Board 8 > Can someone explain what happened in the election?

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Im not political at all but tried keeping up with this election since it was so heated. I saw that Trump was winning at the end of Election Day but then various states had about 10% - 50% ballots remaining which were not yet counted, and a large majority of all of them went to Biden this giving him the win a few days later. The explanation was that those remaining votes happened to be in major cities in swing states, and major cities typically go Democratic, and also mail-in votes tend to be Democratic.

Do I have that right? If so...

1) Why were the swing states the last to be counted? I know PA had some court judgment saying they could count votes up until, like, next week due to the mail. But what about the other states like Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina?

2) Why were the major cities votes last to be counted? Im going to guess it was because those folks are where the most vote-in ballots stem from. But if thats the case, why didnt major cities in other states take awhile to count / go toward Biden?

3) And why do mail-in votes go Democratic? I know Trump griped a lot about mail fraud so maybe that would lead to Republicans voting in person, but it seems like it shouldnt be so overwhelming of a difference.

Can someone who understands politics explain this? Id like to be able to contribute to political conversation since its all people talk about lately, but I simply dont know how this all works.

I dont know if I have the energy to answer all of these questions right now but one quick one:

republicans are also much less likely to take covid seriously, which is why the heavy increase in mail in ballot numbers also heavily favor democrats

also the reason mail in ballots are taking forever to be counted is a mix of republicans intentionally setting it up to be this way and general incompetence. florida, for example, has been doing large amounts of mail in votes for years (i would assume because of its high percentage of elderly voters, but that is an assumption) and has the process down very well, which is why we got the results moslty on election night. other states, for many various reasons, do not have the same history of processing mail in votes, and as such are much less competent at it.

also mail in ballots can generally be received *after* election day, so long as they are postmarked by the right date, and in very close races this can lead them to not being called as they wait for more ballots to come in and be processed

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1) They weren't the last to be counted, just the last to be called, since it was so close in those swing states. Other states like California also aren't done counting, but the race isn't even close in those states and so they were called one way or the other earlier. Not that many states are actually done counting. It's just that some states were called at much earlier percentages, whereas we didn't know who truly won some of the swing states until much higher percentages of the count.

2) Major cities = more votes of all kinds, which take longer to count, and it goes back to point 1. It's not that those major cities were necessarily last, just that they got more attention than states that had already been decided.

3) Democrats have much more reason to mail in vote. They more heavily believed in doing so to avoid covid, for one, while Republicans downplayed the pandemic. Trump also specifically told his supporters not to vote by mail and to instead vote in person.

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Interesting. That makes sense.

And what was the issue about 150K votes being found and all of them going toward Biden? Was that a thing or was it false reporting?

Sunroof posted...

1) Why were the swing states the last to be counted? I know PA had some court judgment saying they could count votes up until, like, next week due to the mail. But what about the other states like Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina?

Depends on the state when they start counting, but all swing states are going to be the last one called well, because,, they are swings states. Other states are still counting votes as well, keep that in mind, we just have enough data off those states at a very early stage that they can call the winner much earlier.

Sunroof posted...

2) Why were the major cities votes last to be counted? Im going to guess it was because those folks are where the most vote-in ballots stem from. But if thats the case, why didnt major cities in other states take awhile to count / go toward Biden?

They aren't necessarily. They are all counted at the same time, but bigger cities are going to seem like they are coming last because of the amount of votes that need to be counted. It just so happens the bulk of the population comes from bigger cities. Bigger population=more ballots=need more time to count

Sunroof posted...

3) And why do mail-in votes go Democratic? I know Trump griped a lot about mail fraud so maybe that would lead to Republicans voting in person, but it seems like it shouldnt be so overwhelming of a difference.

I honestly don't know why mail-in trend D's, but specifically this year was because of the pandemic.

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Sunroof posted...

Interesting. That makes sense.

And what was the issue about 150K votes being found and all of them going toward Biden? Was that a thing or was it false reporting?

It wasn't an actual issue with votes itself, just with the website reporting the votes. It was a clerical error with the actual update, but it didn't actually mean anything.

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Each state has their own counting dates for early and mail in votes (ironically set up by the Republicans in several of these swing states). The delay in the count is a mix of both policy and just a lack of preparation for just how many votes were not going to be counted on election day. In many states, early and mail in votes exceeded the total votes period 4 years ago, and they weren't allowed to count them until election day. These votes also require differing amounts of verification and review that aren't applied to in person election day votes.

Major cities both just take longer to count in general and tend to lean slightly or heavily democratic in most states. Major congested sites are also much more susceptible to Coronavirus, so the percentage of votes being mailed in are higher there even in RATIO, not just pure numbers.

Democrats heavily had the advantage in mail in and early voting because Trump was actively playing down the virus and claiming mail in voting was unreliable and fraudulent. He essentially told Republicans not to mail in there votes and instead to show up on election day in intimidating force.

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lol looks like I was pretty late.

As for why there are still results coming in, it's again a state variable. North Carolina allows votes to arrive until the...12th, was it, as long as they're postmarked. They've basically stopped reporting anything until the cutoff date. That's why nobidy is calling NC, because it's actually possible Biden will still win there.

