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US Election Night will be marred by turbulence, chaos

Voters wait in line to cast their early ballots at Miami Beach City Hall in Miami Beach, Florida on October 20, 2020. (AFP photo)

By Stephen Lendman

The rhetoric that Trump may not leave office if he loses the election, simply it makes no sense whatsoever. When he makes comments like: "We'll see what happens." He's very concerned about maybe coming out on election night with a lead, maybe even a substantial lead, and then the delay in counting mail-in ballots, which can take days, maybe even weeks, who knows.

There will be an avalanche of mail-in ballots far more than any of the previous US elections. I saw one statistic that said half or more than half of Biden's supporters are voting by mail, but something like 80-85 percent voting in person which means how it will go on election night should be win for Trump. We have to wait for all those other ballots to be counted.

Some states allow ballots to be counted before Election Day, but a lot of them do not so that the results of the November 3 presidential election will not be known on election night. It could be a scenario for an awful lot of turbulence and chaos, or whatever.

But when the final votes are in, Trump can huff and moan, if he loses. If he loses you can bet he will do that. He can take the case to the Supreme Court and ask them to decide, but in the end when all is said and done if Biden wins and Trump loses, he will leave. He won't have to be forced out, but the cops will come in and drag him out, or the CIA, or the military or whatever. He will leave, but he certainly will not leave quietly. I would absolutely say that.

I don't know whether Biden will win or not. He may. He’s way ahead in the polls, but the polls can be very deceiving. My first job after getting an MBA in 1960 was doing survey research. Well, I did for clients, and they wanted facts. They didn't want a lot of rubbish that a lot of survey research comes out. They want facts to be able to make operational decisions. The key in survey work is to exclude bias in designing the questions asked and to put together a representative sample of the universe poll. So the universe poll for US elections is all registered US voters. That's the universe, without a random sample of all of them, not skewed from one side over the other and information seems to suggest that a lot of polls coming out are skewed towards Dem voters over Republican voters. And if that's the case, the polls will be very inaccurate.

That's exactly what happened in 2016. Hillary was looked to be a sure bet to win, but she lost and Trump won. Is it an impossible thing to say it cannot happen again? No. It's very possible that Trump would pull a surprise again and win. And if he does, there will be for one or two reasons that the polls were wrong. Or maybe Biden wins the popular vote, which Hillary did in 2016. Trump wins key swing states or battleground states.

The two most important ones based on the US history are Ohio and Florida. I don’t know a US presidential candidate who lost both those states and won the election, certainly not in modern times, at least not for the past century, maybe not going back to the 18th century, when there were no polls back then. But those two states are key and the last polls I saw right or wrong, show both states were toss-up or either one of them. Now if you are told 10 voters are Republican ones, Trump could win them both. And if he wins them both, I would predict that he'll win the election. I could be wrong. I've been wrong many times, but most likely if he does win both of those states he will win.

The bottom line on the November 3 presidential election is we simply don't know who will win until the final poll takes place. And that will be on Election Day, plus the mail-in ballots when all the ballots are tabulated. Then that will be the final poll, and that will tell us who wins and who loses, and no matter what comes out the loser will walk away and the winner will assume the office of the president around January 20.

Stephen Lendman, born in 1934 in Boston, started writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient.

He recorded this interview for Press TV website.


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