The erroneous claim that Trump would've gotten 400 plus electoral votes against Biden

[standingtall]

If there were internal polls that showed that then those polls were either trash or designed with an agenda to get Biden to withdraw from the race. I'm not saying Biden would've won, but common sense ought to tell us Trump getting 400 plus electoral votes was never going to happen. Just look at the 2024 election map. You would have to give Trump every State that he was barely within 15 points of to get him over 400 electoral votes without California or New York. If you gave Trump every State he was within 11 points the best he would've gotten was 379 and if you gave him every State where it was 5 points or less the best he would've done is 316. There would not have anywhere near enough of difference with Biden as the candidate as oppose to Harris for Trump to get 400 plus electoral votes.

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. No Sale.

Will not entertain a convo that wants to find a Democratic scapegoat. We lost because a more unintelligent voters out-voted the intelligent ones.

[Ilikepurple]

2. The good news is that he can run again in 2028

[Janbdwl72]

3. Equally good news is

That the Convincted Felon can not run again in 2028.

Now to make sure we do have elections in 2028.

[standingtall]

4. No Biden no Harris in 2028

Harris ran a good campaign given the circumstances, but She still lost and that's painful memory I'm not interested in revisiting. I'm all in for my Governor Andy Beshear if he chooses to run in 2028.

[Ilikepurple]

5. Sorry, I didn't know how to ads sarcasm smiley in reply title

[RandySF]

6. Nobody knows anything

about an election scenario that didn’t happen.

[SunSeeker]

7. Please stop. Your repeated posts on this subject serve no constructive purpose for Democrats.

Biden’s internal polling showed his chances were dismal.
Why are you scratching open wounds to get in an argument over how dismal?

David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the campaign, is not a liar. Here is what he said:

And she might not have had much chance of winning anyway, given the deficit she inherited from Biden when he dropped out of the race in July.

“We were hopeful. I don’t know how optimistic we were, but we thought, OK, this is tied, and if a couple things break our way [we could win],” David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the campaign, said Tuesday on the “Pod Save America” podcast in a joint interview with fellow Harris campaign alums Jen O’Malley Dillon, Quentin Fulks and Stephanie Cutter.

Plouffe said the campaign’s internal polling never had Harris ahead of Trump.

“We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day,” he said. “I think it surprised people, because there was these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-campaign-polls_n_67462013e4b0fffc5a469baf

Trump benefitted from wide discontent over inflation, like all challengers to incumbents across the globe. Even though Biden had expertly managed to tame inflation to pre-covid levels without sending us into recession, prices did not go down much if at all. People stupidly thought prices should have been made to go down to pre-covid levels, and bought Trump's even more stupid claims that he could do so through oil drilling and tariffs.
The MSM sanewashed these inane Trump claims as legitimate policy proposals instead of telling the truth: that what Trump was planning would only increase inflation. The media failed us and Harris's $1 Billion in ads were overwhelmed by the $20 Billion pro-Trump dark money PACs spent viciously lying about Biden/Harris, and playing to people's bigotry.

We were lucky she only lost by 1.5% of the popular vote considering the headwinds she was facing. Biden would have lost by more. How much more? Who the fuck cares. Biden is not running again. Please move on.

[standingtall]

14. Again with mythical internal polls none of us have ever seen

David Plouffe is simply doing his job. He is suppose to spin the loss in the best light possible. The best that article has is a vague reference to a Biden deficit, but doesn't tell you exactly how big the so called deficit was does he? Plouffe also said Harris was going to win the election and She was going to hold Pennsylvania,Michigan and Wisconsin. Now that election is over he tells us he never had any polling that showed Harris ahead. Does that make him a liar? No! The pre-election spin was him doing his job just like the post election spin is.

[SunSeeker]

18. How is you calling David Plouffe a liar helping Democrats?

[Blue_Tires]

8. Yeah, anyone spewing that is full shit

Regardless, it's yet another argument in favor of eliminating the electoral college

[ucrdem]

9. It's a balonius internet meme

from a remark made by Jon Favreau on a Nov. 8 podcast that naturally went viral in the New-York-Post-o-sphere:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4981792-pod-save-america-bidens-internal-polling-showed-trump-winning-400-electoral-votes/

Favreau is identified as a former Obama aid who called Biden’s reelection bid a “catastrophic mistake” and helped "lead the call for Biden to step aside as the democratic nominee this summer."

