Amidst all the talk of pensioners for Biden in the end it reverted to type with Trump winning over 65s 51% to 48% for Biden while under 30s voted 62% Biden and 35% Trump.
Biden also won 52% of 30 to 44s and 50% of 45 to 64s.
So once again as in most of the West the most consistent votes for the conservative candidate came from the elderly
Interestingly the "conservative" Trump wins only 51% of the over-65s while Johnson won 64% in the same demographic in the UK.
Hypothetically, the Conservatives winning only 51% of the over-65 votes would see them defeated as I imagine the post-65 cohort is a significant part of those who vote.
Biden losing by only 3 points with seniors is superb for the more left candidate. Labour would have a huge landslide if they could achieve that
The American people should never forgive the GOP for stoking this fraud meme. When the Democrats are in power they should push this home. Republicans aren't to be trusted.
But in a way it's a fantastic spectacle. Trump's extremists don't represent the majority even in the GOP. He underperformed his Senators. A liability. A loser. Now post-election the situation is getting 1000x worse for the party. He's driving away more and more mainstream Republicans.
He's also not doing any favours for the party in the Georgia runoffs.
Absolutely, I never particularly liked Trump - thought him a crass, incompetent dullard etc. - but his behaviour in recent days has rammed home why the man is the frightening danger that many have been saying.
Trumpists who aim to bend the rules to defraud the electorate should henceforth be known as "banana republicans".
Apparently the Latin American press is having fun saying "Ah, THAT'S what a banana republic is like!"
Amidst all the talk of pensioners for Biden in the end it reverted to type with Trump winning over 65s 51% to 48% for Biden while under 30s voted 62% Biden and 35% Trump.
Biden also won 52% of 30 to 44s and 50% of 45 to 64s.
So once again as in most of the West the most consistent votes for the conservative candidate came from the elderly
Interestingly the "conservative" Trump wins only 51% of the over-65s while Johnson won 64% in the same demographic in the UK.
Hypothetically, the Conservatives winning only 51% of the over-65 votes would see them defeated as I imagine the post-65 cohort is a significant part of those who vote.
Biden losing by only 3 points with seniors is superb for the more left candidate. Labour would have a huge landslide if they could achieve that
Of course Blair in 1997 did win over 65s but he was the last Labour leader to do that and did indeed win a huge landslide.
Plus remember in the US it is basically a 2 party race (bar a tiny handful of Libertarian and Green voters), so Labour and the LDs effectively combined equate to the Democrats while the Tories and Brexit party would combined equate to the GOP
Morning all. Thank you David for the tip. I think 50/1 is good enough for Pete but I wouldn't go much shorter than this. I think there is no way KH would allow herself to be pushed out of the way for the Presidency and, if Joe B steps down before, she is automatically in the driving seat.
Now for the hand grenade. Apologies if this was posted before and some of you may now this already. Anyway re the counts.
One misnomer about US elections is that voters get to choose which electors are sent to the Electoral College. Actually they don't. It the state legislatures in each state. The Supreme Court has been specific on this and it has also been specific that the authority lies with the state legislatures, not the Supreme Courts of each state or the Governor or the Secretary of State.
The US Supreme Court has ruled explicitly post-2016 that electors cannot be faithless and must abide by the rulings of the state legislature.
Normally, this wouldn't matter as it is a case of procedure. This year it could come very much into play. The state legislatures of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia are all Republican led.
There is one scenario where the state legislatures in each state simply refuse to accept the results, claiming that there has been electoral fraud and appoints its own electors under mandate. This is why the fact that the RNC and the Republican Establishment have lined up behind Trump is important. It suggests the Republican machinery is set to fight.
Would this be catastrophic? Yes Undemocratic? Yes (but there are legitimate questions over the way elections have been run in the cities) Is it possible? Also yes.
That isn't a realistic scenario as the legal cases would run the other way, requiring the certification of votes in those states in the absence of evidence of widespread fraud. These cases would certainly succeed.
Secondly, this only conceivably works where the state has unified GOP governance, like Georgia. But, in that case, THEY are the ones running the election so they'd be saying their own process was fraudulant.
Additionally, you'd have to be looking at Republican majorities in state legislatures blocking certification the result in their own state, disenfranchising the majority of their own voters (and a fair number of Republican voters too - even if a majority of Republicans supported it, a sizable minority have not drunk the Kool Aid). That'd be very, very, very "brave".
Again, utterly unrealistic moving of divisions that don't exist around a map in the bunker.
Over the last month Mr Ed has hypothesised various theories explaining how Trump is going to win. One by one they have all fallen by the wayside. This one will go the same way.
So first of all you are right OllyT, I thought that Trump would win the election and I was wrong. I also said that there were a number of reasons why Biden wouldn’t get the landslide many predicted on here, and on that I was right.
(By the way, one of the reasons I said Trump would win was that the Hispanics didn’t see themselves as either one bloc or as part of the big happy “People of Colour” family that many on here did. Who was right there?) ...
The American people should never forgive the GOP for stoking this fraud meme. When the Democrats are in power they should push this home. Republicans aren't to be trusted.
But in a way it's a fantastic spectacle. Trump's extremists don't represent the majority even in the GOP. He underperformed his Senators. A liability. A loser. Now post-election the situation is getting 1000x worse for the party. He's driving away more and more mainstream Republicans.
He's also not doing any favours for the party in the Georgia runoffs.
Absolutely, I never particularly liked Trump - thought him a crass, incompetent dullard etc. - but his behaviour in recent days has rammed home why the man is the frightening danger that many have been saying.
Trumpists who aim to bend the rules to defraud the electorate should henceforth be known as "banana republicans".
Amidst all the talk of pensioners for Biden in the end it reverted to type with Trump winning over 65s 51% to 48% for Biden while under 30s voted 62% Biden and 35% Trump.
Biden also won 52% of 30 to 44s and 50% of 45 to 64s.
So once again as in most of the West the most consistent votes for the conservative candidate came from the elderly
Interestingly the "conservative" Trump wins only 51% of the over-65s while Johnson won 64% in the same demographic in the UK.
Hypothetically, the Conservatives winning only 51% of the over-65 votes would see them defeated as I imagine the post-65 cohort is a significant part of those who vote.
I think Trump's problem there was that elderly conservatives are often not especially reactionary, they just dislike change. A rabble-rousing nutter is not their idea of a conservative at all. My parents were conservatives for most of their lives, but regarded Mrs Thatcher as altogether too much of a good thing. Thery'd have wanted to shoot Trump.
Johnson doesn't deserve the "nutter" label and people don't in general dislike him, but they have increasing doubts about his perceived lack of competence. That, too, is not something that elderly conservatives like.
Afternoon all ... The truth is the Democrats have a big in-built advantage within the EC and, as 2020 has shown, don't need Texas or Florida to win but if they can secure one or both of those along with Ohio, the Republicans are effectively shut out. ...
Can you explain what you mean by this?
As far as I can work out from my best guess of the results, the tipping point state will end up having a Biden lead of ~2pp, compared to a national vote lead of ~4pp.
That's a pretty large in-built advantage for the Republicans isn't it?
Both sides face new challenges, the GOP has to make sure AZ does not go permanently Blue, as well as GA, the Democrats that the rust belt has become a permanent battleground. If the GOP can keep the Hispanic boost, then at least FL and TX are safe(r)
"It’s a long time since any one-term US president declined to seek re-election – you have to go back into the 19th century (the precise instance is definitional) – but it has to be a realistic possibility. "
According to HYUFD'S definition of presidential term, LBJ was a first term President who did not fight the 1968 presidential election. His term as President from Nov 63 to Jan 65 was his zeroth term as he only took over (I know, not my definition!). OK you could claim that he did try to seek reelection, but dropped out at an early stage, but if so that waters down the definition of "seeking re-election" a lot. By that definition Carfly Fiorina seeked election for president in 2016.
That is not censorship. Twitter is publishing his rants, not censoring them.
It's obviously a serious situation, but there is something comical about Trump's bombastic, self-important and almost apocalyptic rants, being constantly prefaced and bookended by twitter's slightly schoolteacherish, sensible advisories.
It reminds me of a crank constantly vandalising wikipedia with absurdities, with the weary editors constantly needing to add "citation needed" .
I went for a walk at the coast this morning and the roads across the North East are absolutely rammed. So much for a "lockdown".
I note that almost all of the shops in Thornaby are open. My friend reports that the Greggs drivethrough (yes, its a thing) in her part of Newcastle has a massive queue as does McDonalds...
"It’s a long time since any one-term US president declined to seek re-election – you have to go back into the 19th century (the precise instance is definitional) – but it has to be a realistic possibility. "
According to HYUFD'S definition of presidential term, LBJ was a first term President who did not fight the 1968 presidential election. His term as President from Nov 63 to Jan 65 was his zeroth term as he only took over (I know, not my definition!). OK you could claim that he did try to seek reelection, but dropped out at an early stage, but if so that waters down the definition of "seeking re-election" a lot. By that definition Carfly Fiorina seeked election for president in 2016.
Morning all. Thank you David for the tip. I think 50/1 is good enough for Pete but I wouldn't go much shorter than this. I think there is no way KH would allow herself to be pushed out of the way for the Presidency and, if Joe B steps down before, she is automatically in the driving seat.
Now for the hand grenade. Apologies if this was posted before and some of you may now this already. Anyway re the counts.
One misnomer about US elections is that voters get to choose which electors are sent to the Electoral College. Actually they don't. It the state legislatures in each state. The Supreme Court has been specific on this and it has also been specific that the authority lies with the state legislatures, not the Supreme Courts of each state or the Governor or the Secretary of State.
The US Supreme Court has ruled explicitly post-2016 that electors cannot be faithless and must abide by the rulings of the state legislature.
Normally, this wouldn't matter as it is a case of procedure. This year it could come very much into play. The state legislatures of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia are all Republican led.
There is one scenario where the state legislatures in each state simply refuse to accept the results, claiming that there has been electoral fraud and appoints its own electors under mandate. This is why the fact that the RNC and the Republican Establishment have lined up behind Trump is important. It suggests the Republican machinery is set to fight.
Would this be catastrophic? Yes Undemocratic? Yes (but there are legitimate questions over the way elections have been run in the cities) Is it possible? Also yes.
That isn't a realistic scenario as the legal cases would run the other way, requiring the certification of votes in those states in the absence of evidence of widespread fraud. These cases would certainly succeed.
