Hey errbody, have you bitten all your fingers down to the knuckles yet? I’m writing after 8pm Central time. I’ll be updating this blog entry throughout the night, so keep refreshing; I’ll post here some of your comments as we go.

The big story as I write is that it appears that Donald Trump has won Florida — and it was the Latinos of Miami-Dade County that won it for him. In fact, Trump’s numbers among Latinos nationwide are eye-opening. Look:

Latinos are voting for Trump in much greater numbers than four years ago. And no, it’s not just Cubans.

The “rising demographic majority” for Democrats is one of the most dangerous ideas in American politics.

It’s also unscientific gobbledygook. https://t.co/h5OHhYPGZp

— Yascha Mounk (@Yascha_Mounk) November 4, 2020

Questions we’ll be asking after tonight, no matter who wins:

1. To what extent is the Trump support among Hispanics a matter of Trump’s personality?
2. How can the GOP hold on to them?

Similarly, Trump is losing college-educated white women by huge margins. I think we can confidently say that has a LOT to do with Trump’s personality. How many of these women will return to the GOP after Trump goes? Or is this a more permanent re-alignment? Are we looking at the GOP becoming the party of working-class whites and Latinos, and the Democrats becoming the party of urban liberals, educated whites, and blacks? Gonna be fascinating to see how this all plays out.

Ohio is a lot closer than many expected. Nate Silver says:

Earlier tonight on NPR, Mara Liasson said that Ohio going to Biden would be a meteor strike on the race. It would be game over for Trump.

Another big story tonight: how close Texas is. Whoever thought Texas would be in play?

Remember, I’ll be updating throughout the night. Keep refreshing!

UPDATE.2: Ho, ho, ho!

Whatever happens next, this has been a crushing defeat for left racial identity politics. If Trump wins because of Latino voters it strikes the heart of an entire worldview.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) November 4, 2020

UPDATE.3: This is a relief:

Friend texts me:

I feel like a Syrian Christian tonight, guiltily rooting for a terrible person because his opponents want to cut my head off. Figuratively, for now.

Trump now ahead in Ohio. Good lord, he might just pull this off!

UPDATE.4: The 1619 fabulist is concocting a new story to explain why a Latino-driven Trump victory (if we have that) is the fault of wypipo after all.

UPDATE.5: From prominent Johns Hopkins political scientist:

But it’s what the Leftist elite is going to say. They never learn.

I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had, both in person and online, in the last week of Trump voters saying that they thought he would pull it out, because they all know so many people who are going to vote for him but won’t tell anybody about it, because they all believe that somehow, if this got out, they would suffer professionally. This is going to be a HUGE issue if Trump goes back in. The damn Stasi Democrats.

UPDATE.6:

“I would argue that identity politics is exactly who we are, and it’s exactly how we won.” — Stacey Abrams, 5/24/2019

Ha! Even if Trump loses tonight, the unambiguously great news of the evening is that the Woke narrative is in trouble. Naturally I expect that the Human Resources Departments, college administrators, and media managers will double down on it — but that’s not where the country is, it appears.

Believe the data: only white men can save the country from white hetero-cis male supremacy. https://t.co/acWMJyk87V

— Michael Brendan Dougherty (@michaelbd) November 4, 2020

UPDATE.7: This is good news here in Louisiana. Anticipating the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Louisiana voters have amended the state’s constitution to declare no state constitutional right to abortion, thus blocking any possibility that the State Supreme Court might invent one.

BREAKING: @AP reports that Louisiana has passed Amendment 1, which establishes there is no constitutional right to an abortion. pic.twitter.com/JRaECGhLhe

— Catherine Hadro (@CatSzeltner) November 4, 2020

UPDATE.8:

results from starr county, texas, the most latino county in the united states (96% latino)

2016: clinton+60
2020: biden+5 with >98% reporting

we are witnessing a dramatic and historic realignment pic.twitter.com/PxC7ofJYL7

— Thao Nguyen (@nguyenthevote) November 4, 2020

UPDATE.9: Absolutely yes. If Trump wins, no more tolerance for the violent:

Speaking for myself and probably most Americans, I’d love to see every one of them in jail. We’re sick of this. https://t.co/tBlY3Lvs0V

— James Lindsay, astonishingly ignorant (@ConceptualJames) November 4, 2020

I’ll tell you something else. On Twitter, lots of people are talking bout how tonight’s shocking results are a failure of polling. (Recall that the final polls had Biden up by 10 points.) I don’t necessarily agree. How can you poll people who are afraid to tell pollsters the truth? You might recall a few days ago a reader wrote that his wife, a naturalized citizen born in China, agreed earlier this year to participate in a newspaper/network tracking poll. All the campaign she has been lying to the pollsters, telling them that she’s a Biden voter, and giving all the correct “liberal” answers — this, because she watches the news, and she has come to think of the Left’s behavior as akin to what she saw in the Cultural Revolution. That is, she has no faith that those who get that information won’t use it against her. This woman is a registered Democrat.

All these so-called “shy Trump voters” have learned to practice ketman. From my book Live Not By Lies:

If Donald Trump defies the polls and wins tonight, I am confident that it will have been because our twisted Woke establishment — not only the Democrats, but those institutional power holders who enforce Woke orthodoxy — have compelled tens of millions of their fellow Americans to feel compelled to lie to protect their jobs and livelihoods.

If Trump pulls this out, it is time for the executive branch to go after wokeness, hard. Start bringing Justice Department prosecutions against these bullies.

UPDATE.10:

Cheap answer is, some people are frustrated that a professor of philosophy makes 3 times what they do for cleaning their house, or making sure they are supplied with electricity, or keeping them safe from muggers, or cooking them Pad Thai, only to then be talked down to a scolded pic.twitter.com/Dh7CBfubmr

— Chris Arnade ? (@Chris_arnade) November 4, 2020

UPDATE.11:

Tucker Carlson calling out the entire news industry during Fox News’ 2020 election coverage is a bold move. But somebody had to do it. pic.twitter.com/2XbZegFawl

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) November 4, 2020

UPDATE.12: Obama’s Education Secretary:

Yes, you’re right. Keep talking about whiteness. It’s a real winner for y’all.

UPDATE.13: I’m with Sen. Hawley:

We are a working class party now. That’s the future

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 4, 2020

UPDATE.14: Hmm.

Do you see the playbook? It’s the same in every close state. Trump doing well, leading, and they shutdown the urban centers to try and pick up the price tomorrow.

Philly
Pittsburgh
Detroit
Milwaukee
Atlanta

It’s transparent.

— Chris Buskirk (@thechrisbuskirk) November 4, 2020

It’s after midnight, and it’s clear that we aren’t going to have an answer tonight about who won this race, so I’m checking out. I expected that I would go to bed tonight depressed about a Biden blowout, and maybe even a Democratic takeover of the Senate. Instead, we are looking at the GOP holding the Senate, and the possibility that Trump, against all odds, will have won re-election. I’m going to do a looking-forward post separately, then hit the sack until tomorrow. Thanks for sticking around tonight.