DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus How States will Shift....

Something to be aware of -- I think -- in the countdown to the election, is how much the historic (and very partisan) trend towards Mail-In Ballots is going to affect the vote counts that come in on election night.

Also - the shifts are going to be very different state to state -- depending on:

1.) When states start counting their mail in ballots
2.) How they count their mail in ballots (machine, by hand)
3.) Do mail-in ballots have to be received (or just postmarked) by election day.
4.) Can people who requested mail-in ballots walk in and vote, or do they have to cast provisional ballots in person.

Here's an example from Nate Cohn at the Upshot. They did a survey of Georgia voters, which found a perfect tie between Biden and trump at present

However, since they knew the names of the people they polled -- and because Georgia provides a list of everybody who has voted this election, and which method they used for voting -- Upshot could go find out how the different Biden and Trump supporters were voting:



Biden is beating trump by 38%!! among mail-in votes. Trump on the other hand is winning the early in-person vote by 8%, and by people who haven't voted yet (but said they will, primarily on election day) by 18%.

Another example is Nevada - which Jon Ralston studies carefully. Nevada is a particularly clean example for early-voting studies because: (1) a large number of people vote early, even in previous elections, (2) Nevada is a combination of extremely liberal Las Vegas and Reno, and extremely conservative rural areas. Democrats almost always vote for Democrats, Republicans almost always vote for Republicans, etc. (3) Nevada tells you how many people vote each day and the party of those people.

https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-3

In Clark County (Las Vegas) Democrats always lead in early-voting -- even when the GOP ends up winning. But this year everything is crazy. The numbers from yesterday are:

The Clark numbers:

Mail: Dems+96K
In-person: GOP+24K

Again - huge shifts between in-person and mail-in voting.


How does this effect the election?

538 did a study of Pennsylvania, which isn't allowed to start counting mail-in ballots until election day. They also don't have an efficient system to process them (it took nearly two weeks for the primary, though they have more manpower this time).

Predictions are that - on midnight election night, Trump will probably be winning by nearly 20%, as the in-person election day votes are counted, but the mail-in ballots are not. 538 predicts this result, even as they currently predict that Biden will end up winning by ~7%.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-pennsylvanias-vote-count-could-change-after-election-night/

In Ohio, the situation will be the opposite. The mail-in ballots are already being tabulated now -- and the results will be released as soon as polls close. Expect Biden to leap out to a 30-40% lead in Ohio early on election night, which will close as rural counties start reporting their in-person votes.

Generally Ohio does the opposite - as the rural counties report first, and then you see a Democratic comeback between 11PM-midnight as Cuyahoga county comes in. But that comeback will probably be weak this year, as so many of the Cuyahoga Democrats mailed in their ballots. Still Ohio is one of the important states that might have a reasonably accurate Election day report (though additional mail-in ballots may still be counted for an additional three days).

Florida is another state that will likely report accurate numbers within a few hours (as they can count mail-in ballots immediately upon receiving them. This may explain why so much attention is being spent there in the last stages of this campaign, as both sides look for an early victory.

Everything you laid out is accurate. However it will be used by Trump to cast aspersions about the votes being counted late.

The wannabe King is nothing if not a master at stroking fears into his base - they will froth at the mouth no matter what facts you provide.

PA Primaries - finalized a week after the election? That's a fact ... but that will be used as grounds for a 101 conspiracy theories by King Trump.

The you have Kavanaugh saying counting votes after the election would "flip" the election even if they are post marked before the election !!!! . . . and then whichever Judge responded with "there isn't a result until all the votes as counted" ... smh

Here it is: “But there are no results to ‘flip’ until all valid votes are counted. And nothing could be more ‘suspicio[us]’ or ‘improp[er]’ than refusing to tally votes once the clock strikes 12 on election night. To suggest otherwise, especially in these fractious times, is to disserve the electoral process.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...ious-arguments/

You know full well this will be a crap fest - this election.

Neither side, regardless of the vote (unless it is unbelievably one sided) will stop.

We will not know the results on Nov. 3 or 4. I absolutely believe which ever way it leans it will be contested. For a long time. Lawyers, vote counters, absentee ballots (even though they've had ample - MORE than ample time to get them sent in).

