe that Joe Biden has won this election right now.

About 14.8 million votes were cast in the three key swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia that Joe Biden now leads in. If Trump wins those three states and holds the lead he currently has in North Carolina and Alaska he will have the majority of electoral votes.

Biden's vote margin is less than 75,000 votes of the nearly 15 million votes in those three states. A mere .5% separates Trump from Biden.

If only about 1% of Biden's votes were somehow invalidated in those three states because they were illegally cast, it would be enough to reverse the outcome.

For context, consider that 20% of the mail-in ballots in New York City were rejected in the 2020 primary in New York. A lot of that was attributed to voters not being used to the mail-in voting rules. However, the rejection rate was 1.53% in LA county and they are used to mail-in voting.

A recent report indicated that Pennsylvania had only rejected 951 out of 2,614,011 mail-in ballots--.03%. This is also when most voters were doing mail-in ballots for the first time.

The Trump campaign's lawsuit in Pennsylvania alleges that Allegheny and Philadelphia counties alone received and processed 682,479 mail-in and absentee ballots without any review whatsoever.

Does that sound like any real scrutiny or review of these ballots was done?

Further, if a computer "glitch" were to be found that switched votes from Biden to Trump it would only take half of that 1% of votes for Trump to win those three states.

Trump may not prevail in all of this. It is very much an uphill battle once the votes have been counted. It is going to require that votes that have already been counted will have to thrown out.

No one is going to want to make a ruling to invalidate votes be it election officials, state legislators or the courts.

However, just because it is hard does not mean it should not be done. After all, we are talking about the foundational element in our representative republic. If we cannot trust the integrity of the vote we don't have a country.

At the very least, this election should teach us to never again allow mail-in ballots except in extremely limited circumstances (out of the country, military service, certified house-bound disability).

They are just too susceptible to fraud.

Most of the rest of the world recognized this a long time ago.

France has banned mail-in voting since 1975 because of voting fraud.

78% of OECD countries bar mail-in voting for those living in their countries or require a photo ID to get a mail-in ballots.

85% of the countries in the EU follow similar rules.

The author of the study that compiled the different mail-in ballot rules around the world opined.

“If concern about vote fraud with mail-in ballots is delusional, it is a delusion shared by most of the world.”

                                                                                -John Lott 

Perhaps blockchain or some other technology can make remote voting reliable in the future. It is clear that was not the case in 2020 from what the numbers above reveal.

My advice right now is to forget the narrative being promoted by Big Media and Big Tech that there is no basis for the lawsuits and investigations of the results of the election in these key states.

Look at the how Twitter is tagging any tweets that claim there might be election fraud.

To be fair, should Twitter also not be putting a similar disclaimer on any tweet that refers to Joe Biden as President-elect right now? How about "The results of the election are in dispute"? There is as much to justify that disclaimer as the one they are using above.

Follow the numbers, not the narrative.

There is a lot that doesn't add up.

Let's hope that we will get some real answers as to why they don't add up over the next couple of weeks.

If the Democrats claim there is zero evidence of fraud, they should welcome the investigation.

They should have nothing to lose.

However, the nation has much to gain by any investigation not the least of which is to know whether or not this election was legitimate or not.

No Malarkey!

Joe Biden has been named the winner of the Presidential election by the major news outlets.

The election results have not been certified in any states but it does not look promising for President Trump right now even though the Republicans are filing lawsuits in a number of states challenging the vote totals.

If Biden is ultimately declared the winner he faces formidable challenges as President.

Biden is clearly past his prime and it is questionable whether he can withstand the rigors of being President. If you doubt that, consider how many times Trump stood up and took dozens of questions from reporters at Covid briefings or how many rallies he spoke at. 

Can you even imagine Biden being able to do that?

I am wondering whether Biden can easily climb up the steps to Air Force One?

Source : Air Force One Experience

Biden is also going to be facing renewed scrutiny involving what his son Hunter and brother James did to cash in on the Biden name and the extent to which the former Vice President might have been involved. This scandal is no longer in the headlines due to the election coverage but it will not stay that way for long.

Biden also faces a country with many problems and is also very divided along partisan lines. Yes, Covid and getting the economy back to full recovery are big issues. However, it is easy to forget how many things have gone right the last four years.

If he takes office Biden will eventually be measured against this historical baseline and it will not be easy to improve on many of them when someone starts asking if they are better off under Biden than they were under Trump.

