Tangle - FINAL 2020 ELECTION UPDATE

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Tangle News' founder Isaac Saul discusses the final polls, what he is looking for, and his 2020 electoral college and the Senate race predictions. Subscribe to Tangle: https://tangle.substack.com/about:00 - 14:53Introduction, hellos and what the last batch of polls are telling us.14:53 - 20:28The early vote and what we can take away from the numbers so far. Plus, the data in there that’s sticking out to me.20:28-27:20What I’ll be watching tonight as the results come in: the red and blue mirages, the Florida county that could be the earliest indication of who will win.27:20 - 38:01Florida, the best political advertisement of the week, and how Trump can pull off another upset this year.38:02 - 48:10The court battles, voter suppression, counting the ballots and the known unknowns.48:10 -54:25My mom’s rejected ballot in Pennsylvania, my prediction in Pennsylvania, and why my home state feels uniquely positioned to defy the data.54:25 - 1:01:23My electoral college prediction, my hot take about Joe Biden’s path to victory and how this election could change the way we think about the electoral college map in the United States.1:01:24 - 1:13:53The Senate races. Who will end with the majority and what’s going to happen in Arizona, Colorado, Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.1:13:53 - 1:19:20What to expect on election a day and in the days that follow (note: we’re going to need to be patient). A closing message about the dangerous stuff that’s going to pop up in the next 72 hours, and how to be a responsible citizen along the way. Plus, some thank you’s.1:19:20 - 1:20:50Thank you!--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning. Good afternoon, good evening.

It is election day. If you are listening to this, I am Isaac Saul, the founder of Tangle, your host. I'm coming to your ears right now from inside my closet here in Brooklyn, New York, surrounded by a blanket for it to produce some decent sound quality and crouched over a Yeti microphone, courtesy of Andrew Maganelli and Marques Brownlee of YouTube fame, who were generous enough to mail me this thing as a nudge to get into the audio world. So thank you, Andrew Marques.

I've spent the last few months oscillating between Brooklyn, suburban Pennsylvania, upstate New York, and the last 15 months writing about the national political scene. And I got to say, it is a little bit surreal to be here, to be on election day, sitting around waiting for results to start coming in and recording this, at least in part on the eve of election day, you know, with just so much uncertainty and craziness in the air. We're going to cover the latest polling outlook, the early voting signs, the things I'm going to be watching on election night tonight, shortly after you probably listened to this, the how Trump wins scenarios, which, you know, obviously a lot of people do not

have his odds high. What I'm keeping my eye on in terms of some of the voter suppression and kind of wild card stuff that's happening across the country, particularly in Pennsylvania right now, some final thoughts on my home state of Pennsylvania, which as many people have noted, is almost certain to be a tipping point state in this election. The critical Senate race is happening, my electoral college prediction, of course, and what to expect just in the hours and the days following this election. I'm super excited to get into it. I don't see any reason to wait

any longer. Thank you guys for being here. We're going to start off with the polls. Mr. President, are you concerned about your internal polling as it relates to Joe Biden? No, because we have great internal polling. They were fake polls that were released by somebody that is — it's ridiculous. No, we are winning in every single state that we've polled. We're winning in Texas very big. We're winning in Ohio very big. We're winning in Florida very big.

There were fake polls that were either put out by the corrupt media — because much of the media in this country, unfortunately, is corrupt, I have to tell you that, Mr. President. And some of it is excellent, but some is very bad. Those are fake numbers. But you know when you're going to see that? You're going to see that on election day. On election day, you're going to see it was the same thing. I had the same thing. So as you can tell, that's the president of the United States, Donald Trump. He's, you know, been railing against the polls for a long time. That particular clip is from June of 2019, when some of the very first polling came out

showing Joe Biden's advantage in head-to-head polls against Trump. In the last 72 hours, we've gotten our last slate of state polls and national polls all across the country. And, you know, the story is the same. Joe Biden's winning. The margin is not particularly close nationally. The final NBC Wall Street Journal poll among registered voters had Biden up about 52 to 42 percent. poll among registered voters had Biden up about 52 to 42 percent. Two weeks ago, it was 53 to 42 percent. So a point off Biden, maybe, you know, if you're to believe that that's not just a simple margin of error thing. The Wall Street Journal, you know, ran a little bit of a confounding headline saying that the race was tightening in the battlegrounds. I'm not sure that the polls are necessarily showing that. I think some independents are coming home to Trump, which, you know, was always expected. But Biden has never

really come close to being below 50 percent in some of the national polls that we're seeing. You know, a Republican pollster said that this was the most competitive 10 point race he's ever seen. And, you know, that that could be true. I mean, I don't think 10-point races are typically competitive. And I think if there was one that is, this, I suppose, would be it. The final NBC Wall Street Journal poll in 2016 had Hillary up 44 to 40% with 16% of the electorate undecided or voting third party. This final poll is 52 to 42 with 6% undecided or voting third party. Same with the final Fox News poll. It had Clinton up 48, 44 in 2016. It had Biden up 52 to 44 this week.

Again, this is not 2016. This is not the same polling environment. It's not the same environment in terms of how many people are undecided or voting third party. There was one particularly compelling note for me in these polls, which is that 41% of voters said the economy was going to be the most important issue, and 38% said that it was COVID-19. A month ago in this poll, there was an eight-point gap between those issues, meaning the rising cases of COVID-19 have also thrusted back to being almost on par with the economy in terms of importance to voters

as a whole. I've said the same thing all along. If this election is about the economy and COVID with more than 20 million people taking unemployment and over 200,000 Americans dead, million people taking unemployment and over 200,000 Americans dead, more than 230,000, I think now, Trump is in deep trouble. And right now, the election is about the economy. It's about COVID-19. It's not about immigration. It's not about police reform. You know, there's some issues, really strong issues around energy popping up in some swing states. But generally speaking, this election is about the economy and it's about coronavirus. And I do not think that that's a good thing for the president. You know, we got a lot of swing state polling to the latest CNN poll of likely voters has Biden up 50 to 46 in Arizona, 53 to 41 in Michigan, 51 to 45 in North Carolina, 52 to 44

in Wisconsin. Siena College, New York Times released their final polls. They had Biden up 49, 43 in Arizona, 47, 44 in Florida, 49, 43 in Pennsylvania, and 52 to 42 in Wisconsin. So that's kind of the bad news for Trump. The good news for him is that, you know, in the last 72 hours, he's probably got the best poll of the entire election cycle for him is that, you know, in the last 72 hours, he's probably got the best poll of the entire election cycle for him. The Iowa Seltzer Des Moines Register poll came out showing Trump up seven points in Iowa. And that is an identical result to what he got there four years ago, right before the election against Hillary.

He ended up winning Iowa by nine points. And as most of you know, he took Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan too. In September, the race in this poll was close. It was tied. Biden and Trump were even. So this was a major move in the polls. And there are a lot of debates about whether this is an outlier. I tend to think it probably is, given everything else we have on the board.

