One of the myths already building up about the US election is that defeated Democrat Kamala Harris managed to lose between 14 million and 15 million of the votes Joe Biden won in 2020. Thankfully, Lewis Goodall of The News Agents was on hand to bust it.
Goodall retweeted a post from US journalist David Weigel pointing out that “The ‘15 million missing Biden voters’ tweets are useful — everyone tweeting that last week has a rudimentary misunderstanding of how votes are counted, and you can just ignore the rest of their takes”.
The mistake, of course, is that many states, such as California and other West Coast Democratic states, take weeks to declare their final results because of things like absentee votes. The day after the election, Harris was on around 66 million votes, way behind Biden’s tally of 81 million. On Tuesday morning UK time, she was on 71.8 million plus, with eight million more votes to count which will likely lean towards her.
A schoolboy error then for, say, the journalist who tweeted: “The @KamalaHarris defeat I understand. Anti incumbency, economy, perhaps lack of clear message etc etc. But 14 million fewer votes than Biden 4 years ago? That represents astonishing failure for Democratic Party.”
That journalist? Jon Sopel – Goodall’s colleague on The News Agents. Listeners can, presumably, just ignore the rest of his takes!
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