Sunday, November 01, 2020

Is the 2020 Presidential Election Already Over?

Americans cast 136,669,276 votes in the 2016 presidential election.

As of yesterday, according to the US Elections Project, Americans had already cast 92,038,417 votes in the 2020 presidential election.

Assuming similar or even higher turnout, it looks like there are still a lot of votes to be cast.

BUT!

The US Elections Project also asserts the existence of 32,303,784 mail ballots "outstanding," i.e. "yet to be returned." Some of those probably weren't cast (the voters forgot, or just decided screw it and threw them in the trash), others may still be in (or be lost in) the mail, still others may be sitting in mail bags at election authority offices waiting to be processed as "received."

Let's look at some battleground states (same source):

In 2016, Arizonans cast 2,604,657 total presidential ballots. This year, Arizonans requested 3,383,433 mail ballots and have already returned 2,302,756 of them.

In 2016, Floridians cast 9,420,039 presidential votes. This year, they've already cast 8,294,115.

Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are all way behind Florida and Arizona in terms of "actual votes so far in 2020" versus "votes cast in 2016." Actual turnout on Tuesday in those states will be depressed. They're up north where the weather isn't as nice. They're more "lockdown-oriented" vis a vis COVID-19. Their urban areas seem more inclined to "civil unrest." All three of those factors make standing in line with a bunch of strangers for hours unattractive.

I suspect that in all of the "battleground" states, the die is cast. Whoever was winning in each state this morning will still be winning in that state come Tuesday night.

No comments: