It took longer than expected, but former Vice President Joe Biden finally clinched a majority in the Electoral College on Nov. 7 after the election when the Associated Press and the cable and broadcast networks (including Fox News) gave him the 20 votes of Pennsylvania.
In 2016, Donald Trump tore down the Democrats’ “Blue Wall” in the Frost Belt in winning Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by one point. This time, he lost them by one point. As was said about the Battle of Waterloo, this election was “a close-run thing.”
The record-breaking turnout of more than 150 million – at least a 10% increase over 2016 – slowed the counting, but Biden will have more than 80 million votes when it’s finished. And even though he lost the national popular vote, Trump will have about 75 million (over 5 million more than Barack’s Obama’s previous record in 2008). Trump’s spectacular ability to inspire rural voters made things a lot closer than pre-election polls had predicted – and saved the Republican Senate majority.
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At this writing, Biden has narrow leads in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and Wisconsin. While President Trump certainly has a legal right to request recounts and investigate irregularities, his chances of winning recounts/appeals in at least four of the five above states are virtually nil. Biden will be our next president.
So, how did Joe Biden become only the fourth man to oust an elected incumbent president in the last 100 years? The answers are the Covid-19 pandemic and the accompanying economic fallout, the consistent disapproval of the Trump presidency by middle class women (who have the highest turnout), a record minority turnout and the return to Biden of many white workers in the Frost Belt who had defected in 2016.
For all the talk about a “change” election, the voting patterns were largely familiar: Biden carried white liberals, gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, lower-income and urban coastal voters generally, while Trump triumphed with conservatives, upper-income folks, white Catholics, white Christian evangelicals, white Southerners, Midwesterners, farmers and Mormons.
There was virtually no partisan crossover voting: each candidate won only 6% of the other party’s faithful. This was yet another trench warfare election between Red and Blue states. Biden’s narrow Electoral College victory was caused by slight gains at the margins of key groups, not some massive Blue Wave.
The key Biden gains were among white males (+9), white Catholics (+8), union members (+6), veterans (+11) and suburbanites (+6). Biden held almost all of Hillary Clinton’s suburban women and gained with men. This suburban gain allowed Biden to carry nearly every major metro area outside the South: New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Las Vegas and surprisingly, Phoenix. (Cindy and the late John McCain got their revenge for numerous Trump insults on the last one).
As of December 2019, the Trump administration had compiled a good economic record as unemployment reached a 50-year low, with wage gains going especially to the lower-income brackets. It looked like he would sail to re-election on the favorable tides of peace and prosperity. But in the winter of 2020, the Covid-19 crisis killed more than 100,000 Americans and shut down many schools and businesses. Roughly 20 million Americans lost their jobs.
The pandemic took a huge political toll on Trump: 23% told the network exit polls it was the “most important” issue and they voted 61-38% for Biden, thus providing his entire margin in the national popular vote. Another 55% said it had caused them substantial “hardship” and they went for Biden by 64-34%. And in the crucial swing states, the numbers on this issue were largely the same.
The economic fallout from the pandemic cost Trump dearly: Biden’s improved showing with white working men also helped restore the Blue Wall in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. There were five key industrial counties in those states – Erie, Lackawanna and Luzerne in Pennsylvania, Macomb in Michigan and Kenosha in Wisconsin – that swung those crucial states narrowly to Trump in 2016.
This year, Biden posted six- to nine-point gains in all except riot-scarred Kenosha and swung Erie and Lackawanna (good thing Joe was from Scranton!) back into the Democratic column. Many voters there were reluctant to support Hillary Clinton and Biden got many of them back, thus tipping the balance in the Electoral College. (Pennsylvania’s Erie County has similar results to 2016, a five-point deficit for Trump in preliminary returns).
Biden will shoulder one of the heaviest burdens a new president has faced: taming an international pandemic and reviving an economy tumbling deeper into recession.
Then there is the personal factor. Beyond Covid-19, the biggest issue was Trump himself. Of the 51% of Americans who disapproved of the way Trump was handling his job, they voted 96%-3% for Biden. (Forty -even percent said they approved of Trump’s job performance and voted 90% for him). Fully 50% of voters in the exit poll said they would be “concerned or scared” if Trump was re-elected and Biden won them by 91%-7%.
While the pandemic cost Trump crucial support and probably caused his defeat, his ultra-controversial persona created lasting ill will that also cost him badly. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush are examples of Republicans whose likable personalities helped them survive tough times. No one should have been surprised that the voters rung down the curtain on Trump’s “ultimate reality show.”
The ‘Uncle Joe’ factor
Every election is a referendum on the incumbent and voters usually choose the exact opposite when they are not happy. Biden‘s “Uncle Joe/Nice Guy persona” was just the perfect antidote to The Donald. Trump is the only president since 1929 to never get above a 50% job approval rating in the Gallup Poll. He simply struggled to unify the nation. Trump supporters will complain that the opposition never gave him a chance and they have a point: This was the nastiest gang-up by the media and liberal establishment since Barry Goldwater in 1964. But women, especially college-educated women, were offended by Trump’s style: The president’s constant brawling, shouting and tweeting finally just wore many people out.
How is this for irony? If Trump could have gained the 2% with suburban women that he did nationally, he would have carried Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia and won reelection. The suburbs – roughly 50% of all voters – flipped from Trump to Biden and that made the difference.
Did President Trump improve his showing with minorities? Yes, to a degree. The exit polls showed he gained 4% each with Blacks, Hispanics and Asians. Among Blacks, the precinct data in Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia showed a much more modest one- to two-point improvement. Hispanics are different: Trump made sharp gains in Texas and Florida. Laredo in Webb County is the most Hispanic big city in America (96%). In that county, Trump jumped from 23% in 2016 to 38% this year.
Democratic activists blamed the pandemic from stopping their normal heavy door-to-door campaigning in South Texas and in fact, turnout in the Rio Grande Valley was down. But perhaps Texas Hispanics don’t want to see a “transition away from oil” either.
Biden once said the Hispanic vote was “not a monolith” and he was right: a huge Cuban-American break for Trump helped give him Florida, while the Puerto Ricans of the Northeast and the Mexican-Americans of the Southwest (Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico) helped tip those states to Biden.
The Asian-American vote in California and Hawaii turned over its usual Democratic majorities. Once again, irony abounds: Trump scored gains with minority voters, but suffered losses with white swing voters and that cost him his job.
No October surprise
Of course, the ultimate irony is that Pfizer and BioNTech announced six days after the election that their new Covid-19 vaccine had tested “90% effective” in clinical trials. Needless to say, such an announcement a month earlier could have been the “October surprise” that won the election for Trump.
Another major trend was the large increase in voter turnout. For years, editorials have complained about “the apathy of the American voter.” That is no longer a problem in 21st century America. The “shy/hidden” Trump voters once again came out of the woodwork and caused the Trump rally in the campaign’s closing days. They also contributed to the record-breaking turnout – close to 160 million, a 15% increase over 2016’s record 137 million.
At least 65% of eligible adults turned out; this is the highest since 1960 or maybe 1900 when the numbers are final. Trump won at least 10 million more raw votes that he did in 2016 – but Biden gained 15 million more compared to Hillary. One amazing stat: Due to the high turnout, Joe Biden won a higher share of the total electorate than Reagan did in 1984 when he won 49 states.
Trump kept it close
Still, despite all the problems, personal and political, Trump rallied his base in the final week and made it close. A switch of just about 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona would have sent him back to the White House for four more years. Except for (maybe) Georgia, the Democrats utterly failed to rebuild in the South (Florida and Texas were especially disastrous) and the Farm Belt.
Despite the big turnout, this was also a massive disappointment for Democrats in Congress: They expected to gain five to six seats in the Senate and win a majority, but may gain only a net of one. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saw her party lose at least eight seats and barely hold onto her majority.
This was largely a personal defeat for Trump, not a Blue Wave that ushered in semi-permanent Democratic majorities. Unless the Democrats gain a majority in the Senate by winning recounts in Alaska and North Carolina or the two Georgia run-offs on Jan. 5, the agenda of President-elect Biden may be severely constrained.
Barring wins there, Biden will be the first Democratic president since Grover Cleveland in the 1880s to start a new administration without Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. Given that he lost every energy-rich state – Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, Kentucky, West Virginia, etc. – the “Green New Deal” environmental plan is in extreme danger.
Much of the forthcoming Biden administration may consist of executive orders and constant negotiations with Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. As has often been noted, Biden has overcome much personal tragedy with the death of his first wife and young daughter shortly after his first election to the Senate in 1972 and the death of his son Beau a few years ago. He has been running for president since the 1980s and it is a tribute to his dedication that he finally made it. He will need that steadfastness in 2021 and beyond.
The new administration will be facing problems of unprecedented depth – Obama adviser David Axelrod called it the most challenging times since Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in the depths of the Great Depression in 1933 – the steepest recession since 1929, the worst public health crisis in a century and to top it all off, a global climate disaster that threatens everyone. For the good of the nation, all people, regardless of party, should wish President-elect Biden well.
Patrick Reddy, a Democratic political consultant in California, is working on a book, “21st Century America,” which will be published after the 2020 election.
