The vanishing 'red mirage': how Trump's election week soured

[marmar]

(Guardian UK) For Democrats, the familiar sinking feeling began in the early hours of Wednesday morning when Florida came out for Donald Trump. The state is a critical battleground. Up until that point a Democratic victory in Tuesday’s US presidential election had seemed likely. Joe Biden, the former vice-president, was going to win, the polls said. Probably by a landslide. The only question was the giddy margin.

But the humiliating rout predicted by the pundits wasn’t happening. Trump’s support was holding up remarkably well. This wasn’t just true of diehard fans who had packed into his election rallies in the tumultuous closing days of an extraordinary campaign. Others were backing him as well. This, despite a health pandemic and a divisive presidency like no other.

The Florida results suggested a more complex picture was emerging. For the Biden camp, it was an alarming one. With 96% of ballots counted, Trump was 375,000 votes ahead. Biden, it turned out, had underperformed in the Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County. The president had increased his vote among white, working class and Latino people. And among African Americans.

Trump, it seemed, had defied his critics yet again. He comfortably won Texas, crushing Democratic hopes of flipping the state. In the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania – visited repeatedly by both candidates in recent months – Trump was more than half a million votes ahead. There were other notable wins, including Ohio and Iowa. Much of the electoral map was going red. ..............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/07/red-mirage-donald-trump-election-week-soured

[paleotn]

1. My hypothesis...

on the depth of Trump's support this time is the scale of the summer protests scared the bajeebus out of many in white Amurka. The knee jerk was status quo even if it meant the death of democracy and rule of law. Pollsters had a hard time modeling that. Many don't even pay lip service to equality before the law anymore. Hold on to power, moral and political ideals be damned it seems. The 2020 post mortems will be more interesting and scarier than 2016.