The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden Looks Strong After Wisconsin Win, But Both Candidates Still Have A Path

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Miles Parks and I cover voting. And it is 2.58 p.m. on Wednesday, November 4th, 2020, possibly the longest day of the year. So the counting continues. Joe Biden has now won the state of Wisconsin, according to an AP call that just came in, bringing him to a total of 248 electoral votes. President Trump's tally is at 214 electoral votes. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada are all yet to be decided. Asma, what are you hearing from

Starting point is 00:00:47 the Biden campaign? How are they feeling? Well, the Biden campaign is projecting optimism. I mean, they have felt good about both Wisconsin and Michigan. They also feel extraordinarily optimistic about Pennsylvania. And you know, it is worth pointing out that we don't yet know the results fully in Michigan and Pennsylvania. But Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, said earlier today that she feels Biden is on track to win the election. And, you know, she used some pretty optimistic but rather strong or saying that the numbers that they see make them believe that President Trump is going to win. Though at the same time, they are also now proceeding with legal actions. They have filed a suit in Michigan seeking to at least temporarily stop the count to get more legal monitors in to

Starting point is 00:01:46 watch the processing of ballots. And in Wisconsin, they have already requested a recount. And there in Wisconsin, I think, Miles, it's what, like 20,000 votes that separate the two candidates? Yeah, it's about 20,000 votes. It's probably worth noting that the last recount in 2016 in Wisconsin ended up switching something like less than 200 votes. So the odds that a recount here would switch, you know, tens of thousands of votes are just very, very low. But it is it is in the realm of possibility, I guess. I mean, it's worth pointing out that in 2016 in Wisconsin, I believe Donald Trump himself won the state by what, a 20-some-thousand vote margin. I mean, we always knew Wisconsin was going to be incredibly competitive. And so it seems like the margin that Joe Biden is leading by is roughly comparable to the margin that Trump himself won by in 2016.

Starting point is 00:02:39 Yeah, and I'm also curious, you know, Tam, you mentioned this optimism from the Trump campaign. I would even go further. It's worth noting last night that President Trump said, frankly, we have won the election. I mean, that is a direct quote. Are you seeing a disconnect between what the campaign is saying in terms of general optimism, but maybe a little more tempered compared to what the president is saying? You know, the campaign is saying that they believe that they have won states that have already been called for Joe Biden. So, you know, I think that they are pretty much in line with what the president is saying, though the president all morning long has been tweeting out tweets that are fact check, just not true about how the vote counting process works.

Starting point is 00:03:25 He's amplified misinformation. And, and he is he is simply sitting there at the White House sowing doubt about what is a pretty normal process of counting absentee ballots that extends beyond Election Day. I know you think about how many millions and millions of absentee ballots have have come in this election year during a pandemic. The fact that election officials are taking, you know, a few hours, a couple of days in some instances is not only, you know, not surprising, but it was predicted. Election officials, experts across the country have spent the last six months saying this is going to take some time. It's very possible, if not probable, we won't know who won the presidency even by the morning after the election. And not only that, experts in the federal, even the federal government, aspects of the federal government that aren't the president, have been saying people are going to

Starting point is 00:04:19 try to sow doubt in the results because it's taking time. And the Biden campaign has been trying to fight back against that rhetoric. Biden's campaign manager just a bit ago sent out an email with this subject line saying Donald Trump will not steal this election. They've also put up this Biden fight fund. They're saying that it's going to take more resources, more financial dollars to fund the election protection efforts to take this on if the president, you know, does take this election to the courts. And so they're now fundraising off of this. And so is the Trump campaign. In fact, they were fundraising off of it last night while the election returns were still coming in and we didn't really know what was going on. I was like,

Starting point is 00:05:00 my phone was blowing up with texts fundraising from the Trump campaign. Miles, I just want to go through one tweet from the president and have you sort of walk through what he's talking about and what the actual normal process is here. He says they are finding Biden votes all over the place in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. So bad for our country, exclamation point. Finding ballots. Yeah, I mean, I don't know where to start here. Why don't we start with the fact that election officials in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania

Starting point is 00:05:33 could not begin the process of counting, of verifying whether the absentee ballots that they received, the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of absentee ballots that they received in some cases until the day of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of absentee ballots that they received in some cases until the day of the election. That is just an incredible amount of administrative work. And they had basically their hands tied behind their backs because the legislatures, the Republican legislatures in those states declined to change the rules, even though election officials were asking them, basically, can we do this like the other states? Can we process these ballots earlier so that way we'll have a count earlier? The legislature's declined to act. And so what we're seeing now is the result of that,