Consider this list that a friend and BeeLine reader forwarded to me that was compiled by a high school classmate (Bill Waldrop) of his on his Facebook timeline

He did this in order to memorialize exactly where we are right now to set a clear mark for history to remember this moment in time.

Gasoline is currently $1.74 per gallon and $2.48 per gallon diesel. 

Interest rates are 2.89 percent for a 30-year mortgage. 

The stock market closed at 28,000+ even though we have been fighting the COVID for 9 months. 

Our GDP growth for the 3rd Qtr was 33 percent. 

We had the best economy ever until COVID and it is recovering well. 

We have not had any new wars or conflicts in the last 4 years. 

North Korea has been under control and has not been testing any missiles. 

ISIS has not been heard from for over 3 years. 

There are 3 major peace deals in place regarding Israel. 

The housing market is the strongest it has been in years. Homes have appreciated at an unbelievable rate and sell well.

Trump got the highest percentage of minority votes of any Republican Presidential Candidate in 65 years.

Biden got the LOWEST percentage of minority votes of any Democrat Presidential Candidate in 65 years.

On top of all of this we are faced with election results right now that over 70 million voters have legitimate questions about.

Joe Biden also faces the burden of governing with a substantial cloud of illegitimacy hanging over his head.

There are many who are saying that President Trump should concede the election for "the good of the country."

I could not disagree more.

Donald Trump needs to pursue every legal option to determine the correct and legal votes in each state.

More than doing this for himself, Trump needs to do this in order that we all might have confidence that our election system is honest. In a representative democracy if the people cannot trust the integrity of the electoral process the entire government system is suspect.

The person who should want the election results fully investigated the most should be Joe Biden. He needs to have that cloud removed from over his head if he is to have any chance of governing.

If Joe Biden really is serious about "healing" the country he should fully support the full investigation of the allegations of fraudulent voting and any audits or recounts necessary to remove any doubts about the integrity of the vote. It is in his best interest if he really believes that nothing illegal was done in the voting process. It would allow him to take office with full legitimacy.

Let's review where we stand right now to understand just show close the vote is in the key battleground states that are still in dispute.

Vote totals per Associated Press at 1030pm EST on 11/8/20.

Georgia             Biden +10,000 votes  +.2%

Arizona             Biden +17,000 votes  +.5%

Wisconsin         Biden +20,000 votes  +.7%

Nevada              Biden +35,000 votes  +2.6%

Pennsylvania     Biden +46,000 votes  +.7%

North Carolina  Trump +75,000 votes  +1.4%

Michigan           Biden +146,000 votes +2.7%

I don't know what the Trump campaign is going to allege in the lawsuits they are filing in these states but I know that they don't have to invalidate a lot of votes due to election irregularities or fraud to reverse the results in these states.

I also know that the Democrats are particularly vulnerable with regard to the heavy number of votes that Joe Biden received with mail-in ballots. These votes are the easiest to challenge in that they need to have been submitted in a certain form to be legal votes.

Let's take a look at what I know to be true in a few of these states.

In Georgia, there are 132,000 active voter registrations in Fulton County that have been flagged with change of address notices meaning that these voters moved away from their current address. If these were voted they could be invalid. 

Biden is leading Fulton with 72% of the vote. The mail-in vote percentage was even higher. Let's assume half of those votes were illegally cast. That would mean potentially a net of 18,000 Biden votes could be declared invalid in that one county in a state in which he is only up by 10,000 right now.

Arizona is still counting and Trump was reduced the Biden lead substantially since election night when Fox News called the state for Trump. Trump has closed the gap to 17,000 votes with an estimated 81,000 votes still to be counted.

There are many questions about Wisconsin including a voter turnout that approaches 90% which seems improbably high. Wisconsin election officials also left 234,000 voters on the registration rolls earlier this year although there was evidence that the voters had changed address or had died. This was a clear violation of the law which requires these voters be purged from the rolls. Wisconsin election officials also corrected mail-in ballots in clear violation of the law when the witness requirement was not fulfilled properly. All of these ballots are at risk of being invalidated.

In Pennsylvania, the law is clear that no mail-in votes can be accepted after 8pm on election day. The courts in Pennsylvania ruled that this could be ignored due to Covid and mail-in votes would be accepted for up to 3 days after election day. The GOP took this to the U.S. Supreme Court before the election but the justices refused to rule citing it was premature until the election was concluded. However, the Supreme Court ordered Pennsylvania to segregate those votes.