Secondly, this only conceivably works where the state has unified GOP governance, like Georgia. But, in that case, THEY are the ones running the election so they'd be saying their own process was fraudulant.
Additionally, you'd have to be looking at Republican majorities in state legislatures blocking certification the result in their own state, disenfranchising the majority of their own voters (and a fair number of Republican voters too - even if a majority of Republicans supported it, a sizable minority have not drunk the Kool Aid). That'd be very, very, very "brave".
Again, utterly unrealistic moving of divisions that don't exist around a map in the bunker.
Over the last month Mr Ed has hypothesised various theories explaining how Trump is going to win. One by one they have all fallen by the wayside. This one will go the same way.
So first of all you are right OllyT, I thought that Trump would win the election and I was wrong. I also said that there were a number of reasons why Biden wouldn’t get the landslide many predicted on here, and on that I was right.
(By the way, one of the reasons I said Trump would win was that the Hispanics didn’t see themselves as either one bloc or as part of the big happy “People of Colour” family that many on here did. Who was right there?) ...
Latino voters should be a natural ally for the GOP, they are (generally) socially conservative, have actively sought to come to the US to make a better life and so on. They finally seemed to have worked that out. It will be interesting to see how the Democrats respond. So far, it seems to be disappointment about voting for Trump
On an aside, I was just skimming the State results to find the biggest swing - step forward New York which Clinton won by 22 but Biden has only won by 13 which would be a 4.5% swing to the current POTUS. Oddly enough, that's not because of a big increase in the Trump vote numbers which, at about 2.85 million are about the same as 2016 but nearly 800,000 fewer votes for Biden than Clinton obtained. She got 4.5 million he's still under 3.7 million.
It may be that as final ballots come in the Biden number will increase but for him to be down on what Clinton won in 2016 against a backdrop of a larger number of votes overall seems curious.
Too early to say. 16% still to count. If they split proportionally Bide will end up on 4.9m.
Let's see how it looks by December.
They did have a lot of polling problems in NYC and, it’s possible the so-called flight out of Manhattan impacted voter counts. Odd though
NYS is only just beginning to count absentee ballots. For instance the Republican is currently ahead for our state senator race, but the Democrat incumbent is expected to close the gap, probably enough to win, with absentee ballots (including ours). Legally absentee voting by mail is only allowed in NYS with an excuse (this year fear of covid was added as a “temporary illness”) so absentee ballots were counted last, and only if there were enough to potentially sway the result. Basically NYS is not really set up to deal with lots of absentee ballots efficiently.
I went for a walk at the coast this morning and the roads across the North East are absolutely rammed. So much for a "lockdown".
I note that almost all of the shops in Thornaby are open. My friend reports that the Greggs drivethrough (yes, its a thing) in her part of Newcastle has a massive queue as does McDonalds...
Tons of fireworks that last three nights around me. If every one of those was a small gathering consisting of people who live in the same house then I'm a dutchman.
On an aside, I was just skimming the State results to find the biggest swing - step forward New York which Clinton won by 22 but Biden has only won by 13 which would be a 4.5% swing to the current POTUS. Oddly enough, that's not because of a big increase in the Trump vote numbers which, at about 2.85 million are about the same as 2016 but nearly 800,000 fewer votes for Biden than Clinton obtained. She got 4.5 million he's still under 3.7 million.
It may be that as final ballots come in the Biden number will increase but for him to be down on what Clinton won in 2016 against a backdrop of a larger number of votes overall seems curious.
Too early to say. 16% still to count. If they split proportionally Bide will end up on 4.9m.
Let's see how it looks by December.
They did have a lot of polling problems in NYC and, it’s possible the so-called flight out of Manhattan impacted voter counts. Odd though
NYS is only just beginning to count absentee ballots. For instance the Republican is currently ahead for our state senator race, but the Democrat incumbent is expected to close the gap, probably enough to win, with absentee ballots (including ours). Legally absentee voting by mail is only allowed in NYS with an excuse (this year fear of covid was added as a “temporary illness”) so absentee ballots were counted last, and only if there were enough to potentially sway the result. Basically NYS is not really set up to deal with lots of absentee ballots efficiently.
"It’s a long time since any one-term US president declined to seek re-election – you have to go back into the 19th century (the precise instance is definitional) – but it has to be a realistic possibility. "
According to HYUFD'S definition of presidential term, LBJ was a first term President who did not fight the 1968 presidential election. His term as President from Nov 63 to Jan 65 was his zeroth term as he only took over (I know, not my definition!). OK you could claim that he did try to seek reelection, but dropped out at an early stage, but if so that waters down the definition of "seeking re-election" a lot. By that definition Carfly Fiorina seeked election for president in 2016.
Truman too declined to run again in 1952
Truman was all but a two-term president.
Calvin Coolidge got out after one term in 1928 (and a little bit of Harding's as well?) Basically said he didn't want to deal with it anymore but wow, what timing.
Amidst all the talk of pensioners for Biden in the end it reverted to type with Trump winning over 65s 51% to 48% for Biden while under 30s voted 62% Biden and 35% Trump.
Biden also won 52% of 30 to 44s and 50% of 45 to 64s.
So once again as in most of the West the most consistent votes for the conservative candidate came from the elderly
Interestingly the "conservative" Trump wins only 51% of the over-65s while Johnson won 64% in the same demographic in the UK.
Hypothetically, the Conservatives winning only 51% of the over-65 votes would see them defeated as I imagine the post-65 cohort is a significant part of those who vote.
I think Trump's problem there was that elderly conservatives are often not especially reactionary, they just dislike change. A rabble-rousing nutter is not their idea of a conservative at all. My parents were conservatives for most of their lives, but regarded Mrs Thatcher as altogether too much of a good thing. Thery'd have wanted to shoot Trump.
Johnson doesn't deserve the "nutter" label and people don't in general dislike him, but they have increasing doubts about his perceived lack of competence. That, too, is not something that elderly conservatives like.
Do you not think? I think "nutter" is just the same as "eccentric", freighted with a negative judgement. I think even Johnson's most ardent supporters would admit he is eccentric. Calling Johnson a nutter is entirely fair, in a way that calling Sunak a nutter would not be.
On an aside, I was just skimming the State results to find the biggest swing - step forward New York which Clinton won by 22 but Biden has only won by 13 which would be a 4.5% swing to the current POTUS. Oddly enough, that's not because of a big increase in the Trump vote numbers which, at about 2.85 million are about the same as 2016 but nearly 800,000 fewer votes for Biden than Clinton obtained. She got 4.5 million he's still under 3.7 million.
It may be that as final ballots come in the Biden number will increase but for him to be down on what Clinton won in 2016 against a backdrop of a larger number of votes overall seems curious.
Too early to say. 16% still to count. If they split proportionally Bide will end up on 4.9m.
Let's see how it looks by December.
They did have a lot of polling problems in NYC and, it’s possible the so-called flight out of Manhattan impacted voter counts. Odd though
NYS is only just beginning to count absentee ballots. For instance the Republican is currently ahead for our state senator race, but the Democrat incumbent is expected to close the gap, probably enough to win, with absentee ballots (including ours). Legally absentee voting by mail is only allowed in NYS with an excuse (this year fear of covid was added as a “temporary illness”) so absentee ballots were counted last, and only if there were enough to potentially sway the result. Basically NYS is not really set up to deal with lots of absentee ballots efficiently.
Bizarre. In the UK, you stand for office and you go to the count and it’s a shambles if you are still there when the sun comes up. How do these Americans standing for deputy dog catcher of their local town put up with not finding out whether their life’s ambition has come true for days after the actual vote?
On an aside, I was just skimming the State results to find the biggest swing - step forward New York which Clinton won by 22 but Biden has only won by 13 which would be a 4.5% swing to the current POTUS. Oddly enough, that's not because of a big increase in the Trump vote numbers which, at about 2.85 million are about the same as 2016 but nearly 800,000 fewer votes for Biden than Clinton obtained. She got 4.5 million he's still under 3.7 million.
It may be that as final ballots come in the Biden number will increase but for him to be down on what Clinton won in 2016 against a backdrop of a larger number of votes overall seems curious.
Too early to say. 16% still to count. If they split proportionally Bide will end up on 4.9m.
Let's see how it looks by December.
They did have a lot of polling problems in NYC and, it’s possible the so-called flight out of Manhattan impacted voter counts. Odd though
NYS is only just beginning to count absentee ballots. For instance the Republican is currently ahead for our state senator race, but the Democrat incumbent is expected to close the gap, probably enough to win, with absentee ballots (including ours). Legally absentee voting by mail is only allowed in NYS with an excuse (this year fear of covid was added as a “temporary illness”) so absentee ballots were counted last, and only if there were enough to potentially sway the result. Basically NYS is not really set up to deal with lots of absentee ballots efficiently.
Christ, what a mess
It's only a mess if you're impatient and if, like the UK, power changes instantly based on the result. Given the US system, no, it is not a mess. Things are playing out well within the time limits permitted by law in each state.
Morning all. Thank you David for the tip. I think 50/1 is good enough for Pete but I wouldn't go much shorter than this. I think there is no way KH would allow herself to be pushed out of the way for the Presidency and, if Joe B steps down before, she is automatically in the driving seat.
Now for the hand grenade. Apologies if this was posted before and some of you may now this already. Anyway re the counts.
One misnomer about US elections is that voters get to choose which electors are sent to the Electoral College. Actually they don't. It the state legislatures in each state. The Supreme Court has been specific on this and it has also been specific that the authority lies with the state legislatures, not the Supreme Courts of each state or the Governor or the Secretary of State.
The US Supreme Court has ruled explicitly post-2016 that electors cannot be faithless and must abide by the rulings of the state legislature.
Normally, this wouldn't matter as it is a case of procedure. This year it could come very much into play. The state legislatures of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia are all Republican led.
There is one scenario where the state legislatures in each state simply refuse to accept the results, claiming that there has been electoral fraud and appoints its own electors under mandate. This is why the fact that the RNC and the Republican Establishment have lined up behind Trump is important. It suggests the Republican machinery is set to fight.
Would this be catastrophic? Yes Undemocratic? Yes (but there are legitimate questions over the way elections have been run in the cities) Is it possible? Also yes.
That isn't a realistic scenario as the legal cases would run the other way, requiring the certification of votes in those states in the absence of evidence of widespread fraud. These cases would certainly succeed.
Secondly, this only conceivably works where the state has unified GOP governance, like Georgia. But, in that case, THEY are the ones running the election so they'd be saying their own process was fraudulant.
