To ask if Biden has definitely won?

[bluewanda]

He has, right? Joe Biden is the new POTUS!

Biden is the more likely winner.

Five states left (exc Alaska which is not declared but a safe Trump win).

Trump has to get Pennsylvania plus three other states. If he doesn’t get Pennsylvania, he has to get ALL four of the others.

Biden is currently leading in two of them, albeit by small margins, plus Pennsylvania could easily go either way.

(Nevada) having issues with some ballots due to issues regarding the signature on the ballot return envelope. Either the required signature is missing or it doesn’t match the signature on voter registration rolls. So now, prior to including these in the count, they have to notify voters to see if they want to correct them

That's something else that's always worried me. In most cases in the UK, if you louse up your vote that's it - it's invalidated - and I just wonder if offering "second chances" is a good idea

[quote Kljnmw3459]@WhereverIGoddamnLike I'm looking at the voter numbers for the remaining swing states and where trump is leading he has a more considerable lead whereas Biden's lead margins are tiny, minimal. So based on that I would bet my money on trump at this point. Also Florida is usually a reliable indicator of which way this will go.[/quote]
In each state they know which districts have not yet reported, and they know which way those districts tend to vote - D or R.

They also know whether or not it's absentee ballots and mail-in ballots that are left to be processed (at this point most of them are). Those also tend to vote Democrat.

So in Michigan and Nevada, although Biden only has a small lead, the chances are he will win more of the remaining votes because it's a combination of absentee ballots in Democrat leaning districts that are left to be counted.

In Pennsylvania, where Trump has a big lead, again the remaining votes are absentee, and in highly populated areas that tend to vote Democrat, so Biden has a chance of picking up a lot of them.

In George, again where Trump has a big lead, most of the remaining votes are coming from Atlanta - again likely Biden.

So it's all a bit 'how long is a piece of string'

[quote Kljnmw3459]@WhereverIGoddamnLike I'm looking at the voter numbers for the remaining swing states and where trump is leading he has a more considerable lead whereas Biden's lead margins are tiny, minimal. So based on that I would bet my money on trump at this point. Also Florida is usually a reliable indicator of which way this will go.[/quote]

The postal votes are last to be counted and they're expected to be strongly in the democrats favour, its unlikely that Trump will overtake Biden in those states at the later stages of counting.

@Veterinari

Clinton 'won' on votes in 2016 The electoral congress still gave it to Trump

Crazy system

Indeed. Almost as crazy as our own voting system, in fact.

At the 2015 UK General Election :
The SNP got 1.5 million votes and won 56 seats.
The Lib Dems got 2.4 million votes and won 8 seats.
UKIP got 3.9 million votes and won 1 seat.

Source : Wikipedia.

With COVID I’m sure postal votes must be coming from US residents more than normal, just wondered what source there is to assume postal votes will be in Biden’s favour.

Two factors.

Democrats are more likely to be worried about Covid, and thus use an absentee ballot.

Democrats were encouraging to vote absentee, whereas Republicans were actively discouraged by Trump.

Also, on the voter roll it says whether you're a registered Democrat, Republican or neither, and they know how many of each were returned as absentee ballots. More were Democrat than either of the other two.

@Puzzledandpissedoff Interestingly, even in the UK counts, spoiled ballots often get counted. Parties and independents can present monitors who attend the count, and are called to vote and discuss whether a vote should be counted and who for. For example, if a ballot was filled out in pencil, or a tick is used instead of a cross. Notably, a few elections ago, the Conservative Party managed to get several ballots where a penis had been drawn in the box for their candidate to count toward their votes. The Labour representatives agreed as it was a safe seat, and everyone enjoyed the irony.

They're much stricter in the US. The signature process is often regarded as part of voter disenfranchisement. It disproportionately impacts second-language English speakers, as per this ACLU article.

I really struggle with understanding and explaining the electoral college but its something like that!
Although the while thing started because the founders didnt trust true democracy or trust simple people to make the right choice! Yet the US ended up with Trump!

It doesn't matter if he wins

The mad orange Wotsit is so power hungry he won't leave - there will be riots/legal challenges/probable bloody shootings

HE. IS. INSANE

No one believes he will put the American people above his own PERSONAL power

@AgeLikeWine

Not crazy at all. If we didnt split it down into council areas then the areas with less population would end up with no representation of their choice as they would be overrun by the higher populated areas. Scotland wouldn't really have repeatantion in Westminster chosen by it's people if you went purely by the numbers. We are voting for representation alongside a prime minister.

