Jaicee said:
I haven't posted much here since before election day, as I've been mostly just waiting for the data to roll in before chiming in with thoughts. I think there's enough info now though to draw some definite conclusions. -First of all, yes it's clear that Biden won and that this election will be seen as a net gain for the Democrats. However, it also wasn't a Democratic landslide. As of this writing, with approximately 97% of votes counted, Biden has gotten 50.9% of votes that have been tallied to Trump's 47.3%. That's a 3.6% gap and it will likely grow wider as more mail-in ballots are counted. The final margin here will either be comparable to or perhaps even identical to the 3.9% margin by which Obama defeated Romney in 2012, albeit with somewhat different contours. The Democrats have also netted one additional Senate seat (having gained two and lost one in this vote) while the Republicans picked up seven additional House seats. -Both the Democratic and Republican candidates fared better than in 2016. This appears to be a result of 2016 third party and independent voters reverting back to their previous homes after just one cycle away; hence why this outcome so closely resembles the 2012 results. The Kanye West presidency, shockingly, did not materialize. -Contradicting the narrative we see from time to time around VGC, in the media, and other spaces, it turns out that Donald Trump isn't actually the candidate of the American working class and the Democrats the favorite of the wealthy elites. According to the exit poll data, as adjusted for the actual demography of voters, 55% of voters with household incomes below $50,000 voted for Joe Biden, compared to 57% of voters making between $50,000 and $100,000 a year and just 42% of those making over $100,000. In other words, blue collar workers were practically just as likely to vote for Biden as the middle-income suburbanite professionals, while the richest 10% of the population -- essentially the capitalist class -- by contrast, were the only social class that favored Trump in their majority. I point this out mainly to defend my class against those who would imply that the American working class is the real problem with this country; the force leading it astray in a racist and anti-democratic direction. -A major difference between the vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and that for Joe Biden this year is, frankly, white men. According to the aforementioned exit poll data, 38% of white men voted for Biden in this election; up quite a bit from 31% of this same group voting for Clinton four years ago. This difference by itself explains almost all of Biden's higher vote share. Considering that Biden and Clinton are essentially the same candidate but just of different sexes, I really cannot help but speculate that Biden's sex worked to his advantage while Hillary Clinton's worked to her disadvantage. -57% of women voted for Biden versus 42% for Trump. 15-point margin; up from 13 points for Clinton four years ago and 11 points for Obama over Romney in 2012. There is a clear trend toward the Democratic Party here among female voters. -It may also be notable that despite being blatantly pandered to throughout the campaign (the whole "law and order" stuff and such), Trump lost support among white voters compared to 2016. And conversely, Biden fared somewhat worse among voters of color than Hillary Clinton even after nominating a black running mate. I think it all goes to show that maybe, just maybe, much of the public in general -- black, white, brown, whatever -- is less obsessed with capital-R Race than our media landscape is (be it liberal or conservative) and in fact does rather favor "color-blindness" over 100-item checklists. And also, maybe that "demographic destiny" the Democrats keep talking about is bullshit. -Trump doubled his vote share among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender voters compared to 2016 from a measly 14% to 28% while Joe Biden garnered 61% thereof; the lowest share for a Democratic presidential nominee since the demographic was first recorded in 1992. Both with the Republicans actually establishing a proper LGBT outreach organization for the first time and with certain basic issues like marriage equality and adoption rights seeming to be in the rear-view mirror today, it seems that non-heterosexual and transgender voters may become a more competitive demographic going forward. I know I've become more open to voting Republican in the future, under the right circumstances. -That "Generation X problem" that pollsters kept reporting Biden had ever since being nominated? Didn't materialize. He got 52% of the votes among voters 30 to 44 and essentially tied Trump among voters aged 45 to 64. Meanwhile, Biden improved on Clinton's support among younger voters. -Also notable: Biden won both moderate and independent voters, not just self-identified liberals and Democrats. This is just some of the stuff I think is most notable about this election outcome. The bottom line though is that the public has rejected the greatest threat to our democratic system of government we've seen in my lifetime, leaving Trump as only the fourth president in the last century to be defeated in a bid for re-election (the other three having been Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush Sr.). That's gotta be embarrassing for the guy in the White House. It would be funny if it hadn't cost so many people their lives and caused me and so many others so much very real trauma just to watch unfold. | 
