[dragonwriter]

> and maintained control of the Senate.

That's kind-of true. They've definitely maintained it through the end of the Trump Administration, since when the Senate convenes it will be 48-48 with two vacancies to be settled by runoffs two days later, and Pence will still be VP. But as of January 21, the outcome of the two Georgia runoffs will decide the balance of the Senate.

> The fact that the presidential race is close enough to still be under contention days after election night

It's not particularly close, it just has an unusually hard to project due to the pattern of vote counts resulting from one candidate urging voters not to vote by mail-in ballots, large mail-in vote totals, and the timing of mail-in ballot counts vs. counts of in-person ballots in various states. Both by popular and electoral votes, it's going to be less close than the average election of the 2000s.

“Easy to project the winner” and “close” are generally correlated, but fundamentally different, qualities, and this is a case where the usual relationship between them did not hold.

[laverya]

Perhaps we're using "blue wave" differently. To me, a "blue wave" would be Biden scraping a win on election night and then solidifying it into a 338+ blowout, not "Trump wins on election night and then loses as mail-in votes are counted". Having a 50-50 Senate at best isn't exactly a "blue wave" either. (Which is what happens if the Republicans win NC and AK, but lose both the Georgia Senate seat runoffs)