But even if it's not an outlier and you translated this sort of relative shift to the left in this poll, if instead of winning Iowa by nine points, Trump wins Iowa by seven points, a two-point shift to the left for Trump from 2016 means that he's losing Wisconsin, he's losing Michigan, he's losing Michigan, he's losing PA, he's losing Florida, he's losing Nebraska's second district, and Biden's coming out with like a 300 plus point electoral college win. So if the poll is right, okay, if Iowa is actually a seven point margin in favor of Trump, that's actually two points short of where he was, you know, in 2016. So it's the best poll for Trump. It's still

not a poll that is pointing to a Trump victory in the election. But it's worth noting that he had this finish there in 2016 and he ended up winning and he ended up taking Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin. There have been some other polls like Rasmussen that have showed Trump ahead pretty consistently for the last few weeks. And there's this other polling outfit that you've probably seen pop up. You'll meet a guest in a moment who was an outlier and had it right. As Politico puts it, Robert Cahaley, a Republican pollster with the Trafalgar Group, had pre-election surveys that showed Trump nudging out Clinton in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida,

and North Carolina, all of which he won. Trafalgar also accurately predicted that Trump would win the electoral college 306 to 232, though mistakenly they gave Trump the 10 votes of New Hampshire and Nevada instead of Wisconsin's. Still, Trafalgar said 306, Trump won 306. I won 306. about their methods. You know, they sort of just have a different style than other pollsters do. I don't think it's worth digging into too much here. What I will say is that I saw the founder go on Fox News this week, Robert Kehle,

I believe you pronounce his name. And, you know, he was on Hannity and he was basically talking about how their poll shows Trump winning Pennsylvania by three or four points and that if he doesn't win Pennsylvania by three or four points, we know it'll be because the election was stolen and, you know, voter fraud. To me, this is such nonsense that, you know, that that is sort of discrediting on its own. You know, I can't trust somebody who's going to spew that kind of stuff on national television. I have been reporting on Pennsylvania politics and national politics and elections, and I know enough about voter fraud and I know enough

about polling to know that that's just crap. And to me, that sounds like somebody who's getting ready for their polls to be wrong. So, you know, I have all sorts of reasons to question what they've put out. What I will say is that if Trump wins and their polls are right, then we're going to be revisiting what they told us with a lot of interest. And I'll be the first to do that, of course. In the end, the most boring and obvious thing about this race is that it has not really changed. So many people credit COVID-19 for Biden's odds, but they seem to forget, you know, we're right where we were even before COVID was in the national conscience. You know, in early March, Biden was leading 50 to 44.

That clip I played of Trump was from June of 2019, showing him getting clobbered by Biden and a head to head. You know, right now, it's about a 52 to 43.4 margin in the final 538 averages, somewhere in that range. It's been fluctuating this morning. Regardless, it's, you know, I think comfortable to say, according to FiveThirtyEight, it's an eight point national lead. I, you know, I think that's pretty much insurmountable in a lot of places for Trump if those polls are accurate. He needs the margin to be about five percent to have a chance at the Electoral College. He'd still lose the popular vote. You know, in 2016, Hillary won by a little more than

2%. And she lost the electoral college pretty much because of 80,000 votes across three critical battleground states. So, you know, a 2% shift from that margin would be horrible for Trump. And, you know, the polling is showing about a 6% shift. So right now I don't think he's there. You know, the RCP averages, which includes some of those pro-Trump polls I just talked about that I'm skeptical of, they show the same thing. The final real clear politics average was about 3.3 point advantage for Clinton in 2016. She won again by about 2.1 points. Right now, RCP has Biden at just shy of a seven point advantage, even with those polls that I'm skeptical of being averaged in. So, you know, if it's off by that 1.2 percentage point spread,

that's a 5.7 percentage point lead for Biden and a pretty clean win on election night, somewhere in the 290 to 320 electoral college vote range. If it's, you know, wrong in the opposite direction, and we're underestimating Biden's strength, we're looking at a 350, 380 electoral college vote win for him. And, you know, I, before we check out on this poll stuff, I want to just say one last thing, which is the gender gap in this election is just totally bonkers. I mean, we spend so much time talking Republicans versus Democrats, Black versus White, Hispanic versus White non-college voters. The simple men versus women gap in this election is just stunning. I mean, the final Fox News poll had Biden winning women by 17 points overall, suburban was 24 percentage points for women overall. On October 22nd, Dave Wasserman averaged the polls, and we had about a 27-point gender gap then. So in the end, this story

of this election is going to be Donald Trump making some legitimate inroads with non-white voters, Hispanic men, young Black voters, but turning off such a historic number of women in the process that he could lose on election day by a serious margin, you know, despite winning a healthy majority of men in the U.S. or maybe half of the men in the U.S. So we're going to hop into some early voting signals from here. And yeah, we'll check in real quick with what's happening in the news right now. Ninety four million people have have already voted. How unprecedented is that? And what do you think it's likely to mean for turnout tomorrow? Well, we've never even come close to this in American history. To put this in perspective, by the time we get to the polls

opening tomorrow, there will have been at least 100 million people who have already cast their ballots. It's kind of hard to put into perspective what we're seeing with the early vote totals. You know, a lot of people who are smarter than me have said repeatedly that it's really tough to glean what this means. And, you know, I am certainly inclined to think that, you know, it's better for Biden than it is for Trump. But, you know, again, it really is hard to tell when we don't have the election day totals to compare it to. But given all that, and with that caveat, I think it's worth just talking about where we're at right now. So as you just heard, by Election Day today, when you're listening to this, at least 100 million people will have already voted. 137 million voted in 2016.

So we're looking at turnout that could be north of 160 million this year. looking at turnout that could be north of 160 million this year. So 25 million of those voters who have already cast ballots in the election were voters who did not vote in the 2016 election. 7.8 million of those voters are voters who are voting for the first time in their life. And the rest of that 25 million are voters who did not vote in the 2016 election, but had voted before that. So what we know from the polling is that Democrats have about a seven point advantage amongst voters who didn't cast ballots in 2016. So the Democratic Party as a whole on a general generic ballot has about a seven point advantage. But Joe Biden has a bit of a stronger advantage amongst those voters, which I think is pretty crucial to how we kind of look at some of these early vote totals

coming in. Five days ago, so about a week before the election, in six battleground states, Black voters over the age of 65 had already exceeded their overall 2016 turnout numbers. That is one of the most astounding statistics I've read during this election, so I'm going to read it one more time. About a week before election day, in six battleground states, Black voters over the age of 65 had already exceeded their overall 2016 turnout numbers. Those states were Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Texas. In every single battleground state in the South and the Sun Belt, Asian voters have already exceeded their total 2016 turnout, including in Texas, where their turnout is at 150% of what it was in the final 2016 vote total. And in Georgia,

where it's now at 141% of what it was of the final 2016 vote total, 27.8% of early voters in battleground states did not vote in 2016. So again, that partisanship model shows about a seven point advantage for those voters amongst Democrats. You know, fundamentally speaking, this is just not the 2016 electorate. And I think that's something to really keep in mind. We are not seeing the same group of people come out to vote in this election that we saw in 2016. And, you know, on election day, it's going to change again. And it very well may change in a way that looks a lot worse for Biden or looks a lot better for Trump. But just where we're at right now, we know for sure that the group of people deciding who the next president is going

to be is just not going to be the same group that decided it in 2016. And I think that is something that, you know, both throws the models that we have a little bit into question, but also just speaks to how dialed in the country is right now to the political scene. As of Friday morning, more people had voted in Texas already, 9.6 million than had ever voted in any state election ever other than California. So again, 9.6 million people had voted in Texas as of Friday. Before election day, Texas had broken its own vote total record and also every other state's vote total record besides California. And over 30% of the people who voted in Texas so far did not vote in 2016. That means over 3 million people are voting in Texas this year, at a minimum, who sat