In the case of Nevada and Arizona...

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

lol looks like I was pretty late.

Good news is all we all gave very similar answers. I know it's GFAQS, but it's refreshing to see.

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Trump got owned

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Sorozone posted...

Good news is all we all gave very similar answers. I know it's GFAQS, but it's refreshing to see.

I'm sure Ulti will be in here soon enough to try and push conspiracy theories.

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Sunroof posted...

The explanation was that those remaining votes happened to be in major cities in swing states, and major cities typically go Democratic, and also mail-in votes tend to be Democratic.

Do I have that right? If so...

yeah, that's the gist of it. though it's less mail in "tend to" go Dem and "overwhelmingly" go Dem. 60/40 splits minimum, 80/20 for city ones, it's firmly in that party.

Sunroof posted...

1) Why were the swing states the last to be counted? I know PA had some court judgment saying they could count votes up until, like, next week due to the mail. But what about the other states like Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina?

i don't think there's any state that's 100% done with the count. it usually isn't done until a week or two, what you see on election day are broad results with easy to get numbers and that's good enough most of the time. when it's a close race more work needs to be done to get accurate results, which is where we are now. bugs, errors, mistakes all happen, sometimes drastically within a district that flips thousands of votes, and this is all examined in the following days. ballot issues get found, minor fraud gets found, results get adjusted accordingly. bear in mind this isn't as simple as "he voted for X president" either, they need to be mindful of the full ballot as well as what type of ballot it is as some may be segregated pending legal challenges. an accurate tabulation takes time.

regarding PA, they had a court decision saying that they couldn't count any mail in votes until the day of the election. so all that stuff they had just piled up and it's just a steady flow of data.

Sunroof posted...

2) Why were the major cities votes last to be counted? Im going to guess it was because those folks are where the most vote-in ballots stem from. But if thats the case, why didnt major cities in other states take awhile to count / go toward Biden?

80% of the US population is in cities and a mix of early numbers + trends will rapidly make it clear which way they're going. there's a LOT of ballots to count and it's not really as efficient as the other areas which are easier to put together, will paint a broader picture, and give you a more complete result of the state. most cities probably aren't done yet but they don't need to be either to know which way they're going. after a certain point it's just irrelevant padding.

Sunroof posted...

3) And why do mail-in votes go Democratic? I know Trump griped a lot about mail fraud so maybe that would lead to Republicans voting in person, but it seems like it shouldnt be so overwhelming of a difference.

your answer is the general consensus.
Dems typically take covid more seriously, they're willing to trust mail-in voting more.
Republicans don't trust the system and would rather go in person.

the election day votes are more Republican as a whole, the mail in ballots are more Dem as a whole.

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Sunroof posted...

Interesting. That makes sense.

And what was the issue about 150K votes being found and all of them going toward Biden? Was that a thing or was it false reporting?

it was a thing but also a mistake and was misleading.
a site that was updating totals was putting in some aggregate results. as they did a 0 was added at the end, so instead of adding about 14k to his totals, it said 140k. people freaked out, it got looked into, and it didn't actually impact anything because it was also spotted internally right after, with the adjustment visibly there in votes being "taken away" from biden as a result of said typo. basically people saw a screencap of a database update but didn't see the rest of the database update.

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Everyone's pretty much already said what I was going to, but I'll add a little bit of trivia.

One: I think AP/FOX called arizona WAY too early and they were too embarrassed to retract calling it

This is because they assumed the mail-in ballots would trend the same way as in other states.

They were wrong because Arizona has a 'permanent early voting list' you can register for. This means you automatically get mail-in ballots for every election. So republicans in arizona got their automatic mail-in ballots they had registered for years ago and used them. and since historically republicans were more prone to registering for mail-in ballots, the race is getting closer instead of more decisive

Two: Florida was counted so quickly because they allow mail-in ballots to be counted at the same time as in-person ballots

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AZ also had a bug in the reporting. when they, and everyone else, thought that the state was over 90%, they weren't. at 98% they said they were really at 86% and the system was wrong.

i guess the tl;dr is our elections are held together by a range of cement to band aids and a lot of swing states are hovering around duct tape level.

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Trump got less votes

How was I the first one to respond with this

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Trump got owned

A bad take. He got nowhere near owned. Its sad (and actually frightening) that this election was so close.

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Bane_Of_Despair posted...

Trump got less votes

How was I the first one to respond with this

He got less votes lass time too! This is one of the only polls where that isn't sufficient as an answer!

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xp1337 posted...

He got less votes lass time too! This is one of the only polls where that isn't sufficient as an answer!

Hey now, there's a novel idea for the next contest: an electoral college.

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xp1337 posted...

He got less votes lass time too! This is one of the only polls where that isn't sufficient as an answer!

Fair enough

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redrocket posted...

A bad take. He got nowhere near owned. Its sad (and actually frightening) that this election was so close.

Hes about to lose by almost the exact same electoral college votes he beat Killary by, which he called a historic blowout, so Im just savoring the copium and not worrying about that.

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