US elections: who won, who lost and who messed up
How is the count going after the US elections? The point of Federico Punzi, editorial director of Atlantico Quotidiano
The long election night of the 2020 presidential elections also risks turning into a long night for American democracy.
WHAT HAPPENED
Let's retrace the crucial steps of this strange night. Let's say right away that Trump held up, he had advanced in almost all the states he needed to be re-elected to the White House, and where he is now behind, he is very little, thus denying the predictions of the pollsters and mainstream media on the eve of the real losers – for now – last night.
THE BLUE WAVE NOT RECEIVED
That the "blue wave" that many predicted was not manifesting itself was understood almost immediately, when Florida began too easily to turn red, reaching a margin of 3.5 percent with over 90 percent of votes counted (in 2016 Trump won by 1.2 percent).
THE ROLE OF TV
An isolated case, not a trend, was hurrying to get their hands on from Biden's headquarters. But the major networks, CNN and Fox , were slow to assign the Sunshine State to Trump, while they promptly assigned states with lower margins to Biden. This gave the feeling that the president was behind for most of the night.
TRUMP
While it was now increasingly evident that Trump had conquered Florida, attention shifted to Ohio, the state in which the candidate who is later elected president wins since 1964. Here, too, a statement by Trump with a wide margin with respect to the predictions (8 percent). Very important for two other reasons: because it borders two other equally decisive states – Pennsylvania and Michigan – and because it confirmed that the error of the Florida polls was not an isolated case.
THE UNCERTAIN STATES
Trump's advantages in Georgia and North Carolina are more uncertain, two other states in the balance where polls saw Biden's claim as probable. Eventually they should also go to the outgoing president.
THE ELECTORAL NIGHT
But those who have followed the election night on the various US networks cannot fail to have noticed some anomalies. Just as Trump's lead was consolidating in Pennsylvania and the midwestern states, Michigan and Wisconsin, in the middle of the night, the counting was inexplicably interrupted, they stopped counting the votes, announcing that they would take it back in the morning. For hours, no new data from those states and major urban centers like Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee, far behind the other counties.
THE STRIP
Then, the counting resumed in Wisconsin, with a sudden surge in votes for Biden from Milwaukee. Same script in Michigan. Pennsylvania, on the other hand, is still standing. But the authorities had announced that they would take until Friday to accept new votes in the mail (in violation of state law). The ballot resumed, mysteriously suspended for hours, also in Georgia, where the votes are now being counted by mail in Fulton County (Atlanta).
THE MAIL
If all these votes in the mail were already there, why were they not counted immediately and the ballot was suspended? The suspicion arises that those cards have suddenly "appeared" and for this reason the count has been resumed. Other anomalies: in all these states, but also in Nevada, it is not known exactly how many votes remain to be scrutinized. The sites report a variable range. The Nevada Commission says it expects to receive more ballots "in the next week". And then there are, in both Wisconsin and Michigan , leaps of over 100,000 votes for Biden in one fell swoop, as if a 99 or a 100 to nil on Trump had occurred somewhere.
Oddities
Allegations, for now … But I don't remember it ever happened that a state suspended the ballot in the middle of the night, announcing to resume it the next morning, and then resume it after other ballots sent by post were found during the night. And coincidentally, just in the right number to overturn the result.
TRICK
Unfortunately, it is the sleight of hand of voting by post, which risks being decisive, as we hypothesized in our pre- election day analysis . A poisoned fruit of the Chinese virus, which by a strange twist of fate modifies the voting system of the rival superpower of China in the most important election, killing the most feared opponent, the only Western leader who had the courage to challenge Beijing's hegemonic ambitions.
VALID VOTES
Obviously, the votes must all be counted. The valid ones, though. The problem is in fact the parcels of votes by post that arrive in dribs and drabs even hours after polling stations close, perhaps without postmark. It has already happened, it also happened in the midterm elections , it is happening even today. With the difference that this year the size of the vote by mail, wanted by the Democrats, is such that it does not allow us to rest assured … There are two facts: tens of millions of votes cast by mail, hundreds of thousands of "found" votes after the closing of the polling stations; the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania had already ordered that ballots arriving after the polls closed and without postmark (!) be counted, in violation of state law. How many ballots will come out without postmark or voter signature from Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee? The fact is, another coincidence, that for the first time in sixty years, the candidate who wins Ohio (and who won Florida since 1996) does not arrive at the White House.
THE SCENERY
We will understand in the next few hours if the Trump Campaign and the Republicans have something concrete in hand to start appeals. In any case, without getting to real fraud, the postal vote that becomes the system from exception is a madness that undermines two fundamental principles of democratic voting: freedom and secrecy. It is vulnerable to swap votes and even heavy conditioning in the family or environment (there is no guarantee that the voter will fill in the form and post it).
THE DEFEATS
The only ones who are certainly defeated, indeed humiliated by election night, are the pollsters and the mainstream media who had predicted a triumphal ride for Biden that didn't happen. Every day a new poll giving Biden a double-digit lead nationally or in some hanging state. Errors with margins even higher than those of four years ago.
FARLOCCHI POLLS
To fail miserably the most "listed", on the basis of which Nate Silver has worked out his estimate of victory of Biden at 91 percent. Some examples: Biden in Florida +4 for Reuters / Ipsos , +4 for NBC News / Marist , +5 for Quinnipiac , +3 NYTimes / Siena ; Biden in Ohio +4 for Quinnipiac and +1 for NYTimes / Siena . Comical those on Wisconsin, which perhaps will go to Biden but not for the 11 points of NYTimes / Siena , the 10 of Reuters / Ipsos , the 8 of Cnn or the 17 points of ABC News / WashPost . Similar margins of error for the Michigan and Pennsylvania polls.
THE PROBEERS
In the last few days of the campaign, the averages calculated by the RealClearPolitics website have dropped – mainly thanks to the pollsters who have come closest to the real figure, the much-maligned Trafalgar and Rasmussen – but still attributed to Biden a +1 in Florida, a +6 in Wisconsin , a +4.6 in Michigan. But in reality, in the weeks leading up to the gap being even wider, Trump was even given defeat in Ohio and Iowa.
THE PERSPECTIVES OF THE US ELECTIONS
We will see at the end the popular vote: the RCP average closed with Biden at +7.2 percent, but many pollsters estimated it at + 10-12 percent until the end. Such sensational advantages attributed to Biden every day, both nationally and locally, that given the results, fraudulent intent cannot be ruled out: polls inflated specifically to suppress Trump's turnout by discouraging his electorate. No voter likes to vote for a candidate who is certainly a loser.
(Extract from an article published on atlanticoquotidiano.it)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/elezioni-usa-chi-ha-vinto-chi-ha-perso-e-chi-ha-toppato/ on Thu, 05 Nov 2020 06:30:56 +0000.