Additionally, you'd have to be looking at Republican majorities in state legislatures blocking certification the result in their own state, disenfranchising the majority of their own voters (and a fair number of Republican voters too - even if a majority of Republicans supported it, a sizable minority have not drunk the Kool Aid). That'd be very, very, very "brave".
Again, utterly unrealistic moving of divisions that don't exist around a map in the bunker.
Over the last month Mr Ed has hypothesised various theories explaining how Trump is going to win. One by one they have all fallen by the wayside. This one will go the same way.
So first of all you are right OllyT, I thought that Trump would win the election and I was wrong. I also said that there were a number of reasons why Biden wouldn’t get the landslide many predicted on here, and on that I was right.
(By the way, one of the reasons I said Trump would win was that the Hispanics didn’t see themselves as either one bloc or as part of the big happy “People of Colour” family that many on here did. Who was right there?) ...
Latino voters should be a natural ally for the GOP, they are (generally) socially conservative, have actively sought to come to the US to make a better life and so on. They finally seemed to have worked that out. It will be interesting to see how the Democrats respond. So far, it seems to be disappointment about voting for Trump
"have actively sought to come to the US to make a better life and so on" Your partisanship shines through there. People who vote Democrat, or Libertarian, or Green, also do so with a view "to make a better life".
"It’s a long time since any one-term US president declined to seek re-election – you have to go back into the 19th century (the precise instance is definitional) – but it has to be a realistic possibility. "
According to HYUFD'S definition of presidential term, LBJ was a first term President who did not fight the 1968 presidential election. His term as President from Nov 63 to Jan 65 was his zeroth term as he only took over (I know, not my definition!). OK you could claim that he did try to seek reelection, but dropped out at an early stage, but if so that waters down the definition of "seeking re-election" a lot. By that definition Carfly Fiorina seeked election for president in 2016.
Truman too declined to run again in 1952
Truman was all but a two-term president.
Calvin Coolidge got out after one term in 1928 (and a little bit of Harding's as well?) Basically said he didn't want to deal with it anymore but wow, what timing.
My only prior knowledge of Prez C is the Coolidge Effect (as in this beetle) so it's nice to have something more to add!
Afternoon all ... The truth is the Democrats have a big in-built advantage within the EC and, as 2020 has shown, don't need Texas or Florida to win but if they can secure one or both of those along with Ohio, the Republicans are effectively shut out. ...
Can you explain what you mean by this?
As far as I can work out from my best guess of the results, the tipping point state will end up having a Biden lead of ~2pp, compared to a national vote lead of ~4pp.
That's a pretty large in-built advantage for the Republicans isn't it?
There are 51 elements to the Electoral College - 50 states plus DC.
40 of these are "safe" for either the Democrats or the Republicans - 20 each as it happens.
The safe Democrat states include the populous ones like California, New York, Illinois and the East Coast and between them come to 226 EC votes.
The safe Republican states come to just 125 EC votes as they are all smaller populated states so bring fewer EC votes to the table.
The election is fought over the remaining 187 EC votes in 11 states.
Last time Trump won 10 of those 11 and Clinton only won Nevada despite winning the national poll by 2.1%. That was how vote efficient Trump was.
This time, even though he trails Biden by 2.9% currently (so a swing of just 0.4% from 2016), Trump is looking set to hold only four of the eleven - Iowa, Ohio, Texas and Florida which bring 91 to the table.
Biden looks set to hold Nevada and win Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and perhaps North Carolina so a very small change in national votes has had a fundamental impact on the Electoral College which could well end 306-232, the mirror image of 2016.
In 2004 when Bush beat Kerry by 2.4% (so closer than the 2020 election), he won the EC 286-251. No Republican has won a Presidential vote since and for all everyone talks about how Trump is emulating Carter, it's worth remembering George W Bush only just beat Kerry and no Republican has got above 51% nationally since George HW Bush in 1988.
My point is the Democrats start on 226 and only need 44 to reach 270. If they can convert states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania back to safe seats and perhaps put Texas into the "marginal" column, the task facing any future GOP Presidential candidate is going to be that much harder. As this election has shown, the Democrats can win without Texas and Florida and if Georgia's 16 EC votes are starting to move more into the blue column as well, the Republicans face a huge problem.
"It’s a long time since any one-term US president declined to seek re-election – you have to go back into the 19th century (the precise instance is definitional) – but it has to be a realistic possibility. "
According to HYUFD'S definition of presidential term, LBJ was a first term President who did not fight the 1968 presidential election. His term as President from Nov 63 to Jan 65 was his zeroth term as he only took over (I know, not my definition!). OK you could claim that he did try to seek reelection, but dropped out at an early stage, but if so that waters down the definition of "seeking re-election" a lot. By that definition Carfly Fiorina seeked election for president in 2016.
Truman too declined to run again in 1952
Truman was all but a two-term president.
Calvin Coolidge got out after one term in 1928 (and a little bit of Harding's as well?) Basically said he didn't want to deal with it anymore but wow, what timing.
Blair to be fair did the same when he left in 2007
It's actually kinda similar, except: There wasn't a president openly trying to commit a coup at the time. Hillary accepted the results. Were you saying at the time that they probably had a point?
I knew there would be a “it’s different” line...I’m saying that Hillary was looking for an excuse to recount and was actively looking at the fraud route in several states. She didn’t stamp her feet like Trump but it was clear she was also prepared to go down the legal route to overturn it if she could. She didn’t not because she was being magnanimous but because there was no route to her winning.
But of course that’s different.
She was alleging "fraud", or she was alleging that the vote count was wrong? Big difference.
I thought it was the latter - because the outdated and near obsolete and error prone technology was not up to the job of producing an accurate count. That's not alleging "fraud" on the basis of no evidence. It is alleging mistakes in the electoral process - something which was not widely seen as a remotely baseless claim. As evidenced, if nothing else, by the fact that the technology has had a complete overhaul since then. Of course there is no specific reason to think that the errors would have disadvantaged her. Other than the machines were situated in Dem heavy areas, and her vote was lower than many were expecting.
Its called evolution....there are loads of content creators on the Youtubes making big bucks out of covering tech. Linus Tech Tips rakes in huge amounts of cash and employs a lot of people. Unfortunately others haven't kept up with the times.
Arguably many of the new breed cover the tech in even more depth and with more specialist knowledge e.g. Plenty of channels that have spent hours breaking down the exact spec and tech inside Nvidia 3000 series GPUs plus incredible amount of independent benchmarking over the past month.
Its called evolution....there are loads of content creators on the Youtubes making big bucks out of covering tech. Linus Tech Tips rakes in huge amounts of cash and employs a lot of people. Unfortunately others haven't kept up with the times.
It's actually kinda similar, except: There wasn't a president openly trying to commit a coup at the time. Hillary accepted the results. Were you saying at the time that they probably had a point?
I knew there would be a “it’s different” line...I’m saying that Hillary was looking for an excuse to recount and was actively looking at the fraud route in several states. She didn’t stamp her feet like Trump but it was clear she was also prepared to go down the legal route to overturn it if she could. She didn’t not because she was being magnanimous but because there was no route to her winning.
But of course that’s different.
She was alleging "fraud", or she was alleging that the vote count was wrong? Big difference.
I thought it was the latter - because the outdated and near obsolete and error prone technology was not up to the job of producing an accurate count. That's not alleging "fraud" on the basis of no evidence. It is alleging mistakes in the electoral process - something which was not widely seen as a remotely baseless claim. As evidenced, if nothing else, by the fact that the technology has had a complete overhaul since then. Of course there is no specific reason to think that the errors would have disadvantaged her. Other than the machines were situated in Dem heavy areas, and her vote was lower than many were expecting.
The headline in the Guardian to that article was:
"Alleged irregularities in key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin prompt demands for audit amid concerns over ‘foreign hackers’"
So it is pretty clear she was calling this a fraudulent process and not just blaming it on outdated technology, which is why we got the whole "Russia stole the election" issue in 2016.
Afternoon all ... The truth is the Democrats have a big in-built advantage within the EC and, as 2020 has shown, don't need Texas or Florida to win but if they can secure one or both of those along with Ohio, the Republicans are effectively shut out. ...
Can you explain what you mean by this?
As far as I can work out from my best guess of the results, the tipping point state will end up having a Biden lead of ~2pp, compared to a national vote lead of ~4pp.
That's a pretty large in-built advantage for the Republicans isn't it?
There are 51 elements to the Electoral College - 50 states plus DC.
40 of these are "safe" for either the Democrats or the Republicans - 20 each as it happens.
The safe Democrat states include the populous ones like California, New York, Illinois and the East Coast and between them come to 226 EC votes.
The safe Republican states come to just 125 EC votes as they are all smaller populated states so bring fewer EC votes to the table.
The election is fought over the remaining 187 EC votes in 11 states.
Last time Trump won 10 of those 11 and Clinton only won Nevada despite winning the national poll by 2.1%. That was how vote efficient Trump was.
This time, even though he trails Biden by 2.9% currently (so a swing of just 0.4% from 2016), Trump is looking set to hold only four of the eleven - Iowa, Ohio, Texas and Florida which bring 91 to the table.
Biden looks set to hold Nevada and win Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and perhaps North Carolina so a very small change in national votes has had a fundamental impact on the Electoral College which could well end 306-232, the mirror image of 2016.
In 2004 when Bush beat Kerry by 2.4% (so closer than the 2020 election), he won the EC 286-251. No Republican has won a Presidential vote since and for all everyone talks about how Trump is emulating Carter, it's worth remembering George W Bush only just beat Kerry and no Republican has got above 51% nationally since George HW Bush in 1988.
My point is the Democrats start on 226 and only need 44 to reach 270. If they can convert states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania back to safe seats and perhaps put Texas into the "marginal" column, the task facing any future GOP Presidential candidate is going to be that much harder. As this election has shown, the Democrats can win without Texas and Florida and if Georgia's 16 EC votes are starting to move more into the blue column as well, the Republicans face a huge problem.
Which is why I think this could be a seachange election result in the same way 1980 was when Carter lost, it then took 12 years for the Democrats to win a presidential election again, only doing so in 1992 when Bill Clinton won, the worry for the GOP is they could face the same fate and be out of the White House for the rest of the decade after Trump's defeat
Its called evolution....there are loads of content creators on the Youtubes making big bucks out of covering tech. Linus Tech Tips rakes in huge amounts of cash and employs a lot of people. Unfortunately others haven't kept up with the times.