It appears that Pennsylvania did not obey the Supreme Court order. They have intermingled and counted the late ballots but stated that they kept a written record of them. It seems clear to me that these votes are going to be invalidated. Almost 80% of mail-in votes in the state went to Biden. He cannot lose many votes and still win the state.

I have also see reports that in prior elections about 1% of mail in ballots in Pennsylvania were rejected due to errors. In this election only 1/25 of that number were rejected. These seems to indicate there was little scrutiny of the validity of mail-in ballots when they were received. 

2.5 million mail-in ballots were cast in Pennsylvania. Joe Biden received 77% of the vote. Assume that the error rate was only .5% (1/2 of the normal rate). That is 125,000 votes that could be invalidated. If Biden's margin is applied to those votes he is at risk of losing 67,500 votes. That alone would turn the state to Trump.

The AP currently is giving Trump 214 electoral votes. Let's assume he holds NC and Alaska (which still has not been called for Trump even though he has 62% of the vote with 50% of the vote counted). That gets Trump to 232 electoral votes.

What else does he have to do?

Georgia +16 = 248

Pennsylvania +20 = 268

Wisconsin =10 = 278

To do this involves only reducing Biden's margin by 76,000 votes in these three states.

I have not even included Arizona.

Or Nevada.

Or Michigan.

Bear in mind I have also not discussed the possible issues involving the voting tabulation machines of Dominion Voting Systems that a number of questions have been raised about and are used in every one of the states listed above.

Trump may not prevail but this election is far from over.

There is also no way that Joe Biden should be referred to as President-elect right now.

Questions about the legitimacy of the vote need to be answered.

Joe Biden likes to say "no malarkey".

He has an excellent opportunity to prove it right now.

Biden also likes to the talk a lot about the "soul of our nation".  That "soul"might depend on how this election is investigated.  His presidency might as well.

So Predictable

All of it was so predictable.

I am no prophet but I accurately forecasted exactly where we are right now in August in a blog post entitled, "Magnets for Fraud".

Our voting systems are not set up to handle volumes of ballots that are mailed in. All the systems (voting machines, poll workers etc) have been established for in-person voting where collecting and counting the votes is done with automated machines and identities can be checked (where voter ID is permitted) by poll workers. Even if voter ID is not required in a state, in-person voting requires a real person to show up in person at the polls which limits attempts at voter harvesting and other fraudulent acts.

Some argue that mail-in voting is no different than absentee voting. This could not be further from the truth. Absentee voting requires that the voter request a ballot. It also typically requires that some reason be given that the voter cannot vote in person. It also requires some form of ID so that identification can be confirmed (drivers license number, etc). A signature is required that is supposed to be matched to the voter rolls.

Absentee ballots have also typically made up less than 20% of the ballots in an election year. They were 17.7% of all votes cast in 2016.

Moving to mail-in ballots when the entire voting system and infrastructure is geared to in-person voting is an invitation for fraud every bit in line with the unemployment benefits fraud seen in Ohio this year.

To insure the integrity of the election it would be necessary to have scores of people opening the mail, tabulating results and verifying signatures and voter id's against the registration rolls. It would be many times more laborious than the current system and require more time.

It would also almost guarantee that we would not have election results for days or weeks after the election day.

Mail-in voting (or something more sophisticated technologically) is something that may make sense in the future.

However, it must be accompanied by changes in the systems and election infrastructure that have been developed to service in-person voting over a period of years. It is not realistic that it could be changed in a matter of a couple of months without confusion and chaos occurring. I can think of nothing worse happening in a year when the integrity of the vote is so important to gain public trust.

One requirement that I believe is absolutely necessary in mail-in voting is that the votes must be in hand at the Elections Board by election day. Voters deserve to know the final results on election day and not days or weeks later as we have seen in some of the mail-in states like California and New York where ballots are coming in days after the elections. Allowing votes to come in and be counted after initial results have been tabulated is another invitation for fraud.

Prospects for President Trump's re-election look bleak right now.

Recounts may be conducted but they are not intended to uncover fraud in voting. A recount is merely intended to make sure that the votes were correctly tabulated.

A recount is not going to tell you if the vote itself was legitimate.

Was the vote cast by a U.S citizen?

Was the vote cast by a legal resident of the state?

