Who wouldn't just eat from the fruit of the forbidden tree
But who'd cut the fucking tree down and burn it for firewood
(Michael Langdon, American Horror Story: Apocalypse, 2018)
© Kerry Livgren, 1975
Technically we're one day away for Election Day in the USA, but 'tomorrow' doesn't have the exact same meaning here and there, as do so many words in English. Polling places will actually open tomorrow at 11am Edinburgh Standard Time on the East Coast, and close at 7am on Wednesday morning in Hawaii. I won't even mention the US Territories that are on the far side of the International Date Line and will vote on 2 November, or is it 4 November? Never got that one quite right, and it will be 3 November local time for them too anyway. Nuff said. And of course polling places are bound by law to stay open until the last person in the queue at closing time has voted, which might require an extra hour or two in some cases, despite the huge number of postal votes already cast. So don't expect anything close to a clear picture until Wednesday lunchtime at best, and probably even later, over the week-end or so. Only hours away from in-person voting, most major headlines deal with the nationwide polling for the Presidential election, even though it is just an indication of a general trend, as the outcome of the election depends on state-level results. Some might have expected that Donald Trump's wee bout of Covid would boost him in the polls. After all this was The Man who had just world-beaten serial world-beater Boris Johnson for the shortest Covid-related hospital stay in living memory. But it did not, as previous events seem to have influenced voting intentions in a more decisive way. More specifically the first Presidential debate, where a shouty and incoherent Trump made a complete arse of himself. This debate between Trump and Biden did little to enlighten the public. The next morning, media described it as 'a shitshow' and 'a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a trainwreck'. And it was followed by a Biden surge in polls, which then died down. For some unfathomable reasons, the trend of polls has recently become more Trump-friendly, though not enough to drag Biden down into a major danger zone.
And then the American public were deprived of the second 'town hall' debate that Trump reportedly turned down because only weaklings need extra protection from a contagious disease. But I can reveal The Donald actually never turned down the second debate, his spads did. And then injected him with enough of his experimental Covid Specials to make him believe he had. They had everything to fear from a debate involving a real audience of real Americans who had not been 'prepared' by the White House PR team. Finally the formerly-third-and-now-second debate was a definite letdown as it failed to deal with foreign policy. So we missed Trump being asked about his offer to buy Denmark from Greenland, or it might have been the other way round, his spads don't quite remember which tweet had the correct version. Or Trump reiterating his opposition to Scottish Independence because his golf tournament couldn't be called the British Open anymore. Not that it mattered anyway as Americans are not known to be fluent in foreign policy and are more likely to focus on domestic issues, like their constitutional right to one school shooting per week. The whole sequence of events definitely had an impact on voting intentions though, as the weighted average of the last six published polls has Biden on a single digit lead, instead of the double digit lead he enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of the first debate.
State by state polling shows that Joe Biden's post-debate surge mostly translated into more votes in states he already had in the bag, and his later slump mostly translated into fewer votes in swing states, which is obviously not good at all. At one point after the first debate, polls even said Biden would gain Georgia by the weest of margins. Which would have been quite a feat as the last Democrat to win it was Bill Clinton in 1992, and he owed a lot to Ross Perot snatching a big chunk of the Republican vote. But now Georgia is back in Trump's column and Biden's lead in the Electoral College has shrunk by 14 votes compared to early September. Biden's supporters take comfort in the fact that no candidate with an 8% lead in the popular vote on Election Eve has ever lost the Presidency. Then, before 2016, no candidate with a 2.9 million votes' lead had ever lost the Presidency either, had they? Team Blue have reasons to be cautious as the trend of recent state-level polls has made Biden weaker in a specific and limited way, after a counter-intuitive Trump surge in a number of key swing states. Compared to my last projection eight weeks ago, Biden has gained one electoral vote in the 2nd Congressional District of Nebraska, one of two states that split their electoral votes instead of the classic winner-takes-all allocation, but lost 15 in North Carolina that is now projected to back Trump by less than 1%. Biden's base of Solid and Likely states has shrunk from 302 to 253 votes. Most notably, predicted gains in Pennsylvania, Florida and the 2nd Congressional District of Maine have now shifted from Likely to Weak, as well as a few East Coast states shifting from Strong to Likely. Meanwhile another key state, Ohio, remains in Trump's column, which Republicans see as a good omen as no Republican has ever won the Presidency without also winning Ohio. Which does not mean that all Republicans who won Ohio have also won the Presidency, Thomas Dewey in 1944 and Richard Nixon in 1960 are proof of this. Then the most encouraging sign for Team Blue has nothing to do with the campaign issues and serious politics, as it is Trump's latest soundbite, promising to unleash his lawyers all across the USA as soon as the last vote is cast. Not the words of a confident candidate expecting a fair win.
