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

Although Trump is doing slightly better among Black voters in 2020 than he did in 2016, Biden will likely still win Black voters overall by a huge margin. The Black vote isn’t a monolith, though. According to our analysis of likely voters, Black voters 45 and older are much more supportive of Biden than Black voters under 45 are. Our analysis found voters under 45 are still overwhelmingly supporting Biden, but the age gap among Black Democrats is noteworthy.

Why does Biden do slightly worse (and Trump slightly better) among younger Black voters? According to the African American Research Collaborative poll, Black voters under 30 are less likely to think about their vote as support for the “Black community,” which could signal that they express lower levels of linked fate than their elders. Linked fate is the idea that Black Americans vote as a unified bloc in part because their history of being discriminated against in America has made them view their fate in a collective way. In the absence of strong feelings of linked fate, younger Black voters might feel less affinity for the Democratic Party. That same poll also found that Black voters under 30 were less likely than their elders to agree that the Democratic Party is welcoming to Black Americans, or to trust congressional Democrats to “do what is best” for Black people.

Happy Election Day! This afternoon I’ve been tracking reports of technical glitches with voting equipment, and while there have been a handful, that’s to be expected.

A few technical difficulties happen every election. (I wrote a whole story about it!) As Lawrence Norden, director of the election reform program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, told me: “No election is perfect. There are always going to be some technical problems.” And no, it’s not evidence of a hack or some kind of meddling. It’s just the reality when we have 10,000 different jurisdictions, all using different technology on the same day, and some voters using new equipment for the very first time.

There have been timely, effective fixes in each of the cases I’ve found so far. In Franklin County, Ohio, election officials weren’t able to sync electronic poll books with an online database, so they switched to paper poll books to check in voters. A similar fix was made in Spalding County, Georgia after their voting machines went down — voters were able to cast ballots on paper until the machines were back up and running.

And these few examples are the outliers. The vast majority of polling places today have had no problems. Instead, there have been lots of reports of no lines and smooth sailing:

Even if Trump doesn’t win a second term as president, one crucial part of his legacy is already cemented: He reshaped the Supreme Court. In just four years, he’s successfully nominated three justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. All three are relatively young and very conservative, and could anchor a conservative majority on the court for years to come.

Barrett’s ascent to the court this fall was one of the speediest Supreme Court confirmations in modern history, and also the closest to an election. We don’t know exactly how conservative she’ll be, but it seems very likely that by replacing the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September, Barrett’s presence will dramatically shift the court’s center of gravity.

And her swift confirmation could make a difference very soon. That’s especially true if post-election litigation makes it to the Supreme Court. Either way, though, Barrett will be faced almost immediately with a docket of extremely consequential cases — and she and Trump’s other nominees will be shaping law in the U.S. long after this election cycle.