out the 2016 election or weren't eligible to vote then. In Florida, we're seeing a similar trend. About 9 million early votes have been cast already. Over 95% of the 9.4 million votes cast there in total in 2016. So Democrats had a relatively strong day of early voting today, which is Monday versus the Republican numbers that we saw in the preceding days. But part of that was because some smaller GOP leaning counties didn't offer Sunday voting. Still know, we're at 95% of the total vote total in Florida a day before the election. It's just, you know, it's nuts. And that's a place

that is traditionally a really heavy mail-in ballot place. So that sort of sets the scene for what I'm going to keep my eyes on on election night. That's why voting experts are warning people to be aware of a red or blue mirage in early results. Complicating things. Each state has its own rules for how early votes are counted and reported. Some will report results sooner than others, so initial numbers could be misleading and confusing. These so-called mirages will disappear as more ballots are counted, but experts are warning that it could take days or even weeks. So there are obviously a lot of things to keep our eyes on on election night. I do think that

the most important thing is those red and blue mirages. And I was glad to see that CBS News report about it. I don't think nearly enough people are talking about this, but there are going to be some very, very real illusions that are going to bubble up on election day and election night as the returns come in. So just like the fundamental thing to understand here is that because of the early mail-in vote, the way states count those votes, the number of people expected and key battlegrounds to show up on election day, and just the total variance in how states process these votes, the mail-in votes, the early votes are going to show President Trump almost assuredly with an early lead. That's because the in-person votes are going to pour in on election day, and they're going to get processed quicker. And we know from polling that

far more Republicans are planning to vote in person than Democrats. And so the mail-in votes, which are going to be getting counted all morning, those results typically come in a little bit later on election night. And especially given how many of those votes we're expecting, I think they're going to come in a lot later on election night. So because of this, you can expect a red mirage in those states. Trump is going to be winning early and the vote will probably tighten as time goes on. That's if these votes are counted and released the way that they have been in the past. In Michigan and Wisconsin, Trump's odds are very low to win. So when you see that early lead develop, that'll be a pretty easy thing to

observe. I mean, I think those polls are so far outside the margin of error. We'll talk about this in a little bit that, you know, I don't really see him having a chance there. In Pennsylvania, though, the race is tighter. And I think what's happening on the ground is a stronger signal towards a very strong race. going to just have these really jumpy results and returns that we're going to be seeing. And it's probably going to take a while for things to shake out and us to really understand what direction Pennsylvania is headed in. I don't think it's going to be simple. At the same time, you're going to see the opposite effect in other places, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, most likely. There's been a huge number of mail-in and early voting in those states like we just covered. And we're likely to see those returns coming faster.

You know, Florida traditionally, for instance, reports their early vote totals right before the polls close on Election Day. So that means before they even can count and process the Election Day votes, they're going to already have those early vote totals starting to be released to the public and to the press. So that means it's almost certain that Joe Biden's going to jump out to some early leads in important counties in Florida. And that's going to be the blue mirage. And everybody should be prepared for that. You know, if you see Joe Biden take a huge jump in a Florida or Texas or North Carolina, those races are quite tight. Trump probably has the advantage in Florida and Texas. And, you know, I think North Carolina might go blue this year.

But more generally, I just don't think anyone should expect us to know who is winning these battleground states at 7, 8, 9 p.m. I think generally speaking, we should all be ready for the election to last a few days. Unless Biden wins Florida, which I think is one of the few ways this race gets called, you know, late on Tuesday night, I think that we're going to be looking at a lot of counting happening for a couple of days after the election. Speaking of Florida,

I guess the flip side of this is, you know, if you're looking for the canary in the coal mine, as Dave Wasserman says, the place to look is Sumter County. This is where the bulk of residents from the villages live. This is the elderly community in Florida that gets a lot of attention from the press. It's well known for offering insight into how Florida's elderly population is going to vote because it's a very, very heavily populated area where a lot of voters vote by mail. So Sumter traditionally is staunchly Republican. So it's not so much, you know, who's going to win this county. It's what the margins are in that county that are kind of the insights. So that makes it a really interesting place to watch on election night.

Dave Wasserman from the Cook Political Report says that Trump basically has to hit a 67, 69 percent vote total vote share to have a shot to win Florida. vote share to have a shot to win Florida. So he's so gung ho about this that, you know, he said if we have more than 75,000 early votes counted from Sumter and Trump is only getting 60, 61% of the vote, he doesn't see Trump getting to that 67% threshold. And if he doesn't see Trump getting to that 67% threshold in Sumter, he doesn't think Trump's going to win enough votes from elderly Floridians, and he doesn't think Trump is going to win Florida. And if Trump is not winning Florida, then he's not winning the Electoral College. And Wasserman went as far as saying he'd call the election for Biden if we got full Sumter County results, and Trump wasn't at that 67% threshold. He acknowledged, obviously, that most traditional

media outlets would not call an election based on one county in Florida. But if you're looking for that canary in the coal mine, if you're looking for an early signal, if you want to ignore everything I just told you about responsibly understanding these red and blue mirages, that would be a good place to go and have a little bit of fun. I certainly will be watching Sumter County based on what Wasserman has said and what kind of signals the county has shown us in past elections. Speaking of Florida and the vote there, we all know that Trump is vying for a really specific block of the Hispanic Latino vote in Florida, one that I do think could help him carry the state. And so before we jump into our next section here, which is an important one, we're going to talk about, you know, how Trump wins.

I think critical to that is Florida. And so I'd just like to share Trump's latest ad drop down in Florida. I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message. I literally do not care what you think about the president. That is one of the gaudiest advertisements in the history of political ads, and it's been stuck in my head all week since I first heard it. So you're welcome. First off, look, Trump's odds are about 11 in 100, according to FiveThirtyEight, to win this election. And I know that that sounds dire, but it's not as if he does not have a path.

He has quite a few. And 11 in 100 is about the same odds that it'll rain on any given day in Los Angeles. So, you know, I don't think anyone sees rain in L.A. and thinks it's some absurd miracle event. Of course not. It rains there 35 times a year. And we very well may see that metaphorical rain on Election Day. It's also not unprecedented. The polls were off in 1980 by about a seven point margin, which would be enough this year if the era was, you know, in Trump's favor for him to pull out a pretty decisive electoral college victory, probably similar to what he did in 2016.

You know, he's almost certainly going to lose the popular vote, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have pathways. So, you know, what does it look like? What's a Trump win look like? I mean, first off, he'll have to win Pennsylvania. We'll get to that in the next section. I'm going to focus specifically on PA, but Trump has no real path without Pennsylvania. We are going to get some last minute polls from the state maybe after this recording. I'm pretty sure most of them are already out. But rest assured, Trump has a chance there.

