There has been much speculation about whether Trump will accept the results of the election if he loses, speculation that has been deliberately fueled by Trump himself. As I have said before, this is just bluster, designed to sow fear and chaos. Joe Biden was right to dismiss that possibility in the debate. If Trump loses, he has to leave office because the only way he can continue is by a military coup and there is no way that the military is going to be part of that scheme. He may hope that the US Supreme Court will declare him the victor but that option is also a highly remote one unless the results are hair-splittingly close.
Tom the Dancing Bug 1506 donald and john – transfer of power
The popular vote in a lot of places probably will be very close. FiveThirtyEight’s current estimate gives a roughly 5% chance that the election hinges on a recount. As they put it, the scenarios they’re including for these purposes have a 0.5% point difference or less in one or more decisive states. That’s near the bottom of the page. You can mouseover the states in the middle of their “snake chart” to get a quick view of the popular vote projections in each one; lots of them are very close.
I guess 5% could be an underestimate, if people are suspicious enough about states with an apparent gap that’s larger than 0.5%. Tensions and paranoia are extremely high this year, so we probably shouldn’t discount that possibility. In any case, it’s not very likely, but it isn’t such a remote possibility either: 5% is just getting a bad roll on a d20, not a d1000 or whatever. If as I’m thinking it may happen even in a state which appears to have a 1% or 2% margin (let’s say), then maybe we should think it’s more like a d12 or something like that.