9:11 a.m.
Clare Malone greets us with “Welcome to the big show,” and a reminder that the FiveThirtyEight model will be updated throughout the night, once states are called, in a way not entirely different than the infamous New York Times “needle.” To remind you, here is what the final FiveThirtyEight model looked like, heading into Election Day.
For the sake of comparison, here’s what it looks like now, as of Wednesday morning, six days before the 2020 election.
Malone finishes the 2016 intro post saying, “We’re here through the bitter end, the early morning hours, the last hurrah, so stay with us, too. Election results love company.” We shall see about that.
10:07 a.m.
Farai Chideya informs us that “Early voting patterns don’t tell us who will win the election, but they certainly reveal that Americans in battleground states want to have their voices heard. We now have tallies from several that show record-breaking early voting turnout, particularly among Latinos in some states.” I remember reading this and thinking, “Wow, Trump’s going to get stomped.”
11:01 a.m.
Malone pops in to mention that during an interview with a Florida radio station that morning, Trump said he would not accept the election results “if I think there’s something that was wrong.” Expect a lot of this on Tuesday, all day. So much so that I doubt Malone will find it particularly noteworthy to even mention this time.
11:56 a.m.
One thing you can be sure people will be keeping an eye on Tuesday: betting markets. Betting markets in politics are notoriously terrible barometers — you could have made a lot of money if you’d invested in Biden winning the 2020 nomination, which the markets insisted would not happen — but Andrew Flowers shows up to tell us that there has been a massive recent uptick in bettors’ support for Hillary Clinton. On Election Day morning alone, her odds increased by four percentage points, to 83%, far above what Silver and FiveThirtyEight had her at. She would make it up to 89% by 7 p.m. before… going down very far, very fast. For what it’s worth: Betting markets currently have the Biden-Trump race at 50–50.
12:10 p.m.
Carl Bialik hedges a little, noting that just because FiveThirtyEight got every state (and Washington D.C.) right in 2012 does not mean it will happen this time. “On average, across all our simulations in our final polls-only forecast, we ‘miss’ about five or six states,” he writes. He is correct. They did end up missing a few states: Five, in fact. Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, and Wisconsin. All five went to Trump.
1:30 p.m.
Harry Enten (now at CNN) notes that we are 3.5 hours from the first exit polls, but warns that exit polls are often wrong, using the example of 2004 when exit polls pointed strongly to a John Kerry victory. “We won’t know who is going to win until the votes are actually counted,” Enten writes. “Don’t believe in reports you read online that supposedly give you a keen insight of who is going to win. No one knows.” I suspect this did not stop anyone from obsessing over exit polls in 2016, and it won’t stop them from doing it this year either.
2:54 p.m.
Your first warning sign: Malone points out that turnout seems to be down in North Carolina, particularly among Black people. The North Carolina GOP sends out a press release praising the low turnout and the “crumbling Obama coalition.” Trump would end up beating Hillary by three percentage points, expanding on Mitt Romney’s win there in 2012. The only Democrats to win in North Carolina in the last 50 years are Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Obama in 2008.
4:20 p.m.
For all the talk of Trump’s obsession with the stock market, it’s worth remembering that in 2016, Wall Street was rooting for her, not him. Ben Casselman, at market close, notes “investors seem to like whatever signs they’re seeing. The major U.S. stock indexes all ended the day higher … some recent research has found that investors are rooting for a Clinton win.” Shortly after the election, the market tanked, but, obviously, it very much recovered.
4:35 p.m.
It still seems strange that there was an election with Donald Trump on the ballot where he wasn’t the most polarizing figure, but in 2016, as Jody Avirgan wrote, “I wonder if a case could be made that the animating force on the GOP side has been a white-hot hatred of Clinton and the establishment she’s seen to represent. We know, for instance, that more Trump voters are motivated to vote against Clinton than for their own candidate. It has certainly felt like this election is a referendum on Trump, but maybe Trump is simply the most extreme standard bearer for what was going to be a referendum on Clinton all along.” This has been accepted as fact in the last four years, but when Avirgan said it at 4:35 p.m. of Election Day 2016, he had to couch it in “I wonder if a case could be made.” It turns out that, yes, the case can be made.
