I felt like he was going to win. I had a good feel for this whole thing. I even remember saying on here back in September that she would start to fade by the first week of October and that if she was under a 5% lead in the polling averages on October 15th he would win. My only hesitancy was my memory of being convinced of a Romney win in 2012.

The battleground states get an enormous amount of attention of course, but those early states that aren't so competitive really do serve a purpose and give us a window into things. As the counties reported in states like IN/KY, you could see that Trump was running ahead of what he did in 2020 and sure enough, that trend played out essentially almost universally from coast to coast.

I hope we prosper. But stuff like a flat tariff and deporting 20 million people would seriously damage our country and its economy. I pray that this was just campaign rhetoric.

Not sure about the model outputs since I wasn't much of a model rider at age ten, but here's the Euro reanalysis. Epic Phail of Phillish proportions. You can tell it really wanted to go places after the first initial maritime trough, but the block, while strong up in Alaska, saw all its midlevel support vanish in spectacular fashion. Going from appreciable cross-polar flow and a lobe with our name on it to a full on +PNA Aleutian low pattern in a matter of two days is zany as hell. -also note how the NE got two cold snaps out of one trough with that loop-di-loop pinwheel maneuvering there. it really adds onto the idea that the whole atmosphere was about to reconfigure, but then just decided "nah" and immediately reverted to the status quo again.

Just mind blowing that another great opportunity for the first freeze fell apart. The ECMWF was all over it and then over the last couple of runs it got watered down.