I actually think he might pull it out. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. Of course, he'll need to win Florida, too. We got four quality polls out of Florida in the last week, and they were pretty much split on the race, all within the margin of error, two or three points, meaning it's going to be tight. So if Florida goes to Biden on election night, again, it's over. But I don't think Florida is going to go to Biden. And I think Trump is going to win Florida. I mean, how could he not with advertisements like the one I just played? Florida and PA are crucial to his path. In Pennsylvania, he's clearly behind, but there's a lot of enthusiasm on the ground. In Florida, he probably has a sake of argument, let's

just say Trump wins Florida, he holds Texas, you know, the former is pretty much a toss up, the latter is, again, he has to win Texas, or why talk about this? If we can assume that the polls are just off a little bit in Trump's favor, I think there are a couple other assumptions we can make about this race. One is that he'll win Georgia, which, you know, Biden has an upper hand right now, but it's still pretty tight. So in a small polling error, I think Trump could win in Georgia. The other is, you know, a small polling error won't be enough for Trump to overcome his deficit in a state like Minnesota. So let's take Minnesota and Georgia off the board, respectively, give Georgia to Trump, give Minnesota to Biden. We're looking at about

a 236 to 224 lead for Trump with electoral college votes on the board in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Okay. So if you start from that point in this scenario, Trump is 34 electoral college votes away from a win. He could get them in Pennsylvania and North Carolina alone, which puts him at 271. Okay. So the president has 35 and a hundred odds in North Carolina and 15 and a hundred odds in Pennsylvania. Is it likely? No, but you know, his path isn't likely. Still though, it's totally within, you know, my imagination at least that he could win North Carolina and Pennsylvania. And remember from that starting point, that's just a single path. Say Pennsylvania and Michigan go blue. Trump could still win the election by winning North Carolina

and Arizona and Wisconsin. Or if he loses North Carolina, he could win with victories in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, just like he did in 2016. He could also win with Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Yes, Trump could lose North Carolina, Minnesota, Michigan, and Arizona and still win the election if he wins Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Again, none of this is crazier than a rainy day in Los Angeles. So what would drive success like that for Trump? It's pretty simple. He's improving with non-white voters as he loses some older white voters to Biden. So part of his base is legitimately leaving him but at the same time you know as they and suburban women leave crucial Hispanic voting blocks in Florida are behind him the non-white

vote in PA looks like it might be a little bit more in Trump's favor than it was in 2016 which again could be a big change in the election there. It's not as obvious as you think it is. He very well may score the best amongst black voters that any Republican has in decades. On the whole, I think the biggest untold story of this election is that the racial gap is actually shrinking in politics in 2020. And in 2016, Trump had a 13-point edge in the final surveys among white voters. Right now, he has about a five-point edge, which is a big reason why he looks headed for defeat. But at the same time, if he wins, it's going to be because he picks up non-white voters that make up that difference, especially

young Black voters, especially Hispanic men. Turnout for him at higher rates than we were expecting six months ago amongst those groups could be enough to get him over the finish line. In 2016, Hillary Clinton led by 51 points amongst non-white voters in the final polls before the election. Biden's only leading that group 66 to 24, which is about a 42 point spread. Okay. So just from that alone, we can see Trump's doing nine points better with nonwhite voters now than he was in 2016. That's a reality of this election that is a little bit different than I think what the mainstream narrative has led on. At the same time, you know, I'll just point out polls are polls. So we'll see what happens in terms of who actually votes for who

and who turns out for who. I think, you know, I'm going to be watching this very closely. I'm very interested in it, but I wouldn't bank on these numbers. I just think it's fair to compare the polls we're seeing now to what we were seeing a few years ago. Obviously, all of this could be some illusions from small sample sizes in polling. We won't know for sure until Election Day. But what seems certain is that if Trump holds a state like Pennsylvania, he'll do it by outperforming with non-white voters. And, you know, I just want to say one last thing about how Trump's campaigning and what

he's doing to get across the finish line right now. I think there are two things that stick out to me. One, he is a madman. I mean, he's in every state. He's doing like four rallies in Pennsylvania. I don't really know if that makes a huge difference. I don't know if those rallies are enough right now to register and sign up voters

and motivate people to show up to the polls. But I do know that regardless of how you feel about him, the way that he campaigns is unlike pretty much anything I've ever seen before. I mean, he could legitimately just be doing this because he loves the attention and loves the rallies and loves getting people all fired up. And I think that is certainly a huge part of it. But I also think he understands that those rallies are actually a really strong campaign tool. You know, they register a lot of voters at those things. They get phone numbers, they get contacts, they push people to get money to show up and vote. All that stuff is really important. And the other thing is, you know, Trump has been sort of beating this horse

about COVID where he's like, you know, I'm tired of of beating this horse about COVID, where he's like, you know, I'm tired of lockdowns. The country's tired of lockdowns. We don't want to do this anymore. It's COVID, COVID, COVID. You can't watch anything else. On November 4th, you won't be hearing so much about it. What's his closing argument? That people are too focused on COVID.

He said this at one of his rallies. COVID, COVID, COVID, he's complaining. He's jealous of COVID's media coverage. And I have my own objections to that. I think if you've been reading Tangle, you understand that. What I'm less sure of is how that message is going to resonate with a lot of people. Because what I'll tell you from my day-to-day life and my interactions with people is, yeah, we are all really, really tired of the pandemic. People are really tired of this existence of this life that we have with coronavirus. And a lot of people blame Trump for it, which is why he's struggling in this election. But I think

the message that he's sending out there that's been mocked by a lot of people in the press in terms of him saying how tired he is of hearing about COVID and all this stuff. I think it's a message that hits with a lot of Americans. I really do. And I don't know if that kind of messaging is enough to overcome what he's facing in terms of his job performance ratings. But I just want to point out that I know a lot of people who are also tired of hearing

about coronavirus. And I think Trump hammering that could be a pretty effective message in certain parts of the country. And I just wouldn't totally underestimate it. So on the topic of the Trump strategy, I do think that it's important to discuss what I think is critical to his strategy, which is voter suppression, discuss what I think is critical to his strategy, which is voter suppression, challenging the ballots, whatever you want to call it. Before we jump in, I'm going to play a quick clip from an interview that Congressman Clyburn did on Fox News. The woman's voice you hear is a Fox News host, and Clyburn you'll hear coming in after her. Let me just push back a little bit on this idea that voters are suppressed. In the end, we may have to have that discussion. But at this point, you've got an overwhelmingly large number of people who have already voted. Huge percentages of them have

never voted before. And there have been big turnout drives on both sides of the aisle. South Carolina, as a state, has been was one of the earliest states to reopen. You've had absentee ballots available for months and also voter drop boxes where people can walk right up and just put it right in the box. South Carolina's got voter drop boxes? I wish you showed them to me. I've been in South Carolina for all of my 80 years. We do not have voter drop boxes. That's how lies get out. Well, it's my understanding that every state has them. If South Carolina doesn't, that's a big question that South Carolina should address immediately, because it's my understanding that every state has them. Well, you're understanding wrong. We tried very hard to get the voter drop boxes, and the legislature would not approve them. No, we don't have voter drop boxes. That's why I'm saying, when this campaign is over,

we need to go to work and say to every state that for federal elections, do what you want for your own state and local governments. But for federal elections, Congress and President, there must be drop boxes. You're right. I understand that you're correct. You stand corrected, sir, that there are no drop boxes in South Carolina, although the absentee balloting has been going on for weeks, if not months. So I want to just touch on a few things about this clip and how it relates to some of the stuff that I've written about in Tangle and some of the things that I think are important to talk about in this upcoming election.

First of all, Jim Clyburn is, of course, right. I mean, he's one of the longest sitting South Carolina politicians there is. So, you know, I think he knows about whether there are drop boxes there. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. There aren't, and, you know, South Carolina is not alone in that. Every state does not have drop boxes. And, you know, all of these predictions and all of these models that we're seeing out there,

you know, they cannot account for what might happen after the election. They can't account for the fights that are going to take place in the court, in the courts across the country. So, you know, Trump has made clear his intent to declare victory at the first chance he gets. And, you know, he's made clear that he is going to challenge as many ballots as he possibly can the moment Election Day ends, the moment the polls close on Election Day. It would have been nice as, you know what would have been really nice, though, if our Supreme Court could have ruled that everything has to be counted by the evening of our election, our great Election Day. Wouldn't that be nice? Instead of waiting around six days, eight days, nine days, giving them more time.

