Biden Is Projected To Be The President-Elect. Here’s How It All Went Down.

So here’s a tricky issue: The CDC issued new guidelines on Sunday clarifying that people who are actively in quarantine after a positive COVID-19 test can go to the polls, in person, to vote. Obviously, this is not an ideal situation. But it’s definitely one that some voters are liable to face today, as COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing around the country. The big takeaway, I think, is less, “Boy what a good idea! There’s no risk here at all!” and more a statement reminding you that your right to vote exists no matter what your health status.

This is, in other words, one of those situations where values and science have to coexist, and people might make scientifically less-than-ideal choices in the service of their ideals. And there are steps you can take to make this choice safer, if it’s one you have to make. Besides the usual mask and distancing, the CDC also recommends sick voters let poll workers know their status when they arrive at their voting location. That will enable poll workers to take extra precautions — like limiting the amount of time a sick person has to spend around other voters. (Thanks to reader Candler Hunt for asking about this!)

After the 2016 election, Trump and other Republicans were eager to cast the results — which included Trump losing the popular vote — as a mandate for their policy agenda. This time around, whoever wins is almost sure to do the same, especially if he takes office after a protracted and partisan battle over the results. Why? My research on presidential mandate claims suggests that presidents rely on stories about election results to justify their actions precisely when their legitimacy is in question or when they’re on the defensive politically.

This year, there’s been a lot of focus from the two campaigns on religious voters, and relatively little emphasis on people who aren’t religious. But that doesn’t mean religiously unaffiliated voters can’t — or won’t — make a big difference this election cycle. When I last checked in on religious subgroups, people with no religious affiliation were strongly in Biden’s camp.

Overall, according to a Pew survey from late September and early October, 71 percent of religiously unaffiliated people were supporting Biden, and only 22 percent were supporting Trump. The skew toward Biden was less pronounced among people who identify as “nothing in particular” (62 percent for Biden, 31 percent for Trump), but self-identified agnostics (79 percent for Biden, 15 percent for Trump) and atheists (88 percent for Biden, 7 percent for Trump) were overwhelmingly leaning toward Biden.

Those strong levels of support are despite very little outreach to religiously unaffiliated voters from the Biden campaign. As Daniel Cox and I wrote a few months ago, that’s in part because religiously unaffiliated people are hard to organize politically — and it can still be tricky for candidates to openly appeal to the unaffiliated without alienating religious voters in the process. But this is a large and growing group — and it’s likely to be a huge chunk of this year’s Democratic coalition. So it’s a demographic worth watching, because Democratic candidates may start more explicitly reaching out to religiously unaffiliated voters in the future.