Arguably many of the new breed cover the tech in even more depth and with more specialist knowledge e.g. Plenty of channels that have spent hours breaking down the exact spec and tech inside Nvidia 3000 series GPUs over the past month.
Yeah, cannot see this as sad. There is way more information and knowledge out there, for less money for the consumer, supporting more jobs at higher wages, requiring less commuting to work for those involved and less travel for those seeking the information, all while saving trees and landfill. Having a hard time seeing the downside here.
It's actually kinda similar, except: There wasn't a president openly trying to commit a coup at the time. Hillary accepted the results. Were you saying at the time that they probably had a point?
I knew there would be a “it’s different” line...I’m saying that Hillary was looking for an excuse to recount and was actively looking at the fraud route in several states. She didn’t stamp her feet like Trump but it was clear she was also prepared to go down the legal route to overturn it if she could. She didn’t not because she was being magnanimous but because there was no route to her winning.
But of course that’s different.
She was alleging "fraud", or she was alleging that the vote count was wrong? Big difference.
I thought it was the latter - because the outdated and near obsolete and error prone technology was not up to the job of producing an accurate count. That's not alleging "fraud" on the basis of no evidence. It is alleging mistakes in the electoral process - something which was not widely seen as a remotely baseless claim. As evidenced, if nothing else, by the fact that the technology has had a complete overhaul since then. Of course there is no specific reason to think that the errors would have disadvantaged her. Other than the machines were situated in Dem heavy areas, and her vote was lower than many were expecting.
The headline in the Guardian to that article was:
"Alleged irregularities in key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin prompt demands for audit amid concerns over ‘foreign hackers’"
So it is pretty clear she was calling this a fraudulent process and not just blaming it on outdated technology, which is why we got the whole "Russia stole the election" issue in 2016.
Pro tip: headlines often don't help with getting an accurate understanding of the story
That's a great tip from David Herdson, especially if one takes the boost available from Ladbrokes, as suggested by OGH, making it 60/1 which is surprisingly still available. One only has to look at the complete no-hopers in the betting ranked ahead of Buttigieg to recognise what great value this bet represents especially when one considers he was one of the top runners this time around, during the early stages of the primaries and he will be far better known next time. Furthermore, my guess/instinct is that he might actually get the gig before 2024, as I seriously don't see Biden having the mental agility to see out 4 years and that he might well be persuaded to step down very much sooner than might be imagined, maybe in only a year or two. I recognise that Kamala Harris would then be the favourite to succeed him but in such circumstances, I suspect there might well be many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. I've risked a fiver to win £300 but PBers should obviodly DYOR.
It's actually kinda similar, except: There wasn't a president openly trying to commit a coup at the time. Hillary accepted the results. Were you saying at the time that they probably had a point?
I knew there would be a “it’s different” line...I’m saying that Hillary was looking for an excuse to recount and was actively looking at the fraud route in several states. She didn’t stamp her feet like Trump but it was clear she was also prepared to go down the legal route to overturn it if she could. She didn’t not because she was being magnanimous but because there was no route to her winning.
But of course that’s different.
She was alleging "fraud", or she was alleging that the vote count was wrong? Big difference.
I thought it was the latter - because the outdated and near obsolete and error prone technology was not up to the job of producing an accurate count. That's not alleging "fraud" on the basis of no evidence. It is alleging mistakes in the electoral process - something which was not widely seen as a remotely baseless claim. As evidenced, if nothing else, by the fact that the technology has had a complete overhaul since then. Of course there is no specific reason to think that the errors would have disadvantaged her. Other than the machines were situated in Dem heavy areas, and her vote was lower than many were expecting.
The headline in the Guardian to that article was:
"Alleged irregularities in key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin prompt demands for audit amid concerns over ‘foreign hackers’"
So it is pretty clear she was calling this a fraudulent process and not just blaming it on outdated technology, which is why we got the whole "Russia stole the election" issue in 2016.
Pro tip: headlines often don't help with getting an accurate understanding of the story
Read down into it. There were plenty of people close to HRC who were deliberating this was fraud due to hacking, and pushing for an investigation (Podesta and Brazile are mentioned)
Its called evolution....there are loads of content creators on the Youtubes making big bucks out of covering tech. Linus Tech Tips rakes in huge amounts of cash and employs a lot of people. Unfortunately others haven't kept up with the times.
Arguably many of the new breed cover the tech in even more depth and with more specialist knowledge e.g. Plenty of channels that have spent hours breaking down the exact spec and tech inside Nvidia 3000 series GPUs over the past month.
Yeah, cannot see this as sad. There is way more information and knowledge out there, for less money for the consumer, supporting more jobs at higher wages, requiring less commuting to work for those involved and less travel for those seeking the information, all while saving trees and landfill. Having a hard time seeing the downside here.
Most people actually bought Computer Shopper for the adverts since about 2000 or so it really hasn't been necessary.
And as you say the online reporting is far more detailed than anything a paper magazine would write.
Afternoon all ... The truth is the Democrats have a big in-built advantage within the EC and, as 2020 has shown, don't need Texas or Florida to win but if they can secure one or both of those along with Ohio, the Republicans are effectively shut out. ...
Can you explain what you mean by this?
As far as I can work out from my best guess of the results, the tipping point state will end up having a Biden lead of ~2pp, compared to a national vote lead of ~4pp.
That's a pretty large in-built advantage for the Republicans isn't it?
Yes. The Republicans have an EC advantage. And the trends, if they continue, are probably going to make it
It's actually kinda similar, except: There wasn't a president openly trying to commit a coup at the time. Hillary accepted the results. Were you saying at the time that they probably had a point?
I knew there would be a “it’s different” line...I’m saying that Hillary was looking for an excuse to recount and was actively looking at the fraud route in several states. She didn’t stamp her feet like Trump but it was clear she was also prepared to go down the legal route to overturn it if she could. She didn’t not because she was being magnanimous but because there was no route to her winning.
But of course that’s different.
Underneath it all you are an asshat just like your hero.
I said it's similar, I'm not really interested in defending Clinton, or going over what happened in 2016, but if you think it in any way justifies what Trump and Republicans are doing you are an idiot
On an aside, I was just skimming the State results to find the biggest swing - step forward New York which Clinton won by 22 but Biden has only won by 13 which would be a 4.5% swing to the current POTUS. Oddly enough, that's not because of a big increase in the Trump vote numbers which, at about 2.85 million are about the same as 2016 but nearly 800,000 fewer votes for Biden than Clinton obtained. She got 4.5 million he's still under 3.7 million.
It may be that as final ballots come in the Biden number will increase but for him to be down on what Clinton won in 2016 against a backdrop of a larger number of votes overall seems curious.
Too early to say. 16% still to count. If they split proportionally Bide will end up on 4.9m.
Let's see how it looks by December.
They did have a lot of polling problems in NYC and, it’s possible the so-called flight out of Manhattan impacted voter counts. Odd though
NYS is only just beginning to count absentee ballots. For instance the Republican is currently ahead for our state senator race, but the Democrat incumbent is expected to close the gap, probably enough to win, with absentee ballots (including ours). Legally absentee voting by mail is only allowed in NYS with an excuse (this year fear of covid was added as a “temporary illness”) so absentee ballots were counted last, and only if there were enough to potentially sway the result. Basically NYS is not really set up to deal with lots of absentee ballots efficiently.
Christ, what a mess
It's only a mess if you're impatient and if, like the UK, power changes instantly based on the result. Given the US system, no, it is not a mess. Things are playing out well within the time limits permitted by law in each state.
I meant in terms of the systems not set up to handle things. You shouldn't have to wait four hours in a line to vote, which is what happened to our friends in NYC
Fabricant was up early on Wednesday morning when it looked like Trump had won putting in a shift of chapter and verse on the "lessons to be learned" by folk from the result. Broadly, that everyone should strive to be more like Michael Fabricant. Ps. Fabricant (n.). One who disseminates misleading bollocks.
Afternoon all ... The truth is the Democrats have a big in-built advantage within the EC and, as 2020 has shown, don't need Texas or Florida to win but if they can secure one or both of those along with Ohio, the Republicans are effectively shut out. ...
Can you explain what you mean by this?
As far as I can work out from my best guess of the results, the tipping point state will end up having a Biden lead of ~2pp, compared to a national vote lead of ~4pp.
That's a pretty large in-built advantage for the Republicans isn't it?
Yes. The Republicans have an EC advantage. And the trends, if they continue, are probably going to make it
It's actually kinda similar, except: There wasn't a president openly trying to commit a coup at the time. Hillary accepted the results. Were you saying at the time that they probably had a point?
I knew there would be a “it’s different” line...I’m saying that Hillary was looking for an excuse to recount and was actively looking at the fraud route in several states. She didn’t stamp her feet like Trump but it was clear she was also prepared to go down the legal route to overturn it if she could. She didn’t not because she was being magnanimous but because there was no route to her winning.
But of course that’s different.
Underneath it all you are an asshat just like your hero.
I said it's similar, I'm not really interested in defending Clinton, or going over what happened in 2016, but if you think it in any way justifies what Trump and Republicans are doing you are an idiot
Ah, responds with personal insults. Of course, you are not really interested in going over 2016 because you would then have to explain why the likes of you were boring everyone senseless with cries of "Russia!! Russia stole our election!" but then are happy to scream about the integrity of the election process in 2020.
Your that typical partisan who will support their side no matter what and no matter what they do. You are as bad as the most extreme Trumpster, you are just on the other side of the fence.
Afternoon all ... The truth is the Democrats have a big in-built advantage within the EC and, as 2020 has shown, don't need Texas or Florida to win but if they can secure one or both of those along with Ohio, the Republicans are effectively shut out. ...
Can you explain what you mean by this?
As far as I can work out from my best guess of the results, the tipping point state will end up having a Biden lead of ~2pp, compared to a national vote lead of ~4pp.
That's a pretty large in-built advantage for the Republicans isn't it?
There are 51 elements to the Electoral College - 50 states plus DC.
40 of these are "safe" for either the Democrats or the Republicans - 20 each as it happens.
The safe Democrat states include the populous ones like California, New York, Illinois and the East Coast and between them come to 226 EC votes.
The safe Republican states come to just 125 EC votes as they are all smaller populated states so bring fewer EC votes to the table.
The election is fought over the remaining 187 EC votes in 11 states.
Last time Trump won 10 of those 11 and Clinton only won Nevada despite winning the national poll by 2.1%. That was how vote efficient Trump was.