If they want more time, let days, giving them more time. If they want more time, let them put their ballots in early. They don't have to wait till the end. Let's give them an extra three days and let's take all the time you want. You know, people want to know. And you know, bad things happen in places like Pennsylvania and Nevada. We love Nevada. But you have a governor there.

Bad things can happen. That little intervening, let's take plenty of time. No, that's a terrible ruling for our country. I don't care. It's a terrible ruling. It's a shame. So that was the president at a rally talking about the Maryland voting. He also said to reporters explicitly on the night of the election,

we're going to send in our lawyers to places like Pennsylvania. I mean, he said that to a pool of reporters. It's not funny. I mean, it's kind of funny, but it's not that funny. You know, look, now all of these predictions, again, they can't account for hundreds of thousands of ballots being thrown out across the battleground states. So every model we're talking about, you know, is working under the assumption that, you know, 99.99% of votes that get cast are going to be counted in any given election votes are thrown out, especially mail-in votes, because people mess up and we'll get to that in a minute too. But these fights are expected in Pennsylvania especially mail-in votes, because people mess up. And we'll get to that in a minute, too.

But these fights are expected in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, three states where Trump's legal team is already fighting to stop ballot counting after Election Day. In Texas, they tried to throw out 117,000 votes this week. The Republicans did. They challenged the validity of a drive-through voting, and the Texas Supreme Court threw it out because the challenge was absurd. But they threw their best shot at it, and now they're going to take it to federal court and see if they can get a win there. I don't think they will, but there's a clear strategy here. I don't know how else to say this,

but Republicans and Donald Trump, their legal teams in these battleground states are trying to make sure fewer ballots are counted. That is what is available to us on the public docket. You know, I heard from a lot of conservative readers when I wrote about voter suppression a few weeks ago. And I said pretty explicitly in my write-up about it that as much as it pains me to say this, I think it's pretty clear that voter suppression is something one side is doing and the other side isn't really. You know, you talk about something like gerrymandering. I think that that's a kind of political dirty trick that both sides participate in. And, you know, at some point I'm going to do a kind of political dirty trick that both sides participate in.

And, you know, at some point I'm going to do a write-up about that and we'll talk about, you know, who's doing it worse. But when it comes to voter suppression, there isn't much of a debate here. I mean, they're challenging every vote they possibly can in every state they possibly can. So, you know, these fights are public. They're on the docket, again, in state and federal courts across the country. They have, in no particular order,

tried to stop early votes from being counted before Election Day. They've tried to stop early votes from being counted after Election Day. They've tried to stop mail-in drop boxes from being put in every county in a state like Texas. They've tried to stop drive-through early voting. They've tried to enforce secre-through early voting. They've tried to enforce secrecy ballots in Pennsylvania. They did that successfully. They've tried to enforce matching signature laws in several states, which have not been shown to reduce voter fraud, but they're challenging these ballots based on that. And their hope is obviously that enough matching signatures are mismatched that they throw these ballots out. They've insisted that Trump supporters monitor the polls, which a lot of voting right activists are pointing

out sounds a lot like voter intimidation. I mean, I don't want Trump supporters monitoring the polls. I don't want Joe Biden supporters monitoring the polls. I want election workers monitoring the polls, people who understand how to do this stuff, how to participate in something like that, not people who are fans of a certain politician and they're looking out for people or trying to intimidate or coerce people who aren't going to vote the way they want them to vote into doing something else. And obviously, a Trump donor, an ally, took over the United States Postal Service and he instituted a bunch of changes in how the Postal Service collects and sorts mail that have caused delays across the country. And I wrote about this in Tangle, too. And I think that story specifically has a lot more nuance than some of the other stuff we're talking about. I don't think everything Louis DeJoy did was bad. I think it actually

is probably going to be good for the USPS in the long term. I just think he shouldn't have done it in the months leading up to a crucial election where we're going to see millions and millions of ballots being mailed. This is all a matter of fact. You don't have to believe voter fraud is a major threat in order to see what's being done in all these places across the country. Even if you think that voter fraud is a serious threat to the election, which I do not think it is, you can understand whether some of these tactics are going to help votes be counted or not, are going to help prevent voter fraud. I mean, for instance, if you're worried about voter fraud being a major threat, then you shouldn't rush the counting of ballots. They should be counted carefully. They should be

counted before the election. They should be counted after the election. They should be counted in full and double, triple checked. If you're worried about voter fraud, jamming the counting of millions of votes into a single day is not a good way to suss out whether people are voting illegally or not. In fact, I think I can make a pretty good argument that it's the worst way to do that. But clearly, the intention here isn't to suss out voter fraud. It's to reduce the number of ballots that are counted. Okay, so victories for Trump and his team in court have been kind of hard to come by. And I don't know what's going to happen in these election fights, the post-election fights. I think based on what we've seen so far, Trump's odds of getting a lot of ballots thrown out in a way that can sway the election are not particularly good.

But I'll just say, given the chaotic nature of this election, he doesn't need to get a bunch of ballots thrown out in court. I mean, what we're going to see after this election, voter suppression aside, okay, voter suppression aside, is that a lot of ballots are going to be thrown out and a lot of ballots are going to be challenged. And, you know, this in the last 48 hours became a pretty personal example for me. I'm going to play a voicemail for you from my mother, who is a registered Democrat in Pennsylvania, a voicemail she got over the weekend. Hi, I'm calling from Miss Saul. My name is Laura Spark. I'm a volunteer at the Bucks County Democratic Committee with some information about your mail-in ballot. I'm calling because your name

is on the list of mail-in ballots that the Board of Election has rejected, but you still have time to fix it. Usually, when there's a rejection, there's some problem with the return envelope. Maybe it wasn't signed or dated or your address was left out. But because your name is on this list, your vote will not count unless you take care of this. You have two options. Either on Monday, you can go to the Board of Elections or one of their satellite offices between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m.

and tell them that they ask them to look closer at your ballot to see if it was rejected because you are on the list of rejected ballots. You can go to 55 East Court Street in Doylestown, Pennsylvania between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. or 7321 New Falls Road in Levittown, also between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. or 261 California Road in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, same times. If you can't take off Monday, the only other option is to vote at your polling place on Tuesday, election day, but you will need to request a provisional ballot. Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and you can go to iwillvote.com forward slash PA to verify your polling location. Thank you very much. You might get another phone call from PA Dems just to make sure you're aware of this. Thank you for taking care of this. We want to make sure that your vote is counted. Thank you. So, you know, there it is. I mean, look, my mom is a

college-educated woman. She's voted by mail before. You know, she's just barely out of the woods on beating breast cancer for the second time because she's a badass and she's my hero. And so she doesn't really want to go vote in person. She's in a high risk group for COVID-19. And, you know, as she said, she's voted by mail before. She's an experienced voter. She triple checked her ballot. She checked off all the boxes on the instructions, understood that she followed what they told her to do to make sure she had done everything. She did her whole little checklist and, you know, she had to go get this handled. She spent Monday morning, two, three hours standing in what she said was a two or three block long line waiting to, made up of all people who had their ballots rejected, waiting to get into this voting place

