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      in Elections

      Why are the media reporting different US election results?

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      As the US election slowly draws to its conclusion, one of the areas of confusion is that different media outlets are showing different results for the electoral votes.
      The president is elected by winning at least 270 electoral college votes, not the outcome of the popular vote. Because there is no centralised federal election system, it has become tradition in the US that “decision desks” at media organisations make a call that states have been won by one candidate or the other when enough votes have been counted. States that are too close to call – such as Nevada and Georgia at the moment – remain in the balance until a network “calls” them.
      The Guardian uses the data collected and analysed by the Associated Press (AP) news agency as the source for when we will call election results. There are a number of other highly reputable election decision desks in US media, including NBC, Fox News and others. They may call races earlier or later than AP. US networks obviously use the decisions from their own desks – other channels may chose to follow one, or wait for two desks to call a state before they count it.
      This year, Arizona has brought this into sharp relief. Our current total of 264 electoral votes for Joe Biden includes the fact that AP has called Arizona for the Democratic nominee. Not all decision desks have yet.
      AP has issued this guide to all of the states it has called. This is what it says about Arizona:

      The AP called the race at 2.50am EST Wednesday, after an analysis of ballots cast statewide concluded there were not enough outstanding to allow Trump to catch up. With 80% of the expected vote counted, Biden was ahead by 5 percentage points, with a roughly 130,000-vote lead over Trump, with about 2.6m ballots counted. The remaining ballots left to be counted, including mail-in votes in Maricopa county, where Biden performed strongly, were not enough for Trump to catch up to the former vice-president.

      The Trump campaign disagrees. Biden’s lead is currently down to about 68,000 votes in the state – or less than three percentage points – with 88% of the votes counted. More

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      in US Politics

      Facebook and Twitter take emergency steps against Trump false victory claims

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      Facebook and Twitter have deployed emergency measures to counter Donald Trump’s false claims of victory on their social networks, bringing them more directly into conflict with the US president than ever before.The two tech platforms had announced plans in the run-up to the election to counter misinformation about the vote, as well as premature claims of victory, and on the night of and day after, both companies mostly stuck to the plan.Facebook notably dropped the euphemistic phrasing that had previously accompanied its announcements, which discussed the risk that “candidates” may falsely claim a win. It also walked back a previous policy that would have allowed candidates to claim state-level victories before they were called, despite barring the premature announcement of a national win. On Wednesday it started to flag posts from Trump and affiliates claiming the president had won Pennsylvania and other battleground states, even as ballots continued to be counted and official results had yet to be announced.A company spokesperson cited Trump by name in explaining its decision, saying: “Once President Trump began making premature claims of victory, we started running notifications on Facebook and Instagram that votes are still being counted and a winner is not projected. We’re also automatically applying labels to both candidates’ posts with this information.”When it came to reacting to individual posts, both platforms faced criticism for their responses. In late-night posts cross-posted to both Twitter and Facebook, Trump declared: “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!” That post was followed by a second that read: “I will be making a statement tonight. A big WIN!”Misinformation experts say because such posts are able to achieve widespread circulation before being addressed, more comprehensive policies to correct the effects of the misleading posts should be put in place, calling it a “democratic emergency”.“False claims of voter fraud, early victory and election-stealing are helping plunge the country further into chaos and confusion, creating alternate realities for Americans,” said Fadi Quran, the campaign director at Avvaz, an online activist network and non-profit. “Platforms must immediately adopt more effective policies such as retroactively sending corrections to all users who see misinformation and downgrading the reach of repeat misinformers.”Facebook initially labelled the first post with a simple box advising readers to “see the latest updates on the 2020 US election”. More than 30 minutes after it was posted, the company updated its warning to note that “final results may be different from initial vote counts, as ballot counting will continue for days or weeks”. By that time the post had well over 100,000 reactions.Twitter restricted distribution on the first post from Trump on Tuesday night, blocking it from being retweeted or replied to, and appended a note saying the content “is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process”. A spokesperson said the warning was “for making a potentially misleading claim about an election. This action is in line with our civic integrity policy.”Neither platform took specific action against the second post claiming “a big WIN!”. Twitter said the lack of action was because it was unclear what, specifically, was being referenced. While the post could have constituted a premature claim of victory in the national race, it could just as easily be construed as a legitimate expression of pleasure at winning a state such as Florida, which had declared several hours earlier. More

