Yes, all these votes were already cast by Nov. 3, but some states headed by NY (>1.5M votes left to count) and CA are still a-countin’… and countin’...
My favorite popular vote tracker is at Cook’s, a crew headed by the super-diligent David Wasserman. Besides illuminating graphics, they seem to collect slightly more total votes than any other site. Which is why they have crossed this historic milestone first.
Here’s what Cook’s is showing right now:
As many had predicted, Biden-Harris will end this election with well over 80 MILLION VOTES. An Earth-shattering record. The previous record was famously set by Obama-Biden in 2008: 69.5 million. But it gets better, way better:
If I am not mistaken, the number of people voting for Biden-Harris as a proportion of the entire US population (including children and non-citizens) is setting a new record.
Know what this means? A Mandate. A Huge, Historic, Popular Mandate.
Biden-Harris should end up with nearly a quarter (~24.5% to 25%) of the entire U.S.A. population voting for them, possibly more. Some comparisons:
- Obama 2008: ~23%.
- Reagan’s 1984 landslide: also ~23%, perhaps a tad higher than Obama
- Nixon’s 1972 wipeout of Dems: ~22.5%
- Johnson’s 1964 wipeout of Repugs: ~22% (remember that back then, most Southern Blacks were still denied the vote, and the voting age was 21)
- Roosevelt’s 1936 wipeout of Repugs, his biggest victory: 21.5-22% (there was even more disenfranchisement in 1936)
No need to go much further, since besides disenfranchisement of Blacks and young adults, women only got the vote in 1920.
When all is said and done — unless I’m mistaken— Biden-Harris’ vote as a share of the entire population will have broken the previous record by at least ~1.5%! You can tell by how close together the other high-performing numbers are, how hard it is to reach this level of active voter support in US politics with its inherent voter suppression and its two-party split, which rarely strays too far from 50:50.
To use an Olympic analogy, Biden-Harris’ popular vote records are on the level of Mexico 1968.
In case anyone — anyone — challenges you on our mandate, by citing, say, Repugs’ gaining a few U.S. House seats, or even if they manage to cut their Senate losses and retain 1-2 GA incumbents — if anyone challenges you claiming we are “a divided country” and “Biden has a limited mandate”— throw this historical, record-shattering level of support in their faces.
The people showed up in unprecedented numbers, to vote out an incumbent for the first time in a generation, and to support Biden-Harris for the White House. Never before have so many people, in terms of absolute or relative numbers, weighed in on who they want as President.
End of story. Sort of...
Micro-rant: the entire “limited mandate” crap pops up in the media only after Dems win the White House. No one pestered Bush in 2000 or Trump in 2016, after winning the electoral college while losing the popular vote, that their mandate is limited and they must compromise. No. And both came out of the gate with the most extreme, partisan policies imaginable, as if they won by 20% and had endless control of all branches of government.
The US holds separate elections for the Executive and the two Legislative Houses. Winning any of these provides the full mandate for that branch to do its job — which includes cooperating with the other branches. Even if Biden-Harris had squeaked by with 270 EVs and a popular-vote tie, he’d have the full Presidential mandate, and the Senate would be under its full Constitutional duties to cooperate with them. Let alone given the historic popular-vote mandate.
Seriously. Nowhere in the Constitution, or elsewhere, does it say that Democrats must always cooperate and Republicans can always ignore the other party. So don’t buy into that crap, and push it back into whoever tries to feed you with it.
Some additional stats and tidbits below the fold.
Aside: Trump’s support in 2020 will come out to ~22.5%. Not too shabby — but still below Obama and Reagan’s top support, and similar to Nixon and Johnson. It might break the record for a *losing* vote though. The bestest sore loser ever, I guess.
