A few reader comments that particularly struck me...

...all taken from yesterday's open thread.   Blog traffic has been up as much as 50% over usual levels the last couple of days (e.g., 16k+ visits on Wednesday, 21k+ page views), which was gratifying.  So let me share some interesting insights from blog readers (but do read the whole thread, these are just selections):

Peterwoit:

What strikes me looking at some of the exit poll data:

1. Almost no gender gap among white people (both men and women around 55% Trump).
2. 18% of Black men voted for Trump.
3. The reasons given for voting Trump read like they come directly from Fox News: "Trump is a strong leader", "The stock market is high and the economy is great because of Trump", "Biden is a Socialist who will raise our taxes".

The failure of pre-election polling has been striking, and relatively uniform across the country, overstating the fraction of those voting for Biden by around 5%. This is not a statistical error, it is a huge systematic error, of so far completely unknown origin.

Bottom line is that Rupert Murdoch over the last few decades has created our world. We just live in it, with our best political minds totally unable to even successfully measure the problem, much less understand it and start figuring out what to do about it.

Ben:

I may eat my words here in the next few days but let me echo the sentiment of many election watchers regarding how smoothly the election process went despite all of Trump's wailing. In particular, it's notable that the major news organizations still seem to be the primary source for election results, and, despite predictable bias in analysis, they've maintained a pretty conservative adherence to reality in reporting them. Even Trump's protestations implicitly concede the media's authority.

Rollo Burgess (in part):

[I]t seems to me that given the narrowness of key state battles, absent Covid, Trump would almost certainly have won. In other words – all of the unpresidential behaviour, nepotism, flirting with white supremacists, and the relentless remorseless and very obvious lying, would not have prevented T from getting reelected. O tempora o mores.

Edward Cantu (in part):

[I]t is utterly disgraceful that the election is as close as it is. The impressionistic complacency of those who argue "look, this is America, things will be fine" or "don't be so dramatic, we've survived worse than this" is dangerous. Like the obliviousness of the frog in the pot to slow increases in temperature. Even if Biden wins, Trumpism is here to stay...