The 5-Minute Fix: Why Joe Biden is on the verge of victory
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The 5-Minute Fix
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Amber Phillips By Amber Phillips
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We are coming up on three full days after polls closed Tuesday, and there is still no winner. But here’s what we know:
Democrat Joe Biden leads very narrowly in three out of the five swing states still counting votes: Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. President Trump has a narrow lead in the fourth, North Carolina. They’re basically tied in Georgia.
Biden still has more paths to the White House than does Trump. Winning just Pennsylvania would get him to 270. He’s favored in more states than that. Trump, meanwhile, would need to win nearly every outstanding state. The Fix’s Aaron Blake has a continuously updated paths to victory for each candidate.
If Biden wins, here’s why
He will have won by flipping states back to Democrats that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016: Michigan, Wisconsin and, maybe, Pennsylvania. He also expanded the map by making states such as Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona competitive, in a way that makes Democrats hopeful for the future even if they don’t win them all.
People rally outside where votes are being counted in Philadelphia as the vote count pushes Biden in the lead. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post).
People rally outside where votes are being counted in Philadelphia as the vote count pushes Biden in the lead. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post).
Biden also is leading when there was record turnout across the nation. He got the most votes of any presidential candidate, breaking former president Barack Obama’s record. And Black voters in particular came to his rescue again. After saving his candidacy in the primaries earlier this year, they were huge factors in turning out to vote in all these swing states.
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Exit polls show he also won voters under 45, college graduates, women and independents.
Let’s talk about why Democrats are disappointed, though
Democrats were hoping to say by the end of this week that they had total governing control of Washington and a big mandate to govern it. They can’t say that. The White House race is closer than many thought and hoped for. They were expecting to celebrate that they had expanded their majorities in the House (they lost seats). They were expecting to celebrate a majority in the Senate. (The Senate is still to be determined in two likely runoffs in Georgia in January that favor Republicans.)
And perhaps most damaging for Democrats, Trump had surprising strength across the country, at least compared with what polls were predicting. He gained a ton with Hispanic voters in Florida compared with 2016. His economic message resonated. Exit polls showed voters trusted him to handle the economy better than Biden, rather than blaming him for the economic damage wrought by the pandemic.
Democrats must be asking themselves, if the election was this close despite polls showing Americans' disapproval of Trump, what happened?
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The Trump campaign will challenge results. But it’s an uphill battle to win those challenges
For one, election officials across the country, including in states and counties run by Republicans, are defending their work counting ballots legitimately.
Two, the Trump campaign has yet to produce evidence of fraud. Two judges in two separate states have already thrown out challenges to the vote before they got started for that reason. It’s both necessary and difficult to find concrete evidence of fraud that the courts will consider. There’s a high bar for turning over ballots cast for a reason. And without the lower courts taking up these cases, it’s difficult to get all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices have twice declined to hear challenges to Pennsylvania’s three-day deadline extension for receiving ballots, for example. (Though Republicans just asked the court to consider hearing these challenges again.)
Three, Trump’s other major avenue to changing the outcome — recounts — will probably happen in several states. Georgia already said to expect one. But recounts have historically only overturned results when the vote count is in the few hundred, not the tens of thousands. And no presidential race has been overturned.
As The Fix’s Aaron Blake put it, Trump’s avenue for winning the electoral college and challenging those results in courts is narrowing.
What happens if election results are contested?
Analysis ● By Amber Phillips ● Read more »
In a speech of historic dishonesty, Trump tried to reinforce his long-planned effort to retain power
Analysis ● By Philip Bump ● Read more »
Top Republicans are giving Trump a pass on his ‘illegal vote’ claims
Analysis ● By Amber Phillips ● Read more »
What are the odds of Democratic wins in the Georgia runoffs?
Analysis ● By Amber Phillips ● Read more »
What’s the mandate for the next president? It’s harder than it’s ever been to answer that.
Analysis ● By Eugene Scott ● Read more »
In Pennsylvania, a Trump supporter sees his mural in a new light
By Hannah Dreier ● Read more »
In Georgia, a Biden supporter realizes the power of her ballot
By Stephanie McCrummen ● Read more »
What are you curious about in politics?
Read more »
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Election 2020
Updated November 6th at 7:36 am
Visit our Election 2020 hub for the latest news and state-by-state election results.
Still in play: Biden gained a small lead in Georgia early Friday morning. Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania continued to shrink overnight, and Biden’s lead in Arizona has narrowed. An update out of Nevada is expected at noon Eastern time Friday. Here’s where things stand in North Carolina.
Map: Take a closer look at where votes are still being counted across the country.
Key state wins: Trump has won Florida and Texas. Biden has won Wisconsin and Michigan.
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