I’ve mentioned this a few times. I will once more. In elections like this when all the motion seems to be in one direction, when the margins are fairly large, when one side’s strongholds are suddenly in contention the party with what looks like the lead tends to over-perform. ‘Tends’ … so tends to happen more frequently than not except when it doesn’t, which is a decent amount of the time. This is what I would say, based on experience and history, if I were indifferent to the outcome and not deeply scarred, as so many are, by the experience of 2016. We saw this in 1980. We saw it in 2008.

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Breathe.

Folks, it’s been a bruising, bruising evening so far. What looked like a possible Biden blowout is certainly not turning out that way. It seems like Florida, Texas and probably North Carolina are all going to President Trump. It feels a lot like 2016. But I want to stress that in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, most of the Democratic votes don’t seem to have been counted yet. At least the particular counties I’m seeing make it look like Biden is in a good position to win these three states. Outside of the Southeast there are many counties across the country where Biden has improved the margins over Clinton in 2016. Meanwhile Biden appears to be winning Arizona, though that’s not quite certain yet.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But the dynamics of pandemic voting have totally upended number-counters’ ability to make sense of the results. In a way it doesn’t matter. In most cases, it doesn’t really matter if there are premature predictions. The results will be what they are. But it is continuing to create all sorts of seesaw, roller-coastering results and non-results, results that turn out not to be results. Ohio and North Carolina were looking good for Democrats until they weren’t. But now North Carolina looks at least a bit less than certain again. For reasons I didn’t quite understand people were giving Trump Georgia — but without waiting for the big cities and especially Atlanta to report. Now Georgia’s back up in the air. Fox News called Arizona for Biden but no one else has followed them. Now that seems less than certain. It’s all over the place. I stick to what I said: patience, count the votes, I’m very cautiously optimistic.

Okay, my friends, it’s 1 AM on the East Coast. I’ve tried to get as clear a sense as I can of the remaining states or rather the remaining states that will determine the outcome of this election. I’d rather be Joe Biden than Donald Trump.

President Trump’s statement – still underway – is a disgrace. He’s basically making the argument that we’ve heard predicted for weeks: ‘I was winning and then suddenly something happened and now they’re stealing it from me.’ It’s a pretty close paraphrase.

He’s now openly calling it a fraud and saying he won.

This statement makes me think that the Trump campaign thinks it’s losing.

There was so much that was ominous in that brief speech by the President. But here’s maybe the most. This is such a shocking statement that you might think it would be some turning point where President Trump has just gone too far. And yet, this is not surprising. This is not some shocking departure from the President we’ve known for these four years. And yet it’s clear that at least close to enough people voted for his reelection.

As the morning greets us, there are reasons for cautious optimism that Joe Biden will secure an electoral college victory. It was a very topsy turvy night for those who didn’t stay up for the whole thing. (Quite against my will I am still up from last night. Tried to sleep; failed; pulled out my iPad again to see things shifting around 4 AM.) One of the weird dynamics of the last 12 hours is that there was very little clear analysis of what the initial returns meant. Cable networks treated Ohio as a possible Biden pick up and a harbinger of midwestern strength for Biden. It ended up being a decisive Trump win. Georgia was portrayed as part of the southeastern sweep even though for most of the evening most of metro Atlanta and other urban areas had only reported a comparatively few votes. Biden may have the slightest, slightest of advantages in the remaining counting there now. I’m not entirely sure why this was the case. Going from normal returns counting to layering on uncertain mixes of mail-in, early and election day votes with decisive partisan skews is a bit like going from 3 to 4 dimensions. It’s complicated. Still, in cable network commentary it seemed to go out the window. I stuck to my list of numbers crunchers.

For the first time Joe Biden now has leads in states which add up to 270 electoral votes (including Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada). And outstanding votes suggest the margins in those states – while still very tight – are likely to grow.

I am a big believer in nuance. Broad strokes are dangerous, limiting and do little to advance productive societal conversations or close gaps or fend off the spread of disinformation.