5:13 p.m.
The first exit polls come out. They show Clinton ahead, but mostly they show that everybody hates both candidates. “Only 44% have a favorable rating of Clinton, but an even lower 37% have a favorable view of Trump,” writes Harry Enten. “59% of voters say Clinton is not honest, 65% say Trump isn’t honest.” That Biden is not as hated as Hillary Clinton was—it’s not even close—is widely considered his ace in the hole for this election. (Along with, you know, all the people who have died of the coronavirus.) It would be a surprise to see anything close to those numbers in this year’s exit polls.
6:53 p.m.
Silver hasn’t shown up much yet in the live blog, but he pops up right before polls close in Florida to note, “If Clinton wins [Florida], her probability of winning the Electoral College would shoot up to 93% from 71%, according to our election night model. And if Trump were to win it, his chances would increase to 59% from 29%.” You should expect him to post something almost exactly like this, at about exactly the same time, on Tuesday. It’ll terrify me just as much Tuesday as it did then.
7:03 p.m.
Our first calls of the evening: Kentucky and Indiana to Trump, Vermont to Clinton. Silver chimes in with some very happy news for Hillary fans: “exit polls in Georgia imply a close race there, with Trump leading only about 48–47 according to preliminary exit polls put out by CBS News.” Then 20 minutes later, Enten adds, “I’m looking at returns from two major counties in Florida: Duval and Palm Beach. In the early vote, Clinton is doing better than the amount that Obama won by overall in those counties in 2012. In Palm Beach, she’s running 7 percentage points ahead. If that holds, it’s going to be a very long night for Trump.”
Everybody now!
8:10 p.m.
Right about now, the first bit of panic starts to creep in. Enten says, “Trump has just jumped into the lead in Florida by 12,000 votes,” and Casselman warns, “Voters who are most concerned about immigration went for Trump by a whopping 38 points, 68–30.”
8:36 p.m.
Silver starts to waver a little bit himself. “One thing seems fairly clear, as we wait for the first swing state dominoes to fall: If Trump wins the Electoral College tonight, and it remains something of a long shot, it’s going to be with narrow wins in a large number of swing states instead of something more emphatic. And it’s going to be a very long night.” As it turns out, it wouldn’t be that late of a night. But not for the reasons anyone thought.
8:43 p.m.
Uh-oh. Silver: “Betting markets — and The Upshot’s statistical model — now show Trump as slightly more likely than not to win Florida, expecting that he may pick up just enough votes in the Florida Panhandle and southwestern Florida to make up for what will be further Clinton gains in Broward County and Miami-Dade County.” When experts remind you to watch Florida — which has famously gotten good and fast at counting votes in the last 20 years — this is why. Some 90 minutes ago, it was all “it’s going to be a very long night for Trump.” Now? Now the Times thinks Trump is going to win Florida … which makes him likely to win the whole thing.
This is the 90-minute stretch that changes everybody’s tone.
9:05 p.m.
Dan Hopkins lets us know that Hillary is losing Virginia, a state that Obama won easily. It will turn out that Hillary wins Virginia, but at the moment, it’s another sign: Things are starting to collapse. And Hillary’s still behind in Florida. Flowers notes that betting markets are suddenly shifting in Trump’s favor… and that global financial markets are starting to drop dramatically.
9:25 p.m.
More dominoes fall. Exit polls out of Michigan show a surge of rural voters, and a Trump lead, in a state 538 had projected as having a 79% chance of a Hillary victory. Silver says, “It’s a state that ought to be making Democrats nervous.”
9:35 p.m.
