California primary's lesson for pundits: Don't speak too soon in the age of mail-in voting

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. They weren't that far off

The screen shot is a bit blurry, but I think these are the figures.

"And it’s likely to mark the third straight presidential race in which the Democratic margin out of Philadelphia has shrunk. While Biden will probably improve on Clinton's Philadelphia total by a few percentage points, Trump increased his vote by more than 18%."

Final result: Biden/Clinton = 604,175/584,025 = 1.035 - 3.5% higher
Trump 2020/Trump 2016 = 132,870/108,748 = 1.222 - 22.2% higher.

2016 margin: 475,277
2020 margin: 471,305

So the margin did shrink, Biden improved the Democratic vote by a few percentage points, and Trump increased his vote by more than 18%. They said "while the final votes are still being counted", and "as of Saturday evening" for the numbers in the box.

I just noticed they did get one thing wrong - which was about 2012. They talked off "the third straight presidential race in which the Democratic margin out of Philadelphia has shrunk", but the margin in 2012 was higher than in 2008 - so it was only the "second straight" race in which the margin shrunk (which doesn't seem worth noting). But that was data they'd had for 8 years.