The now very unlikely scenario where we have a repeat 2016, with Biden winning the popular vote and losing the Electoral College, would again trigger calls for a reform of the presidential electoral process. Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution devolves it to the states, so a reform could proceed without the need to amend the Constitution. The only option that would require an amendment would be to abolish the Electoral College altogether and make the winner of the popular vote the President-elect, which has exactly fuck all chance of ever happening. More recently some Republicans came up with a proposal that would have allocated 435 votes by congressional district (as Maine and Nebraska already do), 100 (two per state reflecting the Senate seats) to each state's winner of the popular vote, and the three votes for the District of Columbia to the popular vote's winner. If this had been implemented in 2012, Mitt Romney would have won the presidency 282-256, instead of the actual Obama victory on 332-206, because of heavy gerrymandering in Republican states after the 2010 census. The idea has since been dropped as no state except Pennsylvania seriously considered switching to it. Another and more popular option is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, where states could individually decide to allocate their votes to the winner of the popular vote nationwide. It would effectively be 'nullification without suppression' of the Electoral College, and is unsurprisingly much more popular in Democratic states than in Republican states. It would reach the desired effect once states totalling 270 electoral votes joined it, which is far from a done deal right now, even if the 2016 result has given it some additional appeal. So the current process is likely to remain in effect for the foreseeable future, for better of for worse.
© Klaus Meine, 1991
There is no such thing as nationwide polling for the Senate elections, but each competitive race has been surveyed independently many times during the campaign. State-level polls show the Democrats in a very favourable position even in states they're predicted to lose at Presidential level, such as Georgia and Iowa. Even hardcore Republicans admit that the Democrats have been better at campaigning and that Trump is more of a liability than an asset in close Senate races. Best estimate right now is that Democrats will end up with 50 seats and Republicans with 48. And the two Independents caucusing with the Democrats will allow them to take back control of the Senate with a four-seat majority. Polls here are often better for Democrats than the presidential polling, as they appear to have lost just one possible gain since September, the Georgia seat that is part of the regular election cycle. Which does not in fact change the overall projection, as Democrats are now predicted to gain the other Georgia seat, that will be decided at a by-election. I don't expect any further major upset here, though the Republicans appear to be weaker than expected in Georgia, Kansas, Montana and South Carolina. So Republican candidates definitely have to hope Trump does well in these four states and they can ride his coattails to re-election. Democrats also appear weaker than expected in just one seat: Minnesota, that they gained by a cat's whisker in 2008 on Obama's coattails, and then held with a 10% lead in 2014. The states labelled as 'Tilt' are those where a seat is predicted to change hands: six from Republicans to Democrats, one from Democrats to Republicans. The predicted Democratic gains (Arizona, Colorado, the Georgia by-election, Iowa, North Carolina and Maine) definitely qualify as 'Weak' and will probably be decided by tiny margins only. The Republican gain in Alabama looks much more solid as Democrats gained the seat only by serendipity at a by-election in 2017 and the state has a strong Republican leaning.
