The COVID-19 pandemic and former President Donald Trump’s assaults on voting by mail utterly upended the best way folks vote in elections.
Democrats at the moment are extra more likely to vote early in-person or by mail, whereas most Republicans wait till Election Day to solid ballots. And people voting patterns could make election nights complicated to onlookers, because the outcomes can look very completely different relying on the order through which these ballots are tabulated.
In states the place ballots solid on Election Day are counted first, it might probably result in a phenomenon generally known as a Purple Mirage, the place Trump appears to be forward however his lead diminishes as early and mail-in ballots then get counted, resulting in a so-called Blue Shift.
Political analyst and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich describes the phenomenon on this useful explainer—and predicts that Trump will attempt to exploit it.
In 2020, Trump used these Purple Mirages to attempt to allege fraud and sow mistrust about his eventual loss to President Joe Biden.
“Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted,” Trump tweeted in 2020, as his leads evaporated and it grew to become clear Biden was going to win.
This yr, Trump’s allies anticipate he’ll attempt to do one thing comparable and declare victory earlier than sufficient ballots are counted to know who really gained.
“Duh! Is the pope Catholic? There are few things in politics I would ever say you could make a firm bet on. That is one of those,” one former Trump adviser instructed NBC Information of the idea that Trump will say he gained and possibly even demand to “STOP THE COUNT!”—simply as he did in 2020.
Wisconsin, for instance, is predicted to have a Purple Mirage, as sparsely populated rural areas that again Trump are anticipated to report their outcomes first, whereas Democratic strongholds like Milwaukee tabulate their votes extra slowly, NBC Information reported. That can make Wisconsin look higher for Trump in the beginning of the night.
NBC Information additionally reported that various swing states, together with Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia, are anticipated to report mail-in ballots and early votes first, which is able to make it appear like Harris has a big lead. These leads are more likely to come again to earth as Election Day ballots are tabulated.
And Michigan is making an attempt to keep away from a Purple Mirage by permitting mail-in ballots to be preprocessed, making it sooner for officers to rely ballots which can be more likely to favor Harris and keep away from a protracted Purple Mirage.
Regardless of how votes are tabulated, if the race is as shut as polls counsel, it may very well be some time earlier than we all know the result of the election, as late-arriving mail-in ballots may grow to be the deciding issue that determines who wins the Electoral School.
In a name with reporters on Monday afternoon, Harris’ marketing campaign mentioned that whereas they anticipate states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan to have near-complete outcomes by the top of Tuesday evening, they assume outcomes from different states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada may take for much longer to return in.
“We might not know the outcomes of this election for a number of days, however we’re very targeted on staying calm and assured all through this era as the method goes by,” Harris marketing campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon instructed Reuters.
