Don’t be fooled by early US vote counts: They might be misleading
WASHINGTON, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Early vote returns in U.S. battleground states may not be a good indicator of whether Democratic candidate Kamala Harris or Republican rival Donald Trump will win, experts say, thanks to vote counting rules and quirks in several key states.
In the 2020 election, some states showed a “red mirage,” in which Trump was leading on election night, before a “blue shift” saw Democrat Joe Biden overtake him as mail-in ballots favored by more Democratic voters were counted.
Experts had accurately predicted it would happen but Trump still used the shift to amplify his false claims that the election was stolen.
It could happen again this week, especially in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The opposite – a “blue mirage” apparently showing a strong result for Harris only for a “red shift” to reverse the trend – could also happen this week, especially in North Carolina and Georgia.
Trump’s campaign team has said he plans to declare victory when his team believes he has crossed the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the election. That could be premature, depending on how many votes have yet to be counted and where they come from.
How it all plays out will depend on how and when the large numbers of mail-in or early ballots are processed and counted in the different states.
Another factor is that Democrats tend to live in more populous urban areas, where counting votes takes longer.
There are seven battleground states likely to decide the election, each with its own rules for handling and counting ballots. Here’s what to expect on Election Day and beyond:
PENNSYLVANIA
Pennsylvania did not have a clear winner in 2020 for four days after Election Day, as officials sifted through a huge backlog of mail ballots.
The state is among only a handful that do not permit election workers to process or tabulate mail ballots until 7 a.m. ET on Election Day, which means it will likely again take days before the outcome is known.
With more Democrats than Republicans voting by mail, the early results – based on in-person Election Day votes – will probably show Trump ahead, but his lead will likely shrink as more mail ballots are counted.
That pattern in 2020 prompted Trump to falsely claim fraud. This year, a new law requires most counties to announce at midnight on election night how many mail ballots remain to be counted in an effort to forestall conspiracy theories.
WISCONSIN
Like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin does not allow election officials to process or count mail ballots until the morning of the election, which means there can be a delay in reporting the results of those early votes.
In addition, many of the state’s largest cities transport mail ballots to a centralized location for processing and tabulating. That can lead to significant batches of votes getting reported all at once in the early morning of Wednesday.
In 2020, Trump and his allies falsely claimed fraud after Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, reported nearly 170,000 absentee ballots around 3:30 a.m. CT (0830 GMT), giving Biden a huge spike that moved him into the lead for the first time.
That increase was expected due to the way the city processes those ballots and the fact that Democrats were more likely to vote by mail. A similar pattern is probable in 2024.
GEORGIA
Early in-person voting is popular in Georgia, where officials expected 65% to 70% of ballots to be cast at early poll locations.
Absentee or mail ballots, which may comprise around 5% of the vote, can be processed – which includes steps such as verifying signatures – starting two weeks before the election, though workers must wait until Election Day to begin counting them.