The situation in the Senate during the proverbial lame-duck session would draw attention to three states: California, Arizona and Georgia. If Joe Biden wins the presidency, as is highly likely, Kamala Harris will have to resign her Senate seat in California. Which would create only a very short suspense as California law does not require a by-election to fill a vacancy. The Governor has the power to appoint a new Senator for the balance of Harris's term ending in 2022. He would obviously do just that in a matter of hours and another Democrat would replace Harris. Things are more interesting in Arizona as the Senate election there is a by-election, not part of the regular cycle. In this case, Arizona law requires that the Senator-elect be seated immediately to avoid any long vacancy that would deprive citizens of representation. So, if Democrat Mark Kelly wins, as polls currently predict, he would be sworn in and seated on 30 November at the latest. The situation is even weirder in Georgia thanks to local election laws that require a jungle primary for by-elections. If none of the candidates bags an outright majority tomorrow, as is the hugely likely scenario, a runoff will be held on 5 January 2021 between the two top contenders. The combination of all this means that the Senate will be reduced to 99 seats and the balance of power altered to 51 R-48 D during the lame-duck session, opening the door to all sorts of surprises in any vote. This is why the Republicans fast-tracked the confirmation of Trump's Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett ahead of Election Day, to avoid any possible fuckup, and finally won it 52-48. Two Republican Senators had pledged they would not support the nomination in an election year, applying the same informal rule as in 2016 when another vacancy happened, that the Republican Senate majority then controversially reneged on. But only one (Susan Collins of Maine) kept her promise and voted with the Democrats against confirmation. The other one (Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) reneged on her commitment not to renege on the 2016 rule. I guess the Whip reminded Murkowski she had a rough re-election when standing against her party in 2010 and wouldn't want to risk another such gamble.
© Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Marty Balin, 1975
Oddly, the House of Representatives polling is not as obviously good as the Presidential and Senate polls for the Democrats. There is even a very credible scenario where they could lose some marginal seats in swing states, while not gaining enough elsewhere to make up for the losses. The trends of nationwide polling for the House of Representatives still show Democrats ahead, but they have seen better days. More significantly, the weighted average of the last six generic House polls has Democrats on 52.6%, Republicans on 45.5% and Others on 1.9%. Which is as close as can be to duplicating the 2018 results, with Democrats a wee smitch down. Compared to the Presidential polls, both parties here snatch some 2% of the vote from 'Others'. Which probably does not count as a real pattern, but just reflects the fact that minor parties like the Greens and Libertarians are fielding just a minuscule number of House candidates, as they are not willing to spend shitloads of dosh on multiple local campaigns that will deliver fuck all seats.
The projections for the next House have to rely on a mix of generic nationwide polling and targeted polls in individual districts, which you surely remember is American for constituencies. Something we don't see often in the UK, unless Lord Ashcroft pays for it from his pension pot. But it's quite common in the United States where campaign spending is limited only by the depth of the donors' pockets. There has been quite a flurry of district-level polling over the last two weeks. Most of it has been concentrated on supposedly marginal seats that could possibly change hands, and has not always delivered the expected results. Many marginals are projected to remain in the same party's hands, which only confirms the weight of the incumbency factor in close elections. But polling of supposedly safe districts has also delivered some possible upsets, most of them in the Democrats' favour. A number of seats are now in the balance that were not expected to, in Republican-leaning states such as Georgia, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas. Which is of course in line with Joe Biden making inroads in states where the demographics favour the Democrats, most prominently in areas where Hispanics and African-Americans are expected to turn out in larger numbers than at earlier elections.
The projection above, after the dust has settled, is obviously good news for the Democrats, though an unprecedented and unforeseen number of seats might prove too close to call on Election Night. What I have now is the Democrats gaining 17 seats and losing 8, thusly slightly consolidating their majority from the 2018 midterms. As you might expect, the American punditariat don't really have a consensus vision of the gory details here. Current estimates are 220-239 Democrats vs 181-188 Republicans, the rest being tossups, as in American for 'tie'. Of course the odds of Republicans taking back the House with a clean sweep of all 45ish marginal seats are somewhere to the south of fuck all. Some pundits even have a more optimistic vision of the Democrats' prospects than me, with predicted net gains somewhere between 10 and 15. Anyway, if I had to wage a tenner on the global outcome, I would go for a Democratic trifecta: Biden and Harris at the White House, House majority confirmed and strengthened, Senate back to a Democratic majority. Then the surest bet is that we won't know anything for sure on the day after Election Day and can expect a lot of court challenges from the Republicans. No doubt Trump and his cronies will prove to be the sorest losers since Dog domesticated Man, and nothing can be taken for granted until everyone duly elected tomorrow is sworn in. Fingers crossed.
© Jeannette Sears, Pete Sears, 1982
