Thread by @mtdukes

Spent today doing a deep dive on the number of potential ballots left to count in North Carolina.

All told, that number comes out to about 172,000. Here's how we got there...
newsobserver.com/news/politics-… #ncpol

First up: outstanding absentee ballots. An analysis of data as of Thursday AM shows about 108,000 in the "outstanding absentee".

That number is expected to decrease over the next few days, as it did between today and yesterday, when it was at about 116,000.

This number is a measure of the outstanding requests for mail-in ballots, but has a few big caveats:
- Not all of will be returned
- Not all will be sent by Nov. 3/arrive before Nov. 12
- Number doesn't account (yet!) for the people who change their mind and vote in person

Next up: Accepted mail-in votes that arrived between Election Day and Nov. 12.
Our analysis as of Thursday AM puts this figure at about 23,000.

But so far, this number has not been included in the current unofficial results from the state. er.ncsbe.gov/?election_dt=1…

That's because county election boards have to meet to finalize those mail-in ballots and push data back to the state results.

Some counties, like Mecklenburg, will start that as soon as Friday. Others will wait until Nov. 12.

But these are separate from the *outstanding* count.

And finally: provisional ballots.

Per state law, the state announced today that there were about 41,000 provisional ballots cast by NC voters.

Those are cast when there's an issue at the polling place, like a question about a voter's eligibility.

County boards must research these to determine if they're valid, so that's also done during their post-Election Day meetings held over the next few days.

Many of those ballots will not count.

By comparison, voters cast about 60,000 provisional ballots in 2016. About 56% or so did not end up counting.

It's really hard to know if we should expect a similar proportion to count this year (that's how 2020 rolls, y'all).

So! Taken together, that's about 172,000 potential ballots still left to count in North Carolina:

~108,000 outsanding by mail
~ 23,000 "untallied", accepted by mail
~ 41,000 provisional
---------------------
~172,000 total

BUT!

That number is the absolute maximum, based on state data as of 11/5 AM.

Incredibly likely that the true number of ballots counted after Election Day in NC will fall far short of 172,000.

But it's still useful: We know *at least* 97% of the vote has been counted in NC so far.

And while that may not mean much for the final outcome of the big races, it could affect downballot (and still vitally important) races with much tighter margins. newsobserver.com/news/politics-… #ncpol

And national media please take note, for our sake: There are not 300,000-400,000 outstanding ballots in North Carolina.

At least not in any data I have seen.

anyway here's wonderwall