to figure out, just to figure out what had gone wrong. And when she got there, basically, they told her that she had not signed her name next to the date that was on the outside of the ballot. So, you know, she felt a little bit silly or whatever for messing this up. But she also said, you know, it's just so difficult to do. There's so many things, especially in Pennsylvania, that you have to get right. And we're talking about, you know, a woman who has been voting in Pennsylvania elections for decades, right? So what's going to happen when all these young voters are doing this? What's going to happen when people who don't typically vote by mail, who have never voted by mail before, like my mom has, are doing this, right? There are going to be a lot of

rejected ballots in this election. And especially in Pennsylvania that has things like the secrecy ballot requirement, you know, the so-called naked ballots that are sent in without the secrecy envelope are going to be thrown out. And, you know, she got to fix it right at this voting place. She got to sign it, dropped it in the drop box. Her vote should be counted. But she waited in two or three hours, most of which was, you know, standing outside. It started snowing on her. She said people in line were bailing. You know, how many people have two or three hours to spend their day figuring out why their ballot got thrown out? How many people have that time just to vote on election day? You know, I don't know how this is going to change it, but I will say, assuming the race is a little bit tighter than we're seeing in the polls, this kind of thing

could throw the race into some uncharted territory that's off the map of what these election models are expecting. And for what it's worth, things in Pennsylvania are tightening slightly. You know, a few respectable pollsters like Malumberg College has Trump within five points of Biden and Biden under 50 percent, which is crucial. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette endorsed Trump on Sunday, marking one of the few major newspapers in the country to endorse him. And the rallies that Trump has been holding across Pennsylvania are just massive. The enthusiasm is off the charts. The lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania this week has been going on CNN, MSNBC, and he's been telling people this

race is closer than the polls show on the ground. I'm telling you, people are turning out for the president. They want him to be president. And this is the Democratic lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania trying to slap voters awake and say, hey, this is not some slam dunk in PA. and one I can't really shake despite the data and the polls and despite following the data and the polls otherwise, which is just that I think Trump's going to win Pennsylvania. And I think, you know, it may require ballots being thrown out. It may require a bunch of people making a mistake like my mom did and then not following through on voting, not doing what she did in order to get her vote in. But, you know, I'm looking at the rallies. I'm listening to the lieutenant governor. I'm looking at the way the number of registered voters for each party has changed. I'm seeing the enthusiasm on the ground. I'm hearing

from people I know in Pennsylvania. And I just don't have this, you know, I don't have this confidence or this feeling that Biden is going to match what the polls are showing there. And so I think Trump's going to win PA, and I think he's going to lose the election. And the reason I think that is related to my electoral college prediction, which is the next thing that we need to cover. So, you know, I've said in the newsletter before that I'm not one for political prognostication and I'm usually not one to air predictions and tangle. But you know what? I have been doing this for a long time, covering this election, writing this newsletter every single day for 15 months. So I think I've earned the right to let loose a little bit and let my hair down and go out on some limbs. Frankly, I think I have a little bit of a

unique view on how this election is going to go. And so, you know, you can sound the hot take alarm here. I think that Trump is going to win Pennsylvania and I think he's going to win Florida and I think he's going to lose the election by a wide margin. And the reason that I think that and how I believe that that's possible is because I think that Joe Biden is going to win Texas. Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma? Vice President Biden, let me give you. And I don't think a lot of people are expecting Joe Biden to win Texas and lose Pennsylvania and lose Florida. But I'm coming from a place where I think that Biden is going to win Texas.

And I do not feel the same confidence that he's going to win Florida. And for whatever reason, I just can't shake the feeling that Trump is going to pull it out in Pennsylvania. So first off, Texas is totally in play. People don't think of it that way, but it is. The final morning consult poll of Texas was dead even, literally 48.1% to 48.1%. Second, in 2016 and 2018, Texas voted, say, 10, 11 points, give or take, to the right of the country as a whole. So if Biden is winning by eight or nine points in the national polls, which I think we have enough data to say that he's probably close to that, and Texas is two or three points bluer than it was in 2016 or 2018, which I also think it is, and turnout is juiced, which we know it is, they've already broken their 2016 vote totals,

then suddenly you see how Texas is in play, and it's truly a toss-up. And I don't know what else to say here, but just concede that I have, against my better instincts and against the advice of people who are a lot smarter than me, been influenced by the vote totals, the early vote totals that have come in in Texas. Biden looks like he's going to win the areas around Houston, Dallas, Austin by more than a million votes. Clinton only won those by 540,000 in 2016. Beto won them by 682,000 in 2018. Down near the border, where I've spent a lot of time, there is going to be a huge Hispanic turnout and not the kind that helps Trump like in counties in Florida. I know West Texas fairly well. I've got family down there. I used to live there in the summers and they are admittedly in rural sort of blue parts of West Texas. But the people I know down there who live on the border

towns are, you know, not always fans of Trump. This is sort of one of the misnomers about Trump's immigration policy and the wall. You know, a lot of people down there really hate Trump with a passion and they're motivated and they have been since 2018 to ramp up turnout. They got a whiff of, you know, being able to potentially get Ted Cruz out of his Senate seat. And when Trump boasts of a border wall, when he says disparaging things about Mexico, you know, that stuff plays well in states that aren't near the border. So, you know, that stuff plays well in states that aren't near the border. And of course, it plays well in some counties in Arizona and some counties in California and some counties in Texas. I'm not saying that it doesn't, but I will say that you really have to understand how

linked up these states are to Mexico, how much cross-cultural love there is, how much business there is between these two countries, especially down there on the border. And a lot of those people are not fans of the immigration policies that Trump has instituted. Not just that, but, you know, the cities that we're talking about, the Houston's, the Dallas's, the Austin, they're showing unbelievable enthusiasm, like in a way we've never seen before. And those areas are blue. Those areas do vote Democrat. So, you know, I think this election is going to fundamentally change how we think about the map in America. And I could be totally wrong. In fact, I'd say there's like a coin flip that I'm totally wrong. You know, I think Biden is going to win Arizona. And I think

he's already on track to win Nevada, which is considered a swing state. But based on what I'm seeing from the best reporters I know in Nevada on the ground, the early vote total there is already putting that race out of reach for Trump in a lot of ways. sweep Michigan and Minnesota and Wisconsin. I think those polls are all far enough outside the margin of error that I feel comfortable saying that he will. And that puts him at, you know, 305 electoral college votes. Throw in North Carolina, where he's got a 65 and 100 chance to win, and he's at 320. And already we have a comfortable Biden lead without Florida, without Pennsylvania, without Georgia, where he also very well may win. So, you know, that's kind of my hot take here. I am predicting that Biden is going to win Texas. I think that Trump very well may pull it out in Pennsylvania. I think Trump is almost certainly going to win Florida, just based on, again, what I've seen in terms of how the campaigns have happened on the ground there. And, you know, how likely do I think a Biden would in Texas is? I

wouldn't bet my life savings on it, but I feel comfortable enough with the prediction that I'm saying it here in a space that is pretty sacred to me where, you know, I care about my word and I don't typically step out onto these branches to make predictions like this. But to me where, you know, I care about my word and I don't typically step out onto these branches to make predictions like this. But to me, Texas looks a lot like a Michigan or Wisconsin did in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. It's just a state that the campaign, that the Trump campaign has overlooked because they're so used to winning it. And that whole time that they have not spent kind of campaigning there on the ground, the opposition has been making inroads, you know, from Beto to AOC getting votes out in Texas via,