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      in Elections

      Biden says he's on course to win US election as Trump threatens to fight outcome

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      Joe Biden has claimed he is on course to win the US presidential election and issued a plea for national unity, even as Donald Trump threatens to fight the outcome in court.
      The former vice-president flipped the crucial battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday, giving him 264 electoral college votes to Trump’s 214. The target is 270 to secure the White House.
      “After a long night of counting, it’s clear that we’re winning enough states to reach 270 electoral votes need to win the presidency,” Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware. “I’m not here to declare that we’ve won but I am here to report that, when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners.”
      Biden praised a historic turnout of about 150 million and noted that he was set to win Wisconsin by 20,000 votes, similar to the president’s margin in 2016, and leading in Michigan by more than 35,000 votes and growing – substantially more than Trump managed four years ago. Both states have been called for Biden.
      As Trump seeks to fire up his supporters for a bitter legal struggle, Biden called for people on both sides “to unite, to heal, to come together as a nation”.
      With his running mate, Kamala Harris, standing nearby, Biden struck the tone of a president-elect: “I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as I will for those who did vote for me. Now, every vote must be counted. No one’s going to take our democracy away from us. Not now. Not ever.”
      It was a clear rebuke to Trump’s attempt to sow doubt with claims of fraud and threats to dispute the election all the way to the supreme court, ushering in a potentially prolonged and messy endgame to the election.
      Late on Wednesday there were signs of desperation as Trump felt his presidency slipping away. He tweeted a thread stating that he was establishing a “claim” on Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, all of which remain too close to call.
      “We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead,” he wrote. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden advances in key states as Trump seeks to challenge results in court

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      Joe Biden took significant strides towards winning the presidency on Wednesday but the Trump campaign vowed to reverse them at the vote count and in the courts, ushering in a potentially prolonged and messy endgame to the election.
      Biden was called the winner in the critical battleground of Wisconsin, and was ahead in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, while Trump held leads in Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina.
      If the current standings are sustained, it would take Biden over the 270 votes in the electoral college needed to clinch victory, even without the deadlocked state of Pennsylvania, where a million ballots were yet to be counted by Wednesday afternoon.
      Unleashing a long-planned legal campaign, the Trump campaign demanded a recount in Wisconsin and called for the count in Michigan to be halted, on the grounds that its representatives did not have “meaningful access”.
      Starting with a television statement after 2am, Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that the routine counting of ballots after election day was somehow fraudulent. In practice Trump campaign officials were on Wednesday supporting continued vote counts where the president was behind and vigorously opposing them where he was ahead.
      On Wednesday afternoon, Trump staged a rally of his supporters outside a convention centre in Philadelphia where votes were being counted, echoing Republican tactics to stop the recount in Florida 2000, which helped win the election for George W Bush.
      The 2000 election was finally decided by the US supreme court, and on Wednesday afternoon, the Trump campaign also asked the supreme court to rule on its objections to an extended vote count in Pennsylvania.
      The Biden camp has assembled its own legal teams at the chief electoral flashpoints, and launched a “fight fund” to finance the effort.
      Meanwhile the US Postal Service was criticised by a judge for failing to carry out a sweep of its sorting offices for postal votes that had not yet been delivered to polling stations, amid claims that thousands of ballots were stranded at sorting offices.
      As the legal manoeuvring gathered momentum, it was clear the fate of the US presidency was likely to be determined by a few thousand votes in a handful of states, and possibly the decision of an array of judges.
      It was also evident the nation had not delivered the decisive “blue sweep” repudiation of Trumpism Democrats had hoped for, nor did it look likely the election would give them control of the Senate.
      Even before the counting was finished, Biden had won more votes than any president in history – over 70 million – edging out Barack Obama’s 2008 record and about 2.5 million ahead of Trump, once again highlighting the disparity between the popular vote and the arithmetic of the US electoral college system.
      . More

    • 163 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump calls foul play as Biden takes Wisconsin: Politics Weekly Extra – podcast

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      As we wait for the final few votes from battleground states, Jonathan Freedland and David Smith run through the latest results from the 2020 US presidential election

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      The blue wave never made it to shore, but the pathway for a Joe Biden win looks slightly clearer than that for Donald Trump. So what do we know and what should we preparing for over the next few days? Let us know what you think of the podcast. Send your feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      in US Politics

      Paths to US election victory: what Trump and Biden need to win

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      Paths to victory remain in the US presidential race for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, but Biden has more ways to win and appears to be running stronger state to state, based on the places – cities, mainly – where large absentee votes have yet to be counted.
      Biden leads the electoral tally 248-214 after he was declared the winner in Wisconsin on Wednesday and Trump gained one vote in Maine. Adding Alaska for Trump – which had not been called but where the result is not in doubt – gives the president 217.

      From there, five states remained to be called as Wednesday evening approached in the US: Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
      Trump’s paths
      The simplest way for Trump to find the 53 electoral votes he needs would be to win Pennsylvania and at least three other states. If he does not win Pennsylvania, Trump must make a clean sweep of all four remaining states to get to 270.
      But a huge Democratic vote share remained to be tallied in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, meaning Trump could have difficulty hanging on to a narrow lead gained elsewhere in the state. In Michigan, Trump appeared to be in even deeper trouble, because the outstanding vote was expected to be heavily Democratic.
      Trump’s path (Wisconsin update)
      Biden’s paths
      Biden had many paths to find his remaining 22 electoral votes. His most likely path lay through the Great Lakes states, where Pennsylvania and Michigan combined would net 36 votes.
      Without Pennsylvania, Biden could win by winning Michigan and Nevada, where he held a clear but narrow lead. A Biden victory in either of the two reddest states in the mix – Georgia or North Carolina – would almost certainly foretell wins elsewhere and a Biden victory.
      Biden’s path (Wisconsin update) More

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      in US Politics

      Regardless of the US presidential election outcome, Trumpism lives on

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      When all the votes are counted, the presidential election may deliver defeat for Donald Trump. But it did not deliver defeat for Trumpism.Democrats had hoped that four years of turmoil, attacks on norms and institutions and mendacity – plus a pandemic that cost 230,000 lives – would result in a quick, clean and overwhelming repudiation of the 45th president.That would have been clarifying about the direction of the country, a warning to the Republican party that it must take its 2013 “autopsy” report off the shelf and reinvent itself.But on another miserable night for pollsters, it did not turn out that way. Trump proved resilient and increased his vote in Florida, Texas and other states. He found even more white working-class voters than last time and chipped away at Democratic support among Latinos. His cult-of-personality campaign rallies were as enthusiastic and rambunctious as ever.His victory in 2016, it turns out, was no fluke attributable to Vladimir Putin or James Comey. In 2020 his sexism, racism and lie-telling have been legitimised and emboldened.When some Americans protested “This is not who we are”, Trump voters replied: “This is exactly who we are – and we’re not going anywhere.”“The so-called moral outrage around Trump’s presidency did not produce any substantive shift in his Republican support,” tweeted Eddie Glaude, a professor at Princeton University and author of Democracy in Black. “In fact, he expanded his base among white voters. Trump continues to flourish in the intersection of greed, selfishness and racism.”Now, if Trump wins the election, Trumpism wins. But if Trump loses the election, Trumpism wins too.A sense of grievance over a narrow defeat, fuelled by the president’s bogus claims of fraud and amplified by conservative media, will thrive again a Democratic president. The “Make America Great Again” movement – with its nostalgia for a country that never was – was built for opposition rather than incumbency. More