12:30a.m.
Thank you all for joining us on our special 2020 Presidential election. We don’t know who won yet, but it won’t be long until we find out. I hope.
Thank you to the Equinox team, and goodnight.
11:59p.m.
Polling may not be a perfect picture. It’s a scientific instrument for use that is not a 100% prediction. Polling is also not solid. Pollsters may fix their mistakes, but have new ones come up. We’ll see where polling went wrong, but it is important, very important, to know that there probably was a systematic polling error towards Trump once again. Even though it may be very large in Florida (Florida will Florida), it may not be the same elsewhere across the country.
Also, it may be that Biden will likely win a higher portion of the popular vote than Clinton did in 2016. Biden is performing much better in Texas than Clinton did in 2016. Biden is also performing with 69% in California versus Clinton’s 62% performance. Although it does not help in the electoral college, it adds more votes in safe Democratic or leaning Republican states.
11:41p.m.
The New York Times basically has Trump the heavy favorite in both Georgia and North Carolina, but not absolutely.
11:39p.m.
DDHQ projects Trump will win Ohio.
11:28p.m
BREAKING: Fox News projects Biden will win Arizona, the first Democrat to win the state since 1996.
11:26p.m.
Another sign that this election will not be called tonight? “Large counties — Fulton & Gwinnett & Dekalb — have said they won’t be counting tens of thousands of votes until tomorrow,” said Charles Bethea, reporter for the New Yorker.
11:17p.m.
How close can the election be? Biden wins Arizona but loses Pennsylvania and ends up with a 269-269 tie with Maine’s second congressional district or Nebraska’s second congressional district breaking the tie.
11:14p.m.
No results in Nevada…
11:11p.m.
By the way it looks right now, it may seem that Trump over performed his polls, and he may very well have. The problem remains we do not know how much. Millions of mail-in ballots remain to be counted in the key states. New Hampshire, a very close state in 2016, is won by Biden by a comfortable margin. It’s not like Trump is the favorite, we just do not know. Whoever wins Pennsylvania will likely win the election.
10:53p.m.
Nate Cohn from the New York Times found a bug in reporting from North Carolina which could gain Biden votes. Not enough to put him in the lead, but will definitely help.
10:44p.m.
ABC projected that Biden wins New Hampshire. Biden is currently up 54-45. Nate Silver tweeted: “He leads by 9 points. A bit smaller than his polling lead (+11) if that’s where the state ends up, but not suggestive of the sort of large polling error we seem to see in Florida.”
10:37p.m.
Galen Druke, producer and host of FiveThirtyEight, tweeted out: At this point in the night 2016 it had become pretty clear Trump was going to win. That is not the case right now. It is definitely early.”
10:28p.m.
AP reported Tommy Tuberville defeated Democratic incumbent Doug Jones in an expecting victory.
10:26p.m.
AP has called Florida’s 27th district for Republican challenger Carlos Gimenez. He defeated Democratic incumbent Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. The district lies with part of Miami and Monroe County in Florida. Trump’s over performance definitely helped the down-ballot Republicans there.
Another House of Representatives race to watch is Florida’s 27th district. The Republican candidate Maria Salavazar is up over her Democratic incumbent Donna Shalala. That district is in Miami.
10:19p.m.
It is also reported that Philadelphia will no longer count its mail in ballots. 76k votes have been counted out of 350k.
10:18p.m.
Expecting, but Arizona is now 70% reporting (heavy vote-by-mail state) and Biden leads 55-44% with Biden leading in Maricopa, the state’s most populous county, with 54-45%. If Biden wins Arizona, it will give a little extra cushion to Biden.
10:14p.m.
It definitely looks like that Trump will over perform his polls again this year. It’s unsure how much he will over perform, but it’s a nail-biter.
10:03p.m.
The New York Times expects Trump to win North Carolina with a 95%. I’m not sure if it’s going to be called, it looks extremely close.
10:01p.m.
I went back to switching between the New York Times and Decision Desk. New York Times has Biden up by less than a point with 80% in and the Decision Desk
9:41p.m.
In New Jersey news, Biden is winning ~ currently ~ Monmouth and Morris county. Big note that the vote is not all in and that may change. I’m not sure if the New York Times has errors but Bergen County is reported 60% for Trump, which is.. Something.
9:33p.m.
Texas looks likely to go to Trump. Biden is only getting 56% of the vote in Harris County, which is not enough for Biden to carry the state. However, he is performing well in Collin county which he is losing by 2%, probably the best performance for a Democrat.
9:24p.m.
