New York Senator Chuck Schumer speaks at a news conference outside an early voting site in New York. Photo / AP
Democrats went into election day hoping to reclaim the White House and majorities in both chambers of Congress in a victory that would demonstrate an unmistakable repudiation of US President Donald Trump and a Republican Party remade in his image.
It didn't work out that way.
More than 12 hours after polls closed, Biden held a narrow lead in some key states with hundreds of thousands of votes yet to be counted, and he has a comfortable advantage in the national popular vote. But there was no clear Democratic wave.
Republicans held key Senate seats that Democrats hoped to flip, and the GOP may ultimately shrink the Democrats' House majority.
And even if Trump were to ultimately lose, the closeness of the presidential contest raised the prospect that a Biden presidency would have difficulty enacting progressive priorities or quickly move past the divisive politics of the Trump era.
If we didn’t have the EC, we’d have avoided all this drama. Democracy is simple: people vote. Count the votes. Whoever gets more wins.
— Tahar (@laseptiemewilay) November 4, 2020
We’re attached to this relic institution that outlived its purpose long ago. Now, it’s becoming a source that feeds instability & polarization
Democrats will move forward "limping and bleeding with a huge warning about the voters they are repelling from the party," Meghan McCain, a Republican who was critical of Trump, predicted on Twitter.
While Trump's critics were deeply disappointed that the hoped-for blue wave never materialised, Biden's allies encouraged the political world to step back and see the big picture. Dan Pfeiffer, a former aide to President Barack Obama, posted a message to Democrats on Medium entitled, "Biden is winning, act like it."
"The Republicans are already trying to neuter his ability to govern by casting aspersions about how he won," Pfeiffer wrote. "We cannot let them do that. The stakes are too damn high."
Worth mentioning that if you stopped counting ballots *right now*, Biden would win with this map. So Trump is reliant on ballots counted after Election Day for his comeback chances. pic.twitter.com/rGQQT3X2Ub
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 4, 2020
Indeed, should Trump lose, no matter the margin, he would be the first incumbent president to fail to win re-election since 1992.
Biden has already flipped two states Trump carried four years ago, Arizona and Wisconsin, and held a modest lead in at least one other, Michigan, as he moved towards rebuilding the Democrats' so-called "Blue Wall."
"Today, the Vice-President will garner more votes than any presidential candidates in history," Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon told reporters. She added: "I feel like we had been abundantly clear that we thought this could be a close race."
Biden's popular vote lead (3 million, 2.2%) just surpassed Clinton's popular vote lead (2.9 million, 2.1%) from 2016.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 4, 2020
Still, polls heading into election day suggested a much better election for Democrats up and down the ballot but clearly missed a surge of support for Trump and Republicans with turnout high across the political spectrum.
Several of the party's once-promising Senate challengers far fell short, despite a deluge of national fundraising support for headliners like Jaime Harrison in South Carolina, Amy McGrath in Kentucky and MJ Hegar in Texas.
Some House freshmen who helped give Democrats a majority in 2018 also lost, victims of stronger-than-expected performances for many Republican challengers. Democrats' gains in metro and suburban areas were matched or offset in many battleground states by a Republican surge in small towns and rural areas.
Not the most likely scenario, but if Biden wins PA, he can afford to lose Arizona *and* Nevada.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 4, 2020
And in a warning sign for Democrats, Trump demonstrated an uptick of support in some black and Latino communities.
"You certainly had a lot of Latinos voting for him in south Texas and following him down the ballot," said Texas Democratic Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa, who started election day with hopes of flipping several congressional districts and gaining control of the Texas state House. Neither happened.
"It's very difficult to understand how there was such a big difference between what the polling was showing and what ultimately came out," he said. "To say it was a surprise is an understatement."
Donald Trump was slammed by international observers for “baseless allegations of systemic fraud.” #Election2020 https://t.co/SoUQzpU7y6
— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) November 4, 2020
The evolving landscape represents a conundrum for a party that has a clearer claim to national majority support than the GOP.
If trends hold, Democrats will have won the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections - with President George W. Bush in 2004 being the lone Republican popular vote winner since his father's landslide victory in 1988.
One of Biden's principal arguments in a crowded Democratic presidential primary campaign was that he could expand Democrats' coalition to include more older voters, independents, and even moderate Republicans.
He appeared to underperform among other key demographics, however, or at least not expand the alliance enough to quash Trump's base and remake Capitol Hill.
Joe Biden did not declare victory in remarks on Wednesday afternoon, but said "I am here to report when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners."https://t.co/E66NHnnFL0
— NPR (@NPR) November 4, 2020
To be sure, Biden performed better than Hillary Clinton four years earlier in states like Iowa, Ohio, and Texas. But he also failed to win any of them. Democrats clung to the hope that Biden might eke out narrow victories in North Carolina and Georgia.
Veteran Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson said it would be short-sighted to call Democrats' performance a failure when they were on track to resurrect the "Blue Wall" — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — while flipping Arizona with a chance to claim Georgia, two states that haven't gone Democratic in presidential elections since the 1990s.
Ferguson noted that Biden was on track to do so while offering "the most progressive agenda of any Democratic nominee" in the modern era.
Election challengers shout “Stop the count” as poll workers count absentee ballots in #Detroit, Michigan in the 2020 general election @washingtonpost #Election2020 pic.twitter.com/nzWfSSX34P
— Salwan Georges (@salwangeorges) November 4, 2020
"The last time an incumbent president was defeated was 28 years ago — 1228 days ago," Ferguson said. "Incumbent presidents don't often lose, and this one is going to lose and lose resoundingly."
He added: "Elections are about where the votes end up, not how you felt while the counting was happening."
Ferguson and Hinojosa agreed that the mixed results suggest Democrats don't have to entertain a fundamental overhaul.
"To make progress we have to stop treating our opponents as enemies"
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 4, 2020
Joe Biden says "we're campaigning as Democrats, but I will govern as an American president"#Election2020 https://t.co/tuWn2iW30A pic.twitter.com/vppmNAyxuB
In Texas, Hinojosa said Trump could hold appeal with Latinos that doesn't translate into long-term party loyalty.
And he said Democrats hamstrung themselves by going months not canvassing in-person because of the coronavirus pandemic, while the GOP's field operation reached voters directly.
"I'm not saying it was the wrong decision given the situation, but it affected us," he said. "We were taking a knife into a gunfight."
- AP
Iran has vowed to respond, claiming its enriched uranium wasn’t destroyed.