Pessimism.

Nixon had a 30+% support when he resigned.

Apparently, the US has gotten more racist and bigoted since he left office cause Trump has a 40%ish support rating.

Don't forget stupider.

Yeah, Trump’s support has been low-mid 40s basically his entire term. The head-to-head Trump-Biden polls leading up to the election painted a similar picture.

And yet, in the end Trump ended up with about 47% of the 2020 Election vote.

Where the hell did those votes come from?

If one were inclined to solve mysteries in this election, one would start there I think.

The polling wasn’t wrong everywhere (notable example: Georgia), but it was wrong by enough in enough places that it’s a cause for concern. Trump won supposedly 50/50 states like Florida by quite a bit. He came way too close for comfort in states like Wisconsin.

One of the ideas for countering Trump’s voter fraud nonsense leading up to this election is that more accurate polling would improve public trust in election outcomes. There was evidence the 2018 midterm polls were extremely accurate, and a hope that whatever polling errors occurred in 2016 were fixed.

Sadly, that theory was kind of a miss this time.

Hopefully this is some sort of one-off Donald Trump effect because the polls consistently getting it wrong going forward in every presidential election to come is going to be infuriating and yet another thing that gives Righties an excuse to reject the media and reality itself.

I swear I told my friends to not get too comfortable with the polling and that GINORMOUS Biden win that some were predicting.

I’m guilty as charged for predicting a huge Biden win. Not quite this big (map was tongue-in-cheek) but I thought it’d be close.

Not guilty of complacency though. Voted straight-ticket Democrat and encouraged all I knew to do the same.

Yeah, thankfully the scars of 2016 were still with us and nothing was taken for granted. Turnout smashed records.

But Jesus Christ, so did the Rightie turnout. Most votes ever for a sitting President... and most votes ever against.

Somehow managed to be both a unique election and depressingly familiar.

What do you call Biden's 80 million votes? Less than half?

Yes. Pessimist math.

Still counting, but, this is still a lot of votes for Trump.

I know. We got the main thing done which was ejecting Trump. But in other ways it feels like a loss, especially down-ballot.

4 years of the most flagrantly incompetent and deliberately offensive President in modern history, in the middle of a terribly bungled pandemic that’s killed 250,000+ and counting, and a 4% popular vote victory (much narrower in the key battleground states) was the best we could do?

It still left Biden plenty of breathing room, but was apparently not decisive enough of a margin to where Trump felt unable to claim voter fraud and attempt fascist efforts to nullify the result.

Yeah, it feels like a football team who won the game but had 1/4 of the team get injured at the same time. Also, I didn't mention that Biden (or maybe even Harris) will likely be fighting an uphill battle vs the senate, for possibly his entire presidency.

Trump’s defeat was heartening of course

but just as disheartening was the fact that McConnell’s strategy of Senatorial furniture-burning was handsomely rewarded and ratified. As such, expect absolutely zero deviations from plan as a result.

Depending on GA, we’ll likely have to count on occasional defections from the likes of Romney, Collins, Murkowski, and such to get anything at all done.

Pretty much all of those amazingly funded Democratic Senate challengers went kaput.

True.

As an independent, I know everything's not going to be suddenly and magically great with Biden/Harris. I'm guilty of being in the 'they're much better than Trump' camp, which I still do feel in my heart and mind.

Being much better than trump isn't saying much.