Sit back and watch the crap show. There is no way Trump walks voluntarily, unless it's a landslide, and there is no way the dems walk away from Kamala. Not biden. He's just a person that, IF the dems win, he'll be gone within months.

I tend to agree - which is why a whitewash for Biden would be the best thing for the country. Something uncontested so we can move forward without further divide.

/

I'll be sure to not reply in here in the future.

For those who can't follow the link. In the days before paint, you would whitewash your fence. I believe it was a lime slurry in water. Whitewash means to conceal or cover up. It is also the baseball term for a shutout.

thank you.
(sigh)

What happened here??

To get back to the original point -- my point in posting this was to do it before the election. Too many people are going to be overreacting to good news for their candidate -- and it would be best to approach the Tuesday night (as well as most of Wednesday) with a healthy degree of skepticism.

I don't know what happened here.

I made a post - Arch questioned it, I made a sincere apology, and then both posts are now gone.... neither post contained anything inflammatory.

To your point - you are correct but trying to forewarn people to be rationale isn't going to help because Trump will do everything in his power to question the validity of the vote.

**Edit** Per Ref comment below. - I made a post that apologized if anyone was offended by my choice of words. I also posted a link that showed the origins of "whitewash" and it doesn't carry any racist connotation that i am aware of... it's a common cricketing term where one side dominates the other. That post is most definitely gone.

No posts have been removed from this thread by a moderator.

When it comes to Kool Aid, you drank the whole damned pitcher.

Just shows ya trump supporters can’t stand the thought of a Women as POTUS. Let alone a minority Women! Oh the horror!

How do you mean? I think his post says a lot of things, but I'm not seeing that one.

Voting lawsuits pile up across US as election approaches

WASHINGTON (AP) — They’ve been fighting in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania over the cutoff date for counting mailed ballots, and in North Carolina over witness requirements. Ohio is grappling with drop boxes for ballots as Texas faces a court challenge over extra days of early voting.

Measuring the anxiety over the November election is as simple as tallying the hundreds of voting-related lawsuits filed across the country in recent months. The cases concern the fundamentals of the American voting process, including how ballots are cast and counted, during an election made unique by the coronavirus pandemic and by a president who refuses to commit to accepting the results.

The lawsuits are all the more important because President Donald Trump has raised the prospect that the election may wind up before a Supreme Court with a decidedly Republican tilt if his latest nominee is confirmed.

“This is a president who has expressed his opposition to access to mail ballots and has also seemed to almost foreshadow the inevitability that this election will be one decided by the courts,” said Kristen Clarke, executive director of the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

That opposition was on display Tuesday during the first presidential debate when Trump launched into an extended argument against mail voting, claiming without evidence that it is ripe for fraud and suggesting mail ballots may be “manipulated.”

“This is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen,” the president said of the massive shift to mail voting prompted by the pandemic.

The lawsuits are a likely precursor for what will come afterward. Republicans say they have retained outside law firms, along with thousands of volunteer lawyers at the ready. Democrats have announced a legal war room of heavyweights, including a pair of former solicitors general.

The race is already regarded as the most litigated in American history, due in large part to the massive expansion of mail and absentee voting. Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt, a former Justice Department elections official, has tallied some 260 lawsuits arising from the coronavirus. The Republication National Committee says it’s involved in more than 40 lawsuits, and a website operated by a chief Democrat lawyer lists active cases worth watching in about 15 states.

Democrats are focusing their efforts on multiple core areas — securing free postage for mail ballots, reforming signature-match laws, allowing ballot collection by third-parties like community organizations and ensuring that ballots postmarked by Election Day can count. Republicans warn that those same requests open the door to voter fraud and confusion and are countering efforts to relax rules on how voters cast ballots this November.

“We’re trying to prevent chaos in the process,” RNC chief counsel Justin Riemer said in an interview. “Nothing creates more chaos than rewriting a bunch of rules at the last minute.”

But there have been no broad-based, sweeping examples of voter fraud during past presidential elections, including in 2016, when Trump claimed the contest would be rigged and Russians sought to meddle in the outcome.

Some of the disputes are unfolding in states not traditionally thought of as election battlegrounds, such as Montana, where there is a highly competitive U.S. Senate race on the ballot. A judge Wednesday rejected an effort by Trump’s reelection campaign and Republican groups to block counties from holding the general election mostly by mail.

But most of the closely watched cases are in states perceived as up-for-grabs in 2020 and probably crucial to the race.

That includes Ohio, where a coalition of voting groups and Democrats have sued to force an expansion of ballot drop boxes from more than just one per county. Separately on Monday, a federal judge rejected changes to the state’s signature-matching requirement for ballots and ballot applications, handing a win to the state’s Republican election chief who has been engulfed with litigation this election season.

In Arizona, a judge’s ruling that voters who forget to sign their early ballots have up to five days after the election to fix the problem is now on appeal before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a six-day extension for counting absentee ballots in Wisconsin as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. The ruling gave Democrats in the state at least a temporary victory in a case that could nonetheless by appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In neighboring Michigan, the GOP is suing to try to overturn a decision that lets the state count absentee ballots up to 14 days after the election.

In battleground North Carolina, where voters are already struggling with rules requiring witness signatures on absentee ballots, the RNC and Trump’s campaign committee have sued over new election guidance that will permit ballots with incomplete witness information to be fixed without the voter having to fill out a new blank ballot.

In Iowa, the Trump campaign and Republican groups have won a series of sweeping legal victories in their attempts to limit absentee voting, with judges throwing out tens of thousands of absentee ballot applications in three counties. This week, another judge upheld a new Republican-backed law that will make it harder for counties to process absentee ballot applications.

Pennsylvania has been a particular hive of activity.

Republican lawmakers asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to put a hold on a ruling by the state’s highest court that extends the deadline for receiving and counting mailed-in ballots. Republicans also object to a portion of the state court’s ruling that orders counties to count ballots that arrive during the three-day extension period even if they lack a postmark or legible postmark.

Meanwhile in federal court, Republicans are suing to, among other things, outlaw drop boxes or other sites used to collect mail-in ballots.

The Supreme Court itself has already been asked to get involved in several cases, as it did in April, when conservative justices blocked Democratic efforts to extend absentee voting in Wisconsin during the primary.

There is, of course, precedent for an election that ends in the courts. In 2000, the Supreme Court settled a recount dispute in Florida, effectively handing the election to Republican George W. Bush.

Barry Richard, a Florida lawyer who represented Bush during that litigation, said there’s no guarantee the Supreme Court will want to get involved again, or that any lawsuit over the election will present a compelling issue for the bench to address.

One significant difference between then and now, he said, is that neither candidate raised the prospect of not accepting the results.

“There was never any question, in 2000, about the essential integrity of the system. Neither candidate challenged it,” Richard said. “Nobody even talked about whether or not the losing candidate would accept the results of the election. That was just assumed.”

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020...f6add1710031ec4

And everyone paying attention knows why Republicans wish to cast a shadow over mail in voting and to stop counting ballots......

“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends.

Echoing Trump, Kavanaugh argues states have an interest in finalizing results on Election Day

WASHINGTON — Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh echoed President Donald Trump’s position on having results of a presidential election finalized on Election Day, perhaps previewing a Supreme Court fight over absentee ballots that could decide a contested outcome.

It came in a concurring opinion late Monday as Kavanaugh sided with the 5-3 majority that found absentee ballots in Wisconsin can only be counted if they are in possession of municipal clerks at the closure of polls on Nov. 3.

Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee to the court, wrote that states like Wisconsin require ballots be received by Election Day to “avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election.”

“And those States also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter,” he said.

The election between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden is Tuesday. More than 68 million people have voted early, including two thirds by mail-ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Kavanaugh's opinion was not joined by any of the other justices. The court's order was unsigned, but Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Elena Kagan also wrote separately.

For the past year, Trump has questioned the validity of mail-in ballots and bemoaned the days or even weeks it could take to count all absentee ballots. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two critical battleground states, don’t allow the processing of mail-in ballots to begin until Election Day, and Michigan provides only 10 hours of work in advance, meaning it could take days to have those states' full vote tallies.

“Big problems and discrepancies with Mail In Ballots all over the USA. Must have final total on November 3rd,” Trump said Monday on Twitter. The social media platform later attached a disclaimer that “content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading.”

Trump told reporters Tuesday it "would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on Nov. 3, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate."

"And I don't believe that that's by our laws," he said.

The notion that counting late-arriving absentee ballots, according to Kavanaugh, could “flip the results of an election" prompted a sharp rebuke by one of the court’s liberal justices.

“There are no results to ‘flip’ until all valid votes are counted,” Kagan wrote in a footnote of her dissenting opinion. “And nothing could be more ‘suspicio[us]’ or ‘improp[er]’ than refusing to tally votes once the clock strikes 12 on election night. To suggest otherwise, especially in these fractious times, is to disserve the electoral process.”

Election results aren't official until states certify them. Federal law allows the counting of absentee and provisional ballots to extend weeks after Election Day.

Projecting winners on election night is an unofficial action typically taken by the media. Deadlines to certify results vary by state. Electors meet Dec. 14 to formally cast their votes for president based on the winner of the popular votes in their states.

Kavanaugh cites Bush v. Gore as a precedent

Initial vote tallies in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin released on election night that include mostly in-person votes could favor Trump, whose supporters polling has shown are more likely to vote in-person. Election experts have warned to then prepare for a "blue shift" as absentee votes that favor Biden are counted.

The Senate on Monday confirmed Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy in the high court created with Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, meaning one of Barrett's first actions could be on post-election litigation.

More:Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to the Supreme Court, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority

In a footnote attached to his opinion, Kavanaugh also endorsed the position of former Chief Justice William Rehnquist in Bush v. Gore, which settled a recount dispute in Florida in the 2000 election, paving the way for Bush's victory.

Kavanaugh said – like Rehnquist concluded 20 years ago – the power of state legislatures prevail over state courts in regards to rules of a presidential election. Rehnquist was writing for three justices on the court.

"That's a big deal when it comes to the way he and others on the court might decide a post-election case that involves conflicts between state legislature and state courts," said Nathaniel Persily, a law professor and election law expert at Stanford University.

Supporters of Biden have worried an election dispute in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, which have state legislatures controlled by Republicans but Democratic governors, could lead to different branches certifying competing slates of electors.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli...lec/3747059001/

Again, I can see if any posts were removed by moderators, and none have been in this thread.

Can you see the link to which Charger refers ? The one I posted ? Because I can't see it. It would be pretty reasonable for me to think I posted something but didn't. I make mistakes all the time. It would be pretty sensational for me not to post something by mistake but have someone respond and reply to what I typed but didn't post.

If what I've been told is right, by my right wing talk radio hosts, the "state legislatures" finalize election results, according to the USA constitution,
or at least the individual states constitutions, or both.

Therefore, Supreme Court Justices that are originalists would refer to the results finalized by "state legislatures", not state courts.

and, States', Secretaries of state, are the ones in charge of the process of the election for each state.

Trumps going to have egg on his face if Biden appears to be ahead on election night but all the later counted Absentee Ballots and later counted day of the election cast ballots come in giving TRUMP the win in the final count.

I think the later counted Ballots are going to support Trump and bring him the win, if he's not already in the lead.

Donald Trump gave tUSA a mirror, and we needed it.

We needed to see how ugly tUSA has been, and can be, we can learn from this. The south reared it’s ugly head again. Unfortunate, but we will learn from this.

We are going to crucify the southern ideology, we let them off the hook after the civil war. Hate continues to breed hate. We should have buried them.

Your Mirror:


Just reflect on it for a bit.

This is a thread about statistics -- and trends that are going to happen in the days after the election -- there are other threads to bicker in.

Shockingly, Throw Long has the most on-topic response of the thread so far...

Seems very unlikely -- if we just look at the states where they provide the listed public affiliation of mail-in ballot voters:

Mail-In Requests:
Democrats: 25M
Republicans: 15M
Independent: 16M

Mail-In Returns:
Democrats: 16M
Republicans: 8.5M
Independent: 8M

Outstanding Ballots:
Democrats: 9M
Republicans: 6.5M
Independent: 8M

Depending on whether the currently returned ballots are reported immediately or later will tell us the magnitude of the shift (there are many fewer outstanding Democratic ballots than republican ones)...

But a good general rule is - for all the yelling here -- Democrats will vote for Democrats, Republicans will vote for Republicans, and Independents will split closer to 50/50 than you'd think.

Doesn't seem very likely to get a late Trump Shift from mail-ins.

