Looks like the scenarios I mentioned in Notes 48-50 are becoming more relevant.

As I mentioned in Notes 50 the race tightened in the last week though not enough to be likely to change the expected outcome.

There never was any good reason to expect a big enough landslide for Biden for Trump’s defeat to be obvious on the night.

As expected, Trump has taken the opportunity to declare that he really won, that the election is being “stolen” and can only be saved by the Supreme Court.

But it was rather subdued for a claim of victory and Pence’s follow up was even less triumphalist. At present it does look like Republicans have retained a majority of State delegations in the House of Representatives. So it would still be theoretically possible for Pence and the Supreme Court to invalidate Democrat votes in Pennsylvania and throw the election to the House voting by States:

https://www.270towin.com/2020-house-election/state-by-state/consensus-2020-house-forecast

But that forecast of State delegations is itself uncertain. Final results for President and perhaps for Senate and House are unlikely to be known for at least a few days. Meanwhile Trump can only hope for riots against him to unite his very large minority. His injured rather than triumphalist tone is appropriate for maximizing support.

Trump does not have much hope of remaining President but it looks to me that his original 2016 intention of emerging as the leader of a large far right mainstream party posturing against the US “elite” will be spectacularly successful.