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November 1, 2020

The Virus in Voters' Minds

What's keeping Democrats from being confident, and how undecided
voters will have the grimness of 2020 in their thoughts

 

St Luke's United Methodist Church, Indianapolis, Indiana, America, 2020.
(Jason Bergman/Sipa via AP Images)

**First Ballot**

The last 48 hours has encapsulated the liberal tendency to unequivocally
believe bad news and discount good news. Polling from Siena College and
the New York Times

show Joe Biden with a measurable lead in four key swing states, only a
portion of which would give him the presidential election. The result of
one poll in Iowa
,
a state that's not entirely necessary for Biden's path to victory,
showed Trump pulling ahead after a tied race. Guess which one is getting
more attention in my feeds and contacts. (There's some weirdness in
that Iowa poll
, for what
it's worth, despite its gold-standard reputation.)

Even the split result in the ABC/Washington Post polling
, with Trump
and Biden within the margin of error in Florida (a 2-point lead for
Trump) and Biden up by 7 in Pennsylvania, has seen the Florida portion
highlighted and the Pennsylvania portion only occasionally referenced,
even though a win in Pennsylvania would just about seal it for Biden
regardless of what Florida does. And there are other polls

released this weekend
,
including a healthy margin for Biden in North Carolina
, a small Biden
lead in Texas
,
and Minnesota off the map

as a swing state, which would seemingly be good news for the Democrats.

Three things are preventing rapturous celebration or at least the
prevention of despair. One is, simply, 2016. Liberals are simply not
going to believe victory is in hand until it's actually delivered. The
polling error nationally was actually not that large in 2016, and an
error at the state level of comparable 2016 size would not shift the
states Biden needs to win, if it came to pass. But that doesn't matter
to scarred psyches, and actually that's a good thing in terms of
motivating people to vote and volunteer. You don't have to tell a
Democrat to act like they're ten points down; they already think so.

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Second is the expectation of the random shredding of Democratic votes
in
what amounts to a legislative coup. The situation in Texas, where
100,000 votes cast in Harris County by drive-through were challenged
after the fact, despite approvals from the Republican secretary of state
months ago, and assigned to a partisan conservative judge
, designed to
funnel up to a partisan conservative Supreme Court. This is a legitimate
and serious concern, though I would add that finding 5-7 points worth of
votes in Pennsylvania would be a superlative judicial effort. The goal
here has always been to win big enough that it cannot be stolen.

Third is the very plausible fear that Mitch McConnell could keep the
Senate in Republican hands, and here I don't have many comforting
words. It seems like Democrats will pick up Arizona, Colorado, and
Maine, and lose Alabama. All year there's been a question of where
that fourth seat would come from. Iowa looked promising, but attached to
that poll showing Trump in front was a bounce-back for Joni Ernst,
who's probably a slight favorite now based on polling. Democrats have
a bunch of other spots on the board to potentially pick up a
seat-North Carolina, both elections in Georgia, Montana, Texas,
Kansas, South Carolina, and Alaska, even Mississippi if you believe Mike
Espy-but none of them are a guarantee, and all of them could fall just
short. The North Carolina and Georgia races are the likeliest, but Cal
Cunningham is weathering a sexting scandal and clinging to a small lead,
while the Georgia races both appear destined for a January runoff where
there are some structural and historical Republican advantages.

**Read all of our Election 2020 news here**

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A Biden presidency and a Republican Senate is really a scary outcome, if
not the scariest. Usually, close Senate races tip in the same direction,
and there's a chance of that as well. But there's plenty out there,
including the probability of false voter fraud claims and insane
concepts that only the vote counted on Election Night determines the
result to make everyone hold their breath.

And yet, I have to segue now to what I think the forecasts and polls may
not have fully picked up on...

Pandemic Watch

It is likely that, once we get through the slower weekend reporting, the
nation will hit 100,000 daily coronavirus cases on Election Day. We just
about hit that number
on
Friday. The spread is so uncontrolled that people have no idea where
they're catching it
.
Everyone entering New York now has to be tested twice
.
The virus being spread isn't a genetic mutation
, which
appears to have gripped Europe; it's just the same damn virus we
haven't been able to manage for eight months.

Last night was Halloween, and if your neighborhood was like mine you saw
a tiny trickle of kids. Maybe you didn't get to go to the party you go
to every year, or your children were upset about no trick-or-treating.
Today is literally the Day of the Dead, and in states with heavy Mexican
communities that will take on new significance
.
If you're a Wisconsin Badger fan you didn't have a football game
yesterday because there's an outbreak on the team. If you read your
newspaper this morning in a swing state you're probably reading about
increases in your communities. Pennsylvania
, Michigan
, Wisconsin
, Iowa
, Ohio
, Minnesota
and Arizona
are generally
uncontrolled. North Carolina
and Florida
are swinging up though
mellowed out a bit, and Texas
is a bit worse, especially
for hospitalizations. Georgia's
relatively flat and
that's the best news in a battleground.

The psychological weight of 2020 is staring people in the face, many of
whom are about to vote. And there's probably a greater prevalence of
swing in the late deciders; the 90 million or so who've already voted
had their minds made up long ago.

**Read all of our Unsanitized reports here**

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Meanwhile, the White House has clearly and just about explicitly given
up on any containment

and is pushing either herd immunity or a fantasy that the virus
doesn't exist. The president's rallies are now being studied for
their death toll; at least 700
,
according to one paper out of Stanford. Areas Trump spoke at like The
Villages, Florida are now having outbreaks
.
One of the most despairing messages of this entire pandemic came from
Dr. Fauci yesterday
,
who certainly inferred the deadly implications of a Trump re-election.

Maybe I'm a completely bad read on the state of the electorate. Maybe
I'm a biased, cloistered elite. But I have to think that if you're
filling in your ballot right now, the thing you're going to have on
your mind is the sickness and death around you, the lack of normalcy in
your life, the fact that you might be wearing a mask or face shield
while you're making this decision, the fact that you haven't been to
a concert or a comedy show in eight months and you're just sick of the
routine of being scared. I have to think that you're not going to vote
for the status quo. And while there's not a lot of swing to be had
among those swing voters, there's enough to make the polls off in the
wrong direction than Donald Trump wants.

But maybe that's me.

**Days Until the Election**

2.

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Today I Learned

* Two more election stories at our site today: Sierra Lyons

on returning citizens in Florida and their difficulty securing voting
rights, and Annabelle Williams
on the Sunrise
Movement's voter mobilization for Biden in the final days. (TAP)

* ICYMI, your guide to when the polls close and when results will come
in .
(FiveThirtyEight)

* Where the contest is being waged in the important battleground of
Pennsylvania
.
(Politico)

* How the architects of the National Popular Vote plan to win by 2024
,
so we aren't looking at Erie and other bellwethers in Pennsylvania.
(Los Angeles Times)

* Trump's using a dark pattern to squeeze recurring donations

out of supporters through to December, presumably for legal fights. (New
York Times)

* This analysis of voter data in Texas

is fascinating. (Ryan Data & Research)

* Biden waits until a holiday Saturday night to disclose his campaign
bundlers
.
Pretty weak. (Politico)

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