It's taken time for a clear picture to emerge, not least because most people voted early on those ballots.

Many postal is you were just discussing have to be counted.

Here is the state of play as we go on air.

Some networks have projected Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan for Biden were being a bit more cautious.

One thing is clear, though.

This has Bean, a historic result in terms of turnout, with both sides highly motivated, the US looks set to get a 67% turnout, with 136 million votes cast.

As of five o'clock this afternoon, Joe Biden has topped 70 million votes, the largest number of any candidate in US electoral history.

Even so, Donald Trump has got three million more votes than he did four years ago.

But of course, the popular vote doesn't matter.

It all comes down to the Electoral College.

Let's look at where we are now.

With that, the Biden campaign says they're very confident of victory in Wisconsin, Arizona and Michigan.

That would give Biden 264 electoral votes, and Fox News agrees with that tantalizingly close, but not quite.

The 270 that Biden needs to be president.

The key will be for him to tip a state like Georgia, Pennsylvania, or perhaps the most likely next Nevada.

And it could be just a while before there's a clear answer in those states.

One thing, though, is apparent.

But despite the popular vote mandate, this won't be a landslide for Biden, the polls certainly underestimated Trump support, which in absolute terms, grew during the last four years.

So where did that happen?

Voting is complete in North Carolina, Florida and Georgia.

Onda.

They're all interesting results from there.

Almost majorities.

Hispanic neighborhoods voted for Trump, up 11% in majority black neighborhoods in those states, up 2%.

And look at this.

It was meant to be Biden sweet spot.

But even the over 65 is down there.

Biden was up just by 1.5% with them.

One caveat, though.

To those figures, they could look different when we get the bigger national picture in the days and weeks ahead.

Well, if Biden is to govern effectively, control of the Senate would certainly help.

But that may elude him with Senator Susan Collins in Maine a Republican Trump skeptic doing better than expected.

There on the Republicans, likely toe hang on to North Carolina and Georgia as well, taking them potentially to 50 Senate seat that would split the chamber right down the middle, symbolizing a polarized nation.

So a record turnout.

But what drove people to the polls?

According to the exit polls released last night, this wasn't the coronavirus election that many people thought it would be.

35% said it was three economy that calls them to vote 20% racial equality and down at third with just 17% the coronavirus pandemic.

Perhaps that's one reason that the route of President Trump and his party predicted by many polls, didn't happen.

Thanks, Mark.

Absolutely fascinating some of that data.

We're going to dive into it a bit further, joining us now.

Goldie Taylor, who's worked for political candidates on both sides, now editor at large of The Daily Beast and Franklin's, the Republican pollster and Strategy and Gold.

I just want to start with those numbers for Donald Trump because he increased his share of the vote.

I wonder how you explain that to your readers to people who understand that he has done better in 2020 than he has in 2016.

He certainly has.

And I think almost no.

One.

I don't know, a pollster who is credible, who predicted that Donald Trump would expand his electric in the way that he had.

You know, certainly he got a greater share of white voters than he had in 2016.

They also got a greater share of Hispanic and Latino voters.

He got a greater share of not much marginally so, but a greater share of African American voters.

And I think that there is a, uh, sort of writing thought as to why that happened.

Number one.

I think there was a a misstep, if you will, by the Biden campaign in terms of investing in our shoring up votes among Hispanic and Latino voters, especially in South Florida, in the southern southwestern quarters of Texas, especially, and so those states where he might have done better.

Uh, there were fewer.

Resource is, but where he did make the investments where he is making up the gap and where you're seeing some of those states come in.

His column tonight even was among African American voters We knew that if we could grow that vote, if we could encourage more excitement, there's some more exciting.

Let me ask about what you let me ask you about that.

I'm really interested in when you say, shoring up the Latino vote, particularly in Miami, Miami Dade.

I mean, some people say it's because it was sort of, you know, sold to people of Cuban origins of Venezuelan origins that Biden was socialist on.

Do you know that was obviously what they had escaped from?

Others will say I've heard this phrase Hispanic, wondering that there was something in the Biden camp that was sort of, you know, taking the Latino vote a little bit, too.

S sort of lightly playing despot Cito at the rally and hoping that everyone was sort of homogenized and would go for the Democrat vote.

Where do you think that actually went wrong?

Well, I think they're both right.

I don't think that they're mutually exclusive.

I think on the one hand that there were folks inside the Biden camp who did not invest more fully and Hispanic and Latino voters.

But I think also that there were other aspects at play that are intercultural.

And so Cubans are certainly in South Florida, you know, operate a bit differently.

Then say those of Mexican heritage who are lying the southwestern quarter of Texas.

You know those places.

Will Biden lost?

Uh, in fact, in the Rio Grande Valley.

He lost in space among Hispanic voters among that quarter in the Rio Grande.