He has won technically, but not really.

The blue wave didn't happen, the BAME uptick has made the 'trump racist' argument a lot more nuanced, especially when you add on the Biden picked up more white male votes.

Those in the UK and media who like to pretend that Trump is the ultimate NeoLiberal Capatilist/War mongerer are going to have to memore hole a lot of thier previous twitter hot takes, (I'm talking about the small resistence movement on MN who have been posting from very selective twitter hot takes and posts for the past 4 years)

America will go back to Bush level and it will be conveniently ignored, Trump needed to lose, but the resistence movement and Idepentant readers are going to be doing full 180 degress in analaysis.

It isn't the win that some are hoping for

Please God, cut us some slack! 🤞🤞🤞

The mad orange Wotsit is so power hungry he won't leave - there will be riots/legal challenges/probable bloody shootings

It is this type of only taking news from Twitter and selective framing that is contributing to the problem, the protesters in Seatle last night where not pro trump, it isn't pro Biden supporters getting a baseball bat or bikelock to the face.

America is a shit show, and pretending it is only one side who are being abusive dicks shows that the devision has worked and is activily stoking it.

Assuming Biden wins, will it be difficult for him to achieve stuff with the likely republican retention of senate control?

That was a very interesting article, @sergeilavrov, and I completely accept there can be valid reasons for the signature issue
That said, I do wonder where the balance lies between enabling voters and the risk of fraud

I'd forgotten the "penis vote" though, and did enjoy that

[quote WhereverIGoddamnLike]@AgeLikeWine

Not crazy at all. If we didnt split it down into council areas then the areas with less population would end up with no representation of their choice as they would be overrun by the higher populated areas. Scotland wouldn't really have repeatantion in Westminster chosen by it's people if you went purely by the numbers. We are voting for representation alongside a prime minister.[/quote]
I’m not criticising Scotland, or the SNP.

I’m criticising a stupid FTPT voting system which allows Party A to win 56 seats for 1.4m votes while allowing Party B to win just 1 seat for 3.9m votes.

It is perfectly possible to devise an electoral system which combines local area representation with a parliament which fairly reflects the views of the electorate.

@Rosehip10 Yes, he will be presented with a robust Senate majority leader in Mitch McConnell. He's known to play hard, and dirty. If the Trump administration doesn't pass a relief bill before January, it's unlikely one will be forthcoming after that. A big test will be Biden's willingness to use executive orders, something that Trump has used frequently - it may be that the best tactic is using EOs to remove Trump's EOs, establishing a more moderate playing field for the Senate and House to fight within. Every new president in the last 30 years has come to office with his party holding a majority in both houses of Congress (albeit only for their first two years): it will be interesting to see how the Democrats handle a split.

I think the democrats do need to think about why trump was so popular

He's likely to win Michigan (they're at 99% counted) and should win Nevada. This gives him exactly enough electoral college votes to get 270 which means that he wins, whatever that gaslighting bastard Trump says!

While nothing is set in stone, the odds are certainly significantly better for Biden than Trump. Also, this is a weird year in terms of voting and counting ballots so it could take a few days. Pennsylvania, for example, currently has Trump in the lead by a decent amount, but only 61% of the ballots in Philadelphia (a very large, overwhelmingly blue city) have been counted, whereas counts are > 90% in most of the rural, red areas. I would put money on PA electing Biden in the end (and thus, Biden winning the whole election). Definitely more of a nail-biter than I was hoping for, though.

Assuming Biden wins, will it be difficult for him to achieve stuff with the likely republican retention of senate control?

No, it will be the opposite of what happened with Trump in power, but this time it will be painted as a bad thing instead of good

I still have hopes for Pennsylvania. There are still a million absentee ballots left to be counted, by some estimates, and absentee ballots are leaning blue (and also are coming from blue areas of the state). Trump's lead is 400k votes at the moment. He's claiming victory to delegitimize the results and is suing to stop them from counting every ballot.

Sorry, that should have been yes, everything will just get blocked, but it will everything wrt to american politics will just flip with it being good /bad

@Newjez I think the Republicans will also need to think about it. 2016 many Republican politicians were against him and no doubt still are. Can they find someone similar for 2024? Democrats have struggled to find a likeable person after Obama. Obama and Trump both (in different ways but still) represented change and maybe even hope. Clinton and Biden have both been more of status quo candidates.

Trump's lead is 400k votes at the moment

It's going down literally by the minute- currently at 330k, with still over a million votes to count (this is Pennsylvania).