With Joe Biden the presumptive president-elect and President Donald Trump refusing to concede what he calls a rigged election, the great political divide that splits our country can be seen in miniature in the five-county Times News area.

Monroe, Lehigh and Northampton counties favored Biden while Carbon and Schuylkill overwhelmingly went for Trump. Biden did better in four of the five counties than losing Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton did in 2016 when Trump carried the state by about 44,000 votes to win its 20 electoral votes. The vote margin in Carbon this year was roughly the same as it was four years ago.

While the vote count in Pennsylvania has not been certified and is not expected to be for at least another week or so, Biden appears to have an insurmountable lead and is expected to carry the state by a higher number of votes than Trump did four years ago.

Trump’s legal team plans additional lawsuits in Pennsylvania and elsewhere challenging the legitimacy of the election, especially the mountain of mail-in ballots.

Nationally, with 270 electoral votes needed to win, Biden leads with 290 to Trump’s 214. Biden has a slight lead in Georgia, which will undertake an automatic recount since the margin is less than 0.5%. Trump leads in North Carolina and Alaska. Trump is contesting the results in Arizona and Nevada - a total of 17 electoral votes - even though both have been called for Biden.

I have been talking to voters throughout the area who supported both candidates, and the range of comments run the gamut. Some Republicans are following the president’s lead in showing significant skepticism about how the election has been conducted, even though there has been no proof of widespread fraud. When I asked them what they were contesting, they had no specifics, referring me to Trump’s allegations which also were short on proof.

There were other Republicans and some Democrats who said that Trump has every right to request a recount in states such as Georgia and Wisconsin where Biden’s margin is small. They also said, however, that if these legal actions prove to be unsuccessful or successful but have no impact on the overall results then Trump should concede and have members of his administration cooperate in a smooth transition of power which has been a tradition in our country in virtually every other election since 1800.

Most Democrats and a few Republicans said that it’s “pretty obvious” that Biden is going to be the next president, so let’s get on with it.

A record number of voters cast ballots in 2020. Biden has received 76.1 million so far while Trump has 71.3 million. The nearly 5 million difference far surpasses the 2.9 million by which Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 even though she lost the election.

With some provisional and military ballots still to be counted in Pennsylvania, it becomes pretty clear in looking at the map of the 67 counties that in most cases, including the five in our area, Biden did as well or better than Clinton while Trump’s percentage of the votes dropped in comparison to those he received in 2016, and this appears to be the difference in who captured the Keystone State.

Biden flipped Northampton County by 1%, which the Democrats lost by four points in 2016. In Lehigh, Biden won by a difference of about 7%, up from Clinton’s 5% four years ago. Monroe voters favored Biden by 6%, 5% better than Clinton was able to do. Trump won Carbon by 65% of the vote, the same percentage as in 2016, and he won Schuylkill with 69%, down 3% from last time.

Some other key counties: Luzerne went for Trump by a difference of 15% compared to 19%; Lackawanna went for Biden by 8% compared to a Democratic win of 3% in 2016.

The only other county Biden flipped was Erie, which gave him a 1% margin, compared to a 2% Democrats’ loss in 2016.

The startling numbers in Carbon County should send shivers down the backs of Democrats who have been uncompetitive in two consecutive presidential elections. This is a county which had a substantial Democratic voter registration lead until about 2015 and controlled all of the row offices.

Then it went south in a hurry, and with it discouraging outcomes in not only the presidential races of 2016 and 2020 but also the off-year election of 2018 and the countywide elections of 2019 in which the Republicans made nearly a clean sweep of the row offices.

What was the big difference that resulted in this sharp reversal? In a word, Trump, and a perception that Democrats, once viewed as the party of the people, had shifted way too far to the left for the more centrist to somewhat conservative Democrats of Carbon County.

Schuylkill has always been a Republican bastion, so the big numbers there are no surprise. The lone Democrat in the three-member state House of Representatives delegation from Schuylkill - Neal Goodman - did not seek re-election, so the Republicans flipped the seat as Tim Twardzik defeated Peter Symons Jr. with about 63% of the vote for the 123rd District seat.

Some Pottsville political observers told me that Goodman saw the writing on the wall and didn’t want to go to the well once too often when he knew that his district would be going all in on Trump, which would undoubtedly lead to down ballot success for Republicans.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com