November 12, 2020

Biden Now Leads the Popular Vote by More Than 5 Million

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President-elect Joe Biden’s popular vote lead over President Trump has grown to 5.29 million, according to the Cook Political Report.

Vote counting is still underway, but Biden thus far leads the popular vote contest by 3.4 percentage points. The former vice president currently has at least 279 electoral votes—more than the 270 needed for victory. With North Carolina likely to go to Trump and Biden leading in Georgia and Arizona (some outlets have already called Arizona for Biden), Biden could see his total grow to 306 electoral votes.

Biden’s wide margins of victory in both methods of counting renders Trump’s claims of having been reelected particularly ridiculous. And while Biden ultimately won a majority of electoral votes, the close contests in key swing states have further emphasized the advantage that Republicans have in the Electoral College—and have fueled calls for getting rid of that system altogether.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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