Crossing milestones: popular victory margin
Which brings me to the margin. A relatively low-key Friday diary by Davidsfr announced that Biden-Harris crossed the 6 million vote margin. It is now 6.155M and will continue to grow, since the straggler counts are coming mostly from deep-blue New York voters. A couple of no less significant margins were crossed over the weekend:
Biden-Harris now surpass Obama-Biden’s 2012 victory margin of 3.86%. They are also a hair below Obama-Biden’s 2012 share of the vote (51.06%), and will almost surely cross it today.
I guesstimated on Nov. 4 morning (in response to worried WhatsApp inquiries from relatives in Israel), that the popular vote margin is likely to end up around 4-5%. This seems to have turned out correctly (I was a bit bearish on the EC victory at the time, only a bare MI-AZ-WI-NE2 270EV seemed relatively safe then).
Surpassing Obama 2012 means that 2020 is the second-largest percent victory by any side in our hyper-polarized 21st Century. Yet another sign of a broad mandate. Biden-Harris also won the second highest share of the vote by the Dem ticket since 1964; second only to Obama-Biden 2008.
Apparently, Biden-Harris’ vote share of >51% is also the best for any challenger since FDR in 1932 (h/t Vetwife!).
The electoral college efficiency gap
On the ominous side, this margin also means that 2020 shows the largest “electoral college efficiency deficit” (for lack of a better term) in this century, and a very rare one overall: at least ~3.5%, possibly more once all is counted, separate Biden-Harris’ percent popular margin, and the 0.6% margin by which they won the tipping-point state of Wisconsin. This would be the largest EC efficiency gap since Truman’s deficit in 1948.
Hillary’s 2016 tragic efficiency deficit was ~2.8%. Obama, by contrast, enjoyed an EC efficiency surplus in 2008 and 2012, by 1.7% and 1.5% (both times the tipper was Colorado).
Is having an EC efficiency surplus a sign for a more competent, more savvy campaign? Obama was known to master “Retail Politics”. But then, most of the efficiency gap might be just luck of the draw in terms of the type of demographic-geographic groups each candidate happens to attract or repel. I don’t know.
For sure, local foul play at tipping or near-tipping states does affect efficiency: infamously, the US Supreme Court reversed a lower court a week before the 2020 election, ruling for WI Republicans that mail-in ballots there count only if they arrive by evening on Election Day itself. Most other battleground states had at least a few days extra allowed. As the Cook tracker shows, WI had a relatively anemic 10.8% increase in total votes over 2016, the lowest increase among battleground states that were decided by <5% (to boot, 2016 in WI was actually down from 2012). So WI’s “true” margin sans this blatant last-minute suppression, was likely at least a few tenths of a percent higher.
And perhaps, in 2016 & 2020 the long malignant arm of the Russian regime has also been dampening our efficiency at historical rates, more than what our opponent, his campaign, or “baseline” voter-support tendencies could ever do on their own. These are scary thoughts. For sure, instead of agonizing over efficiency deficits and while fighting voter suppression, it’ll be nice to just get rid of the Electoral College once and for all.
If we manage to enact de-facto popular vote rules, I don’t take for granted that the results we are seeing now (i.e., Dems winning all 4 most recent popular votes by >2%) will hold as is — since both sides of the Presidential game have played for the EC score rather than the popular score (in that sense, the popular vote is a bit like tallying individual points across sets in tennis, ping-pong, or volleyball). But once popular vote determines the official winner things will hopefully be less bizarre, distorted, and opaque.
Anyway, for now let us indeed celebrate this historical outpouring of voter support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
NBC’s tally just exceeded 80M as well, just barely.
The nice thing on their site is that if you click on individual states it gives an estimate of remaining votes to count (h/t libera nos!)
In NY it says there’s still ~1.8M remaining. And the late counts been overwhelmingly Dem.
Wow. If this is the actual number there, then together with other states (mostly CA) Biden-Harris might get close to 82M votes and even exceed 25% population share when all is said and done.
Not to mention, saving at least 1 or possibly 2 still-pending US House seats in NY, and one in CA.