Edit: Cite: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html

I tend to disagree when it comes to Independent voters splitting nearly 50/50. I believe that was very much true before Trump. Let's face it, people like Mitt Romney and John McCain are far different men than Trump. They were men of morals and character. I could certainly see a 50/50 split for candidates such as those two. Because with men like those you were down to looking strictly at policies.

Trump tended to con a lot of people that became convinced he was in "campaign mode" and would suddenly become "more presidential" if he were elected. There is now four years of evidence to show just how divisive and nasty he truly is.

There is a lifetime of evidence that dictates that Biden is not some extreme liberal. No matter how much the Republicans try and convince Independent voters that Biden will just be a figure head and that somehow Kamala will actually be running the country, people know better. They saw that the moderate portion of the Democratic party won with the nomination of Biden.

That's what most Independent voters look for. A sense of moderation. There's only one direction they can lean towards in order to get that.

Maybe - but the data doesn't tend to bare it out. It is possible that there are 55/45 splits in independents, but it's hard for them to be much bigger than that.

Also, most independents aren't actually independents -- and have really only voted for one party or the other.

On election day, one side will be out to an early lead, if the results flip in the days after, the losing side will cry fraud. Probably best if they only release final results instead of play by play. Thats not going to happen. The media is going to make this worse by getting over dramatic with the results in order to keep people glued to their tv's.

Every individual county has different rules for when they need to report, what they need to report, and how they need to report it.

I think the best thing we can do is not change these rules in the last week before a controversial election.

I think the water gets murky on what would best be reported and what the people want to know. This election is seen as the most important election in America for as long as most anyone alive can remember. At least by most people. It speaks to the very character and fiber of common decency.

The evidence is rather overwhelming that mail in votes will favor democrats and some places won't even start counting them until the day after the elections. Seven counties in Pennsylvania which will most likely be a deciding factor in the election comes to mind.

I think trump will try and declare victory on election day and if once mail in votes are counted that changes, all hell is going to break loose and he will do everything in his power to keep it tied up in court rather than concede gracefully.

It's going to be a cluster F***.

For this reason, I think the networks are going to be very cautious before declaring a state in favor of either candidate.

So we may not see anyone at 270 or higher for a couple of days. No repeat of Florida 2000.

I don't think most Independents are predisposed to vote entirely for one party or another. Show me data if anyone wants to back up that claim. I will say that there is increased pressure in society to join a side.

I also don't think that Independents think of themselves as some sort of middle position between the two major parties. In fact, I would say that many of us think the whole idea of this dichotomy of "right" and "left" is silly and lacking common sense.

Most likely, they are people that hold a range of views that don't fit neatly into one box or another.

Exactly. Which is why depending on the circumstances they could vote for either box.

But that's really not what most independents are.

The research shows 80% of independents are partisans who just don't want to label themselves as such.

Independents are leaning heavily toward Biden this election...


https://www.foxnews.com/politics/poll-biden-trump-lead-narrows-slightly

It seems as though you don't feel 20% of the independent votes are substantial? Trump won the election by less than 80,000 votes in three key states. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would have changed the outcome of the election and that wouldn't take many independent votes to change the winner of this election.

20% is ridiculously huge. 10% is ridiculously huge in the current electorate.

I said that "Democrats tend to vote for Democrats, Republicans tend to vote for Republicans, and Independents tend to split about 50/50" -- that is true.

Yet you posted this which indicates something totally different. And as I stated, 80,000 votes in those three states is a significantly low number in regards to what it would take to change the outcome from 2016 than 20%, or even 10% of independent voters for that matter.

Ummm -- that is exactly consistent with what I posted?

"Nearly four-in-ten U.S. adults (38%) identify as politically independent, but most “lean” toward one of the two major parties. Only 7% of Americans overall don’t express a partisan leaning, while 13% lean toward the Republican Party and 17% lean toward the Democratic Party.
"

7%/38% = 18% i.e. about 20%....

So you can expect swings up to a maximum of about 63/37 Democratic, or 54/46 Republican.....

I never said that independents aren't important, I said they tend to be closer to 50/50 than people believe.

If 20% of them are not partisan, that means they lean in neither direction. That would also mean it's dependent on the candidates. That means if one of the candidates is found to be deeply disturbing, a 50/50 split is not so predetermined. It allows for a swing in one direction or the other depending on the election and the candidates.