This time, even though he trails Biden by 2.9% currently (so a swing of just 0.4% from 2016), Trump is looking set to hold only four of the eleven - Iowa, Ohio, Texas and Florida which bring 91 to the table.
Biden looks set to hold Nevada and win Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and perhaps North Carolina so a very small change in national votes has had a fundamental impact on the Electoral College which could well end 306-232, the mirror image of 2016.
In 2004 when Bush beat Kerry by 2.4% (so closer than the 2020 election), he won the EC 286-251. No Republican has won a Presidential vote since and for all everyone talks about how Trump is emulating Carter, it's worth remembering George W Bush only just beat Kerry and no Republican has got above 51% nationally since George HW Bush in 1988.
My point is the Democrats start on 226 and only need 44 to reach 270. If they can convert states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania back to safe seats and perhaps put Texas into the "marginal" column, the task facing any future GOP Presidential candidate is going to be that much harder. As this election has shown, the Democrats can win without Texas and Florida and if Georgia's 16 EC votes are starting to move more into the blue column as well, the Republicans face a huge problem.
Which is why I think this could be a seachange election result in the same way 1980 was when Carter lost, it then took 12 years for the Democrats to win a presidential election again, only doing so in 1992 when Bill Clinton won, the worry for the GOP is they could face the same fate and be out of the White House for the rest of the decade after Trump's defeat
Could well be. No tears from me if it is.
And our WH2020 charity bet. Just remembered it. We did under/over 281 at 50p a point on Biden EC. So settling at the near certain 306, you have lost £12.50.
Sum to go to Mermaids.
Or if that makes you feel queasy because you think like Rowling that they specialize in bullying pre-pubescent children into a sex change, we could go for Shelter, or an org that I'm thinking is bang in line with your staid and crusty Tory identity - the National Trust.
Six countries have now reported coronavirus cases linked to mink farms after a Covid mutation spreading from the animals to humans was found in Denmark.
The US, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden have reported Covid cases in minks, the World Health Organisation has confirmed.
Afternoon all ... The truth is the Democrats have a big in-built advantage within the EC and, as 2020 has shown, don't need Texas or Florida to win but if they can secure one or both of those along with Ohio, the Republicans are effectively shut out. ...
Can you explain what you mean by this?
As far as I can work out from my best guess of the results, the tipping point state will end up having a Biden lead of ~2pp, compared to a national vote lead of ~4pp.
That's a pretty large in-built advantage for the Republicans isn't it?
There are 51 elements to the Electoral College - 50 states plus DC.
40 of these are "safe" for either the Democrats or the Republicans - 20 each as it happens.
The safe Democrat states include the populous ones like California, New York, Illinois and the East Coast and between them come to 226 EC votes.
The safe Republican states come to just 125 EC votes as they are all smaller populated states so bring fewer EC votes to the table.
The election is fought over the remaining 187 EC votes in 11 states.
Last time Trump won 10 of those 11 and Clinton only won Nevada despite winning the national poll by 2.1%. That was how vote efficient Trump was.
This time, even though he trails Biden by 2.9% currently (so a swing of just 0.4% from 2016), Trump is looking set to hold only four of the eleven - Iowa, Ohio, Texas and Florida which bring 91 to the table.
Biden looks set to hold Nevada and win Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and perhaps North Carolina so a very small change in national votes has had a fundamental impact on the Electoral College which could well end 306-232, the mirror image of 2016.
In 2004 when Bush beat Kerry by 2.4% (so closer than the 2020 election), he won the EC 286-251. No Republican has won a Presidential vote since and for all everyone talks about how Trump is emulating Carter, it's worth remembering George W Bush only just beat Kerry and no Republican has got above 51% nationally since George HW Bush in 1988.
My point is the Democrats start on 226 and only need 44 to reach 270. If they can convert states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania back to safe seats and perhaps put Texas into the "marginal" column, the task facing any future GOP Presidential candidate is going to be that much harder. As this election has shown, the Democrats can win without Texas and Florida and if Georgia's 16 EC votes are starting to move more into the blue column as well, the Republicans face a huge problem.
Which is why I think this could be a seachange election result in the same way 1980 was when Carter lost, it then took 12 years for the Democrats to win a presidential election again, only doing so in 1992 when Bill Clinton won, the worry for the GOP is they could face the same fate and be out of the White House for the rest of the decade after Trump's defeat
Could well be. No tears from me if it is.
And our WH2020 charity bet. Just remembered it. We did under/over 281 at 50p a point on Biden EC. So settling at the near certain 306, you have lost £12.50.
Sum to go to Mermaids.
Or if that makes you feel queasy because you think like Rowling that they specialize in bullying pre-pubescent children into a sex change, we could go for Shelter, or an org that I'm thinking is bang in line with your staid and crusty Tory identity - the National Trust.
No proof of payment required. I trust you.
@Kinablu, when I read a response like this, I really have to apologise to you again for the comment I made the other day. Respect to you.
Correct me if I'm wrong but was there a time around 3:00am GMT on Wednesday when people were seriously wondering if Biden would hold VA?
I think it was just before I went to bed 'knowing' that Trump had somehow won again.
IIRC Mr Ed was behind ramping that theory as well.
Virginia is really not a swing state anymore. On the other side of the aisle Ohio isn't looking particularly swingy either.
I think we both know that but on election night Mr Ed was trying to tell us that the Dems had a major problem in Va when it was pretty obvious that his "evidence" for this was simply that the election day votes in Fairfax and Loudon counties were coming in first making it look like Trump was doing very well. He wasn't
It's actually kinda similar, except: There wasn't a president openly trying to commit a coup at the time. Hillary accepted the results. Were you saying at the time that they probably had a point?
I knew there would be a “it’s different” line...I’m saying that Hillary was looking for an excuse to recount and was actively looking at the fraud route in several states. She didn’t stamp her feet like Trump but it was clear she was also prepared to go down the legal route to overturn it if she could. She didn’t not because she was being magnanimous but because there was no route to her winning.
But of course that’s different.
She was alleging "fraud", or she was alleging that the vote count was wrong? Big difference.
I thought it was the latter - because the outdated and near obsolete and error prone technology was not up to the job of producing an accurate count. That's not alleging "fraud" on the basis of no evidence. It is alleging mistakes in the electoral process - something which was not widely seen as a remotely baseless claim. As evidenced, if nothing else, by the fact that the technology has had a complete overhaul since then. Of course there is no specific reason to think that the errors would have disadvantaged her. Other than the machines were situated in Dem heavy areas, and her vote was lower than many were expecting.
The headline in the Guardian to that article was:
"Alleged irregularities in key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin prompt demands for audit amid concerns over ‘foreign hackers’"
So it is pretty clear she was calling this a fraudulent process and not just blaming it on outdated technology, which is why we got the whole "Russia stole the election" issue in 2016.
Apparently in 2016 in Detroit 37% of precincts returned more votes than voters:
"The greatest tragedy in all of this is that the gurus of wokedom have persuaded thousands of idealistic young people who rightly want to change the world into supporting what is actually a deeply reactionary movement. The trans activists can only realise their aim of being able to enter spaces reserved for women by erasing the female sex. Critical race theory remains credible only so long as black and brown people continue to fail. In the end, the woke movement is turning into an echo of the very oppressors it claims to be combating. After all the statues come down, and women’s prisons are opened to all and sundry, the celebrities and social media warriors will move on to the next fashionable cause — and minorities will still be less likely to win the top jobs, and women will still be the victims of violence. The only thing that will have changed is the bitterness of a generation whose idealism was betrayed.
Afternoon all ... The truth is the Democrats have a big in-built advantage within the EC and, as 2020 has shown, don't need Texas or Florida to win but if they can secure one or both of those along with Ohio, the Republicans are effectively shut out. ...
Can you explain what you mean by this?
As far as I can work out from my best guess of the results, the tipping point state will end up having a Biden lead of ~2pp, compared to a national vote lead of ~4pp.
That's a pretty large in-built advantage for the Republicans isn't it?
There are 51 elements to the Electoral College - 50 states plus DC.
40 of these are "safe" for either the Democrats or the Republicans - 20 each as it happens.
The safe Democrat states include the populous ones like California, New York, Illinois and the East Coast and between them come to 226 EC votes.
The safe Republican states come to just 125 EC votes as they are all smaller populated states so bring fewer EC votes to the table.
The election is fought over the remaining 187 EC votes in 11 states.
Last time Trump won 10 of those 11 and Clinton only won Nevada despite winning the national poll by 2.1%. That was how vote efficient Trump was.
This time, even though he trails Biden by 2.9% currently (so a swing of just 0.4% from 2016), Trump is looking set to hold only four of the eleven - Iowa, Ohio, Texas and Florida which bring 91 to the table.
Biden looks set to hold Nevada and win Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and perhaps North Carolina so a very small change in national votes has had a fundamental impact on the Electoral College which could well end 306-232, the mirror image of 2016.
In 2004 when Bush beat Kerry by 2.4% (so closer than the 2020 election), he won the EC 286-251. No Republican has won a Presidential vote since and for all everyone talks about how Trump is emulating Carter, it's worth remembering George W Bush only just beat Kerry and no Republican has got above 51% nationally since George HW Bush in 1988.
My point is the Democrats start on 226 and only need 44 to reach 270. If they can convert states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania back to safe seats and perhaps put Texas into the "marginal" column, the task facing any future GOP Presidential candidate is going to be that much harder. As this election has shown, the Democrats can win without Texas and Florida and if Georgia's 16 EC votes are starting to move more into the blue column as well, the Republicans face a huge problem.
Which is why I think this could be a seachange election result in the same way 1980 was when Carter lost, it then took 12 years for the Democrats to win a presidential election again, only doing so in 1992 when Bill Clinton won, the worry for the GOP is they could face the same fate and be out of the White House for the rest of the decade after Trump's defeat
Could well be. No tears from me if it is.
And our WH2020 charity bet. Just remembered it. We did under/over 281 at 50p a point on Biden EC. So settling at the near certain 306, you have lost £12.50.
Sum to go to Mermaids.
Or if that makes you feel queasy because you think like Rowling that they specialize in bullying pre-pubescent children into a sex change, we could go for Shelter, or an org that I'm thinking is bang in line with your staid and crusty Tory identity - the National Trust.
No proof of payment required. I trust you.
I think it's unfair to call HYUFD staid and crusty. It takes considerable agility to stay loyal to the Conservatives as they morph from conservatism to radical populism. I have every faith in HYUFD to shake of the dogmas of old ways of thinking and embrace mercantilism, feudalism, theocratic noncognitivism, or wherever the hell they end up next on their drunken walk across the ideological wilds.