Was the registered voter actually the person who cast the vote? 

Did the votes of one party never get put into the system?

Was one party allowed to cure errors in mail-in ballots but it was not allowed by the other party?

Was there some digital manipulation of the voting machine tabulation system?

In order for President Trump to have any chance at prevailing it appears that some evidence of suspected systemic fraud must be produced.

That is not easy to prove although there are already instances where everything that I have cited above has occurred somewhere in the battleground states.

Short of a miracle, I just don't see where that evidence is going to come from.

The other problem is that in a situation like this possession is 99% of the law. The votes are on the record for Biden. It is a high burden to overcome that unless there is compelling evidence of real fraud. It would take a lot for a judge or state legislator to throw out votes that are already on the record no matter how illegitimate they may be.

Some in the Republican party are suggesting that President Trump should graciously concede defeat and make plans for the transition of power. That would be good advice if there was no evidence of fraud. I don't know the specifics of what the Trump campaign may have in that regard. 

However, if they have any reasonable basis that fraud was involved Trump should not concede an inch. It would be a disservice to the 70 million people who voted for him and it would also be negligent to not confront any evidence of fraud as election integrity is the foundation of our entire government system. Without it, nothing is legitimate.

I have written before about some of the voting numbers that come out of inner city precincts.

The numbers themselves suggest fraud for no other reason that it is hard to imagine that in any human endeavor on any subject you could find this much unanimity on any subject or issue.

For example, consider these vote totals for six inner city voting precincts in Cincinnati, Ohio in the 2016 Presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Cincinnati Precinct 13A-  Obama 1,080 votes, Romney 5 votes

Cincinnati Precinct 15C-  Obama 703 votes, Romney 4 votes

Cincinnati Precinct 22C-  Obama 859 votes, Romney 8 votes

Cincinnati Precinct 24H-  Obama 336 votes, Romney 1 vote

Cincinnati Precinct 24I-  Obama 407 votes, Romney 2 votes

Cincinnati Precinct 26H-   Obama 455 votes, Romney 2 votes

In those 6 precincts Obama got 99.5% of the vote.

You would think that with this many ballots you would have more people mark the ballot incorrectly for Romney by error than the number of votes he actually received.

I wrote at that time that this might not represent voting fraud but it makes you wonder how one demographic group can have their vote almost totally defined by race. 

There are rich and poor African Americans. Males and females. College graduates and high school drop outs. Evangelicals and atheists. Families and single households. 

You don't see anything like this with any other demographic group.

I compared that vote with the 2016 vote in Cincinnati's wealthiest suburb, Indian Hill.

Indian Hill is generally considered a bastion of wealthy, white, privileged Republicans in Cincinnati. In fact, the zip code that includes Indian Hill donated more money to Romney than any other in the entire state of Ohio.

What were the vote totals in Indian Hill between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney?

Indian Hill Precincts- Romney 3,434, Obama 1,406

In those 6 precincts Romney got 71.0% of the vote.

I can understand 71.0%. I don't fathom 99.5%.

I was curious what the vote totals in those six inner city precincts were for Joe Biden.

Here are the votes for 2020 as currently reported with 100% of the vote in. (there will undoubtedly be some minor adjustments before the count is certified).

Cincinnati Precinct 13A-  Biden 490 votes, Trump 16 votes

Cincinnati Precinct 15C-  Biden  414 votes, Trump 21 votes

Cincinnati Precinct 22C-  Biden 420 votes, Trump 18 votes

Cincinnati Precinct 24H-  Biden 128 votes, Trump 9 votes

Cincinnati Precinct 24I-  Biden 214 votes, Trump 5 votes

Cincinnati Precinct 26H- Biden 229 votes, Trump 22 votes

In those 6 precincts Biden got 91.2% of the vote instead of the 99.5% Obama received.

More significantly, Biden only got 1,895 votes in these precincts compared to the 3,070 that Obama got and the 2,657 that Hillary tallied.

On the other hand, Trump got only 56% of the vote in Indian Hill in 2020 compared to the 71% that Romney received (Trump got 62% in 2012).

Consider the vote totals in Philadelphia as they are being reported as I write this.

Trump received 29% of the election day vote. Biden got 92.4% of the early vote and half the votes were submitted early. When over 9 of every 10 votes being counted after election night are going to one side any electoral margin can be erased quickly.

