Joe Biden Is the President-Apparent
Democrat inexorably zeroes in on 270; party otherwise faces election disappointments
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
In an election contest that
proved startlingly close for
progressive voters eager
to oust President Donald
Trump, former Vice President Joe
Biden seems on course to capture
the White House, with states totaling
253 electoral votes — 17
short of those required for victory
— called for him, versus just 214
for Trump. As Gay City News goes
to press in the early evening of November
4, six states have not yet
been called.
But two of those six — Arizona
and Nevada — give Biden a lead
that he seems likely to hold. Together,
they would deliver the required
additional 17 electoral votes.
With 86 percent of the vote
counted in Arizona, which a Democrat
has not won since 1996, Biden
enjoys a 93,000-vote lead. In order
to overtake the former vice president,
Trump would need to show
a 21-point advantage over him in
a race where Biden is currently up
by more than fi ve points. The Arizona
results have convinced both
the Associated Press and Fox News
to call the state for Biden.
In Nevada, Biden’s lead is far
smaller — less than 8,000 votes
or under one percent, also with
86 percent of the vote counted.
But there, the uncounted vote is
absentee ballots, which were sent
to Democrats by a very wide margin.
No further data is expected
from that state, however, until late
Wednesday evening or more likely
Thursday.
Of the other four uncalled races,
Alaska’s three electoral votes will
go to Trump. The tally in North
Carolina, with 15 electoral votes
has been stalled all day, with Biden
down 1.5 percent or about 77,000
votes, with an estimated fi ve percent
still uncounted. North Carolina
last went Democratic in 2008.
The fi nal two — Pennsylvania
and Georgia, with 20 and 16
electoral votes, respectively — began
the morning after the election
with huge Trump margins that
have declined steadily as urban
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with his running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, on November 4.
areas including Atlanta, Philadelphia,
and Pittsburgh have reported
their numbers. Biden is now down
by under 50,000 votes in Georgia
—which last went Democratic in
1992 — with fi ve percent of the
vote outstanding. In Pennsylvania,
Biden remains down just under
250,000 votes, but he cut his defi cit
by well over 50 percent throughout
Wednesday and 14 percent of the
state votes remains to be counted.
Signifi cantly, Nate Silver of fi vethirtyeight.
com, rates Pennsylvania
as “lean Biden” and Georgia a
“toss-up,” but “lean Biden” if you
force him to pick.
In any event, the combination of
wins in Arizona and Nevada would
make Pennsylvania and Georgia
superfl uous — gravy, as it were.
As the Electoral College drama
plays out, Biden has already accumulated
a popular vote lead of
almost 3.5 million.
Despite the positive news on the
presidential front, in the crucial
battle for control of the US Senate,
Democrats, buoyant about their
chances of a fl ip in the days leading
up to the election, appear unlikely
to achieve that goal.And with
the apparent election of the Biden
ticket, Democrats need a net gain
of only three seats to achieve 50-
50 split that would be resolved by
the vote of the incoming vice president,
California Senator Kamala
Harris.
In an election night that proved
jarring for many Americans who
hoped to avoid a repeat of Trump’s
2016 upset victory, one of the most
surprising results came from exit
polls suggesting that the president
had dramatically improved his
standing with gay, lesbian, bisexual,
and transgender voters. Four
years ago, Hillary Clinton bested
Trump by a 78-14 percent margin
in a contest with several wellknown
minor party candidates.
This year, exit polls showed Biden
earning only 61 percent of the community’s
vote versus a shocking 28
percent for the president — historically
one of the best performances
for a Republican presidential candidate.
Gay City News, analyzing that
exit poll fi nding, recognized that it
was not backed up with comparable
numbers at the individual state
levels. In many states — including
POLITICS
REUTERS/ KEVIN LAMARQUE
large ones like California, Texas,
New York, and Illinois, no breakdown
of the LGBT vote was shown,
and in Florida, arguably the second
most conservative of these big
fi ve states, the break was reported
at 80 to 17 percent in Biden’s favor.
Associated Press, which conducts
the exit polls, did not respond
to a request for comment clarifying
these confounding results. And a
representative from a leading national
LGBTQ advocacy group,
speaking off the record, confi rmed
this newspaper’s doubts about the
quality of the national estimate.
Biden appears to have prevailed
on election day by rebuilding at
least two of three blue wall states
of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania,
that Clinton lost — by
narrow margins in each of the
three — and likely fl ipping Arizona
from its 2016 results and, also
likely, holding Nevada.
Signifi cantly, however, Trump
demonstrated a strong pull with
white voters, who favored him 57
to 42 percent — white women pre-
➤ PRESIDENT-APPARENT, continued on p.20
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