Consider This from NPR - Historic Turnout Leans Biden With Votes Still Being Counted

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

Early data suggests 160 million people voted this year — which would be the highest turnout rate since 1900. With an unprecedented number of those votes cast by mail, knowing the results of the presidential election on Tuesday was never a guarantee. We know a little more about the results of congressional elections — and they are not great for Democrats. NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis explains.One thing we do know is that voters in 32 states decided on dozens of ballot measures, from legalizing marijuana to raising the minimum wage. Josh Altic with the website Ballotpedia has been tracking those measures.Listen to more election coverage from NPR: Up First on Apple Podcasts or Spotify The NPR Politics Podcast on Apple Podcasts or SpotifyIn participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

One of the big questions going into Election Day, with a lot of polls making it look like Joe Biden was going to win, was, is this going to be a landslide or something closer? We just got a million votes in in Miami-Dade County. This is a biggie. And take a look at what we're seeing here. Let me try to clarify the screen for everybody. Then a little after nine o'clock Eastern time, after all the polls had closed in Florida, it looked like we were starting to get an answer to that question from Miami-Dade County. Biden needed to do really well in that county, which is in South Florida, if he was going to win the whole state. Trump won Florida in 2016,

so turning it blue this year could have been an early sign of that landslide for Biden. This is an enormous county. They've just reported out a million votes in Donald Trump right now. It looks like he is running above his 2016 number. You could just take a look at the statewide total. But Trump did way better than expected. And it started to look like Biden was performing below expectations across the state. People are already arguing about why, but the bottom line is, a little after midnight, CNN projects that President Trump will win the state of Florida. CNN called Florida for Trump. Florida, we didn't win it. We won it by a lot.

And everything that happened after was starting to look like a close race. Trump knew it. We want all voting to stop. We don't want them to find any ballots at four o'clock in the morning and add them to the list. Okay. Let me be very clear. Officials in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania are not finding ballots today. They are counting millions of ballots that were already mailed in, but that by law could not begin to be counted until Election Day. I'm here to tell you tonight, we believe we're on track to win this election. This is Joe Biden in Delaware around 1230 a.m. We knew because of the unprecedented early vote and the mail-in vote, it was going to take a while.

We're going to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying votes is finished. And it ain't over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted. So yeah, the race ended up to be closer than a landslide. Still, as of right now, 3 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, a lot of votes that are still being counted in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia are mail-in votes and votes from large cities, votes that might favor Democrats. But knowing the results for sure could take some time. And that's okay. This is Consider This from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers.

It is Wednesday, November 4th. Support for NPR and the following message come from YouStudio. Offering secure hosting and distribution of your company's audio and video podcasts. Train remotely, improve communication, and more for as little as $1 per user. Visit theletterustudio.com today for your personalized demo. The news moves fast. Listen to the NPR News Now podcast to keep up. We update stories as they evolve every hour. So no matter when you listen, you get the news as close to live as possible on your schedule. Subscribe to or follow the NPR News Now podcast. This is Consider This from NPR.

Experts at the University of Florida are estimating that 160 million people voted in this election. That comes out to around 67% of eligible voters. Which would be the highest turnout rate since 1900. The counties are working incredibly hard. You're going to see a lot of updates in the next couple of hours and throughout the day. This massive turnout, so much of it by mail, is why some states are still being counted. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Buchvar said this morning there are still millions of votes to be counted. Again, this is a process. We could know a winner in Pennsylvania soon, but it could take till the end of the week

to actually count every Pennsylvania ballot that was postmarked by Election Day. We are exactly where we said we would be. So we said it was going to take some time to count the mail ballots. Also today in Michigan. Now I continue to expect, though I had for weeks said we expect results to be in by Friday. We're still certainly on track for that. But as I've also mentioned recently, we are on track to have our results in much sooner. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said it'll take time for officials in her state's 1,520 local jurisdictions to count mail-in ballots. And to report those results back up the chain. That counting process happens on the local

level. So we're also very mindful of that process. It's another reason why it has always taken, taken, you know, several hours, if not days, for results to come through our state. And in Wisconsin. So Wisconsin's counting and reporting of unofficial results has gone according to law. The Associated Press has called the state for Joe Biden. Megan Wolf, the administrator of the state's election commission, said Wednesday it'll take weeks to certify those results, which is normal. Every step of the elections process is publicly observable. You can observe Election Day and voters casting their ballot.

You can observe the votes being tallied at night. The voter registration records are public information. The absentee data is public information. And what she's getting at here is that all of this counting is an incredibly meticulous process. I'm incredibly proud of the work done by Wisconsin's election officials, and I feel 100 percent confident in the election that they conducted. And just one more thing about the sheer number of votes.