you know, phone banking and all these online campaigns to Biden, who's campaigning there, who's on the ground there. So, you know, I think Trump sort of overlooked the state and made an assumption about how it's going to go. And I think it's going to end up biting him in the end. And I think Texas is going to flip. up here and give you some of my closing thoughts about what to expect following election day. Look, the Senate is obviously key to how the country looks in the next four years. I mean, imagining a Biden win unless he gets a majority or some leverage, you know, is imagining a frankly likely to be lame duck president. FiveThirtyEight has Democrats with about a 76 and 100 chance of winning the Senate, which looks about right to me based on what I know about the races that are there. The clear flips in my mind start in Arizona. Mark Kelly is running a strong campaign against Martha McSally, who can't decide whether she loves Trump or hates him. And I don't think that's a

good recipe for winning in a state like Arizona. I imagine Kelly wins there by a pretty solid margin. I think the polls have been exceptionally strong for him. He's an astronaut, which, you know, that sucks to have to run against if you're Martha McSally. I wrote earlier this year that I had a feeling Cory Gardner would rally and hold his seat in Colorado. His position against Hickenlooper, despite some bumps in Hickenlooper's campaign, has actually just worsened since then. And I got some flack for that prediction from a few readers, and they were right. And that's what I get for making predictions.

I think Cory Gardner is going to get crushed almost certainly. His demise seems imminent. And losing those two states puts it at about a 51 to 49 advantage. But remember, Democrats are likely to lose Doug Jones's seat. The only thing worse than running against an astronaut is running against an Alabama football coach, which is what Doug Jones is doing in this election. And that puts us back at about 52 to 48. And from there, the obvious toss-ups are the two Senate races in Georgia, one of which is a special election, the race in Iowa for Joni Ernst's seat, the race in Maine for Susan Collins' seat, the race in Montana for Senator Daines' seat, the race in North Carolina for Senator Tillis' seat, and the race in South Carolina for Senator Lindsey Graham's seat.

the race in South Carolina for Senator Lindsey Graham's seat. I'm just going to come out and say what I think here. I don't see Susan Collins or Tillis holding their seats. Collins has managed, much like Martha McSally, but to a worse degree, to become an enemy of the left and also lose favor amongst Trump supporters, which pretty much seems like the worst possible thing you could do in 2020. I happen to think she's kind of a fine senator and, you know, shoots down the middle quite a bit, but the polls show a tight race there. And I just can't imagine Maine Republicans are nearly as enthusiastic about keeping Collins as Maine Democrats are about getting rid of her. And so, you know, ever since Collins voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, liberals have had their eyes on her. Sarah Gideon has raised $63 million to her $25 million

in this race. And I think she's going to pull it out. I think, you know, again, the enthusiasm there is imbalanced. And given what the polls are showing, I think that's an advantage for Gideon. Likewise, Senator Tillis looks doomed in North Carolina. Cal Cunningham, the Democratic challenger there, you know, he had a rather unsavory sexual scandal. He was having an affair. He's got kids and a wife and all these text messages came out and it was pretty ugly. And his polls did not take a dent. I mean, his approval rating went down, but the number of people who said they were going to vote for him anyway, pretty much stayed exactly the same. And the polls in North Carolina there have been pretty steady.

Marist College, an A-plus rating from 538, had Cunningham up 10 points in that race last week. That seems far enough out of the margin of error that I'm not going to bet on anything else happening. Turnout in North Carolina is going to be through the charts. All the liberal college towns there and the cities there have been growing. And I think that Cal Cunningham is going to win. So that's kind of the state that splits the Senate. And from there, things are a lot less certain in my mind. get that seven point lead for Trump in a poll like that from a respected pollster was huge for her. I don't see Iowa moving seven points to the left from where it was in 2016 this year. So I think Ernst is going to hold on to her seat. The same goes for Montana, where Republican Steve Daines has a clear advantage and never really hasn't. He's got a two and three chance of winning the election, according to FiveThirtyEight. And again, I don't think there's anything on the ground there that's making me question those polls. So, you know, those are kind of the two ways I weigh these outlooks. That leaves Graham and the two Georgia Senate races as the final toss ups.

have no idea what's going to happen in those races. Few people are hated by liberals as much as Lindsey Graham is. Jamie Harrison has run a really strong campaign in a traditionally red state. He's also got the benefit of being an African-American candidate running in an election where very little attention is being paid to issues that matter a lot to African-Americans in South Carolina. And that's something that is happening on the ground. That makes me think that Harrison could have a card up his sleeve, like, say, a huge turnout amongst African-American voters who predominantly come out and support him. So the polls are showing, you know, a 4 or 5 percent gap between Harrison and Graham in favor of Graham. And I think a giant surge of African-American or non-white voters in South Carolina could get Harrison across the finish line. I don't think it'll be enough. So, you know, if you made me bet, I would bet that Senator Graham is going to win that race. In Georgia, it's kind of a similar but different story.

I mean, John Ossoff has been pretty memorable throughout this campaign. You know, I think he's had some made for TV, made for social media moments, one of which came recently, which was this, you know, minute and 20 second long attack he had against Senator Perdue, who he's running against in the last debate. After this interaction, after this debate, Senator Perdue actually dropped out of the last debate. So I'll run that clip for you real quick. Well, perhaps Senator Perdue would have been able to respond properly to the COVID-19 pandemic if you hadn't been fending off multiple federal investigations for insider trading.

It's not just that you're a crook, Senator. It's that you're attacking the health of the people that you represent. You did say COVID-19 was no deadlier than the flu. You did say there would be no significant uptick in cases. All the while, you were looking after your own assets and your own portfolio, and you did vote four times to end protections for pre-existing conditions. But they did vote four times to end protections for pre-existing conditions. Four times. And the legislation that you tout, the Protect Act,

it includes loopholes that specifically allow insurance companies to deny policies to Georgians with pre-existing conditions. Can you look down the camera and tell the people of this state why you voted four times to allow insurance companies to deny us health coverage because we may suffer from diabetes or heart disease or asthma or have cancer in remission. Why, Senator? So again, Senator Perdue dropped out of the last debate. This clip got shared like crazy on social media.

It was on all the late night TV shows. You know, Ossoff then rallied support and money and fundraising and earned media off the fact that Perdue dropped out of the last debate after this one. And he sort of angled it as like, hey, I crushed this guy in the debate, so he's scared to come see me again. That kind of thing, you know, to me could matter on the ground. I mean, that could sway some people. And Ossoff is young enough and new enough on the scene that he's drumming up a lot of enthusiasm.

