A Popular Political Site Made a Sharp Right Turn. What Steered It?

Real Clear Politics has been catering to campaign obsessives since 2000. It pitches itself as a “trusted, go-to source” for unbiased polling. The Trump era changed its tone, and funding sources.

For three days after every major news organization declared Joseph R. Biden Jr. the victor of the presidential election, one widely read political site maintained that Pennsylvania was still too close to call.

The delay was welcome news to allies of President Trump like Rudolph W. Giuliani and friendly outlets like The Gateway Pundit, which misrepresented the site’s decision in their efforts to spread false claims that Mr. Biden’s lead was unraveling.

That site, Real Clear Politics, is well known as a clearinghouse of elections data and analysis with a large following among the political and media establishment — and the kinds of political obsessives who might now have all the counties in Georgia memorized. It markets itself to advertisers as a “trusted, go-to source” admired by campaign and news professionals alike. Its industry benchmark polling average is regularly cited by national publications and cable news networks.

But less well known is how Real Clear Politics and its affiliated websites have taken a rightward, aggressively pro-Trump turn over the last four years as donations to its affiliated nonprofit have soared. Large quantities of those funds came through two entities that wealthy conservatives use to give money without revealing their identities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/us/politics/a-popular-political-site-made-a-sharp-right-turn-what-steered-it.html

Boris Johnson's chief adviser Dominic Cummings has left Number 10 with immediate effect, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg says.

Mr Cummings spoke to the PM earlier on Friday and it was decided it was best for him to go immediately after days of turmoil, our political editor said.

The former Vote Leave supremo had been at the centre of a power struggle in Downing Street in recent days.

The PM's director of communications Lee Cain has also left.

Mr Cummings was seen leaving No 10 a short while ago carrying a box.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54938050

Nearly 80% of Americans say Biden won White House, ignoring Trump's refusal to concede - Reuters/Ipsos poll

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nearly 80% of Americans, including more than half of Republicans, recognize President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the Nov. 3 election after most media organizations called the race for the Democrat based on his leads in critical battleground states, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Biden - who needed 270 Electoral College votes to win - had 279 of those votes to 214 for Trump with results in three states not yet complete, according to Edison Research. In the popular vote, Biden got 76.3 million, or 50.7% of the total, to 71.6 million, or 47.6%, for Trump.

The Reuters/Ipsos national opinion survey, which ran from Saturday afternoon to Tuesday, found that 79% of U.S. adults believe Biden won the White House. Another 13% said the election has not yet been decided, 3% said Trump won and 5% said they do not know.

The results were somewhat split along party lines: about six in 10 Republicans and almost every Democrat said Biden won.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-election-poll-idUKKBN27Q3DW

“She Is a Master”: Joe Biden’s Campaign Manager Told the Political Future—And Was Right

Jen O’Malley Dillon, the first woman to manage a winning Democratic presidential campaign, has somehow managed to keep a low profile. But her deft behind-the-scenes direction just cost Donald Trump the presidency.

...

There is, of course, plenty of credit to go around inside the Biden and Democratic worlds. The candidate leaned on old hands Ron Klain, particularly when coronavirus hit the country; Mike Donilon, a consultant who has been with him since 1981; and Steve Ricchetti, who has significant ties to the corporate world. Lawyers Bob Bauer and Dana Remus assembled hundreds of attorneys to fend off Trump’s attempts at suppressing votes. Anita Dunn (who happens to be married to Bauer) was elevated to run the campaign at a pivotal moment, taking control after Biden’s dismal fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses; she was especially influential in crafting communications strategy during the general election campaign. Symone Sanders was with Bernie Sanders in 2016; her jump to Biden three years later shored up his connections to progressive, Black, and younger Democrats. In Pennsylvania, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman’s plan to chip into Trump’s rural-vote margins worked, while activists boosted Biden’s margins in Philadelphia and its suburbs. In Georgia, Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo didn’t waste their time moaning about Abrams’s bitter 2018 gubernatorial-race defeat, instead constructing a key Peach State turnout and voter-protection operation. In Wisconsin, state Democratic Party chairman Ben Wikler fought off a hostile Republican legislature and judiciary and flipped a crucial state.

Yet no one did more than Dillon, the rare and most powerful new kid in Biden’s inside circle, who today becomes the first woman to ever manage a winning Democratic presidential campaign (and the first of any party, if you don’t count Kellyanne Conway’s nearly three months atop Trump’s 2016 run, when she replaced Paul Manafort). Dillon, 44, worked her way up through the Democratic-campaign ranks as a field organizer, moving from John Edwards to Barack Obama in 2008, then becoming executive director of the Democratic National Committee before rejoining Obama in his 2012 campaign. Beto O’Rourke’s hiring of Dillon, in March 2019, to run his primary campaign, was considered a major triumph for the former Texas congressman, but he still never got traction. When O’Rourke dropped out, Biden pounced. He knew Dillon from his vice presidential years. Last March, Dunn reached out to Dillon first, before Biden heavily recruited Dillon to head his general election machine. “Jen is a brilliant strategist who knows the battleground states like the back of her hands, and who knows the Democratic Party mechanisms and infrastructure down to what type of data infrastructure needs to be built to reach persuadable voters,” says Ben LaBolt, who was an Obamaworld colleague. “She is a master of both the brass tacks of traditional campaigning and the modern, digital ways of campaigning.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/joe-biden-campaign-manager-told-the-political-future-and-was-right

Stacey Abrams garners praise from Democrats for mobilising voters, as Biden inches ahead in Georgia

Around 800,000 new voters have been added to Georgia's voting rolls since 2018, says Ms Abrams

Stacey Abrams did not deny her anger when Republican Brian Kemp was declared the winner of the Georgia governor's race two years ago, after a bitter contest marred by widespread irregularities and allegations of voter suppression.

Instead, she channelled that anger into the work she had started years before to organise and mobilise an army of voters to break the Republican Party's lock on state politics and create a government that looked more like the new Georgia.

That army, anchored in metro Atlanta and in smaller pockets of predominantly black cities and counties, helped to push former vice-president Joe Biden several thousand votes ahead of President Donald Trump in the state this week. ...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/stacey-abrams-georgia-democrats-election-biden-voters-b1668721.html

Boris Johnson
@BorisJohnson

Congratulations @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris

Nigel Farage
@Nigel_Farage

The first polls are closing and I am absolutely optimistic.

Philippe Van Damme
@P_VanDamme_EU

Very Belgian comment on very American presidential election.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

How come every time they count Mail-In ballot dumps they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?