At around noon Eastern time on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press, 69.9 million votes had been counted for Joe Biden. That means he has received more votes than anyone who has ever run for president. At that number, he beats the old record by about 300,000 votes. The record was set in 2008 by Barack Obama. A lot of people are understandably focused on the presidential race right now. The situation in Congress is a little more clear. It looks like Democrats will lose seats in the House of Representatives but still keep their majority. A lot of people thought they would gain some seats. And while votes are still being counted in a few key races,

it looks more and more likely that Republicans could keep control of the Senate. NPR congressional correspondent Sue Davis has been looking at what that would mean. She talked to NPR's Audie Cornish. What went wrong, so to speak, for Democrats? Yeah, I mean, it's been a complete reversal of fortune for Republicans down the ballot. There had been this widespread confidence that Democrats were going to take over the Senate, that they could gain as many as six or seven seats, and that Democrats were poised to grow their majority in the House by as many as 10 to 20 seats. Obviously, none of that happened. I think the one thing everyone is pointing to right now is just how wrong the polls were. I talked to election analyst Sean Trendy this morning,

and he told me that polling simply did not account for Trump support, that a significant number of Trump voters just were never accounted for. Those are the exact people that when you hear a phone call and the person says, hi, I'm from the New York Times, would you take a poll? Just go click. I think it is that straightforward. I also talked to Democratic Congressman Ami Berra of California today, and he said that the polling was way off from where it was in the 2018 midterms,

and that's when Democrats won. He basically told me he just thinks Democrats couldn't account for the effect that Trump has when he himself is on the ballot. While it looks like Republicans will hold their majority in the Senate, not all races have been called. Can you tell us what's still outstanding? Yeah, there's still five races that haven't been called. 47 have been called for Democrats, 48 for Republicans. One we're watching really closely is Michigan. There's a Democratic

incumbent there, Gary Peters. He's running narrowly behind a Republican, John James. Obviously, it could be a pickup opportunity for Republicans. North Carolina remains really tight, but incumbent Republican Senator Tom Tillis is leading. You know, that was always seen as a state that was critical to the majority. So if Republicans hold it, I think that's one of the reasons why they seem to feel pretty secure right now. Alaska hasn't been called, but I don't really see any reason there to think it's going to be a Democratic pickup. And the last one is Georgia. There's two Senate races there. One of them is going to go to a January runoff, and it's quite possible the other one, where it's held by incumbent Republican David Pertwee, might be able to hold it off and win it outright.

Given that there are some races that are going to be uncertain, at least for the next few days, what does that mean for the Senate majority? It does. And, you know, depending on how Georgia goes, it could take quite some time. North Carolina in particular could be tight and could be subject to court challenge. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke to that reality earlier today in Kentucky. You can anticipate in close elections, both sides will be lawyered up and will end up in court. It's happened over and over and over again. Nothing unusual.

And I do want to say here, I think McConnell has a point, and it's worth focusing on that because I think a lot of people are really nervous about what's going to be happening with ballot challenges. It's really not uncommon, especially in Senate races, to go through court challenges before they are certified. It happens almost every election year. NPR's Sue Davis. So let's talk about some stuff we actually know. In 32 states this election, voters had to decide

on more than 100 different ballot measures. And they made some big decisions. Four new states voted to legalize marijuana. California voted that Uber drivers are not employees of the company, but rather will remain independent contractors. Which means the companies don't have to pay benefits or follow state labor laws. The measure affects a lot of other gig economy workers, too. In Florida, the minimum wage will eventually go up to $15 an hour. Josh Altik with the political website Ballotpedia talked about all these measures with host Robin Young on NPR's Here and Now. Let's start with California's Prop 22. It's being called the most expensive ballot initiative in state history.

It asked whether gig economy companies had to classify their workers as employees. Now, the decision that they don't sent shares of Uber and Lyft soaring. But what does this mean for people employed in the gig economy? So it specifically concerns app-based drivers. And it's a response to AB5 passed in 2019 that defines independent contractors in a way that makes these employees classify their workers as actual employees. That means minimum wage, certain benefit requirements, et cetera. So this was definitely a best defense is a good offense action by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and their cohorts. It allows these workers to remain as independent contractors, but it also gives some other restrictions, like there is a wage floor

in the measure, some like worker training requirements and health insurance requirements. So there were other factors in play as well. But this is one that, you know, this policy is new. It's the first time voters have decided to get economy on the ballot. And we'll see sort of whether other states consider this policy in the future. Yeah. As we said, marijuana won in several states in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota. Voters voted to legalize marijuana for recreational use. There was also medical marijuana on the ballot elsewhere. Oregon voted to legalize psychedelic mushrooms. Take that first. It doesn't mean that people can just wander into the street

and take some psychedelic mushrooms. What does it mean? Yeah, the Oregon measure, Measure 109, was, from the perspective of mushroom advocates, kind of conservative. So basically, it allows psilocybin services, which means, by the initiative's language, that there will be certain centers with trained administrators, and you would go for a session under observation by an administrator. So that's what it allows for anyone 21 and over.

But there was another measure paired with that one, Measure 110, that was also on the ballot. And that actually was sort of a first of its kind as well. It decriminalized all Schedule 1 through 4 drugs. It made them just a violation with a $100 maximum fine. So those two in combination give an interesting take on sort of what the direction of that particular policy is going, as well as the D.C. measure, which also passed. In Florida, voters chose President Trump over Joe Biden, as we've been saying, but also overwhelmingly approved increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026. What do you think that is? What happened there? Yeah, I think the main takeaway is this is actually the first time statewide voters have decided on that magic number 15,

which has been kind of a focal point of the minimum wage movement for a while. So what the measure would do is increase minimum wage by $1 per year until it gets to $15 per hour by 2026. And it's the first time that that $15 per hour number has been on the ballot. And like you said, it has got, you know, 60% approval, which it needs. So yeah, interesting first. Josh Altik with the political website Ballotpedia, talking to Robin Young. That was on Here and Now, a production of NPR and WBUR in Boston. If you are hearing this on Thursday morning or later, you can hear more NPR coverage of the election results on Up First or on the NPR Politics podcast. Links to both of those shows are in our episode notes.

This is Consider This from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers.