I've gotten a few questions about the provisional ballots in Pennsylvania this afternoon. I addressed them here earlier this morning, and I don't have a lot to add. nytimes.com/2020/11/06/ups…
Today, we did get initial provisional results in some very Republican counties. They were ~ the same as the non-provisional vote. That's not going to cut it for Trump, since a) he needs to win these ballots big to win by this means; b) Philly/dem areas have more provisionals
I don't really know exactly why the networks haven't called it (that's not say they're wrong--I can think of a number of arguments, some better than others), so I don't know what it would take to trigger a call
One possibility, though, is that they're waiting to clear the recount threshold--.5 point. That would be around 35k votes. So while I don't know that's the tipping point margin, I can imagine that it might be.
Biden's now up by 28k votes, putting him up by .43 points--just short of the .5 point threshold. No clue whether any decision desks are really waiting for Biden to clear this figure, but we are approaching it
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Maricopa only adds about 7k ballots tonight, but they're Biden+11--assuming I did this right.
Obviously that's the wrong direction for the president, though many ballots still remain.
As always, the key is what kind of ballots we're looking at: late mail, election day drop off, provisional, or cured ballots. I haven't seen any clear indication of what this is, and absent that it's hard to be too sure of what to make of it
Given their typical sequence, this ought to be the last of the election day dropoff. If so, that's a very bad sign for Trump.
There was a point on Tuesday night--not sure the time, you can probably find the tweet--when the eastern Ohio counties came in and I think I would have thought very hard about calling Trump the favorite
There was some conflicting info among white northerners at that point: MN/ME/NH were fine for Biden, WI was close, and rural OH/IA were worse than 2016. IDK how I would have sorted it out if forced.
But there was no way to know that this red wasn't bleeding to PA
I guess by that point we did have the AZ early vote, which would have kept the non-Rust Belt path alive. But it's not like Biden was an overwhelming favorite in WI at that point either, and I do think this was well before the needle came around on Georgia
Well it's about time: Joe Biden is the president-elect.
He's carried the state of Pennsylvania, and I can report that it is very loud here in dark blue Manhattan
The remaining vote could expand Biden's lead in Pennsylvania to well over 100,000 votes
The winning map: Biden currently has 273 electoral votes, and he leads in states worth 306
Trump wins the new Maricopa vote by 15.6 points. Still not good enough for him. Still not going to yield a projection, I don't think.
That's a little better for Trump than it was yesterday. It would put him on track to really tighten things up if it kept up, even if it wouldn't be enough to put him over the top. And Trump doing a little better makes it harder to rule out that he won't do better later
I want to be clear that I really do think that Trump is still competitive in Arizona. No, he's not 'on track'--if you play this out, Trump still falls a hair short. But the results today are awfully close to on track, and there are a lot of ballots left.
In Pennsylvania, I can think of two possibilities. One is that the desks are waiting for Biden to clear the .5 point recount threshold. That's a stated AP position.
If so, Biden could be called... at really any point, as his lead is now up to .43 ap.org/en-us/topics/p…
Another possibility is the provisional ballots, which are a little murky so far if you're looking for 1000% certainty. That said, all indications are that they break Democratic: there's too much in Philly and Allegheny, and the early reporting in latter is that they're D+50
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