We don’t believe that Donald Trump will win all of the states in which postal votes are still being counted – Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Indeed, it is possible that he will win none of them.
But here is a counter-factual map for this Friday morning – or pre-factual map if you prefer – showing how he could still win, when the process of voting, counting, legal challenge and whatever else may be up America’s sleeve is eventually complete (courtesy of the Cook Report, and not taking into account pecularities in Maine and Nebraska).
And here below is another pre-factual map, or counter-factual, or whatever you want to call it – which shows the best result for Biden now apparently possible.
These uncertainties and others help to explain why we have kept our counsel about the results so far – since we have a difference here between a potential narrow Trump and a comfortable Biden one. And the electoral college result is only the beginning, rather than the end, of any probe into what actually happened, and is happening.
As Ben Roback wrote on this site on Wednesday, the Blue Wave that some opinion polls suggested has not materialised. It is very early to draw more conclusions, other than that the President’s intention to contest the result was clearly pre-planned (Ben has been writing about it in his columns for some time).
If Trump has any evidence for his claims, he hasn’t offered it yet – and the Republican Party institutionally is keeping its distance from them. America is deeply divided on culture, Trump himself being both a symptom and a cause of these differences, and if Biden offers much other than a better yesterday we’ve yet to see it. Let’s see what happens next.