95-100% that Biden is our next president. No deep dive into the stats and polls, just general impressions:
- Biden gets back WI, MI, and PA and IA. 2016 Trump was about as weak as a state winner can be in these areas. Super vulnerable in all four of these states.
- Trump keeps OH to make things semi-interesting early in the evening. Here, Trump can afford to lose three or four percentage points from 2016 and still carry the state.
- Biden wins NC in a mild surprise. In contrast to Ohio, if Trump loses a percentage point here, the state probably flips blue.
- Trump keeps GA, but it's startlingly close. Just a hunch -- Excluding Ross Perot's vote-splitting, 2016 Trump was the weakest Republican candidate in Georgia since 1980 when Carter won his home state. Trump won by 5 points in 2016; I'll bet he squeaks by Biden by less than one this time around. It'll be news.
- Trump keeps TX, but the surprise is he only hovers around the 50% mark, with Biden coming in north of 48% 46%. Similar to Georgia, you have to go back to 1976 to find a GOP candidate that performed as weak in Texas as 2016 Trump. [NOTE: I do think Texas is (very) slowly turning blue, but 2020 Biden getting 48% seems a little too ambitious on second thought. 2008 Obama and 2016 H. Clinton both got to 43% and change ... I can see Biden bumping that to 46%]
- Biden flips FL back to the Dems, becoming the first candidate since 1988 to get more than 53% of the state's vote. The newscasters hold out for Central Time Zone Escambia County before calling FL to maintain viewer interest. H. Clinton lost to Trump by 1.2% while picking up over 200,000 more Florida votes than either of Obama's runs. Biden's got room to move here, whereas Trump barely scraped past 49% in 2016 and will lose a few points off of that.
- Biden flips AZ to put the final nail in Trump's 2020 run. 2/3 of Arizona's popular vote is in Maricopa County. In that county, 3rd-parties took just under 10% of the vote in a election that Trump won by less than 3%. In November, the 3rd party vote drops and Maricopa swings Democratic. Pretty similar to Florida. 2016 Hillary outvoted both of Obama's runs by over 130,000 votes. 2016 Trump stumbled to 48%. Not a state Republicans can take for granted in 2020.