I’ll start out politely. If you still have a campaign sign up for any candidate for any office in your front yard stop being a tool and go that that thing down. Yes, Virginia, the election is over. And be responsible, those signs are recyclable you know.
Okay, now let’s all sit down and have our physicis, err, civics lessons. The election is over. The counting may not be and guess what, it almost never ever is by now in any year. That’s because there are always recanvases and audits, sometimes recounts, and election boards have to review all of this before any count can be certified. The chances of mis-counts happening are pretty slim. Occasionally they do and sometimes between projection, final count, and certified count 1, or 2 votes might swing. Pretty important stuff for the dogcatcher at Dog Patch, voter population 4. Not so important when we are talking about 150 million voters. Close votes sometimes trigger automatic recounts, or often induce apparent losers to petition for a recount. The information clearinghouse Ballotpedia reviewed 4,687 statewide general elections and noted than recounts were ordered 27 times. Of those 3 resulted in a change in the apparent winner and in those three cases the initial margin of apparent victory was 161 votes or less.
Here’s a fact of life. Incumbents don’t always win. Even Presidential incumbents. In the United States thirteen times before this year the incumbent President failed to win reelection beginning with America’s very second President. In 1912 William Howard Taft finished third in a 3 way race in his reelection! This is not an American phenomenon. Across the globe incumbent Presidents have lost in reelection attempts outside the U. S. over 60 times since Taft’s third place finish.
If the votes of the 2020 election stand as they are currentry counted, with Joe Biden pulling in more than 51% of the popular vote cast, this is not a particularly close race. That’s not particularly uncommon. Before this year popular vote winner failed to receive more 50% of the votes cast eighteen times although not all if then were close. The most recent close race was the 2000 Bush vs Gore election with George W. Bush defeating Al Gore in the electoral college by 1 vote but losing the popular vote to Gore by 500,000 out of approximately 102 million votes cast (48.4% to 47.9%). In 1960 with Kennedy vs Nixon although John Kennedy had a comfortable majority of 84 electoral votes, Richard Nixon won electors in 26 states to 22 for Kennedy (Harry F. Byrds won 2 states) and the popular vote difference between Kennedy and Nixon was 113,000 out of about 69 million votes cast (49.72% 49.55%). In 1876 Hayes ve Tilden the popular vote went to Samuel Tilden although Rutherford B. Hayes won in the electoral college by one vote. In 1824 in a 4 way race John Quincy Adams lost the popular vote to Andrew Jackson by less than 45,000 votes, neither candidate receive a majority of electoral votes and the President was determine by a vote in the House of Representatives which was won by Adams by a single vote. (The popular vote results were 41.4% Jackson, 30.9% Adams, 25.2% combined Crawford and Clay although not all states held general elections for President.) Not all close popular vote victories resulted in electoral college nail biters and some large electoral college wins were determined by quite small popular vote margins. Some electoral college votes cannot even by compared to popular vote because until 1828 not all states held elections for president. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S.Constitution specified the states would elect the president but bow the states determined for whom each would cast their vote was left to the states themselves. Five times electoral college victories were scored by popular vote losers, most recently in 2016 when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 77 electors yet receiving 2.75 million less popular votes. Others include George W. Bush and John Quincy Adams already mentioned. In 1888 Benjamin Harrison defeated incumbent Grover Cleveland by 2 electors while losing the popular vote by 9,500 votes. Twelve years earlier Rutherford B. Hayes took the electoral college by a margin of 65 votes while losing the popular vote to Samuel Tilden by 110,000 votes cast. Did anybody ever win all available electoral votes? Actually yes, twice. George Washington and George Washington.
What does all this tell us? A couple things. We can sit around all day, all week, all year crunching numbers looking for who won what when and by how much and the answer still comes out the same. The election is over. Let’s move on. And there hasn’t been a George Washington since George Washington.
Oh, and go clean up those yard signs.
The Real Reality Show Blog 
Brilliantly said; amazing information. And yes, this is all getting old quite quickly.
Thank you! I can’t tell you when I was last described as brilliant. I may print that out and hang it on my wall!!!
Great information — thank you for collecting it all. I keep hoping people will finally listen to facts. But then I also keep hoping my neighbor across the street will take down his Trump flag. 😉
Thank you for reading! I fear fact listening isn’t being taught anymore and the ones in charge now clearly must have skipped school on the day it was way back then.
My sister proudly told me that she had bought a Trump tree ornament. And I had to say “oh, cool” for the survival of all mankind. You don’t want to unleash the Kraken😑
You have a future in the diplomatic corps!
LMAO!!!