Joy Reid is an actual host on a program aired a “news” network.
Just keep that in mind while I tell you this next part.
Apparently, Reid doesn’t know how many votes are up for grabs in the Electoral College – or that the political polling and analysis organization FiveThirtyEight is named after it.
In an embarrassing tweet that for some reason is still live, Reid claimed FiveThirtyEight is named after the tiny margin of votes that wound up giving George W. Bush the presidency back in 2000.
“Here's the thing: the reason there's a thing called @FiveThirtyEight is because 538 was the margin in FL when the Republican SCOTUS reversed the 2000 election during a recount, making Dubya the president. That's the kind of margin where races can flip. That's not what's up now,” the MSNBC host claimed in a tweet, suggesting the margin of votes currently separating Joe Biden from President Donald Trump could be due to an error.
Here's the thing: the reason there's a thing called @FiveThirtyEight is because 538 was the margin in FL when the Republican SCOTUS reversed the 2000 election during a recount, making Dubya the president. That's the kind of margin where races can flip. That's not what's up now.
— Joy WE VOTED!! WEAR A MASK!! Reid 😷) (@JoyAnnReid) November 10, 2020
Except that’s not true. At all. FiveThirtyEight is named after the 538 available Electoral College votes, not the margin in the 2000 race. (And side note: the dispute during the 2000 vote was largely due to human factors, not allegations of rampant and intentional voter fraud.)
Additionally, SCOTUS never "reversed" the 2000 election results. In fact, Bush was ahead in every count. What the Supreme Court did do was stop the Florida recount, determining that it was unconstitutional because there were no across-the-board standards being applied to all the ballots (remember those hanging chads?). The re-count halt stalled, leaving Bush leading with 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266.
On top of that, Bush won Florida by 537 votes, not 538 – which a simple Google search would have told Reid, and likely save her from the egg currently dripping off her face. But as usual, spouting partisan nonsense is far more important to the media than getting the basic facts right.