Coronavirus update: Nobody in London is paying the slightest bit of notice of the lockdown (except to the extent that pubs etc are shut to people inside) - Popular open space gathering spots are absolutely packed.
As predicted - closing of non-essential shops, pubs, restaurants etc has reduced the places for people to go, so the remaining options are more packed than they would otherwise have been.
Its called evolution....there are loads of content creators on the Youtubes making big bucks out of covering tech. Linus Tech Tips rakes in huge amounts of cash and employs a lot of people. Unfortunately others haven't kept up with the times.
Arguably many of the new breed cover the tech in even more depth and with more specialist knowledge e.g. Plenty of channels that have spent hours breaking down the exact spec and tech inside Nvidia 3000 series GPUs over the past month.
Yeah, cannot see this as sad. There is way more information and knowledge out there, for less money for the consumer, supporting more jobs at higher wages, requiring less commuting to work for those involved and less travel for those seeking the information, all while saving trees and landfill. Having a hard time seeing the downside here.
Most people actually bought Computer Shopper for the adverts since about 2000 or so it really hasn't been necessary.
And as you say the online reporting is far more detailed than anything a paper magazine would write.
Did they have a readers' wives page?
Hang on - computer geeks with wives - don't be daft!
Fabricant was up early on Wednesday morning when it looked like Trump had won putting in a shift of chapter and verse on the "lessons to be learned" by folk from the result. Broadly, that everyone should strive to be more like Michael Fabricant. Ps. Fabricant (n.). One who disseminates misleading bollocks.
Will he have to change his hairstyle now, or is it more a tribute to Boris?
"The greatest tragedy in all of this is that the gurus of wokedom have persuaded thousands of idealistic young people who rightly want to change the world into supporting what is actually a deeply reactionary movement. The trans activists can only realise their aim of being able to enter spaces reserved for women by erasing the female sex. Critical race theory remains credible only so long as black and brown people continue to fail. In the end, the woke movement is turning into an echo of the very oppressors it claims to be combating. After all the statues come down, and women’s prisons are opened to all and sundry, the celebrities and social media warriors will move on to the next fashionable cause — and minorities will still be less likely to win the top jobs, and women will still be the victims of violence. The only thing that will have changed is the bitterness of a generation whose idealism was betrayed.
This isn't far off the mark.....when you think about a lot of the woke identity stuff and start exclusively pigeon holing how races and religions as they all think x, all vote y, it is incredibly racist.
I believe the original roots of identity stuff comes down to genuine real racist / sexist stuff, where particular jobs were segregated exclusively on race and sex lines. Men worked the factory lines, women were only allowed to work the office typing pool. But that isn't what the real loud mouth activists are on about these days e.g. think how casually a "joke" was made about how Rishi Sunak isn't a proper brown person, he can't understand them, but he is rich and successful.
Morning all. Thank you David for the tip. I think 50/1 is good enough for Pete but I wouldn't go much shorter than this. I think there is no way KH would allow herself to be pushed out of the way for the Presidency and, if Joe B steps down before, she is automatically in the driving seat.
Now for the hand grenade. Apologies if this was posted before and some of you may now this already. Anyway re the counts.
One misnomer about US elections is that voters get to choose which electors are sent to the Electoral College. Actually they don't. It the state legislatures in each state. The Supreme Court has been specific on this and it has also been specific that the authority lies with the state legislatures, not the Supreme Courts of each state or the Governor or the Secretary of State.
The US Supreme Court has ruled explicitly post-2016 that electors cannot be faithless and must abide by the rulings of the state legislature.
Normally, this wouldn't matter as it is a case of procedure. This year it could come very much into play. The state legislatures of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia are all Republican led.
There is one scenario where the state legislatures in each state simply refuse to accept the results, claiming that there has been electoral fraud and appoints its own electors under mandate. This is why the fact that the RNC and the Republican Establishment have lined up behind Trump is important. It suggests the Republican machinery is set to fight.
Would this be catastrophic? Yes Undemocratic? Yes (but there are legitimate questions over the way elections have been run in the cities) Is it possible? Also yes.
"Legitimate questions" my arse.
The only legitimate questions I see are around the outrageous voter suppression by Republicans.
Plus I suspect republican majority state legislatures are quite happy to be in power, and Trump no longer to be president. I realise the republican party are basically a criminal organisation - and I'm glad you seem to be admitting this now, but I don't think it's a realistic option, just a fantasy in Trump's head.
I posted on here yesterday the key reason why HRC didn’t do a recount in Michigan in 2016 even though she was a few thousand behind was that a large number of precincts in Detroit had posted voter numbers that were in excess of their registered voters, and Michigan state law doesn’t allow precincts to be included in a recount where that happens. The explanation given was that a number of the ballot machines failed on the day and the feeders they fed the votes into erroneously duplicated a number of ballots.
Nothing was investigated further becauSe it didn’t matter to the final results but there were a number of obvious questions around that not least why election feeding machines, which should have been tested rigorously by the manufacturer before the distributors to cope with high volumes and election style processing, started to malfunction on the day.
There is a reason why so many American shows feature corrupt local politicians and why so many local politicians in the States have gone to jail for fraud etc
This doesn't make sense - re: no recount in 2016. It's not that certain votes would be excluded from the recount, and her vote would therefore go down (obviously - otherwise had she won by a few thousand then Trump could have had a recount and won the race!). It's just that the numbers for those counties wouldn't change. So a recount wouldn't have disadvantaged her if it had happened (which i think is what you are implying - apologies if wrong).
Hi Alex, the issue is that the whole precinct’s votes are excluded from a recount if this occurs so her overall numbers would have fallen given these were heavily Democrat wards. So it’s very unlikely she would have won while raising questions over what had happened.
Hi Mr Ed - I think you must be wrong - you are misunderstanding what "excluded from the recount" means. It means "won't be counted again" ie. "won't be changed". It doesn't mean "the count will be redone, as if those votes didn't exist". This is obvious if you think about it for a brief moment.
Any other interpretation (ie. yours) would mean that there would be no way that a recount could give the same result as a count. If a recount isn't expected to give the same result, then the original results couldn't be certified as accurate. You are suggesting that Hillary's vote would have gone down (because of where the votes with the issue were located ie. Hillary voting counties). But supposing she had WON the state! The implication would be that Trump could have demanded a recount knowing that her vote would go down and therefore he would likely win. Clearly there is no way that this could be correct and the law cannot mean what you think it means.
Hi @Alex, here’s the link to the article . It looks pretty clear but maybe I have misinterpreted
The article was very clear: If hand-tallied ballots can’t resolve all the mismatches, the votes will stand in the counties where the errors remain. The voting machines were a decade old. Crap equipment is a not un-regular problem in votes and/or counts across the US.
Perhaps not a bad thing, as it will reduce Trump's legal scope to things like parking regulations for tractors and the right to bear arms while scrutinising an election count.
"The greatest tragedy in all of this is that the gurus of wokedom have persuaded thousands of idealistic young people who rightly want to change the world into supporting what is actually a deeply reactionary movement. The trans activists can only realise their aim of being able to enter spaces reserved for women by erasing the female sex. Critical race theory remains credible only so long as black and brown people continue to fail. In the end, the woke movement is turning into an echo of the very oppressors it claims to be combating. After all the statues come down, and women’s prisons are opened to all and sundry, the celebrities and social media warriors will move on to the next fashionable cause — and minorities will still be less likely to win the top jobs, and women will still be the victims of violence. The only thing that will have changed is the bitterness of a generation whose idealism was betrayed.
This isn't far off the mark.....when you think about a lot of the woke identity stuff and start exclusively pigeon holing how races and religions as they all think x, all vote y, it is incredibly racist.
There is quite a close similarity between many of the arguments put forward for "safe spaces" and segregation policies. Racial segregation was often advocated on the basis of protection of minorities.
Six countries have now reported coronavirus cases linked to mink farms after a Covid mutation spreading from the animals to humans was found in Denmark.
The US, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden have reported Covid cases in minks, the World Health Organisation has confirmed.
Why do we need an ongoing worldwide health hazard, just to suit the vanity of rich women with Neanderthal social values?
"The greatest tragedy in all of this is that the gurus of wokedom have persuaded thousands of idealistic young people who rightly want to change the world into supporting what is actually a deeply reactionary movement. The trans activists can only realise their aim of being able to enter spaces reserved for women by erasing the female sex. Critical race theory remains credible only so long as black and brown people continue to fail. In the end, the woke movement is turning into an echo of the very oppressors it claims to be combating. After all the statues come down, and women’s prisons are opened to all and sundry, the celebrities and social media warriors will move on to the next fashionable cause — and minorities will still be less likely to win the top jobs, and women will still be the victims of violence. The only thing that will have changed is the bitterness of a generation whose idealism was betrayed.
This isn't far off the mark.....when you think about a lot of the woke identity stuff and start exclusively pigeon holing how races and religions as they all think x, all vote y, it is incredibly racist.
There is quite a close similarity between many of the arguments put forward for "safe spaces" and segregation policies. Racial segregation was often advocated on the basis of protection of minorities.
There are colleges in the US implementing non-white dorms....I mean I thought all those people in the 60s marched for ending exactly that kind of racist bullshit. The woke-ists will argue it is non-white people making a choice, rather than forced to do it, but that doesn't really wash with me. How are you going to break down mistrust, misunderstanding and bring people together, if people start demanding they live separately based upon the colour of their skin.
"The greatest tragedy in all of this is that the gurus of wokedom have persuaded thousands of idealistic young people who rightly want to change the world into supporting what is actually a deeply reactionary movement. The trans activists can only realise their aim of being able to enter spaces reserved for women by erasing the female sex. Critical race theory remains credible only so long as black and brown people continue to fail. In the end, the woke movement is turning into an echo of the very oppressors it claims to be combating. After all the statues come down, and women’s prisons are opened to all and sundry, the celebrities and social media warriors will move on to the next fashionable cause — and minorities will still be less likely to win the top jobs, and women will still be the victims of violence. The only thing that will have changed is the bitterness of a generation whose idealism was betrayed.
This isn't far off the mark.....when you think about a lot of the woke identity stuff and start exclusively pigeon holing how races and religions as they all think x, all vote y, it is incredibly racist.
There is quite a close similarity between many of the arguments put forward for "safe spaces" and segregation policies. Racial segregation was often advocated on the basis of protection of minorities.