But I think there are a couple of things at play Number one, the Socialist boogeyman.

Anybody who knows Joe Biden knows that he runs in the same strike as, say, a Barack Obama, even a Bill Clinton, that he is much more centrist than and maybe even presses wanted to put forth this time.

And so the Socialist boogeyman really didn't play this time.

And so Venezuela, you said you did let me bring in Frank lunch.

Now I want to look at what's happened to the Trump vote, Frank, because it seems as if he's increased fractionally his vote amongst white women.

Now we'll remember 2018.

The midterms was all about getting back suburban women.

I'm wondering if that has now sort of reversed.

Well, he lost them earlier in the campaign when he was so eager to get the kids back to the schools and what we found WAAS.

In that period in late August early September, suburban white women with Children moms were uncomfortable sending their kids back to school.

They wanted to work, but they still were nervous about it.

And 51% of these women were either extremely or very afraid of their Children attending class with other Children.

And the fact that Trump seemed to be pushing them to go created the schism that it took into the last week of the campaign to repair itself.

And second, even though Trump's uh, job approval went higher among women over the last year, his performance in that first debate really turned these middle aged middle income moms against him.

They didn't like the way that he interrupted.

They didn't like the way he carried himself.

And for them, it's not just about policy.

It's also about the persona about the character of the candidate, and they really disliked and resented how tough Trump waas He fixed it to a great degree in the second debate.

But these are all contributors to what was happening.

Let me ask you, because presumably you're you're speaking to people in the Trump campaign now on by the looks of it, they wouldn't have expected to have done this well to have come this close, would they?

Isn't this considered a better result than they were anticipating?

It's a better result than anybody else was anticipating, But the Trump campaign would tell you that they've been reading this and seeing this all along.

And that's one of the problems.

Actually, one of the reasons why I now realized that if Donald Trump had made a couple of different decisions during the campaign, he would be the one who'd be ahead tonight.

He'd be the one that we'd be assuming running for president if he had changed his debate strategy or and by the way he went to the right states and had the right messages in those states.

But if he showed just a little bit of empathy, particularly in coming out of Walter Reed, this could have been a different outcome.

I didn't realize, personally, a za pollster.

I didn't realize how close this election was gonna be.

Donald Trump absolutely could have won it.

Isn't that an extraordinary thing to say there, Goldie?

I mean, if we've learned one thing again for years on.

It's how confusing the picture that the pollsters painted for us has bean on.

The sense you get is maybe polling is only actually reaching half of America.

I mean that there, you know, there's a whole swathe of of America that is not saying what they're doing and not trusting anyone with their voter or or their news that they're getting, you know well, first of all, I have to say that I agree with Franklin Franklin wholeheartedly on his previous spate of statements.

I think that you know that this race could have been largely in Trump's favor had he made a few different decisions.

But certainly I think polling has it's weaknesses, but it always has.

There was a fella named Bill Bradley in California who ran for office, and he was black.

Man happens to be.

And when they call pollsters, they asked about him, You know, 30 years ago about Bill Bradley, what they vote for him.

There were many voters who said they would when in fact they wouldn't when in fact they weren't favoring him because they didn't want to tell people that they weren't favored him because he happened to be a black candidate.

This time it sort of worked in reverse.

We call it sort of a reverse Bradley.

There were a grand swamp of people out there who did not want to flip mint because of other public division or other things that they were supporting Donald Trump and that they like his policies, that they liked what he was doing at the port, that they liked what he was doing in terms of the Supreme Court and, you know, anti reproductive rights laws that they liked what he was doing in terms of taxation, that they liked what he was doing in terms of, you know, dealing with protesters on the streets.

They like the kind of language and verb is that he was putting forward.

And so there were lots of those when I know them, you know who said, you know, Gosh, I just think he's a bad guy, But they went into the voting booth and they voted for him anyway.

That means they way we've got the numbers behind that.

19% of Trump voters were dishonest with their friends and even their family.

Only 9% of Biden, voters acted the same way.

There was a level of either embarrassment or fear of how they were gonna be treated retribution if they acknowledged they were voting for Trump, that was one of the impact of the polls.

But the second is that Trump people did not participate.

They simply refused to cooperate with pollsters.

And the reason why they did not want to help the establishment.

They didn't wanna help CNN or the New York Times.

And so they simply said, No, Moss, I'm not gonna be involved.

The only way the pollsters will ever be able to measure them is by asking longer questions and by empowering these people, telling them that if you speak to us, the world is gonna hear you.

They're going to respect you.

They're going to recognize you.

It actually requires a different questionnaire than what we normally would do with voters.

And those are the Children.

I think that's absolutely fascinating.

Thank you both very much.

Indeed.

Really, really good to have your newsnight this evening.