Basically, Democrats rushed their mail ballots in this year. That meant the mail requests that hadn't been returned, heading into the weekend, were quite Republican. This was clear well in advanced
But...
--in general mail ballots have been decent for Biden--even Republican ones.
--the late mail ballots may also be quite young
--it's possible that these Republicans just voted in person, and we don't know it yet
If you've learned anything so far from this election, it ought to be that vote results can be very different by time and method! And until you've seen a group of ballots from that time and method, you just can't be *extremely* confident about just how good they are
The likeliest outcome in Arizona, by far, is that these ballots are good enough for Biden. But I don't think we can be *100%* confident about that until we've seen some of them
If the ballots *aren't* what Trump needs, we'll know fairly quickly. I'd think that even if the first batch aren't super Trump, that it will be all that the networks need to know
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It's just a matter of time.
Here's what's left to be counted, as we head into the possible/likely day of decision for Biden nytimes.com/2020/11/06/ups…
In Pennsylvania, Biden is on track to amass a lead of around 80k votes before provisional ballots get counted. I'd think that will be enough for the networks to make a projection.
We don't know the provisionals, but eye-balling the results I'm guessing there's a lot in Philly.
There's just not much left in Georgia at this point, where we have a scattering of absentee votes and then the provisional/cured/abs/military extraneous stuff. It's really close. There won't be a call. But right now I just don't see the votes for Trump without errors or surprises
Meanwhile, Trump's lead is under 50k in PA. It sure seems like Philadelphia is due to give us an update at some point this evening...
Meanwhile, Trump's lead in Georgia is now under 2500 votes. It'll be interesting to see whether Georgia beats out Pennsylvania in the race to a Biden lead
Unlike Pennsylvania, Biden won't be called the winner in Georgia if he manages to take a lead. It'll be too close, with provisionals and overseas ballots still left to go and the prospect of recount
Something interesting to think about: Stacey Abrams is basically the only major Democrat who fared worse in 2018 than Biden/Dems in 202. Who else is there?
Gillum lost, but he did fare better than Biden/Dems 2020
Trump's lead in Georgia now under 10,000 votes, mainly after mail-in ballots from Fulton.
Clayton and Chatham absentees alone ought to cover the rest of the difference
Yeah, then we get to the extraneous stuff. Overseas ballot v. provisionals v. the scattered missing stuff across the state. If the SOS is right, there's quite a bit of absentee elsewhere to pad Biden. Hard to judge the rest. It'll be in recount territory
Sadly, we're at the point where the needle is no longer very helpful. In a lot of places, the SOS says there's still absentee vote but the count is high enough that the needle isn't expecting much more. At this late stage, exact reporting prevails over the models
Biden wins the new votes in Nevada by 14 points, and there's still more late mail and provisionals left. I don't know if anyone will call it on this basis, as it's still fairly close and there's no *hard* data on what's out. But you can still pencil this into the Biden column
Additionally, Clark County (Las Vegas) appears to hold a disproportionate share of what's left. That would be good news for Biden, even if the remaining vote methods (late mail, provisional) weren't likely to his advantage
I think a main barrier is that the network projection models may not be built to handle vote by method to this extent. If your model knows it's all late mail/provisionals, then the data could quite possibly support a call. If not, then no call.
Unbeknownst to you, I've been up for a while and I've had my coffee. I think I'm all caught up on where we stand. We'll have an article on the state of play in a bit.
The big picture: no change in where we stand since last night. Biden still on track in PA; GA tallies were in line with our expectations and Biden may still have the tiny edge in GA--though there are a few too many conflicting reports this AM for me be certain about what's out