[1] https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/politics/decision-2020/...
You can get a more accurate number by subtracting the mail-in votes counted (under PA results) from the total ballots cast. This gives 269888 ballots uncounted right now.
I've also taken these numbers and extrapolated the mail vote in each county. Under this model Biden is currently shown as winning the state by 92k votes (1.35%)
Also, according to the trends here:
Alaska - Trump (3 votes)
Arizona - Trump (11 votes)
Georgia - Biden (16 votes)
North Carolina - Trump (15 votes)
Nevada - Biden (6 votes)
Pennsylvania - Biden (20 votes)
Winner would be Biden.
Based on what I am seeing (reading twitter feeds of various analysts), AZ is leaning towards Biden because there are a few blocks of votes left that should lean much more towards Biden, which would prevent Trump from clawing back.
And Georgia is going to be so close that that it will go to re-count, so that one is probably best characterized as a coin flip.
Alaska is also a bit of a wildcard. From my understanding, none of the mail-in ballots have been counted and counting won't start till next week. So no one has any clue what the breakdown of those votes look like. But probably safe to assume Trump gets AK.
To put that into perspective, less convincing than Trump's win in 2016, slightly more convincing than George W. Bush's re-election.
In 2016 Clinton was +2.9M votes, but 77K were in the "wrong" places (MI 10K; PA 44K; WI 23K) and so the minority candidate took the prize. Gore was +500K, but Bush got Florida by 537 votes, and that was the ball game.
Biden is +3.5M and things are still up in the air?
What a cockamamie system.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/upshot/networ...
tl;dr is that many of the remaining votes are in parts of the state that are more liberal than the parts of the state that have already been counted. If Biden wins a county that is 50/50 D/R, then they're assuming that he will also win a county that is 60/40 D/R (oversimplifying a bit because turnout can very from county to county and mail-in ballots might have different demographics than in person voters). However it was a bit controversial that Fox called AZ as early as they did, I don't think any of the other TV channels have followed suit
I think this is technically correct in that the other TV channels didn't; AP, however, also called AZ.
The description for the "Block trend" column could perhaps be a little clearer. It currently reads:
>How has the trailing candidate's share of recent blocks trended? Computed using a moving average of previous 30k or more votes (or as many as available).
To me that says "We compute the moving average using the last 30k votes, except when we use more or less than that.".
I also wonder if theres a good statistical reason for only counting full blocks. Why not just stop at 30k?
You'll see similar, on the face of it absurd numbers in the other direction in very red areas for the in-person vote, where the few Democrats available mostly voted by mail, so virtually everyone voting in person voted for Trump.
Who's up for adding simple graphs to this?
Great resource BTW!
The same reason they are estimated counts in the first place, there's not hard counts of ballots before the, um, count of ballots.
> Why has this process dragged on for days.
Because its a manual process that normally takes days.
> Where do they keep losing ballots?
They don't, that's why the estimated numbers go up, not down.
> Why isn't there a deadline?
There is, both in federal and, usually sooner, in state law.
> Why are only these states still counting?
Only those states are still getting national attention, many states are still counting but once the result of the races of national interest were clear, no one outside of people interested in state races that might still be in doubt was paying attention.
The process is dragged on for days because Republicans prevented the States from passing legislation that would allow them to start counting the mail-in ballots early, among other reasons.
The deadline is December 8th.
A ton of states are still counting, see California for example. People are only interested in the swing states though.
Indeed. The process is outlined here:
https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/roles#meeting
EDIT - it should be made clear that this is when the electors vote. Each individual state must finish their counting before that so they know which electors are voting on December 8. Each state is free to decide when they stop counting - and they each have their own laws regarding that. The Federal government has no say - the US constitution prohibits the Federal government from getting involved.
>Where do they keep losing ballots?
Because a process that had never been trialed in many places was used at the national scale.
>Why isn't there a deadline?
There is for the ballots being mailed (varies by states). There isn't any practical deadline on counting as long as a good faith effort is being made. Realistically we're probably looking at recounts in several of the key states.
Sure, I get that, but didn't anyone foresee that this will call into question the legitimacy of the election.
To recap, both candidates have claimed victory at this point, despite no major media outlet calling enough electoral votes.
This could have been prevented by simply not changing things at the last minute. Instead, we've set the stage for an extremely contested, ugly election. There is no landslide, as everyone expected. This is the worst possible outcome.
How could there be? Voting is a state business. Each state is responsible for how it chooses the electors, via what procedures, on what timetable, etc.
Here's what the Constitution has to say on this matter (Article 2, Section 1): "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress".
Well, Article II of the Constituion might have included language something like "The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States."
The first clause absolutely gives Congress the power to set a deadline by which electors must be chosen. And it has; the choice of electors, to be within the Electoral Count Act safe harbor, must be finalized six days before the Electoral College votes (so, Dec. 8, as the EC votes on Dec. 14.)
there's a balance to be struck between counting every last mail-in ballot and concluding the election in a reasonable amount of time. it's probably worth erring in favor of counting everyone's constitutionally guaranteed right to vote, even if it means a week or two of nail biting over the outcome.
There is, in effect. However, it's in December.
Note that last time round, it dragged out for days as well; it's just that most of the slow count wasn't in states that were consequential for the electoral college.
They aren't the only states still counting. They're just the only states where the further count can possibly change the winner.
And I also don't really understand how mail can arrive later. In my state of Oregon which has mail-in only voting, ballots must arrive by 8PM on election day. That's it. Why do other states allow it to go past that? This is crazy. It's election day, not week.
