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Making GG weekly politics-free again!
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Election night tips!
First up, even moreso than other years, don't get too concerned about initial reports of ballots coming in. Early votes are skewed pretty heavily Democratic, and in-person election day voting will likely skew heavily Republican. It varies depending on the state whether early votes are reported first, election day votes are reported first, or if they're intermingled. So plenty of states will look like a big lead one direction, then slowly even out.
Next, plenty of states won't have complete results on election night, so it could be a few days, even a week or more before the election can be called.
What to look for!
On election night Florida should have results pretty quickly. If Biden wins Florida, it's over.
Nebraska's 2nd district and Maine's 2nd district should also be fairly quick. If Biden wins both, 538 gives him a >99% chance of winning, so that's also crushing. But ignoring their model for a second, each district gives 1 electoral vote. In my above map, Biden needs 12. +1 from one of those districts +11 from AZ will get him there, so winning either opens another path to close things out.
North Carolina may not have complete results by the end of the night, but may be able to be called on election night. If Biden wins NC, it's pretty much over as well.
The state to not worry too much about is Pennsylvania. It doesn't start counting mail-in ballots until 7am on election day and will not be done in time, so it'll take most of the week or more to get enough results to say who's winning. This also means it'll start very red and narrow as mail-in votes are included.
First up, even moreso than other years, don't get too concerned about initial reports of ballots coming in. Early votes are skewed pretty heavily Democratic, and in-person election day voting will likely skew heavily Republican. It varies depending on the state whether early votes are reported first, election day votes are reported first, or if they're intermingled. So plenty of states will look like a big lead one direction, then slowly even out.
Next, plenty of states won't have complete results on election night, so it could be a few days, even a week or more before the election can be called.
What to look for!
On election night Florida should have results pretty quickly. If Biden wins Florida, it's over.
Nebraska's 2nd district and Maine's 2nd district should also be fairly quick. If Biden wins both, 538 gives him a >99% chance of winning, so that's also crushing. But ignoring their model for a second, each district gives 1 electoral vote. In my above map, Biden needs 12. +1 from one of those districts +11 from AZ will get him there, so winning either opens another path to close things out.
North Carolina may not have complete results by the end of the night, but may be able to be called on election night. If Biden wins NC, it's pretty much over as well.
The state to not worry too much about is Pennsylvania. It doesn't start counting mail-in ballots until 7am on election day and will not be done in time, so it'll take most of the week or more to get enough results to say who's winning. This also means it'll start very red and narrow as mail-in votes are included.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile
Good tips. I love high high voter turnout has been so far. Btw, who do you guys go to for polling info? 538 seems to be the gold standard as far as I can tell.
Edited: Sun, 01 Nov 2020 16:02:04
I'm all about 538 because the only thing that matters are polling averages and they make that very easy to navigate and view. How well they interpret those averages is debatable, but you definitely don't want to be looking at random singular polls. 270toWin also has aggregate polls -- I like their site for customizing election maps. I've also used realclearpolitics for looking up polls for specific races.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile
That thing belongs in a Genesis video.
I just woke up, and comparing the map Yoda posted to what's happening now and it's eerily correct. Nearly all the undecided states are still counting votes.
Edited: Wed, 04 Nov 2020 08:01:12
Related, Biden won Nebraska's second district and Arizona, so Nevada + Michigan + Wisconsin will seal the election.
I am even more concerned about election fraud and voter tampering than I was last night. While people were negative about polls in 2016, the bigger errors were largely contained within the rustbelt states, and even then it was a matteer of 3-5 points. Nationally Clinton was +3.9 in polls, and won +2.1.
This year Biden was +8 nationally in polling averages, and is currently ahead roughly +1.8 in the national popular vote. That is almost an impossible level of error. The +1.8 is likely to go up a little, but Biden is still on track to have about the same margin as Clinton, just distributed slightly differently.
Biden has much better favorability ratings than Clinton in 2016. Biden may not generate the most enthusiasm in the world, but people really disliked Clinton, don't hate Biden, and have been really motivated to vote against Trump. Given all that, having essentially the same result as 2016, even with a different electoral college outcome, makes no coherent sense and I think requires more than just "oh, we were a little off weighing the polling samples".
I am even more concerned about election fraud and voter tampering than I was last night. While people were negative about polls in 2016, the bigger errors were largely contained within the rustbelt states, and even then it was a matteer of 3-5 points. Nationally Clinton was +3.9 in polls, and won +2.1.
This year Biden was +8 nationally in polling averages, and is currently ahead roughly +1.8 in the national popular vote. That is almost an impossible level of error. The +1.8 is likely to go up a little, but Biden is still on track to have about the same margin as Clinton, just distributed slightly differently.
Biden has much better favorability ratings than Clinton in 2016. Biden may not generate the most enthusiasm in the world, but people really disliked Clinton, don't hate Biden, and have been really motivated to vote against Trump. Given all that, having essentially the same result as 2016, even with a different electoral college outcome, makes no coherent sense and I think requires more than just "oh, we were a little off weighing the polling samples".
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobileCome on Nevada! It's Biden's last chance to reach 270, but it's incredibly tight with Trump trailing by a paltry 8000 votes.
The tension!
The tension!
Michigan and Nevada be like:
Biden wins!
Ding, dong the witch is dead! 🤣
Na, na, na, na. Na, na, na, na. Hey, ey, ey. Goodbye! 👋
I considered participating in No Nut November but I've already lost.
travo said:I considered participating in No Nut November but I've already lost.
Why is this even a thing? 
Holy crap, and now they're saying Putin might be stepping down as he's rumored to have Parkinson's?? I guess that's the twist ending for 2020 that no one saw coming.
Well shit, how will Trump flee to Russia now?
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robio (3m)
I made this map a few days ago, so not sure if the numbers are exactly the same but there's been no major change.
This is the map if you give Trump every state where he has any lead at all, and you give Biden only states that 538 a 90%+ chance of winning (which varies by state, but is generally around an 8 point lead or more).
So every grey state is either even or Biden leading. It basically means if the map looks like this on election night, which is pretty reasonable, Trump would need to sweep every single one of these states he's behind in to get to 270.
Everything looks about as good as it can. My concern is election fraud and court chicanery. Everything Republicans say is projection, and there's few things they yell about as much as voter fraud.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile