Determination Day

This year Election Day is a different beast. Rather than being the one day nearly everyone votes, it will instead be the last day that anyone votes. And above all, it will be the first day the votes are counted.

So if you have not voted, it's time to join in making history.  Vote.  Before it's too late.

Millions have voted already--perhaps 100 million before the polls even open on Tuesday. Most election experts believe that more than half the votes will have been cast by then. Early voting, both by mail (or drop box) and in person, has been phenomenal. In huge Texas, the early vote is as large as the total vote in 2016. That is likely to be true for a dozen states by Monday. The early vote in tiny Hawaii not only exceeds the total vote in 2016—it is higher than the total vote in any election in the state’s history, including 2008 and 2012 with native son Barack Obama on the presidential ballot.

 But Election Day itself is not therefore just an afterthought. Nor is it the day that only Republicans vote. There are plenty of Democrats and Independents, especially from core constituencies in key places, that have yet to mark their ballots. 

 

And if turnout is anywhere near proportional to early voting totals, we will see higher numbers of voters and a higher percentage of eligible Americans voting than anyone alive has ever seen.

 Nor will Election Day necessarily be the end of the process. In the ordinary course of how particular states count ballots and for how long, votes will be recorded for days and in some states weeks, by law. Unfortunately, the fears and omens gathering around Election Day may also persist: the relentless vote suppression efforts, the threat of armed militias and foreign cyber attacks on the system. Several reports suggest that Trump will continue misusing instruments of government to disrupt election results and the orderly transfer of power, and may refuse to concede any loss while claiming false victories. 

 But let’s stick with Election Day and Election Night, and what we can expect. While that subject will be debated every moment until then, there are a few things to be said, and to watch for.

 On Election Day, the most important factor to watch for is turnout, both generally and in specific places. Some may be tempted to see large turnout as favoring Republicans, because so many Democrats have voted. But that’s not necessarily so. In fact, Democrats will need large turnout in places like Miami Dade in Florida and in Philadelphia, and more categorically among Black and Latino voters. But the general rule this year is very likely to be: the higher the turnout, the better it is for Biden-Harris and almost all Democratic candidates.  The same determination that brought voters out in hostile conditions to vote early must happen again on Determination Day.

 Or put it this way: the only way Biden loses is if turnout is middling low, either generally or in a freakishly selected few places. (If it is very low, then Biden may have already banked enough votes to win.)

 Then comes Election Night and how the votes are counted and reported. Much has been made of the “red mirage,” the counting of Election Day votes skewed Republican, before the mail-in votes that are largely Democratic. Apart from causing viewer stress, this was theorized as providing Trump an excuse to claim victory because the red mirage will make him look like the winner on Election Night, before Democratic mail-in votes slowly overtake this lead in the ensuing days and perhaps weeks.

 But the reality is likely to be more complicated. The order of when votes from the three streams of in-person early, in-person on the day, and mail-in votes are reported, varies from state to state, and sometime county to county within states. And nobody really knows how that will go.  The New York Times and FiveThirtyEight have published state by state guides to how they will report, and the guides do not always agree.  And then there's the vagaries of the day—for instance, if turnout is overwhelming.

 But the assumption that every state counts Election Day votes first is certainly wrong. According to the New York Times,  only Virginia reports just Election Day votes first. Many states do a mixture, or counties within states have different policies. Early on there may even be a blue mirage in Nebraska, Missouri and maybe Montana because they count mail-in votes first.

 In some states, when the red mirage appears it will likely turn blue by the end of the night. But in other states—notably Pennsylvania and Michigan—it could persist until the last arriving mail-in votes are counted, days later. However, even this is unlikely. 

 The big question is whether a red mirage will persist into Wednesday in enough states to provide the illusion that Trump has won the required 270 electoral votes for victory. And the answer is probably not, at least according to a couple of analysts at Politico. 

 

The pattern that is likely to occur in more key states is the blue/red/blue sequence. These are states that count early votes first, then Election Day votes, and then the last mail-in votes. The states where this is more likely to happen include Florida, North Carolina, Maryland, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas, and maybe Wisconsin. (This cycle doesn’t necessarily mean red will go ahead of blue in the middle but just increase faster.) 

 The potential good news is that this blue/red/blue cycle will probably be completed fairly early on Election Night in Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Ohio. If Biden wins any one of them, he is likely to win the election: especially Florida or Ohio. This is the conventional wisdom now, and it is how the news networks will report it. 

In most polls so far Biden has a small lead in all of them except Ohio, and some polls give him a tiny lead there, too. Again, he doesn’t have to win them all. He wins one or two, and it’s all over but the counting elsewhere.

 But Trump needs to win all of the above states, plus another state where Biden has a small polling lead that may have pretty complete returns Tuesday night: Georgia. And then there’s Texas, which may also have definitive results. 

 Even if Trump wins all of these states, Biden can still win the presidency with the tier of upper midwestern states where his polling lead is higher. But he’ll need Pennsylvania, which in the hive mind of political analysts is turning out to be this year’s Florida or Ohio.

 If Biden must rely on these states, the process will drag on longer. But a lot of analysts believe the winner will be clear on Election Night. Some expect to know by 11 pm Eastern. The numbers crunchers at FiveThirtyEight say there’s a 60% chance we’ll be sure by midnight Pacific. They all say that if we do, the winner will be President Biden.

 So however the count goes, here’s one thing to remember, if you go to bed late Tuesday or early Wednesday morning: in any state that by that time Biden is ahead, no matter how slightly, he will very likely win it. So much for the weeds of Tuesday. 

 The bigger picture? What if the polls are wrong? The polls are always wrong, to some extent. In 2016 they (fatally, as it turned out) underestimated the Trump vote in certain states. In 2012 they underestimated votes for President Obama, and Mitt Romney had to cancel his fireworks. According to the New York Times four days from Election Day, if state polls are as wrong as 2016, Biden still ends up with 335 electoral votes.

 Apart from general Trump revulsion, for me the key differences are that Democrats were not really united in 2016, and were (stupidly) not all motivated to vote. The leftists who voted third party were even dumber. This year Democrats (and the bulk of Independents) are united and highly motivated to vote (that is, angry and scared to death), and third party support is miniscule. 

 So here’s the big possibility: the unique and highly motivated coalition to defeat Trump and Republicans and elect Biden and Democrats will produce an overwhelming tide, leading to large margins in many contested states, and victories in states Democrats haven’t won in years or decades. The red mirage will be barely a blip if it appears at all. We may see so many Biden victories that Pennsylvania could keep counting until March and it wouldn’t matter. 

 However, if it is closer than that, various fears will be engaged. For instance, the fear that the election will be, or at least seem, so close that it will take weeks to resolve, with accompanying turmoil and court cases. But looking at the numbers, FiveThirtyEight estimates that there is no more than a 4% chance of this happening. At worst, days.

 Will voters believe a Trump claim of victory on Election Night results alone? Pew found that half the voters surveyed believe that the winner won’t be known by then. They may not be happy about it, but they are willing to wait for votes to be counted.  And all that's needed to win is 270 in the end, assuming we keep our nerve.

 This is not to say there might not be challenging days and weeks ahead. In fact there will be, no matter what happens on Election Day. With the Trump administration still in charge, and 100,000 new Covid cases a day, this is going to be the greatest test the American system has faced, at least since World War II and probably since the Civil War. And just as surviving the covid crisis depends on the doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers most of the media never sees, surviving Trump will depend on career public servants and state officials whose names we may never know.

 As for Tuesday night into Wednesday, it’s tempting to say, fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. And it may be. Days before November 3, Florida and PA continue to be complicated and hard to read, with lots of dirty dealings going on. But the effect of all of that disruption is relative. A really big turnout resulting in a really big wave suddenly overwhelms all those disreputable efforts. By late in the evening (and possibly earlier), I think it will be pretty clear that Trump is being decisively rejected. After that, enjoy watching the progress of how badly.

  That is, if you've been part of that determination.