By Dr. Vishnu Bisram
Absolutely Joe Biden will win the Presidency. It will take several more days to get official results. But it is clear to me that Biden has the numbers even though it is not official. Biden would be the next President and it would be best for America and the world. Kamala Harris, a Caribbean (Jamaican father) and Indian American (Indian Tamil Hindu mother) would be the next Vice President. Congrats are in order for both. The trends of the mail in ballots would put Biden ahead of Trump. The military ballots may tighten the gap in a few states but overall Biden would get past 270 electoral votes needed for victory.
As I forecast before the US elections after analyzing opinion polls and as I examined exit poll numbers of voting of various categories of voters as well as having examined voting returns from the counting on Tuesday evening, I concluded that Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger, would win the Presidency of the US. On three different seminars before the election, I was asked who would win, and I replied Biden and right after the voting I was asked again who would win and I responded “Biden”. I was also asked who would be better for Guyana and India. My response was it does not matter who wins the Presidency, US-Guyana and US-India relations would not be adversely impacted. Guyanese and Indian nationals who favored Trump were not pleased with my response and a few were very hostile. India-USA relations would get better under Biden. And Biden would be better for immigration.
I must confess, I am a labor activist having served as head of the branch of my union for some fifteen years. (I also taught labor economics for over a decade). The UFT union historically supported Democratic candidates with rare exception backing a Republican or an Independent. I volunteered annually for every election campaign going back the last three decades. I towed the union line canvassing votes for its endorsed candidates, almost all of whom were/are Democrats. Occasionally, in my private capacity, I volunteered for a Republican candidate that served my community’s interests in Greater Richmond Hill. And in 2020, my union supported the Biden/Harris ticket. I was given a list of names and telephone contacts in battleground states to convince to vote Democrat. That is how it was done every year including for every Presidential election going back to Clinton in 1992. Be that as it was, my analysis of the 2020 election or of any election was/is not clouded by my support or campaigning for Biden or endorsed candidates. It is based on objective analysis of polls and of my own conversations with voters. I am professional and non-partisan. Like almost all other pollsters, I too was wrong in 2016 when I accepted the polls that Hillary Clinton would win the Presidency. She did win the popular votes by almost 3M votes but lost in the electoral college to Donald Trump.
For 2020, after examining the counting trends on Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday, that had Trump in the lead in most battleground states, I told inquiring minds that Biden would win the Presidency based on the mail in ballots. The gap between the two contenders was not too huge to overcome once the mail in ballots were counted. Mail in ballots tend to be heavily Democratic while in person ballots tend to be heavily Republican. Mail in ballots are usually counted last after election day’s voting. Thus, Biden’s numbers kept rising after Tuesday when the mail in ballots were being counted.
I told the many people I spoke with in India, Guyana, America, Canada, UK, and around the Caribbean on Wednesday evening that Biden would win the Presidency although many insisted it was over for Biden. I insisted that Biden had a very good chance of overtaking Trump once the counting of the mail in votes came in. And sure enough that is exactly what has happened. Except for North Carolina, which is up in the air, Biden should win all of the undeclared battleground states. However, a declaration would take some days because military ballots from overseas would still have to come in and be counted. The deadline for those ballots varies until next Thursday but they would have to be post marked latest on November 3.
I published several such articles on the ICDN website as well as in the newspapers in Guyana and the West Indian website explaining why Biden would win based on voting trends. The numbers were indeed closer than expected for comfort. But Biden has prevailed and will be declared the President.
President Trump could go to court to challenge the results and demand recounts, and there should be a recount in states with close outcomes. But the numbers won’t change much. There is no evidence of fraud. Biden has won convincingly. The Supreme Court won’t help him. In fact, the Supreme Court may reject his appeal. The court won’t entertain requests to throw out ballots or stop counts. Trump has lost. The only issue I have is that mail in ballots should have been delivered or reached counting sites by Tuesday evening at close of voting. (I will pen another piece why Biden/Harris would be better for India, Guyana and the globe).
