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Thread (1/): If social media has proven anything to me, it's that everyone gives a damn what I think... but regardless, here's my view of what to expect on Election Night. We may not know with our usual amount of certainty (which in itself is ...
(2/) ... based on a large amount of pre-election polling, exit polls, and turnout-based models aka "high voter turnout is a good sign for the Very Silly Party") what the results are... but I think we'll have a reasonably good idea of how things are going for one reason. ...
(3/) ... In the words of the late Tim Russert, "Florida Florida Florida." With the exception of some areas (I'm lookin' at you, Miami-Dade), our cursed peninsula does one thing relatively well... count votes fairly quickly. We've had a tremendously robust vote by mail setup ...
(4/) ... for years and our VBM ballots are counted generally the same way as our early voting and Election Day ballots. They're all paper ballots, which is different from states which may use paper ballots for absentee/VBM but electronic voting machines for Election Day. ...
(5/) ... further, our state laws allow VBM ballots to be at least verified as valid prior to Election Day, even if the counting itself doesn't necessarily happen until E Day. I believe (but am not certain) that Florida is also allowed to actually start counting those votes on...
(6/) ... the morning of Election Day rather than having to wait until polls close. So how does all this help us know on Tuesday what's happening? Well, it only does if the results go one particular way and by a wide margin. The general consensus is that Trump's path to ...
(7/) ... victory is very narrow. That's not to say there isn't a path... but it is a tightrope. Meaning, he really can't afford to miss anything. Meanwhile, Biden's path is more like a choose your own adventure book with multiple paths leading to a victory. With that ...
(8/) ... understanding, if the networks are able to call Florida for Biden, the odds are very much against Trump winning the electoral college. 538 regularly runs 40,000 simulations on outcomes based on polling. In those runs, if you remove the scenarios where Trump ...
(9/) ... wins FL (in other words, you only look at the model runs where he loses FL), he LOSES the electoral college in more than 99 out of every 100 model runs, on average. He HAS to win Florida unless he has some other way to overcome strong odds against him ...
(10/) ... granted, we're not talking insurmountable odds, but we're talking some pretty bad odds. Here are examples of less than 1% odds, as shared by XKCD ( https://xkcd.com/2379/ ) ...
(11/) ... Whether or not we know Florida on Election Night will depend in large part on how close it is. We've covered that Florida does a good job of counting quickly and that the big shift to VBM may not be that much of a game changer here. But regardless, the winning ...
(12/) ... must be really far ahead and probably far ahead in ALL modes of voting for the winner to be called. Networks will be very gun-shy this year, and rightfully so. Expect to hear more states be "too early to call" (which is different than "too close to call"). In the ...
(13/) ... past, NBC has been quite fond of the phrase "apparent winner" rather than "projected winner" when things look really good for a candidate but they're still not comfortable enough to hang their peacock on a definitive result. If a result is super close, then ...
(14/) ... we get into messy scenarios like waiting on results of provisional ballots (you arrive at the polling place, there's a problem with your registration, & they allow you to cast a sort of quarantined ballot that doesn't get counted unless they solve the problem), or ...
(15/) ... automatic recounts required by law in some smaller margins of victory, or worst of all a protracted legal battle. There's some thinking that this may be the year where large court cases over policies and procedures are "broke" and the new "woke" is fighting ...
(16/) ... individual ballots and registrations based on signatures, registration data, and all other manner of ghastly crap that could tie up the results for a long time. And of course, if we somehow wind up with an electoral college tie (also pegged at as much as a ...
(17/) ... one in 100 chance in some versions of 538's modeling, then we're in a new level of hell written by people who probably have a lot of leather hidden in their closets behind the nice starched work shirts. Here's how I described that scenario to a friend on Facebag: ...
(18/) ... So moral of the story: we probably won't know for certain on Tuesday night, but there are scenarios where we can be reasonably sure of the outcome. If Florida is decisive and timely, a Biden win there leaves Trump a narrow needle to thread to win. And for that ...
(19/) ... matter, if Biden can somehow get to 215 EVs by 11PM Eastern (Florida has 29), it's game over. California has 55 and Biden is all but guaranteed to win that one when the polls close there, which would put him over the top. One final nod to the 2016 elephant in the ...
(20/) ... room / 400 pound gorilla. Yes, polls were off in 2016 (though they did seesaw back and forth throughout the runup to the election and tightened significantly in the last week)... but this year they really aren't doing that (quite the opposite - see below from 538) ...
(21/) ... Further, forecaster Harry Enten (AKA the "Wizard of Odds") has assembled an EV map based on the assumption that 2020 polls are as wrong as the 2016 polls were. Biden still wins by a significant margin in that scenario. That doesn't speak to the timeliness of the ...
(22/) ... result, but it does speak to the very different landscape we're in this year versus 2016's series of unknowns. Not that 2020 is a known variable, but it's a different unknown variable. So there ya go, my vomitous outpouring of armchair psephology for Tuesday. So ...
(23/23) ... TLDR: we might have a good idea Tuesday but it probably won't be absolutely certain. I think we'll have an even better idea by the end of the week. And regardless of what the polls say, take nothing for granted no matter who your candidate is. (End of thread)