Little technical difficulties. First Democratic pick up in the Senate. Fox News projects John Hickenlooper to win Colorado beating Republican incumbent Cory Gardner. Fox News also projects Democrats to hold the House of Representatives.
9:20p.m.
Right now, it’s just a lot of waiting for votes. It is definitely not a landslide victory and could be one of the closest elections (2016 or 2004, that remains to be seen). Big caution that results reported so far may not be representative. Polls were off in Florida. Remains unknown what will happen in the midwest. I’ll be looking at Arizona next.
9:03p.m.
It is 9pm and we have more poll closings
8:35p.m.
Earlier tonight, I’ve said that the New York Times had three needles for tonight that aimed to forecast the final vote. Right now, with wide uncertainty, the needle has Trump very likely to win Florida (which the AP has not called), Georgia as probably Trump (Trump +4), and North Carolina leaning Trump (Trump +.09). North Carolina accepts ballots as long as they are postmarked by election night.
8:24p.m.
North Carolina Board of Elections have Biden up 5-43% with 3.5 million votes casted.
8:22p.m.
BREAKING NEWS: The Decision Desk just called Florida for Trump. They have it 63 for Biden v. 80 for Trump
8:18p.m.
Right now, Biden has 85 electoral votes versus Trump’s 55. Biden won VT, IL, MA, NJ, MD, RI, DE, and VA. Trump won OK, MS, Al, SC, TN, Wa.
8:11p.m.
As of 8 p.m., it is increasingly likely that Trump will carry the state of Florida. Trump massively overperformed in Miami-Dade 54%-46% with Cuban Latinos. Biden made some gains among seniors, but not much to offset it. The real question is whether or not that polling miss is only towards Florida or if it is replicated everywhere else.
8:04p.m.
A big caution: be careful of early returns vs. Election- Day votes. There has been a mass of early votes that have been cast, but also a significant number of e-day votes as well. What may be showing a particular lead in one candidate does not mean much unless there’s a mix of early and e-day votes or when all the votes have been counted in a particular county.
New York Times has brought back its infamous needle this year — but only for Florida, North Carolina and Georgia. The way the early ballots are counted, NYT is able to use the needle to determine how many votes are left to be cast,– via mail, in-person, and e-day, and who has a better chance to win.
8:01p.m.
Hi everyone! Welcome to the first election night coverage by The Equinox! I’m Johnathan Miller and I cover politics for the Equinox. I’m joined by my co-writer Nadia Sanchez. Our team is led by producer Elizabeth Scalzo, Editor-in-Chief of The Equinox. Rounding out the team is Meme specialist Nancy Sanchez; Social Media Editors Chloe Colmenares and Naniyah McClain, and Managing Editor Amaya Morales.
This election campaign has been a long one, and it is finally coming down to the end. In the next update, I’ll look at states that have already closed and results from them. We know that North Carolina is expected to close its polls at 7:30 but some polls will be open for 45 minutes, which will delay results there.
I wrote this down on Facebook last night to which I was expecting and the reason for that is pretty simple: polling error. Here is basically what I wrote:
”Biden is heavily favored, but not absolutely favored. We should go in expecting a Biden win, but with open minds to other possibilities. He leads in PA, which will likely be the state to decide the election, by 5-6%. He leads right now in Fla., Ga, NC, and Ariz. (along with Wisc.and Mich.)
By other possibilities, here is what I mean. a 2016-style polling miss would make it very close but Biden will still win in Pennsylvania and thus gain the likely bare minimum of 270 electoral votes.
An even bigger miss than in 2016 (say a 5-6 point) will be enough to flip Pennsylvania and the election to Trump.
But, a polling miss in Biden’s direction would have Biden possibly picking up Ohio, Iowa, and yes even Texas. And maybe the miss isn’t uniform. There’s a miss in the sunbelt in favor of Biden and the midwest/rust belt has no miss or the opposite happens.
The purpose of this is that while, yes, Biden is in a much better and stronger position than Clinton was at the end of 2016, polling error is still a thing that can happen and a big enough shift can dramatically change the dynamics. We won’t know how large or in which direction until after the election, if there is even one. Pollsters (most of them at least) have improved over the past four years by weighting their sample by education –this showed that whether you had a 4-year degree mattered more on your vote preference than it did in the past (white, college educated > Clinton, white, non-college educated > Trump). This may help shrink the possible polling error. There’s no way we can know for sure.
I also want advice and caution against taking much stock on vote count in the midwest/rust belt, esp in Pa. (I will talk about this tomorrow).”