So it's some sketchy backstab intended to achieve I know not what purpose, but only a fool would believe it.

[FBaggins]

10. I don't know about 400 - but your math is wrong

He won 312… you can’t say that five more points would only add 4 more EVs when there were four states that came within about five points.

Worse yet - a five point shift would have cost us four additional senate seats

The 400 EV scenario isn’t all that far fetched. Before the switch - Biden was performing six or seven points worse than Harris ended up… and that was when large portions of the party were buying the story that he was fine and it was just a bad debate. There’s a plausible scenario where things deteriorated from there

[standingtall]

11. There were 8 States that came within 5 points

and Trump already won 6 of them, but my math was slightly off I missed Minnesota which Harris won by 4.2%. I'm not counting Virginia, because Harris won that by 5.2%. The criteria was within 5 points 5.2% is slightly outside of 5 points. The only 2 States Trump didn't win that were within 5 points were Minnesota and New Hampshire and New Hampshire is only 4 electoral votes.


I firmly believe 400 plus electoral votes for Trump would've been far fetched. When Jimmy lost to Reagan in 1980 and Reagan got over 400 electoral votes. Unemployment was 7.2% which was highest it had been at that point sense 1941, we were in a legitimate recession not just a perceived one and Carter was even more unpopular than Biden. So any comparison to that period doesn't work.

I don't believe Harris running 7 points ahead of Biden or don't remember it that way, but even if that's true the incumbents parties voters usually come home closer to the election. Biden dropped out before the convention so he never got the artificial convention bounce either.

[FBaggins]

12. "The criteria" was entirely made up

Why 11 points? Obviously so that you didn't have to count NY at 12 points (which would make 400 likely).

Why 5 points when the polling shift from Biden to Harris was larger than that? Specifically so that VA didn't count? NM and NJ?

And 15 points would be almost 450

[standingtall]

13. Of course the criteria

was made up. The point is would've taken a massive unrealistic swing for Trump to get over 400 electoral votes. The line had to be drawn somewhere. Harris won New Mexico by 6 points and New Jersey by 5.9%. You might as well have said why not 30 points. That way Trump could've won California and Maryland too. Giving every State that he was in within 15 points besides New York is already extremely generous, because one of the States he was barely within 15 points was Illinois which would be ignoring the fact Chicago exist which is over half the population in Illinois lives in the Chicago metro area.

[Self Esteem]

15. The final internal polls that were shown were catastrophic.

I never did the EC math but the week before Biden dropped out, the internal polling shared to the state parties and congressional Democratic campaigns showed him on track to lose by the largest margin of any candidate since Dole in 1996.

I don't know if it ever added up to 400 electoral votes but it didn't matter.

Their polling had him down in every state that Harris eventually lost, plus Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Virginia.

Other states were within four points, including Connecticut and New York.

Do I think Biden would have lost all those states? No. But the campaign conceded the final Monday that the math was hard. They still tried to push the narrative that over time, the map would revert back to where it was prior to the debate (essentially the map we got) but the mood was decidedly not confident in Biden winning.

There's a reason he dropped out. He was flatly told by his own staff he was not likely to win.

He saw the writing on the wall and accepted that the election had gotten away from him.

Ultimately, what did Harris in (overall weakness of Democrats showing up) would have been multitude times worse with Biden, as he had very little enthusiasm surrounding his campaign after the debate.

Like I said, I think most those states come back but Biden was down 6-10 points in the campaign's internals in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He was absolutely on pace to lose to Trump by a landslide, both in the popular vote and the EC.

It wouldn't have been by 400 EV but it was shaping up to be similar to 2008.

[MineralMan]

16. Of What Use Is This?

Why speculate about something that did not happen, and cannot now happen?

Ridiculous.

[sarisataka]

17. I don't recall predictions he would have hit 400 against Biden

although I did see plenty of predictions Harris could reach 400; turns out those were made ignoring the facts as they existed.

[WarGamer]

19. I'm open to a vigorous 2028 Primary...

Hoping for someone both competent AND charismatic.