Comparing the total votes to other years it is hard to make a case that 2020 involved abnormal vote totals in Philadelphia based on what I have seen thus far. However, the early mail-in vote this year has really shown what is going on beneath the surface. In the past these votes got buried in the overall results. This year it was impossible to ignore the effects as so much came in together in mail ballots.

I still can't get over this report that I cited in my last blog post.

23,277 votes for Biden and ZERO for Trump in one batch of votes!

This year raises the additional question as to how anyone could look at the imbalance in early voting numbers and suggest that it benefits the two parties equally. 

In fact, isn't it the Democrats who state that the issue is not equality of access or opportunity but of equity? Kamala Harris made this argument just days before election day. She said "equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place." 

Based on this Marxist thinking, if there is an unequal result there is injustice. The result we have seen with early voting unquestionably fits the definition of injustice under that standard.

Is there any doubt that if early voting numbers were reversed in favor of Republicans that the Democrats would be strongly arguing for its removal?

The larger question is how can a country that spawned Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and other tech giants be grappling with a voting system that people can't trust?

Why should it take days to count ballots in so many critical states?

Why are voter ID laws so vigorously opposed by Democrats?

Why should there be any question whatsoever about the integrity of our elections?

These are questions that need to be answered.

The problem is that the Democrats have no interest in answering them.

The system is clearly working for them. Why would they want to change it?.

It is all so predictable

Nobody Won

In my last blog post I posed the question, "Who Will Win?".

It turns out that nobody won.

We still don't know who won between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

At some point one or the other might eventually be declared the winner.

I see this occurring only after numerous legal challenges and recounts are undertaken in the remaining contested states.

This is likely to be many times greater than the drama we saw in the 2000 election recount in Florida between George W. Bush and Al Gore that was defined by the controversies of "hanging chads". This time we will likely see a repeat of that in multiple states.

I would imagine there will be a tremendous focus on the validity of vote by mail ballots in those states.

Credit: Texas Monthly

 

I have no way of knowing whether voting fraud or other irregularities were involved in any of the vote counts in the key swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia or North Carolina.

However, what transpired Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning raises serious concerns.

When have we ever seen multiple states suspend the counting of votes and then start up again and see that thousands and thousands of votes suddenly appeared while simultaneously moving the election in favor of Joe Biden from Donald Trump?

It smells to high heaven. Perhaps the votes are legitimate but I don't think I have ever seen worse optics in my life.

It almost looks as if the Democrats decided to cheat and are not even worried about how it appears. After all, who in the media is going to call them out?

These charts show how the vote count unfolded Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning in Wisconsin and Michigan.

There was a very consistent trend to the voting throughout the entire night favoring President Trump until, BOOM, a miracle occurred.

Perhaps it is all due to a massive 90%+ vote for Biden in mail ballots from urban precincts but it should by all means be investigated and challenged if there was any tampering or illegalities involved.

The same thing is going on right now in Pennsylvania as I write this.

Look at this tweet from FiveThirtyEight.com that shows 23,277 votes for Biden and 0 votes for Trump in one batch of votes out of Philadelphia.

Is anyone supposed to believe that in a group of 23,277 voters there wasn't one person who thought that Trump was a better choice than Biden? 

It is even harder to believe that in that large a group you would not find a handful of people who voted for Trump simply because they marked the wrong box on the ballot.

We will see how this unfolds but it is clear right now that nobody won on Tuesday night, most particularly, the American people.

The election process we have witnessed has seriously undermined the public's faith in the most basic foundational element in our system of government.

It is just further evidence how deep we are in within "The Fourth Turning".

Sitting here today I could not help but remember this passage from that book by Neil Howe and William Strauss that was written in the last 1990's.

Eventually, all of America's lesser problems will combine into one giant problem. The very survival of society will feel at stake...

History warns that when a Crisis catalyzes, a previously dominant political party (or regime) can find itself directly blamed for perceived "mistakes" that led to the national emergency. 

Key persons associated with it could find themselves defamed, stigmatized, harassed, economically ruined, personally punished---or worse. 

If that is true, even the winner of the 2020 election may find that they did not win in the end. 

Putting aside the possible election fraud it is still worth noting that half of the country voted for a soon to be 78-year old who clearly shows no capacity to lead the country in this dangerous and challenging time.

