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November 2020 US Election

Towered said:
Trump's lead in Pennsylvania is now down to only 4 percentage points. It's looking like by some time tomorrow this state will be blue. He's bleeding support like crazy. In Georgia too.
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He can't "bleed" support - the votes are already in and he had it; he's simply got outvoted when the mail-in ballots gets counted.

AoD
 
Race is tightening in Georgia. The difference between Trump and Biden is 1.1% Trump is at 49.9% while Biden is at 48.8%
 
A segment on tonight's "The Agenda" on TVO, discussed the miss by "Polly" the artificial intelligence, whose 'Biden' prediction may yet come to pass, but clearly not at the 55-45 margin that was predicted.

This appears to be the biggest miss by that software/A.I so far, which doesn't ask people for their opinions, but instead samples the internet/social media for both party/candidate mentions but also issue mentions, and then weights them to assess probable votes.

Video here: https://www.tvo.org/video/what-the-polls-got-wrong

Erin Kelly, President of Advanced Symbolics discusses what went wrong.

Interesting dissection, so far focused on not distinguishing different Hispanic communities in the U.S. (Venezuelan/Cuban/Mexican etc.)

Also not weighting issues properly when there are clearly multiple ballot issues. (Covid/Trump-Bigotry/Economy/Experience in US of non-college educated males, etc.)

She noted that while 'Polly' got the BC election right overall, it under weighted the Green Party.

That may be a reflection in part of an electorate that holds different 'strong' views.

Interesting discussion.
 
I would call this the worst good result for the democrats?

Narrow Biden Win means no more Trump in the White House.
However Trump Overperformed and seems to be getting 7+ million new voters meaning he was not really repudiated either.
Gop Senate so no real reform.


Looks like next 4 years will be interesting but just less crazy.
 
Northern Light said:
So, as at an hour ago, the State of Maine, on the east coast of the U.S. had only counted ~70% of the vote, some 15 hours after the polls closed.

I think that's nuts.

So I was curious if I could discern why.

Apparently Maine is historically slow to report votes.

Here's what I found:

Among the causes of the slower results reporting is the state’s relatively large size combined with the fact that Maine decentralizes election administration down to the level of towns and cities. Instead of all ballots being counted by the state, or by Maine’s 16 counties, they are counted by each of Maine’s 500 municipalities. More than half of those municipalities contain fewer than 1,000 voters, and more than half of them count ballots by hand rather than with electronic equipment.

Maine law also prohibits electronic transfer of ballot data, no matter how secure the transmission, which means ballots and ballot data (from those jurisdictions that have machines) must be physically moved from each municipality to the secretary of state’s office in Augusta.

The above is from here: https://www.fairvote.org/here_s_why_...ection_results

****

Putting aside that I think the electronic transfer of results rules are nuts.

What glares out at me is that Maine has more than 500 municipalities.

Its 1.3M people.

Ontario, has 14.5M people and 444 municipalities.

There are tenants/condo associations with more voters in them than a majority of Maine's local governments!

😲
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I've observed that in a lot of the US; countless small or even tiny municipalities or even separate municipalities in larger urban areas, much like Ontario used to be. There is very little history of amalgamation, 'metro' governments, etc. similar to what has occurred here over the years. I don't know if it is a cultural thing or if state laws/constitutions inhibit it. Simply in terms of law enforcement, there are approximately 12,300 'local law enforcement agencies in the US (non-federal) and ~47% of those have under 10 sworn members; ~6% (770) have 1. Extrapolate that to councils, roads departments, etc. and it's a lot of bureaucracy and, in my view, inefficiency, compared to us.
 
I was doing the math. If Biden wins Georgia and loses the remaining states it ends up in a electoral college tie.

Biden would have 269 votes if he won Georgia.
 
lenaitch said:
I've observed that in a lot of the US; countless small or even tiny municipalities or even separate municipalities in larger urban areas, much like Ontario used to be. There is very little history of amalgamation, 'metro' governments, etc. similar to what has occurred here over the years. I don't know if it is a cultural thing or if state laws/constitutions inhibit it. Simply in terms of law enforcement, there are approximately 12,300 'local law enforcement agencies in the US (non-federal) and ~47% of those have under 10 sworn members; ~6% (770) have 1. Extrapolate that to councils, roads departments, etc. and it's a lot of bureaucracy and, in my view, inefficiency, compared to us.
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Meanwhile, the creation of new counties in the United States slowed down significantly after Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union in 1959.

Bullfrog County, NV was established in 1987 (primarily for nuclear waste disposal, despite being completely uninhabited) but dissolved in 1989. It would have been the second-newest county if it survived today. The newest county is Broomfield County, CO in 2001. However, Alaska has boroughs serving as county equivalents and saw the establishment of Skagway in 2007, Wrangell in 2008, and Petersburg in 2013.

Southern California has only ten counties, despite having a combined total of approximately 24 million people.
 
Richard White said:
I was doing the math. If Biden wins Georgia and loses the remaining states it ends up in a electoral college tie.

Biden would have 269 votes if he won Georgia.
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He's going to win Arizona and very likely Nevada.
 
Johnny Au said:
Meanwhile, the creation of new counties in the United States slowed down significantly after Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union in 1959.

Bullfrog County, NV was established in 1987 (primarily for nuclear waste disposal, despite being completely uninhabited) but dissolved in 1989. It would have been the second-newest county if it survived today. The newest county is Broomfield County, CO in 2001. However, Alaska has boroughs serving as county equivalents and saw the establishment of Skagway in 2007, Wrangell in 2008, and Petersburg in 2013.

Southern California has only ten counties, despite having a combined total of approximately 24 million people.
Click to expand...

The county concept in the US is totally different than here (Ontario) and is generally a much stronger senior level of government. I'm not sure there is square inch of the lower 48 that isn't contained within a county. I can imagine the politics that would be involved in dividing an existing county. The Alaska borough system, where they exists, is kinda sorta like the southern county system (where created) except there are no internal municipalities (single tier in our terms). I actually find our system a bit of dog's breakfast, but way off topic.
 
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