Front Burner - A presidential waiting game

Episode Date: November 4, 2020

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election is still yet to be determined. Vote counting in crucial battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan are still not completed. Today, CBC’s Lyndsay Duncombe and Alex Panetta on what we know after a long night, and what we are still waiting to find out.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. So, it's Wednesday, November 4th, at about 3 a.m. Eastern Time. And it's still not clear who the next President of the United States will be. There is no expectation that this night is going to end anytime soon.

I don't think it looks like it might be possible. We may be sitting here now looking at election days. Thankfully, I've got my colleagues, Lindsay Duncombe and Alex Panetta with me from Washington to make sense of what we do know and to walk us through what we don't yet. This is Frumper. Lindsay, Alex, thank you so much for being with me. Of course. Good to be here. Yes, good morning to you both. I think maybe the best way to go through what's happened tonight at this crazy hour is to go through what we know and what we don't know.

And we don't know who the president is, obviously, but we do know that it wasn't a landslide. At this point, it's very close. There are still a handful of swing states that are in play, and we don't have the final results yet. Lindsay, what's the state of things right now at 3am? What does the map look like? Well, you know, I think when we were gaming out the possibilities that could happen tonight, this is what Alex described on Twitter as the buckle up scenario. I mean, there is no landslide that we're looking at. No way. One congressional district could decide an American presidential election. Doesn't happen that often, but it is possible. There's no question the lawyers are on

hold. The lawyers are preparing. The lawyers are learning the laws. This is going to get bumpy. I'm looking at the Associated Press saying that Joe Biden now has 236 electoral college votes compared to 213 for Donald Trump. And of course, you need 270 to win. The scenario here is that Donald Trump has held on to some of those traditional Republican areas and is ahead in those Midwestern states that he picked up in 2016. We talked about the possibility of a Trump voter surge on Election Day. Certainly seeing it does not look like Trump has sent the Republican Party into some sort of disaster. The issue with that, though, is we're still waiting on many ballots. The count is still ongoing, and it's expected that the ballots coming in in places such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania could end up being more positive for Joe Biden. A couple of

surprises, too. It looks as though Joe Biden is doing well in Arizona tonight. That is something the Democrats have wanted to do for a long time, giving the Democratic change in that state. And Georgia appears to be competitive as well. So it's not over, even though we're hearing two very different messages from both leaders tonight. OK, so we've got competitive races in Georgia and Arizona. And then as you mentioned, we've got these swing states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and these are very, very much up in the air. And I want to go through all of this a little bit more with you guys in a minute. But let's talk first about the candidates' reactions. And let's start with Joe Biden. Good evening.

Lindsay, he came out around 1 a.m. He gave a statement. And what did he have to say? Joe Biden said exactly what you would expect Joe Biden to say. He said that we are still counting. He talked to his supporters who are all gathered in that typical Joe Biden COVID era rally way in their drive-in kind of car scenario. Everyone was honking. He said, be patient. We feel good about where we are. We really do. I'm here to tell you tonight, we believe we're on track to win this election. we're on track to win this election.

We need to count the ballots. And he said that democracy essentially was going to unfold the way that it should. You know, we could know the results as early as tomorrow morning, but it may take a little longer. As I've said all along, it's not my place or Donald Trump's place to declare who's won this election.

That's the decision of the American people. Okay. And Alex, Lindsay mentioned before, we have very different messages coming from the two candidates. And Donald Trump, he came out and spoke around 2.30 a.m. And what did he have to say? Well, I think what I tweeted after he spoke was he went there. He did what everyone thought he might do, what people feared he might do. This is a fraud on the American public.

This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. And what he said was shocking enough that, you know, even the folks on Fox News looked stunned after he said some of the things he said. He basically declared the election a fraud, which is strange because he was actually doing pretty well. I mean, he has a real legitimate chance of winning this election. I think the fact that he looks like he may have lost Arizona puts him in a bit of a hole. But, I mean, he appears to have a chance.

And his reaction to that is, this is a fraud. And he says we need to keep counting the votes in Arizona. But certainly there were a lot of votes out there that we could get because we're now just coming into what they call Trump territory. I don't know what you call it, but these were friendly Trump voters. But he seems to suggest that counting the votes in the places where he's ahead is illegitimate. And then he says he wants to go to court to ensure the integrity of the ballot. 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. And I mean, just seeing one of the commentators here saying, what would you say if you saw this happening in another democracy? You'd say this is a failing democracy. And our democracy is in peril. It was truly one of the most stunning things I've ever heard out of the mouth of a politician in a developed country. And Alex, I want to be absolutely clear here. You know, when the president says that there's fraud being perpetrated here, there is no evidence that there is any fraud being perpetrated here, that Democrats are trying to steal this election at this point, right? He's outperforming the polls. I mean, I think what's happened is some parts of the country were better prepared than others for counting mail ballots, which takes longer, right, because you've got to check signatures.

