Election Night Hot Takes

It’s 1:30 a.m. on Wednesday and here’s a surprise for those who believe in the “science” of political polling: The presidency is within reach of both President Trump and Joe Biden.

It looks like Biden may have 220 electoral votes to Trump’s 213.

Frankly, the fact that Trump is this close is astonishing. The president didn’t run only against Joe Biden. Trump ran against The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC and CBS. Every one of these “news” outlets was relentlessly critical of Trump, cheered his impeachment and the Mueller investigation, refused to cover the Hunter Biden scandal and had been polishing Trump’s political obituary for months. 

He also ran against social media. Both Facebook and Twitter had their thumbs on the scale for Biden as they censored conservative voices.

With so many mail-in votes to count, we were warned that there might be no clear winner on Election Night. Turns out, that was one of the few predictions this year that was correct.

The Blue Wave never materialized.

The Biden landslide didn’t happen.

Lindsey Graham was not in a “tight race,” after all.

And Democrats are unlikely to take control of the U.S. Senate. Thank God. 

Once again, many polls were wildly wrong. Last week, for instance, an ABC/Washington Post poll had Biden up by 17 points in Wisconsin. As I write this, Trump is ahead in the Badger state. Quinnipiac recently had Biden up by 5 in Ohio, but as I write this, Trump is up by 8. That’s a huge swing.

When I checked yesterday morning, the prince of polling, Nate Silver, was giving Trump only a 10 percent chance of winning.

Perhaps it’s time that Mr. Silver and all of the other charlatans in the business learn to code.

On the local scene, there was discouraging news. Virginia election officials decided to knock off at 11 p.m., leaving many votes uncounted. That is unconscionable. They should have had teams of workers ready to tabulate the vote. All night, if need be.

Still, it appears Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer won re-election despite an obscene infusion of money into the coffers of his opponent. In fact, all of the incumbents on city council appear to have comfortable leads unless there are many, many more votes out there. Norfolk and Portsmouth voted to roll the dice on casino gambling.

We’ll have more tomorrow. Perhaps we’ll even have a winner in the presidential race. Then again, maybe not.

Seems like only yesterday they told us it wouldn’t be close.