I think Perdue still has the advantage overall, but I think it's going to be a really tight race. really tight race. Meanwhile, Kelly Loeffler is fighting to hold her seat in the crowded special election race, which is going to be the craziest thing to sort of wrap up 2020 with. This race very well could decide who has the Senate majority, which would be pretty much perfect, you know, just given how this year has gone and all the craziness has been happening. Loeffler is trying to earn a spot in the runoff against Raphael Warnock. He's consolidated support amongst Democrats, but this is a special election. So there are about five candidates in the race that have a shot. And basically on election day, if nobody gets 50% of the vote,

if none of those candidates get 50% of the vote, then we go to our runoff, which is January 5th, 2021. So either Warnock is going to get 50% of the vote because he's the one who has consolidated the most support and he's pretty much the only Democrat that has a chance, or it's going to go to a runoff between Warnock and either Kelly Loeffler, a Republican, or Representative Doug Collins, another Republican. Loeffler has lunged to the right to distinguish herself from Collins in this race. I don't know if it's helping or hurting her. I do think that she had a pretty ugly incident with the whole stock sell-off before COVID-19, and I think it looked pretty bad, and I think it got a lot of national attention. I don't know how that's going to play out. But, you know, of course, all of this leaves out the wildcard here related to my electoral

college pick, which is John Cornyn's race in Texas. So if I'm calling Texas for Biden, you might wonder how I view the Senate race there. And I do think it's going to be close. I've interviewed MJ Hagar, the Democratic challenger, a couple of years ago. She's polished. She has a unique story. She's a female Air Force pilot who's also worked for Dell. She's worked as a professor at Texas universities. She's been endorsed by Barack Obama. She's focused her campaign on health care, which to me seems like a really smart move. She's done a lot of good things in this race. But, you know, John Cornyn has just won pretty much every election he's ever been in. I mean, he's maybe the strongest Republican Senate candidate that's

on the ballot this year. He's won six statewide races in Texas, two of which were to be on the state Supreme Court, one to become attorney general, and then three Senate races. So, you know, that's like a dazzling record, especially when compared to Hagar, who has run in one race, which was a House race that she lost two years ago. I think this race could get tight if the turnout looks the way I'm seeing it look right now. And obviously, if Biden is going to flip Texas, then I also must predict that this race is going to be really close. But, you know, I think John Cornyn is in a much better position in Texas than Donald Trump is, frankly. I don't know how

much better, but it'll be a tight race. If I had to bet, I would say it's a split ticket in Texas, which I think is pretty unusual split in the sense that I see Biden winning and Hagar losing. But, you know, again, it's going to be close, I think, and I'm really interested to keep an eye on it. So there are some other competitive Senate races in Alaska and Kansas. Both of them are, you know, decidedly red states to me. Kansas is open, but the Republican there has a strong lead in the polls. Again, without getting the attention of being a battleground state from the national parties, I don't see anything happening on the ground there. That makes me think the polls

could be off by as much as they need to be for the races to go a different direction than the polls are saying. So Alaska, Kansas, I imagine will go red. That means, you know, Democrats could come out of this with a one to three or four seat majority, depending on how those races go, or they could end up split. I think actually a split Senate is a pretty likely outcome here. But, you know, it's it's going to matter who shows up to vote. I mean, that's not a particularly novel or interesting thing to say, but it's it's pretty much true. or interesting thing to say, but it's pretty much true. All right. So that is the end of the political prognostication. And it's been, you know, it's been a great run. The end of my electoral college predictions and pretty much the end of this podcast. The last thing that I want to do is just talk about what to expect

on election day. If you're listening to this and you're still listening, we have a couple of minutes left. We're just about done. And, you know, I imagine that if you're a Tangle reader, you don't need to hear what I'm about to say. Most Tangle readers are pretty rational. They're here because they're interested in hearing from the other side. But I'm going to say it anyway. There's a very good chance that we don't know who's going to win this election until the days after the election. And we should all be prepared for that.

There's going to be unprecedented mail-in combined with any kind of close race. And that's going to mean a lot of recount combined with any kind of close race. And that's going to mean a lot of recounts, a lot of challenge ballots. We could be waiting a couple of days just for the ballots to get counted before the challenges come in. States like Pennsylvania, states like Florida, the results from those states could take a few days to come in. And given that, I think there's going to be a ton of scary stuff happening around the post-election narratives, the post-election conversations. So I want to talk about a few of them. And to kind of kick that off, I'm just going to play a brief comment from Jason Miller, the president's advisor, who was on television and said this recently. If you speak with many smart Democrats, they believe that President Trump will be ahead on election night, probably getting 280 electorals, somewhere in that range. And then they're going to try to steal it back after the election.

We believe that we will be over 290 electoral votes on election night. So no matter what they try to do, what kind of hijinks or lawsuits or whatever kind of nonsense they try to pull off, we're still going to have enough electoral votes to get President Trump reelected. So I just want to say this clearly. The election is not going to be stolen by Democrats based on counting mail-in ballots afterward. afterward. We did not know who the presidential winner was before midnight on election nights in 1960, in 1968, in 1976, in 2000, in 2004, in 2016. Nobody should pretend there would be anything historically unusual if that happens again in 2020. We can also expect that in the days after this election day, the internet is going to be awash with conspiracies, videos of purported voter fraud, voter intimidation, civil unrest. They're

going to be everywhere. Both sides are going to be doing it. And many of those videos are going to be from past events. They're going to be from other countries. They're going to be fabricated. They're going to be exaggerated. They're going to be made to make everything appear as if it's as bad as possible. And it will be important not to get your news from places like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter during that time. You have to look towards news outlets and television stations that have editors and standards and are less likely to share unverified information. Obviously, Tangle will be by your side all week,

the whole way, I'll be in your inbox. But just fundamentally speaking, I think we all have a role to play in terms of limiting the spread of that kind of misinformation. There will be, in no uncertain terms, a load of predictions that come in based on the early vote. The Sumter County thing is a fun example.

If you're looking for real, verified, certified results, don't look to pundits or campaigns. Look to election officials. Look to major media outlets that are declaring races. Those are the places where responsible predictions and information will be shared. let me just say this. Somebody is going to win this race. Unless there's a tie, which I think I gave you enough anxiety about in my special edition about that a few weeks ago, in all likelihood, there's a 99% chance that we get a winner on election night. And when we do, there's a certainty that nearly half the country in either direction is going to be distraught by the news, half the country in either direction is going to be distraught by the news, maybe more so than in any election in modern U.S. history. And my advice to you is just to remember that the sun's going to come up. There will be more elections, regardless of whether your guy wins or not. We're all going to have a lot of work to do to improve the status of our country after this election, to improve the way we show empathy for the opposition.

We're all going to have more to do to understand each other, to put more effort to find reliable and balanced information, to guide how we act in moments like this. Of course, again, I hope TANCL can be a part of that for you. But just be prepared for the chaos that's going to come in the days after Election Day. And please think before you share, think before you retweet, take a moment, take a breath, be sure what you're sharing is reliable information.

All right, my friends, my subscribers, if you've made it this far, thank you. That was a tour de force of bloviation. Thank you for listening. Thank you for showing the love. Thank you for caring. I'll be in your inbox tomorrow, all week. I look forward to witnessing this historic election together. And, you know, instead of freaking out about what the first poll results or election results are that come in, crack a beer, crack a seltzer, spend some time with your family,

maybe even don't watch the results and just wait for Tangle to come out on Wednesday. You'll be hearing from me soon. I really appreciate it. And last but not least, a special thank you to my fiance, Phoebe, who helped me record the intro for this podcast, to Magdalena Bokova, who helps Tangle run all of its social accounts and partnerships, helps me produce the newsletter every day. A thank you to my dad, Billy Saul, who helps edit the newsletter, to Sean Brady, who also helps edit the newsletter, catching pretty much every typo I've ever written. A big shout out to Seth Moskowitz, who does research on the Tangle newsletter.

And a thank you to all of you who have been listening and supporting for the last 15 months. Thank you. I love you. I love you. I love you, mom. Have a great night. True international pressure. Will you remember that Texas?

Will you remember that Pennsylvania? Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania? South Carolina's got voter drop boxes? I wish you showed them to me. At the end of the day, I'm just wondering, if you're a bazoodle doodle, what is your hoodle? Mine's a saw. Be blessed. Stay blessed.

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