The authors of the The Fourth Turning suggest that history is not made by events but by the reaction of human beings to events.  We saw clear evidence of that yesterday.  We are hurtling down the road for a rendezvous with history of our own making.  Two clearly marked paths were there for the choosing.  Half the country seems to have no appreciation for the dangers and risks that one path has for our country and our way of life. 

We all will have to deal with where this division and the final decision leads us.

Who Will Win?

Who will win?

This is the question everyone is asking right now.

I gave up making predictions eight years ago after I predicted that Mitt Romney would defeat Barack Obama in 2012.

I now confine myself to analyzing and assessing the data I look at without making a definitive prediction. That is probably especially prudent this year when there is so much going on that is unknown and without precedent (the effects of Covid, surge in early voting etc.) 

In any election analysis I start first by looking at history. That is especially true when one of the candidates was on the ballot last time. I look backwards to see what the votes looked like in the last election. Defeating an incumbent starts first with understanding how many votes they got the last time and where they were from. 

Defeating an incumbent begins with getting voters who supported the candidate the last time to change their vote. After that, you hope to recruit new voters to your candidate and cause.

Looking Backward

Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by winning Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by razor thin margins.  

These states provided Trump with 46 electoral votes to give him a 304-227 margin in the electoral college.

Had those 46 electoral votes been in Hillary's column Trump would have only had 258 electoral votes and would have been 12 short of the 270 necessary to win..

The total margin in those three states were as follows:

Pennsylvania     44,292

Wisconsin          22,748

Michigan           10, 704

Trump also won Florida with only a 1.2% vote margin and North Carolina with 2.8%.

When that is the baseline from the last election it is not difficult to make the case that Biden could easily turn the table on Trump.

Consider if you have a result in a state that was 51%-49% the last time. 51 out of 100 voters were for Trump. 49 out of 100 were for Biden. It would only take 2 of Trump's 51 voters to switch their vote to turn the state. 

Trump could do the same to Biden in some other states.

Trump only lost New Hampshire by .4%, Minnesota by 1.5%, Nevada by 2.4% and Maine by 2.9%.

Democrats have a big advantage going into any Presidential election in that they are certain to win large electoral rich states like California, New York and Illinois. Just these three states provide 104 electoral votes which is almost 40% of the 270 that is needed.

However, Democrats struggle for votes in most of the rest of the country.

Consider that Hillary Clinton was able to get more than 50% of the votes in only 14 states (including D.C) in 2016. Trump got more than 50% in 23 states.

This alone should show you why the Founders established the electoral college system. 

I like this chart which shows the percentage of vote for Hillary in 2016 by state. Many more states went big for Trump than they did for Hillary.

Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/2016-election-results-by-state

Trump got at least 55% of the vote in 18 states. Hillary only did that in 10 states.

Those 18 states gave Trump 112 electoral votes balancing out California, New York and Illinois.

There is little question you would like to be the Democrat in a Presidential race these days. Knowing you have three big states locked up before you start is a big advantage. 

Any Republican has a much narrower path to victory. However, in the past the Democrats have come up against the reality that most of the rest of the country is center right rather than liberal in its political views. That is why Democrats who have won recently (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) did all they could when running for President to appear as centrists rather than liberals.

Has that changed? The Democrats have made a big bet this year that it has. Granted, they have tried to disguise their agenda by putting good old Joe up front. The big question is whether voters will see through it?

The Democrat establishment was clearly afraid of letting Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren head the ticket after they saw what was happening in Iowa and New Hampshire. They closed ranks behind Biden in South Carolina despite Joe's woeful finishes in the first two primary contests in Iowa (4th) and New Hampshire (5th). 

In 2016, in my final blog post before election day, the following  states were all considered swing states and polls showed all of these within the margin of error. The odds were against Trump but I pointed out that he clearly had a path to victory within these states.

Trump won the first six states on this list. He also won Wisconsin which was considered totally out of reach. He lost New Hampshire by 2,700 votes, Nevada by 27,000 votes and Colorado by less than 5 points. 

Florida

Ohio

North Carolina

Iowa

Pennsylvania

Michigan

Colorado

Nevada

New Hampshire

All of these states are still key battleground states in 2020 with the exception of Colorado. Georgia may be in play now when it was considered safe for Trump the last time. Wisconsin is definitely in play. Arizona is as well. Add Minnesota to this list.

These 12 states will determine the 2020 election.

Where We Are Now

You would like to be Joe Biden right now if you look at the polls. He is running ahead. Even better, he is looking better than Hillary did on the eve of the last election. 