A NY Uni did have segregation recently didn't it? The argument seems to have moved extremely quickly from "The colour of a humans skin is no more important than the colour of their eyes" to "The colour of a humans skin is all that matters"
Six countries have now reported coronavirus cases linked to mink farms after a Covid mutation spreading from the animals to humans was found in Denmark.
The US, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden have reported Covid cases in minks, the World Health Organisation has confirmed.
I believe the Netherlands did so several months ago.
Afternoon all ... The truth is the Democrats have a big in-built advantage within the EC and, as 2020 has shown, don't need Texas or Florida to win but if they can secure one or both of those along with Ohio, the Republicans are effectively shut out. ...
Can you explain what you mean by this?
As far as I can work out from my best guess of the results, the tipping point state will end up having a Biden lead of ~2pp, compared to a national vote lead of ~4pp.
That's a pretty large in-built advantage for the Republicans isn't it?
There are 51 elements to the Electoral College - 50 states plus DC.
40 of these are "safe" for either the Democrats or the Republicans - 20 each as it happens.
The safe Democrat states include the populous ones like California, New York, Illinois and the East Coast and between them come to 226 EC votes.
The safe Republican states come to just 125 EC votes as they are all smaller populated states so bring fewer EC votes to the table.
The election is fought over the remaining 187 EC votes in 11 states.
Last time Trump won 10 of those 11 and Clinton only won Nevada despite winning the national poll by 2.1%. That was how vote efficient Trump was.
This time, even though he trails Biden by 2.9% currently (so a swing of just 0.4% from 2016), Trump is looking set to hold only four of the eleven - Iowa, Ohio, Texas and Florida which bring 91 to the table.
Biden looks set to hold Nevada and win Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and perhaps North Carolina so a very small change in national votes has had a fundamental impact on the Electoral College which could well end 306-232, the mirror image of 2016.
In 2004 when Bush beat Kerry by 2.4% (so closer than the 2020 election), he won the EC 286-251. No Republican has won a Presidential vote since and for all everyone talks about how Trump is emulating Carter, it's worth remembering George W Bush only just beat Kerry and no Republican has got above 51% nationally since George HW Bush in 1988.
My point is the Democrats start on 226 and only need 44 to reach 270. If they can convert states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania back to safe seats and perhaps put Texas into the "marginal" column, the task facing any future GOP Presidential candidate is going to be that much harder. As this election has shown, the Democrats can win without Texas and Florida and if Georgia's 16 EC votes are starting to move more into the blue column as well, the Republicans face a huge problem.
Which is why I think this could be a seachange election result in the same way 1980 was when Carter lost, it then took 12 years for the Democrats to win a presidential election again, only doing so in 1992 when Bill Clinton won, the worry for the GOP is they could face the same fate and be out of the White House for the rest of the decade after Trump's defeat
Could well be. No tears from me if it is.
And our WH2020 charity bet. Just remembered it. We did under/over 281 at 50p a point on Biden EC. So settling at the near certain 306, you have lost £12.50.
Sum to go to Mermaids.
Or if that makes you feel queasy because you think like Rowling that they specialize in bullying pre-pubescent children into a sex change, we could go for Shelter, or an org that I'm thinking is bang in line with your staid and crusty Tory identity - the National Trust.
No proof of payment required. I trust you.
I will settle when all the results are in, if confirmed that Biden has won over 281 EC votes as is likely but not certain then I will pay up then but only once all votes are in and any recounts settled from the states adding up to 281 given Biden is currently on only 253 EC votes
It's actually kinda similar, except: There wasn't a president openly trying to commit a coup at the time. Hillary accepted the results. Were you saying at the time that they probably had a point?
I knew there would be a “it’s different” line...I’m saying that Hillary was looking for an excuse to recount and was actively looking at the fraud route in several states. She didn’t stamp her feet like Trump but it was clear she was also prepared to go down the legal route to overturn it if she could. She didn’t not because she was being magnanimous but because there was no route to her winning.
But of course that’s different.
She was alleging "fraud", or she was alleging that the vote count was wrong? Big difference.
I thought it was the latter - because the outdated and near obsolete and error prone technology was not up to the job of producing an accurate count. That's not alleging "fraud" on the basis of no evidence. It is alleging mistakes in the electoral process - something which was not widely seen as a remotely baseless claim. As evidenced, if nothing else, by the fact that the technology has had a complete overhaul since then. Of course there is no specific reason to think that the errors would have disadvantaged her. Other than the machines were situated in Dem heavy areas, and her vote was lower than many were expecting.
The headline in the Guardian to that article was:
"Alleged irregularities in key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin prompt demands for audit amid concerns over ‘foreign hackers’"
So it is pretty clear she was calling this a fraudulent process and not just blaming it on outdated technology, which is why we got the whole "Russia stole the election" issue in 2016.
Apparently in 2016 in Detroit 37% of precincts returned more votes than voters:
Let's hope all the glitches were ironed out for this election to ensure it's 100% fair and above board.
IIRC it used to be Chicago where the most dodgy vote-counting went on. Again, IIRC from 1964 there was a well-supported view that without the 'assistance' of the Mayor of that city we'd never had had the Kennedy Camelot White House.
The American people should never forgive the GOP for stoking this fraud meme. When the Democrats are in power they should push this home. Republicans aren't to be trusted.
But in a way it's a fantastic spectacle. Trump's extremists don't represent the majority even in the GOP. He underperformed his Senators. A liability. A loser. Now post-election the situation is getting 1000x worse for the party. He's driving away more and more mainstream Republicans.
He's also not doing any favours for the party in the Georgia runoffs.
Absolutely, I never particularly liked Trump - thought him a crass, incompetent dullard etc. - but his behaviour in recent days has rammed home why the man is the frightening danger that many have been saying.
Trumpists who aim to bend the rules to defraud the electorate should henceforth be known as "banana republicans".
Read down into it. There were plenty of people close to HRC who were deliberating this was fraud due to hacking, and pushing for an investigation (Podesta and Brazile are mentioned)
Some of the results are very close and if there is a defined margin within which a recount has to occur, so be it.
The current Georgia margin of 7,000 votes out of nearly 5 million equates to roughly 80 votes in an average UK constituency. If I were the Agent of a candidate down by 80 votes in a General Election, I'd be asking for a recount. If I were 8 votes down in a local election with 5,000 votes cast I'd be screaming for a recount.
Now, that's not because I would suspect malpractice but at that level of margin, human error comes into play and it is only right and proper that votes aren't just counted but counted correctly. Unfortunately, the worst time to start a recount is as soon as you finish the first count. Everyone is exhausted and a new batch of counters after a good night's sleep works wonder. Yes, everyone wants a result but the process has to be seen to be done properly.
The problem is or are the allegations that somehow ballot fraud is affecting the result. Looking at the US numbers, we would be looking at tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots to affect a result in a State - it's much easier for 20 or 30 ballots to have an impact in a parish council election than in any other meaningful contest.
Have there been instances of voter fraud? Yes in the UK but have there been any instances where the scale of the perpetrated fraud has impacted on the result? I can't think of one but that isn't the point - the slightest impropriety has to be stopped (though the UK approach is wrong-headed and seems predicated on disenfranchising elements of the electorate rather than protecting the integrity of the process for all).
Is anyone seriously expecting me to believe 50,000 fraudulent ballots have been added by the Democrats or 50,000 Republican ballots have been "lost" or "stolen" or "mislaid" and no one has noticed? It's an easy scare to put up in a tweet and it makes good clickbait and empowers those who believe the process is somehow "corrupt" but, as someone once said, where's the beef?
Trump and his cronies are as good at throwing around allegations in defeat as Clinton and her acolytes were and it's been fascinating to watch the conservative commentariat spewing out thousands of words claiming Biden lost and Trump won. I've yet to see a conservative commentator or blogger honestly ask why Biden won or why Trump lost.
Let the recount process happen if it needs to where it needs to. If the result remains the same, send the lawyers home and accept the verdict of the electorate.
Also from 538, apparently the "last major drop" of ballots from Maricopa County, Arizona, which currently has 92,000 outstanding, is expected at 4pm GMT.
Afternoon all ... The truth is the Democrats have a big in-built advantage within the EC and, as 2020 has shown, don't need Texas or Florida to win but if they can secure one or both of those along with Ohio, the Republicans are effectively shut out. ...
Can you explain what you mean by this?
As far as I can work out from my best guess of the results, the tipping point state will end up having a Biden lead of ~2pp, compared to a national vote lead of ~4pp.
That's a pretty large in-built advantage for the Republicans isn't it?
There are 51 elements to the Electoral College - 50 states plus DC.
40 of these are "safe" for either the Democrats or the Republicans - 20 each as it happens.
The safe Democrat states include the populous ones like California, New York, Illinois and the East Coast and between them come to 226 EC votes.
The safe Republican states come to just 125 EC votes as they are all smaller populated states so bring fewer EC votes to the table.
The election is fought over the remaining 187 EC votes in 11 states.
Last time Trump won 10 of those 11 and Clinton only won Nevada despite winning the national poll by 2.1%. That was how vote efficient Trump was.
This time, even though he trails Biden by 2.9% currently (so a swing of just 0.4% from 2016), Trump is looking set to hold only four of the eleven - Iowa, Ohio, Texas and Florida which bring 91 to the table.
Biden looks set to hold Nevada and win Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and perhaps North Carolina so a very small change in national votes has had a fundamental impact on the Electoral College which could well end 306-232, the mirror image of 2016.
In 2004 when Bush beat Kerry by 2.4% (so closer than the 2020 election), he won the EC 286-251. No Republican has won a Presidential vote since and for all everyone talks about how Trump is emulating Carter, it's worth remembering George W Bush only just beat Kerry and no Republican has got above 51% nationally since George HW Bush in 1988.
My point is the Democrats start on 226 and only need 44 to reach 270. If they can convert states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania back to safe seats and perhaps put Texas into the "marginal" column, the task facing any future GOP Presidential candidate is going to be that much harder. As this election has shown, the Democrats can win without Texas and Florida and if Georgia's 16 EC votes are starting to move more into the blue column as well, the Republicans face a huge problem.
Which is why I think this could be a seachange election result in the same way 1980 was when Carter lost, it then took 12 years for the Democrats to win a presidential election again, only doing so in 1992 when Bill Clinton won, the worry for the GOP is they could face the same fate and be out of the White House for the rest of the decade after Trump's defeat
Could well be. No tears from me if it is.
