18
Briefing
America’s presidential election
The Economist
September 5th 2020
2
some reason—such as a forgotten
id
card,
changed address or mistake on the voter
rolls—in doubt. Such verification can take
a while in person; it may take even longer
for mailed ballots.
Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is
Michigan’s secretary of state, says that the
gap between when polls close and when re-
sults are announced “is when we anticipate
individuals...may drum up uncertainty
and plant doubts about the sanctity of the
process...By constantly providing informa-
tion and being transparent we hope to mit-
igate [those] efforts.”
The gap is particularly concerning be-
cause of the likelihood that the ballots
counted early may tell a different story
from those counted late. After the 2012
elections Edward Foley, a professor of law
at Ohio State University, noticed a tenden-
cy for later-counted votes to favour Demo-
crats. He called this phenomenon the “blue
shift”. In Pennsylvania, for example, late-
counted ballots have added around 20,000
more votes to the Democratic tally than the
Republican one in the past four presiden-
tial elections. In 2016 Mr Trump’s lead in
the state whittled down from 67,951 on
election night to just 44,292 in the end.
There are various factors at play in the
blue shift, and their relative importance is
a matter of some debate. Part of the story is
the urban/rural split. Rural counts are by
and large faster; rural areas are by and large
more Republican. Young and urban voters,
being more transient as well as more likely
to vote Democratic, may be more likely to
vote with provisional ballots.
This year mail-in ballots may exacer-
bate the shift in places where they are not
counted until late in the process, or where
their sheer number clogs up the system.
Mail-in ballots are not normally expected
to show a pattern of support different from
that seen in the election as a whole. But this
year Mr Biden’s supporters tend to be more
worried about covid-19 than Mr Trump’s,
while Mr Trump’s are likely to share his
professed views as to the nefariousness of
the whole idea. A recent YouGov poll found
that half of Mr Biden’s supporters planned
to vote by mail, compared with just a fifth
of Mr Trump’s.
An enhanced blue shift raises the pos-
sibility of a “red mirage”: a situation in
which Mr Trump appears to be leading
around the time when people are used to
having the television networks call the re-
sult, but falls behind when the counting
continues. Calculations based on our elec-
tion-forecast model provide a sense of how
that might look (see chart 3).
Though there is obviously a significant
margin for error, the model currently pre-
dicts that Mr Biden will, when all the votes
are counted, win 334 Electoral College
votes. Now imagine that every state sees a
doubling of mail-in and other late ballots,
which is hardly a sure thing but seems rea-
sonable, and that the proportion of Biden
votes in those mail-in ballots is 75%, which
would square with what likely voters for
the two candidates are telling YouGov
about their intentions when it comes to
voting by mail or in person. At a stage when
only 70% of the strongly pro-Biden mail-in
votes have been counted, the election will
look like a clear win for Mr Trump. Only
after 90% are counted will the true out-
comes for each state become clear.
In reality there will be no such evenly
spread national mirage. But the conditions
necessary for late swings will be present in
many states. Michigan expects that its
share of absentee votes may nearly triple
from its levels in 2018. In the swing states of
Wisconsin and North Carolina, where in
2016, 5% and 4%, respectively, of votes
were cast by mail, the odds of a precipitous
rise look strong. And if Mr Trump seizes on
what looks like a mirage in a single battle-
ground state—if, for example, he sees a
small lead in Pennsylvania narrow by the
customary 20,000 votes and then keep on
narrowing—the effect on the narrative of
the election, if not its underlying process,
will immediately become national.
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