It’s Election Day on the calendar. Polling places opened 53 minutes ago across most of the state and polls have been open for one to two hours for the 47.6 percent of the U.S. population that lives in the Eastern time zone.
But Election Day has already happened for most voters. As of last evening, just under 100 million U.S voters have already cast their ballots – a number that represents approximately 78 percent of the total votes cast in 2016.
In Texas, 57.3 percent of registered voters have already voted. That’s just shy of the 59.4 percent total turnout of registered voters in the 2016 election.
What these numbers portend for Texas and for the country is turnout that will eclipse the previous high-water mark set in 1960, when 62.8 percent of the voting age population turned out to vote for Richard Nixon or John F. Kennedy.
All eyes on six states
In all likelihood, Joe Biden will win the popular vote no matter how the election is ultimately decided. But U.S. presidents are not chosen by popular vote. They are chosen by 51 separate and discreet state elections. For most of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, the results are already baked in.
But six states are pivotal. Those states are Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. Of those six, the two likely bellwethers are Florida and Pennsylvania. Fortunately for those who have to go to bed early, both are in the Eastern time zone and will be among the first to report results.
Pennsylvania is pretty much a “must win” for Joe Biden. The same can be said of Florida for Donald Trump.
According to the Real Clear Politics averages as of this morning, Biden is narrowly ahead in all six of these most-watched states with the exception of North Carolina, where Donald Trump holds a two tenths of a point lead.
The polls
The polls got it wrong in 2016. Team Trump is hoping that the polls are wrong again. There are reasons for such hope. The simple fact is that the science of polling hasn’t caught up with the way consumers now live their lives. Most polls still rely on telephone interviews. However, most voters no longer have a listed landline telephone number. This fact has greatly complicated all forms of consumer research, including political polling.
The simple fact is that the sample that is available to the polling organizations for a cost and on a time frame that is feasible under traditional polling methodology is no longer representative of the population.
It is quite possible that the brand name national polls – which all show Biden to be anywhere from slightly to comfortably ahead – will get it wrong again in 2020.
Our prediction
My head – driven by available data – tells me that Joe Biden is going to win. My gut – driven by what I have seen from the two campaigns – tells me that all of the energy favors Donald Trump.
And that’s how I’m calling it.
Be here tomorrow at this same time and let’s see how I did.