Then in some places there's the ability to challenge a finding of noncompliance. Like if you say the signature doesn't match, the voter can then challenge that finding. This takes longer. And in some places, state governments or local governments were prevented from counting earlier. Pennsylvania is a good example. And now the argument the argument is oh you didn't go quickly enough well excuse me you first you told me i couldn't hurry and now you're telling me i didn't go quickly enough it's like it seems to me uh that those places are being put in a bind and now there's well the president hinted at the possibility of litigation that he might go to the supreme court i'm not sure how this would

work um but uh clearly we're we've headed now from the the might go to the Supreme Court. I'm not sure how this would work. But clearly, we've headed now from the public forum to the potentially heading to the legal forum over the next few days. And people were expecting this on all sides, right? There are thousands of lawyers in all of these states. And the issue is, we don't know what the tightest race is going to be, what individual ballots might be challenged. We just go into this counting scenario that will have days of uncertainty and then the fallout, which could be more and more uncertainty with the legal scenario. Right. And Lindsay, I want to ask you, you know, I know you said that people were expecting this, but for you to hear the president of the United States talk about this election being fraudulent, did that surprise you tonight? I think I was surprised with the forcefulness of it.

There was no couching. It was all out there, which is the way that Donald Trump behaves, right? You're going to lay it out on the field. There was no couching at all. way that Donald Trump behaves, right? You're going to lay it out on the field. There was no couching at all. It was just a blatant, not true statement presented in a way that evoked wild cheers from the 200 or so unmasked people in the White House who were just thrilled to hear him say it. We will win this. And as far as I'm concerned, we already have won it. So I just want to thank you.

I want to go through what happened tonight. through what happened tonight. And maybe we can start with the states that came back right away when we knew the results already. And what are the big states that we know Trump held on to that maybe Biden and his supporters hoped he could pick up, which he didn't? Well, Florida, I think, is the main one. I think anyone that was hoping for a decisive early call in Joe Biden's favor had their eyes on Florida. And everyone knew that was going to be tight. But what happened in Florida, particularly in Miami-Dade County, is that Donald Trump overperformed against expectations. Hillary Clinton lost Florida four years ago by 1.2 points. Trump tripled his margin. Democrats are not happy about it. Trump attacks have worked. Yeah.

He did exactly what his advisor said he was doing with this campaign, which is to bring out more voters, people that hadn't necessarily voted in 2016, but were Trump supporters and Republican supporters, particularly when it comes to Hispanic men. And this is true in the Cuban community. We had Katie Simpson out with a party of people in Miami from the Cuban community. And the very targeted messaging for that demographic group in that particular county really resonated that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are socialists. And by bringing them in to power, that there would be that the U.S. would go into a dramatically leftward direction. Right. So he couldn't flip Florida. You know, I know Texas was also one that they had hoped that they might be able to flip.

That always a long shot. Texas, always a long shot. But we definitely were in the Democratic drooling territory of them thinking that it was, you know, a potential. People were talking about it, but it was a long shot. Polls were all thinking that we might see a major realignment in the Sun Belt in this election, and that's just not happening. The hopes of the Democrats for a glorious evening of massive victory has got to be filed away. I think some of those folks are, you know, are reaching for the booze.

And Alex, what were some significant wins that Biden picked up early on? Well, it looks like, I mean, he outperformed Hillary Clinton in a bunch of places. It's not clear it's going to flip a whole bunch of states. It looks like it may have flipped Arizona. It's not 100% clear, but it looks like it's happening. And he's flipped a single seat in a single electoral vote in Nebraska because they break them down in unconventional ways there. So that's probably 12 electoral votes heading his way.

He needed 38 more than Hillary Clinton to become president. So that means he's probably missing 26. And that you can get there with any combination of two outstanding states. And those outstanding states are Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia, North Carolina. Some of them appear to have slipped away from him, but he definitely is in the game. In New Hampshire, it looks like Joe Biden will win. Biden will win in the state of Oregon. He hangs on to Minnesota Minnesota as well as Colorado.

And it'll probably take a couple of days to determine exactly what exactly has happened. Take me through what's happening in these states right now. You mentioned some of them are slipping away from him. What do we know right now about what's happening in these states where now everybody's attention is focused? Sure. So let's take Georgia as a good example. Some people were ready to call it for President Trump earlier in the evening. He had a lead of about 300,000 votes at one point. And suddenly that lead started to narrow a little bit.