And our WH2020 charity bet. Just remembered it. We did under/over 281 at 50p a point on Biden EC. So settling at the near certain 306, you have lost £12.50.
Sum to go to Mermaids.
Or if that makes you feel queasy because you think like Rowling that they specialize in bullying pre-pubescent children into a sex change, we could go for Shelter, or an org that I'm thinking is bang in line with your staid and crusty Tory identity - the National Trust.
No proof of payment required. I trust you.
I will settle when all the results are in, if confirmed that Biden has won over 281 EC votes as is likely but not certain then I will pay up then but only once all votes are in and any recounts settled from the states adding up to 281 given Biden is currently on only 253 EC votes
Digging in like Desperate Don. But ok, yes, we can wait for the EC meeting.
If Georgia flips on a recount you will only be out for £4.50.
Its called evolution....there are loads of content creators on the Youtubes making big bucks out of covering tech. Linus Tech Tips rakes in huge amounts of cash and employs a lot of people. Unfortunately others haven't kept up with the times.
Arguably many of the new breed cover the tech in even more depth and with more specialist knowledge e.g. Plenty of channels that have spent hours breaking down the exact spec and tech inside Nvidia 3000 series GPUs over the past month.
Yeah, cannot see this as sad. There is way more information and knowledge out there, for less money for the consumer, supporting more jobs at higher wages, requiring less commuting to work for those involved and less travel for those seeking the information, all while saving trees and landfill. Having a hard time seeing the downside here.
Most people actually bought Computer Shopper for the adverts since about 2000 or so it really hasn't been necessary.
And as you say the online reporting is far more detailed than anything a paper magazine would write.
Did they have a readers' wives page?
Hang on - computer geeks with wives - don't be daft!
I used to buy it for the penetration testing pictures on page three.
Comments
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1325065549559291910
Plus remember in the US it is basically a 2 party race (bar a tiny handful of Libertarian and Green voters), so Labour and the LDs effectively combined equate to the Democrats while the Tories and Brexit party would combined equate to the GOP
The next election could be fought very differently, as even the Guardian seems to have noticed.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/07/how-democrats-latino-voters-texas-border-towns
https://twitter.com/Breaking24Seven/status/1325058509495472128?s=19
https://twitter.com/Mike_Fabricant/status/1325014177996484608?s=20
Johnson doesn't deserve the "nutter" label and people don't in general dislike him, but they have increasing doubts about his perceived lack of competence. That, too, is not something that elderly conservatives like.
It reminds me of a crank constantly vandalising wikipedia with absurdities, with the weary editors constantly needing to add "citation needed" .
Calling Johnson a nutter is entirely fair, in a way that calling Sunak a nutter would not be.
Should be 1.01/1.02 IMO
Your partisanship shines through there. People who vote Democrat, or Libertarian, or Green, also do so with a view "to make a better life".
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2008.0375
40 of these are "safe" for either the Democrats or the Republicans - 20 each as it happens.
The safe Democrat states include the populous ones like California, New York, Illinois and the East Coast and between them come to 226 EC votes.
The safe Republican states come to just 125 EC votes as they are all smaller populated states so bring fewer EC votes to the table.
The election is fought over the remaining 187 EC votes in 11 states.
Last time Trump won 10 of those 11 and Clinton only won Nevada despite winning the national poll by 2.1%. That was how vote efficient Trump was.
This time, even though he trails Biden by 2.9% currently (so a swing of just 0.4% from 2016), Trump is looking set to hold only four of the eleven - Iowa, Ohio, Texas and Florida which bring 91 to the table.
Biden looks set to hold Nevada and win Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and perhaps North Carolina so a very small change in national votes has had a fundamental impact on the Electoral College which could well end 306-232, the mirror image of 2016.
In 2004 when Bush beat Kerry by 2.4% (so closer than the 2020 election), he won the EC 286-251. No Republican has won a Presidential vote since and for all everyone talks about how Trump is emulating Carter, it's worth remembering George W Bush only just beat Kerry and no Republican has got above 51% nationally since George HW Bush in 1988.
My point is the Democrats start on 226 and only need 44 to reach 270. If they can convert states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania back to safe seats and perhaps put Texas into the "marginal" column, the task facing any future GOP Presidential candidate is going to be that much harder. As this election has shown, the Democrats can win without Texas and Florida and if Georgia's 16 EC votes are starting to move more into the blue column as well, the Republicans face a huge problem.
https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1325086835756789761
I thought it was the latter - because the outdated and near obsolete and error prone technology was not up to the job of producing an accurate count. That's not alleging "fraud" on the basis of no evidence. It is alleging mistakes in the electoral process - something which was not widely seen as a remotely baseless claim. As evidenced, if nothing else, by the fact that the technology has had a complete overhaul since then.
Of course there is no specific reason to think that the errors would have disadvantaged her. Other than the machines were situated in Dem heavy areas, and her vote was lower than many were expecting.
Arguably many of the new breed cover the tech in even more depth and with more specialist knowledge e.g. Plenty of channels that have spent hours breaking down the exact spec and tech inside Nvidia 3000 series GPUs plus incredible amount of independent benchmarking over the past month.
"Alleged irregularities in key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin prompt demands for audit amid concerns over ‘foreign hackers’"
So it is pretty clear she was calling this a fraudulent process and not just blaming it on outdated technology, which is why we got the whole "Russia stole the election" issue in 2016.
Furthermore, my guess/instinct is that he might actually get the gig before 2024, as I seriously don't see Biden having the mental agility to see out 4 years and that he might well be persuaded to step down very much sooner than might be imagined, maybe in only a year or two. I recognise that Kamala Harris would then be the favourite to succeed him but in such circumstances, I suspect there might well be many a slip 'twixt cup and lip.
I've risked a fiver to win £300 but PBers should obviodly DYOR.
And as you say the online reporting is far more detailed than anything a paper magazine would write.
I said it's similar, I'm not really interested in defending Clinton, or going over what happened in 2016, but if you think it in any way justifies what Trump and Republicans are doing you are an idiot
Broadly, that everyone should strive to be more like Michael Fabricant.
Ps. Fabricant (n.). One who disseminates misleading bollocks.
Your that typical partisan who will support their side no matter what and no matter what they do. You are as bad as the most extreme Trumpster, you are just on the other side of the fence.
And our WH2020 charity bet. Just remembered it. We did under/over 281 at 50p a point on Biden EC. So settling at the near certain 306, you have lost £12.50.
Sum to go to Mermaids.
Or if that makes you feel queasy because you think like Rowling that they specialize in bullying pre-pubescent children into a sex change, we could go for Shelter, or an org that I'm thinking is bang in line with your staid and crusty Tory identity - the National Trust.
No proof of payment required. I trust you.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Four+Seasons+Total+Landscaping/@40.0261802,-75.0304985,19.01z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c6b44c3cd2507b:0xf7a6fd9e9365a3be!8m2!3d40.0263593!4d-75.0302358
https://www.fstl1992.com/
The US, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden have reported Covid cases in minks, the World Health Organisation has confirmed.
https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/12/records-many-votes-detroits-precincts/95363314/
Let's hope all the glitches were ironed out for this election to ensure it's 100% fair and above board.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-march-of-wokeism-is-an-all-pervasive-new-oppression-s7dw3s5lr
It takes considerable agility to stay loyal to the Conservatives as they morph from conservatism to radical populism. I have every faith in HYUFD to shake of the dogmas of old ways of thinking and embrace mercantilism, feudalism, theocratic noncognitivism, or wherever the hell they end up next on their drunken walk across the ideological wilds.
As predicted - closing of non-essential shops, pubs, restaurants etc has reduced the places for people to go, so the remaining options are more packed than they would otherwise have been.
Hang on - computer geeks with wives - don't be daft!
This isn't far off the mark.....when you think about a lot of the woke identity stuff and start exclusively pigeon holing how races and religions as they all think x, all vote y, it is incredibly racist.
I believe the original roots of identity stuff comes down to genuine real racist / sexist stuff, where particular jobs were segregated exclusively on race and sex lines. Men worked the factory lines, women were only allowed to work the office typing pool. But that isn't what the real loud mouth activists are on about these days e.g. think how casually a "joke" was made about how Rishi Sunak isn't a proper brown person, he can't understand them, but he is rich and successful.
If hand-tallied ballots can’t resolve all the mismatches, the votes will stand in the counties where the errors remain.
The voting machines were a decade old. Crap equipment is a not un-regular problem in votes and/or counts across the US.
Cull the lot.
And the mink.
The current Georgia margin of 7,000 votes out of nearly 5 million equates to roughly 80 votes in an average UK constituency. If I were the Agent of a candidate down by 80 votes in a General Election, I'd be asking for a recount. If I were 8 votes down in a local election with 5,000 votes cast I'd be screaming for a recount.
Now, that's not because I would suspect malpractice but at that level of margin, human error comes into play and it is only right and proper that votes aren't just counted but counted correctly. Unfortunately, the worst time to start a recount is as soon as you finish the first count. Everyone is exhausted and a new batch of counters after a good night's sleep works wonder. Yes, everyone wants a result but the process has to be seen to be done properly.
The problem is or are the allegations that somehow ballot fraud is affecting the result. Looking at the US numbers, we would be looking at tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots to affect a result in a State - it's much easier for 20 or 30 ballots to have an impact in a parish council election than in any other meaningful contest.
Have there been instances of voter fraud? Yes in the UK but have there been any instances where the scale of the perpetrated fraud has impacted on the result? I can't think of one but that isn't the point - the slightest impropriety has to be stopped (though the UK approach is wrong-headed and seems predicated on disenfranchising elements of the electorate rather than protecting the integrity of the process for all).
Is anyone seriously expecting me to believe 50,000 fraudulent ballots have been added by the Democrats or 50,000 Republican ballots have been "lost" or "stolen" or "mislaid" and no one has noticed? It's an easy scare to put up in a tweet and it makes good clickbait and empowers those who believe the process is somehow "corrupt" but, as someone once said, where's the beef?
Trump and his cronies are as good at throwing around allegations in defeat as Clinton and her acolytes were and it's been fascinating to watch the conservative commentariat spewing out thousands of words claiming Biden lost and Trump won. I've yet to see a conservative commentator or blogger honestly ask why Biden won or why Trump lost.
Let the recount process happen if it needs to where it needs to. If the result remains the same, send the lawyers home and accept the verdict of the electorate.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1325099845045071873?s=20
If Georgia flips on a recount you will only be out for £4.50.
I’ll get my coat.