Karl Rove’s sober assessment of the 2020 Elections in the WSJ, Biden Had No Election Coattails:
Major Polls in 2020, Like In 2016, Were Completely Off The Mark
Despite press declarations that President Trump (who led in none of the 80 national polls conducted since Labor Day) didn’t have a chance, he barnstormed the country…. The president scored surprising victories in places where many had written him off, like Florida, Iowa and Ohio. Now that Michigan has been called for Joe Biden, up 1.2 points with 3% to go, the race comes down to six states.
No Systematic Election Fraud
The counting of the remaining mail-in ballots is under the control of local election boards. Each state has its own structure and process, but both parties will be involved in conducting and witnessing the counts. When there are attempts to rig the outcome, every candidate and both parties have speedy access to the courts. This is as it should be, since there is nothing more important to our democracy than free, fair and accurate elections. There are suspicious partisans across the spectrum who believe widespread election fraud is possible. Some hanky-panky always goes on, and there are already reports of poll watchers in Philadelphia not being allowed to do their jobs. But stealing hundreds of thousands of votes would require a conspiracy on the scale of a James Bond movie. That isn’t going to happen.
No Blue Wave: Republicans Make Gains In House
The race for the White House wasn’t Election Day’s only story. In the battle for the U.S. Senate, Republicans appear to have pulled off what a few weeks ago looked nearly impossible. They likely keep their majority, surviving a giant flood of Democratic money. No Republican in a competitive race had anything close to the tens of millions of dollars that individual Democratic opponents hauled in. But elections are about more than money.