And that's one of the reasons people in the media and outside the media try to urge people not to get fixated with early results because the votes are being counted unevenly in very bizarre ways this year, right? People are voting using different methods, and Democrats and Republicans tend to be voting differently, Democrats primarily using mail ballots. Well, lo and behold, the counties around Atlanta, which skew heavily Democratic, did not count their mail ballots as Well, lo and behold, the counties around Atlanta, which skew heavily Democratic,

did not count their mail ballots as quickly, and the counting will continue well into today. So that 300,000 started to diminish, and you were looking at a count gap of about 120. So I did some back of the envelope math. And if the outstanding ballots around Atlanta break the way the already counted votes around Atlanta have broken, you're probably looking easily at a Democratic pickup of, you know, a net 90,000 votes easily. Some people are suggesting that will even be more generous to Democrats because most of these are mail ballots, which is even skews even more disproportionately favorably toward Democrats. So that's just one example.

Different versions of that are playing out in different states. It's too soon to say whether Biden will win any of them. But, you know, he needs, like I said, 26 electoral votes on top of the ones he already has. And there is definitely that potential there. there's definitely that potential there. And Lindsay, all of these counts that we're waiting on in these battleground states, when could we expect to start to get some answers here? When will the state start reporting? Well, we're getting information from the various secretaries of state in these states, Georgia and Wisconsin. Those results could come in later today. Michigan will take longer than that. And we're expecting the longest time lag with Pennsylvania. We may not get those results

till the end of the week. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income. That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Okay, and Alex, I want to come back to you here, and I want to loop back to what we were talking about earlier,

President Trump's comments tonight. And, you know, you alluded to the possibility of litigation. So it's possible that counting is not all that's left to do in these states, right? Like, explain to me how exactly this could get more complicated over the coming days, and I guess, possibly weeks. So one of the things the Republicans are going to try to stop is the counting of ballots that were received after Election Day, but postmarked before Election Day. So you'll recall the fights over the U.S. Postal Service and a suggestion that maybe mail delivery was being slowed down.

So some states have allowed the postmarking of mail ballots before Election Day. If the mail is slow and you get them later, it's okay. They still count. And so you expect to see some of that being fought, probably up to the Supreme Court. Can you paint me a picture? Like how how sticky could this get? Could we see this happen in multiple states?

Could we have like several different iterations of Florida in 2000 going on at once? Absolutely. I mean, I think we've written about this for months now saying that this could could make Florida 2000 look like a church bingo game. It'll be playing out potentially in several states and also in the streets, because George W. Bush and Al Gore were not the type of people who would have said the things that Donald Trump said. said. So you've got the courts happening in potentially multiple fronts. You've already had violent protests this year and counter protests. And so then you've got the street and you've got this really inimitable character in the president of the United States. Lindsay was suggesting that this is surprising. It is surprising. You have to be shocked by, you know, when someone says we should stop counting votes. And I have already won. But on the other hand, you know, Lindsay and I have been talking about this for months now.

And, like, anyone who's paid any attention, and we've tried to pay close attention to this, has seen this coming. Lindsay, I wanted to ask you if we could zoom out a little bit here. Mm hmm. Lindsay, I wanted to ask you if we could zoom out a little bit here. The results tonight were probably closer than a lot of people might have thought that they were going to be. Certainly closer than some people might have interpreted the polls. These polls are not to be trusted. Pundits saying for weeks, if not months, that this was going to be a landslide. And, you know, as they say,

you can't get high on your own supply. Do they say that? What message do you think the American people sent tonight about how they perceive the last four years of Donald Trump? I think the situation is two different messages. You have a very clear message of support for the president from rural areas, areas that are given a They like what they see in the White House, which is the absolute opposite of what we saw from Biden supporters. So I think the biggest takeaway is that this election has always been perceived to be a referendum on Donald Trump. I think Democrats were hoping that Donald Trump would be repudiated, that this would be a move away.

And instead, what we see is an incredibly divided, incredibly tense country. These are all signs that this is not some sort of overwhelming across-the-map rebuke. There's a moral victory and there's a political victory. They're not the same thing. We wanted to see a repudiation of this direction for the country. And the fact that it's this close, I think, it hurts.

It just hurts. Thank you both. There's so much to keep tabs on, and I hope that you'll keep talking to us in the coming days and weeks to help us make sense of this all. That was really helpful. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. All right, guys, thank you. That is all for today. We will of course be following this story. This is FrontBurner. Thank you for listening and talk to you tomorrow.