Tuesday is election day, but there’s no guarantee the country will know right away whether President Trump will be re-elected or Democrat Joe Biden will be the nation’s next president.
For the millions of Americans who will be closely following the results as they come in, there are some important things to remember to put the numbers in perspective.
Turnout predictions are little more than educated guesses, but all indications point to totals that could exceed the 138 million who voted in 2016. In Texas, for example, more early ballots were cast by Friday than the state’s total number of votes four years ago.
Although more than 91 million votes have already been turned in nationwide, election workers could be counting ballots for the next week or longer. California and 21 other states, including such presidential battlegrounds as Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Nevada, will tally mail ballots that arrive after the election, as long as they are postmarked by election day.
In California, “election officials prioritize the right to vote and election security over rushing the vote count,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said last week. “We’d rather get it right than get it fast.”
But those mail ballots take more time to verify and tally than in-person votes, and not all arrive by mail. In San Francisco, about 25% of the mail ballots are turned in at polling places, which means they aren’t counted until after the election.
The prospect of a drawn-out vote has outraged Trump, who has complained for months that an increase in mail ballots will result in a rigged election and ensure that “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
“It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3rd, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate,” Trump told reporters last week. “I don’t believe that that’s by our laws.”
But in fact, there has never been a presidential election when all the votes were counted on election night. Even without late-arriving mail ballots, there are always provisional and challenged ballots left to be tallied, which is why California won’t officially certify its election results until Dec. 11.
There’s nothing unusual about a long count election. In 2018, the last California congressional race wasn’t decided until nearly a month after the election. It took six weeks to determine the winners in two New York congressional races this summer. And in 2000, Republican George W. Bush had to wait until Dec. 13, six weeks after the election, before it was decided that he’d won Florida by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast, making him the winner of the presidential race.
On Tuesday, late-arriving votes aren’t likely be good to Trump and other GOP candidates. In what political observers have dubbed “the blue shift,” ballots counted after election night, many of them from younger or occasional voters turning them in at the last minute, tend to favor Democratic candidates.
That means that in states with a slow count of mail ballots, the early results could look very different from the final results.
In California two years ago, Republican candidates had election night leads in four of seven House seats targeted by Democrats. But when all the votes were tallied, they lost every one.
It’s not just a California phenomenon. In Arizona in 2018, Republican Martha McSally had a small election night lead in the Senate race. But after almost a week of post-election counting, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema was the winner.
A CNN national poll taken Oct. 23-26 found that people who had already voted backed Biden, 64% to 34%. But those who said they were voting on election day favored Trump, 59% to 36%.
In states with party registration, Democrats voting early have greatly outnumbered Republicans this fall. And with Trump calling on his backers to cast their votes in person, the GOP could dominate the election night results from polling places.
That might not make a difference in states like California, where the mail votes are processed quickly and announced early. But two of the likely battleground states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, don’t deal with the mail ballots until election day, while a new law only allows election officials in Michigan, another hotly contested state, to work on the absentee ballots for 10 hours the day before the election.
That means Trump could pile up a strong lead when the in-person GOP-favoring results are released, only to see that advantage disappear as the heavily Democratic mail ballots are tallied — potentially leaving the president and his allies to claim the results were fixed.
“If it turns out to be really close and it comes down to Pennsylvania, God help the United States of America,” Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the UC Irvine law school, told the New York Times.
Pennsylvania is just one of the states where the 2020 election could turn. While the burgeoning number of mail ballots shouldn’t cause problems in states like California, Florida, Iowa and Arizona, which have experience dealing with heavy vote-by-mail totals, the flood of early votes could be a disaster for other states.
In Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin, mail ballots made up less than 7% of the total vote in 2016, compared with 58% for California and 73% in Arizona. But so far this year, North Carolina, Nevada and Texas already have collected mail votes exceeding more than 80% of their 2016 vote totals.
Here’s a list of what to look for as the polls close across the nation on Tuesday.
4 p.m. PST:
Polls close: Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia and Vermont.
Highlights: Georgia is the key state, with Democrats trying to take it back from the GOP. There are also two important Senate races in Georgia and one in South Carolina, part of the other major national story of this election — the battle for control of the Senate, now held by Republicans. If the Democrats win in Georgia, it could forecast a big night for Biden.
4:30 p.m. PST:
Polls close: North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.
Highlights: North Carolina and Ohio are states Trump won in 2016, but polls have shown Biden with a slight lead in both of them. Democrats also are looking to flip a Senate seat in North Carolina.
5 p.m. PST:
Polls close: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Washington, D.C.
Highlights: Florida and Pennsylvania are the battlegrounds. While the Pennsylvania vote count could be slow, Florida has plenty of experience with mail ballots and could have its results out quickly. Expect Biden to take an early lead in the mail ballots, with Trump pulling closer as the in-person votes are reported. It’s a must-win state for Trump. Republicans also are expected to flip a Democratic Senate seat in Alabama.
5:30 p.m. PST:
Polls close: Arkansas.
Highlights: A likely win for Trump.
6 p.m. PST:
Polls close: Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Highlights: Arizona and Wisconsin are the states to watch. Trump narrowly won Wisconsin in 2016, and a repeat would be bad news for Biden. On the other side, a Biden victory in Arizona, a longtime GOP stronghold, could signal a Democratic shift. Polling also shows a tight race in Texas, where a Biden victory likely would end Trump’s re-election hopes. Democrats also are hoping to flip Senate seats in Arizona and Colorado.
7 p.m. PST:
Polls close: Iowa, Montana, Nevada and Utah.
Highlights: Nevada is the presidential prize. Democrats won it in 2016, but it’s a state Republicans are hoping to flip. Republicans are also fighting to hold on to Senate seats in Montana and Iowa.
8 p.m. PST:
Polls close: California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
Highlights: Not much suspense, with Idaho a sure win for Trump and the other states strong for Biden. In California, the first results will include well over half the anticipated total vote and will provide a strong indication of the trend for ballot measures and local elections.
9 p.m. PST:
Polls close: Hawaii.
Highlight: A strong state for Biden.
10 p.m. PST:
Polls close: Alaska.
Highlight: A likely win for Trump. But there’s a tight race for the Senate, with an independent candidate backed by Democrats challenging a GOP incumbent.
John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth
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November 02, 2020 at 03:00AM
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Here’s what to look for while watching election returns Tuesday night — and beyond - San Francisco Chronicle
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