Starting point is 00:06:13 where election officials are working around the clock, literally 24 hours a day in some cases, to basically count these ballots, process them as quickly as possible. But the jurisdictions where this process is taking the longest are predictably Democratic for two reasons. One, there's just a lot more people there in those jurisdictions. And so the amount of ballots that they're seeing is just higher, takes longer to process. But also Democrats were encouraging their voters to vote by mail at much higher numbers than Republicans were. So it makes sense then that if absentee ballots are delayed because of all of these processes that didn't get done this year, that the votes that are counted later in this process would

Starting point is 00:06:56 then be Democratic votes. It's not some sort of conspiracy. Honestly, if you had just looked at this process two weeks ago, you would have said, well, of course, this is what's going to happen. And look at that, the Trump campaign. I just got an email. They are also taking legal action in Pennsylvania. So I think that what we know here is that there are going to be a lot of legal filings, a lot of maneuvering in the days, hours, possibly weeks ahead. We are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, what happened with the Senate?

Starting point is 00:07:29 The news moves fast. Listen to the NPR News Now podcast to keep up. We update stories as they evolve every hour. So no matter when you listen, you get the news as close to live as possible on your schedule. Subscribe to or follow the NPR News Now podcast. And we're back. And although much of our focus has been on the presidential race, the presidential race is not the only game in town. And there was a new race call from the AP in the Senate. And it is somewhat surprising if you've been following this along the way. Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine, has been reelected. Yeah, you know, Tam, to me, that was perhaps the most surprising Senate race call in the entire

Starting point is 00:08:18 country. You know, Collins was seen to be a particularly vulnerable Republican senator. But really, I mean, bigger, I would say, than Collins' defeat or victory here is the fact that Democrats had been really talking aspirationally about taking back control of the Senate and having this mandate to govern if Joe Biden were to win the presidency. Regardless of who wins the presidency, it doesn't really look like Democrats will take control of the Senate. No. Yeah, you look at some of these races. I mean, Texas, John Cornyn winning by 10%, South Carolina, Lindsey Graham winning by more than 10%. I mean, these were races that a couple

Starting point is 00:08:56 weeks ago, there was language from Democrats that they thought they were really in the game here. And Miles, the thing is that leading into this with early voting off the charts and we now know that turnout was ultimately extremely high in this election, the theory was that that would favor Democrats. But in the end, it didn't really favor Democrats in like a wave type way. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see over the next couple of days. Again, votes are still being counted. It does look like Joe Biden is on his way to winning the popular vote,

Starting point is 00:09:36 potentially by a higher margin than Hillary Clinton won it in 2016. That being said, there's definitely going to be some soul searching about how, you know, the highest turnout election in 100 years ended up in a situation where Republicans have basically held on to every competitive seat that they were defending that they were worried about other than maybe, you know, Colorado and Arizona. Well, the Trump campaign did say that they were going to find new Republicans, that they were going to find people that supported the president and just didn't vote last time. And they found them. For all the energy and enthusiasm on the Democratic side, as seen in the massive fundraising numbers that went to all of those Senate races that now Democrats have not won, Republicans had the energy too. You know, I think once we get the full results in, I'll be really curious to look at how blue counties and red counties ultimately ended up faring. Because one thing I noticed yesterday,

Starting point is 00:10:36 just quickly skimming those so-called Obama-Trump counties, those pivot counties, say in Ohio, is how much redder some of them looked. You know, they looked equally red, if not redder than they did four years ago. And there was all this talk from Democrats that they could win back some of those voters with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. And I don't know the full answer to this, but it feels, you know, sort of, I guess, as we are less than 24 hours since the polls have closed, that it seems like blue areas might have gotten even bluer and red areas, some of them may have gotten a little redder. All right, that is a wrap for this podcast. We are watching the returns as they come in. As this develops, we will be back when there is something that you need to know. Remember, you can support all of us here at the NPR Politics Podcast by supporting your local NPR station.

Starting point is 00:11:25 Just head to donate.npr.org slash politics to get started and let them know that we sent you. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden Looks Strong After Wisconsin Win, But Both Candidates Still Have A Path

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