According to the RealClearPolitics.com poll average, Trump is running 4.5 points worse today than he was against Hillary Clinton in nationwide popular vote polling four years ago. 

The President is doing better in the battleground states but he is still worse off by 2.5 points than he was when he beat Hillary Clinton in these states.

Those numbers suggest that Joe Biden will win.

However, it is difficult to not question a number of the polls when they are showing numbers like Biden +12 (CNN), Biden +11 (Economist/YouGov) and Biden +10 (NBC/WSJ).

Are they seriously suggesting that Joe Biden is going to have a bigger winning margin over Donald Trump than Barack Obama had over John McCain (+7), Bill Clinton over Bob Dole (+9) or FDR over Thomas Dewey in 1944 (+7.5)?

It makes me want to question the entire methodology in these polls.

This Gallup favorability survey would also suggest that Joe Biden is the favorite. Notice that the candidate with the higher favorability rating with likely voters won every election from 1992 to 2012. Romney and Obama were tied but Obama had a higher favorable rating with all adults.

That was not true in 2016 as Hillary had a higher favorability rating than Trump and still lost.

Interestingly, Trump actually has higher favorables in 2020 than he did in 2016. However, Biden is still 9 points higher than Trump in the Gallup survey.

Can Trump overcome this disadvantage? How much are the recent revelations about Hunter Biden's affecting Joe's favorables leading up to election day?

If I am in Biden's camp I would be feeling good about the polls and the difference in the favorable ratings.

What would concern me if I was Biden?

I have never seen a bigger enthusiasm gap between two candidates as there is with Trump vs. Biden. You would have to point to Obama vs. McCain to find anything similar. It is quite remarkable.

The momentum also clearly favors Trump. However, this is probably not as important as in past elections because of the large number of early voters this year. 

The early vote is huge but it does appear that Black, Hispanic and youth votes have not turned out in the same percentages in the early voting in key states as we have seen in past elections . This can be made up on election day but Democrats have generally indicated in polling that most were going to vote early. A lot of that seems to be driven over fears of Covid which surveys show is much higher with Democrats than Republicans.

If I were Biden I would also be concerned about the number of White working class voters who are turning out to vote. This demographic is what made Trump the winner in 2016. Trump won White non-college voters by 37 points last time. He won men in this group by 48 points.

Biden needs to cut into this margin. That is especially true in the Rust Belt states. He has to be particularly concerned about new voters turning out in this group. The odds are that any new voters in this group are not turning out to vote for Joe Biden as a candidate.

If I am Trump I would be most concerned about the votes of White, college-educated women. I would also be concerned about the polls indicating that I am losing support in the age 65+ demographic. This is generally the most reliable demographic to turnout to vote. It has also tended to be more conservative than other other groups. Losing voters here would hurt Trump badly.

In the end, this election will be determined by turnout. Candidates win who best turnout their voters.

There were a couple of great examples of this in 2018 and 2019.

In 2018, the Republicans lost a Senate seat in Alabama when their candidate was Roy Moore. This was in a state that Trump won by 28 points two years earlier. Democrat Doug Jones won by 1.5 points.

How did he win? Jones got 92% of the votes Hillary did two years earlier. Moore only got 50% of Trump's total---500,000 fewer votes than Trump got. They didn't vote for the Democrat. They simply stayed home.

The same thing occurred in Kentucky in 2019. Trump carried Kentucky 62.5%-32.7% in 2016. Incumbent Republican Governor Matt Bevin lost by 5,000 votes to Democrat Andy Beshear.

The Democrat got 89% of the votes that Hillary received in 2016. Bevin only got 59% of the votes Trump got. Another 500,000 Trump voters seemed to have stayed home.

The conventional wisdom in politics has been that high turnout helps Democrats. I am not sure that is true in the Trump era as he seems to have a unique ability to motivate people to vote who have sat on the sidelines before.

For example, look at these statistics from Trump's rallies in Pennsylvania on Saturday as reported by GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. Approximately 25% of those who signed up to attend those rallies were people who did not vote in 2016. This is consistent with the stats I have seen for almost every Trump rally this year.

The rally on Saturday in Butler, PA was a sight to behold. I have been in Butler a number of times and my jaw dropped when I saw the size of that crowd. Butler's population is about 14,000.

Take a look at this Reuters photograph. The Secret Service estimated there might have been 50,000 people there.

