Chartered Financial Consultant
Commentaries
Where are my Photos and Art?
FLOPPY'S DIGITAL COPIES (2031 J Street)
You can also see lots of them walking or driving by.
These two photos were exhibited in the 2018 California State Fair
AWARD OF EXCELLENCE AT 2016 CALIFORNIA STATE FAIR
Two High Heels - PosterizedWooden Chair and Esalen Tree Photo (Illustration Mode)
Reflection in Lilly Pad Pond (Photo)
Tower Bridge with Moon (Photo)
View from New Brighton Beach Campground Rollerball Pen and Colored Pencils
GRANNY, GRANDKIDS AND SEAGUL IN BODEGA BAY
Interesting Numbers from the Election
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I’m writing this two weeks after the Presidential election. The Loser has not yet conceded. Below are the projections from my last commentary compared with the near-final results. I’ll also note some of the interesting numbers from the two remarkably close elections of 2016 and 2020.
My Projection – President: Joe Biden will win the election handily with 320-330 electoral votes. The popular vote margin for Biden will be five to ten million votes.
Results: Biden leads in the popular vote by 5.6 million, almost twice the margin Trump lost by in 2016 (2.9 million). The Biden/Trump Electoral College total appears to be 306-232, the same total as when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016. I thought North Carolina or Florida might go for Biden.
My Projection – Senate: I think the Democrats will lose the Democratic Alabama seat, but will pick up seats in Colorado, Maine, Arizona, and possibly North Carolina and Iowa. That would give Democrats a 52-48 advantage.
Results: Republicans now lead 50-48, but the Democrats could control the US Senate if they win the two Georgia seats to be decided in the January runoff. I thought Susan Collins would lose in Maine, but her vote against Justice Barrett may have saved her. She and Senator Murkowski (AK) could be swings vote on close and contested issues in the next Congress.
My Projection – House of Representatives: Democrats will still have a comfortable margin. House seats don’t change often and incumbents rarely lose.
Results: The Republicans picked up a few seats in the House, surprisingly. With new district lines in the 2022 election there will likely to be more turnover than usual.
Being a numbers geek and a Government major (MA from CSUS), election results fascinate me. Here are some interesting statistics.
Biden leads in the total US popular vote by 5.6 million votes (50.9%) Biden leads in the California popular vote by 5.0 million votes (63.8%) Biden leads in the total popular vote (excluding California) by about half a million votes. This means that the country was about evenly split when not considering California votes. Scary.
In 2016, Trump won three states (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) with a total of 36 electoral votes by only 72,000 votes.
In 2020, Biden won three states (Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin) with a total of 37 electoral votes by only 57,000 votes
Oklahoma, West Virginia and Alaska were the only states where every county voted for Trump. All counties/islands in Hawaii voted for Biden.
The Democratic Presidential candidate has received the most votes in seven of the last eight elections, but Republicans became President in two of the seven.
In the 2000 George W Bush/Al Gore election, Gore conceded the night of the election, then unconceeded when Florida’s difference suddenly shrank to a few hundred votes. The margin in Florida was 537 when the Supreme Court stopped the count by a 5-4 vote. Bush won the Electoral College 271-266 (270 is required to win).
Otherwise, the average time for a candidate to congratulate his or her opponent was ONE day. As of today, it has been 14 days since the election and ten days since all the major news networks declared that Joe Biden had won the election. Trump has yet to concede, AND he is actively attacking the democratic process and the hard-working poll workers.
If you want to view a classic concession speech, check out John McCain’s four-minute 2012 speech after he lost to Barrack Obama. It is beautiful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Mba8ncBso
I’m sorry if I’ve gotten a little geeky here, but its good therapy for me to process this information as data, not as reality. If Biden and Harris had not won, Donald Trump and Mike Pence would continue to make decisions about the COVID Crisis, Americans’ health care, climate change, and future Supreme Court nominees.
Let’s just hope we can survive until January 20, 2021 at noon EST, not that I’m counting the minutes.
NOTE: Most numbers are from https://cookpolitical.com/2020-national-popular-vote-tracker.
Bob Dreizler