With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, the number of factors impacting election outcomes seems to have multiplied. Or else anxiety over the outcome simply has made each a stand-alone story.
From voter registration to early voting spikes to mail delays to post-election doomsday scenarios, October tales of how the election could go sideways feel like harrowing coronavirus stories from March. Election coverage between now and Nov. 3 will resemble pre-Halloween, TV-marathon fright weeks.
Early voting across the country has been epic. “The U.S. has already hit 76% of total 2016 early voting,” a Washington Post graphic blared on Tuesday. Texas leads the nation in early voting turnout. More people have already voted there (4.7 million) than voted for Donald Trump when he won the state by 9 points:
This figure contributes to an immense wave of voter enthusiasm sweeping across the country, which is on track to shatter records for early turnout. With two weeks left until November 3, at least 35 million people so far have voted by mail or in person, according to data collected by the US Elections Project. That number represents nearly a quarter of the total votes counted in the 2016 presidential election.
Acting President Donald Trump consistently trails former Vice President Joe Biden by significant margins in national polls. Republicans hope their advantage in new voter registration will help them on Election Day to make up ground lost to heavy Democratic early voting:
As the presidential campaign heads into its final weeks, Republicans hope that gains in voter registration in the three states — Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — and heavy turnout by those new party members might just be enough to propel Mr. Trump to a second term.
“The tremendous voter registration gain by the Republicans is the secret weapon that will make the difference for the Republicans in 2020,” said Dee Stewart, a Republican political consultant in North Carolina.
Democrats still maintain a significant advantage in registration in those states. But registration lists often contain voters who have moved or died, and states differ in how they update their lists.
Vox’s Rani Molla explains:
“Let’s say you have two states of the same size with a million new voters registered in each, and 500,000 have moved away or died,” Center for Election Innovation & Research founder David Becker explained to Recode. “If state A has diligently cleaned the list, they’d show a net 500,000 increase in voter registration, while state B might show a net million.”
Kevin Morris, a voting rights researcher at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, put it another way: “You can’t compare one state to another because different states have different removal practices.”
Instead, these voting experts suggest looking at new voter registrations, rather than total voter registrations, to get an idea of how many people might turn out to vote. Only some states, however, report this information incrementally, and it’s often lagging. Thanks to the pandemic keeping people away from the DMV and other voter registration places, new voter registrations had been down earlier this year, though the number rebounded this summer.
Turnout is more important than registration. How independent voters split and how many disaffected Republicans stay home or vote for Biden remains another wild card, as does U.S. Postal Service delivery in key swing states.
Washington Post (caveat in italics is mine):
Consistent and timely delivery remains scattershot as the agency struggles to right operations after the rollout, then suspension, of a major midsummer restructuring. In 17 postal districts representing 10 battleground states and 151 electoral votes, first-class mail is on time 83.9 percent; that’s 7.8 percentage points lower than January and nearly 2 percentage points below the national average. By that measure, more than 1 in 6 mailings arrive outside the agency’s one- to three-day delivery window.
The slowdowns, which have raised alarms and suspicions among voters, postal workers and voting experts, have particular implications for states with strict voter deadlines. Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia, for example, do not accept ballots that arrive after Election Day regardless of postmark. Of the states that do, there is generally a short qualifying window: In North Carolina, where polls have President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden in a dead heat, postmarked ballots must arrive within three days of the election.
The Post is incorrect. North Carolina this year will accept ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 until Nov. 12. You can’t can’t tell yer election rules these days without a program. They keep changing. Ask Marc Elias at Democracy Docket:
Even rumored doomsday scenarios keep changing. Charles Stewart III (WBUR) reminds voters that election processers are “highly rule-bound.” Whatever the theoretical prospects for voters not choosing the next president, one constant stands out: “the unwillingness of courts to credit unsubstantiated charges of fraud in election cases.” In the end, voters will determine the outcome.
We are overthinking this campaign, Politico’s Tim Alberta believes. Voters simply do not like Trump:
Generations of pollsters and journalists have fixated on the question of which candidate voters would rather have a beer with—a window into how personality translates into political success. Here’s the thing: Americans have been having a beer with Trump for the past four years—every morning, every afternoon, every evening. He has made himself more accessible than any president in history, using the White House as a performance stage and Twitter as a real-time diary for all to read. Like the drunk at the bar, he won’t shut up.
Whatever appeal his unfiltered thoughts once held has now worn off. Americans are tired of having beers with Trump. His own supporters are tired of having beers with Trump. In hundreds of interviews this year with MAGA loyalists, I have noted only a handful in which the person did not, unsolicited, point to the president’s behavior as exhausting and inappropriate. Strip away all the policy fights, all the administrative action (or inaction), all the culture war politics, and the decision for many people comes down to a basic conclusion: They just do not approve of the president as a human being.
With any luck, we can stop worrying about whether Trump will win on or about Nov. 3 and move on to how he might salt the earth on his way back to Florida, or to jail.
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