38 hours until election day
Although I have advised everyone — myself included — to ignore the “horserace” and stay focused on getting every American to participate… I am obsessed (as I am every year) and so I offer you my round-up of where we stand right now. I am, of course, watching the Senate and House closely, as well as the control of the state legislatures as we went this critical redistricting year. The Missouri governor’s race is also on my radar as a potential sleeper surprise. For election night tracking, I recommend my friend Evan Grossman’s election night survival guide. But that’s a day and half away, so for now most of my anxiety is about the presidential race (despite my frequent protestations that we are too focused on the national, the federal, the presidential, and not concerned enough about the local…):
Good News for Biden
- In just about all the polls, Biden is ahead — and substantially ahead. Even if you adjust for the ways the polls were off last time, even if you widen the margin of error — Biden is still on pace to a big victory.
- Biden is winning the same voters Hillary won in 2016 — but he is also winning a critical slice of the 2016 Trump supporters as well as 2016 third-party voters (about 6% of the 2016 electorate).
- And then there are the new voters. One example: In 2016, Clinton won the big cities in Texas (Austin, Dallas, Houston) by 541K votes… and Biden is on pace to double that — over 1 million votes.
- Young voters are turning out at an unprecedented rate…