Who is going to turnout to vote?

Keep these stats in mind as well.

Source: 

Trump won in 2016 despite only 55% of White, working class voters turning out to vote. That compares to 72% of white college graduates. They are also the largest voting bloc comprising 41% of total voters.

There is more upside in votes in this demographic, by far, than any other group if Trump's support is still at the same level as 2016. His objective is to make sure they vote.

There is untapped potential for Biden in the Black and Latino vote. However, the polls seem to indicate that Trump has made inroads here. What happens with this vote will also be key on Tuesday.

If you want an excellent in-depth analysis of the state of the race and a prediction of where it ends up on November 3 I recommend you read this piece by Philip Stutts.

Stutts is not a pollster but has access to the largest data collection, analytics and AI company in the United States. He sees Biden the winner of the popular vote but Trump winning the electoral vote with a smaller margin than 2016.

He bases that on voters being most concerned about safety and security issues (ending riots, funding police, rebuilding the economy) and breaking for Trump at the end. I might add that this is also a benefit of incumbency. It is always a risk to vote for the challenger. The devil you know is always safer than the devil you don't. That is especially true in times of uncertainty like we are in right now.

He also thinks that Trump wins with his brand over Biden--projecting strength and optimism over weakness and pessimism.

Finally, he thinks there are a lot of "shy" voters out there who will vote for Trump that pollsters have missed.

Read the entire article. It has a lot of good insights.

Looking Forward

What should you look for on election night to get a sense of where things are going?

I am going to look first at the returns coming out of Kentucky. Kentucky's polls close at 6pm and it usually has the earliest reported results. In 2016 when I saw the early counts coming in from Kentucky, and Trump pulling in over 60% of the vote, I anticipated a good night. It proved true.

I am going to be interested in the reports of how heavy the election day voting has been. Larger turnouts might favor the Republicans. Lighter turnouts the Democrats.

I am going to be interested in any exit poll data that comes out early. I am going to be cautious in relying on these polls too much since it is unclear to me if the models can be relied on as they might have been in the past with so much early voting this year. However, if those exit polls show a marked upward trend in turnout with White working class voters, or a poor turnout in Black precincts, or a shortfall in the youth vote it might give some hints on where things are going.

The results from Florida, North Carolina and Georgia are going to be particularly important early in the evening. If Trump holds these states with margins similar to 2016 he may be able to duplicate what he did the last time. This will show that Biden has not been able to strip away the support Trump had in 2016.

If Trump loses any of these it is going to be difficult to see how he can win.

If Trump were to be in a close race in Texas or Ohio he will be in serious trouble.

On the other hand, if Trump is doing better in states like New Hampshire or Virginia than he did the last time, Biden needs to worry even more about Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

It is also going to be critically important that the news source you watch for election returns is providing context for you as to where the votes are coming from. 

Are they early (more likely Democrats) or election day votes (Republicans)?

Are they coming out of urban (Democrats) or rural (Republican) areas?

What is going on in the suburbs? Is Trump holding his own compared to 2016? If he is not, Trump has to do even better in the rural areas or hope that Biden is underperforming in the big cities.

How do the vote percentages compare to 2016 in key counties in the swing states?

For example, in 2016 Trump lost Miami-Dade county by 30 points. If he keeps Biden's margin below that number it is going to be very positive for Trump in Florida.

On the other hand, if Trump lags in Sumter County in Florida (location of the large Villages retirement community,) which he won by 39 points the last time, it could indicate that he really is leaking support with the age 65+ demographic.

The so-called experts will start the night giving Donald Trump about a 10% chance of winning the election.

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com is predicting that Joe Biden has a 89% chance of winning.

The Economist has Joe Biden with a 96% chance of winning.

Considering all of the analysis I have done I think they are vastly underestimating Trump's chances.

I expect to see a lot of close races in many of the swing states I listed above.

A lot will depend on turnout.

There is no question that Trump is the underdog going into election day. 

That is where he started when he first announced for President back in 2015 and nothing much has changed since then.

I don't know what is going to happen. I am not making any prediction or putting down any odds.

However, if I have learned anything over the last five years it is that it is not wise to underestimate or bet against Donald Trump.

I can't count the numbers of times he has been counted out by the media.

He is still standing.

Will he still be standing on November 4?

We will find out together.

It may prove to be one of the most consequential nights in American history when so much hangs in the balance.

May God bless the United States of America.