Time to start drinking a little more heavily: Bialik notes that “Clinton’s firewall is starting to crumble.” Silver says betting markets are at 50–50 and reminds readers “not to pay too much attention to exit polls next time around,” another piece of advice we’re all going to ignore on Tuesday.
9:50 p.m.
Silver sounds the alarm. “It’s very hard for Clinton to win the Electoral College if she loses Michigan along with Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida—none of which look particularly safe for her right now.” She would in fact lose all of those states. Those of us clinging to the “73% chance Clinton wins” graphic that’s on the side of FiveThirtyEight’s site at 9:50 get water splashed in our face as well by Silver: “Clinton isn’t really a 73% favorite right now — Trump holds narrow leads in many swing states, some of which are likely to be called for him eventually, so her actual odds are probably lower.”
10:25 p.m.
Trump officially wins Ohio. For the first time since the night began (and since the race began), the 538 forecast installs Trump as the favorite to win the electoral college, with a 55% chance.
10:32 p.m.
Enten encourages people to go to bed right now, as if sleeping is possible: “Right now, Trump leads in both Michigan and Wisconsin. If those leads hold, I don’t really see a path for Clinton to win. … Even if she does win either Michigan or Wisconsin, though, Trump is the favorite.” Five minutes later, he points out that even with the Milwaukee votes tallied in Wisconsin, she’s still three points behind.
10:59 p.m.
Bialik writes a headline on his short blog post that we’ll be hearing a lot about in the next four years, and will still be obsessing over the week before Election Day 2020: “Polling Error Has Become The New Normal.”
11:09 p.m.
North Carolina is called for Trump. “It is the first really big shoe to drop against Clinton, since it deprives her of her best backup plan if she loses a Midwestern or Rust Belt state,” writes Silver. “Now Clinton has to run the table in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.” She, uh, wouldn’t.
11:21 p.m.
Enten says the words that still sound surreal four years later: “I’m looking at this map right now, and … if you aren’t a Trump fan, you better start coming to terms with the fact he will probably be president.”
It is worth noting that it is not, in fact, that late into the night. If we’re all this certain who’s going to win at 11:21 p.m. this Tuesday… it’s going to feel like it went incredibly fast.
11:33 p.m.
Florida is officially called for Trump, and Fox News calls Wisconsin. Bialik quotes a Texas Democratic congressman who, earlier in the week, said, about Trump possibly winning, “It’s never talked about in much depth or detail because the guy is such a joke. We can’t fathom it and therefore are not planning for it.”
12:50 a.m.
The liveblog updates start to slow, perhaps because the staff has been screaming into a mirror like the rest of us for the last 90 minutes. But Enten tosses out one Hail Mary: “The Clinton campaign is basically hanging on by a thread at this point. She needs to pull out Michigan and Pennsylvania and then hit one of two scenarios: 1. Win Alaska and New Hampshire or 2. Win Arizona. That’s going to be extremely difficult. It’s not impossible, but it’s a straight, if not royal, flush.” I specifically remember reading this update and thinking, “Oh, fuck off. Don’t humor me.” Harry Enten is great and I meant no offense, Harry. It was a long night.
2:08 a.m.
Even though Pennsylvania has now been called for Trump, TV reports say Hillary has no plans to concede. But 20 minutes later, Micah Cohen drops the hammer:
Five minutes later, Hillary concedes.
2:52 a.m.
Silver has one last update, which sits atop the live blog, four years later. “It’s the most shocking political development of my lifetime.” And he does this for a living.
All told, going back and reading Silver and company four years later provided a few key lessons:
1. The FiveThirtyEight staff are all very good at their jobs and were extremely cautious, no matter how many barbs you’ve sent their way over the last four years.
2. There is no moment on Election Night when it’s obvious what’s going to happen. This whole election turned in, essentially, 90 minutes.
3. Exit polls are pointless and wrong and you should ignore them.
4. Joe Biden is a lot better off at this point than Hillary Clinton was heading into Election Day.
5. No one knows anything.
6. So vote.