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Questions About Election Results

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 5:20 pm
by Estonut
I've never so closely watched the vote counts come in. Can anyone explain why:

1) In the AZ race, the following data is currently shown:

Code: Select all

Candidates	%	Votes
Joe Biden	49.6%	1,627,902	
Donald Trump	48.9%	1,606,714	
90% of estimated votes counted
Including the votes for the independent candidate, there have been 3,283,820 votes cast. If 90% have been counted, they must have received 3,648,688, with 364,868 uncounted.

Biden's lead is 21,188, or only 6% of the uncounted ballots, yet they have had him declared the winner for 4 days. How can that be?

2) The 5 "too soon to tell" states have been at least 88% counted since Tuesday night. How can they have that many counted on Tuesday, yet not be able to count the remaining (at most) 12% for the next 4 days?

Re: Questions About Election Results

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 5:53 pm
by jaybee
I believe that those "% of votes" numbers are very much an estimate. In some states, Like NV, mail-in ballots were sent out to everyone. Nevada truly has no clue how many total votes are going to come in until it's all over. Not sure if AZ falls into that, but from what I've been seeing in all the state by state stats, that percent of vote in figure is pretty much a blue sky number and can vary depending on which news source is showing the stats.

Re: Questions About Election Results

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 5:56 pm
by jarnon
1) Most networks haven’t declared Arizona yet. Fox News did, which led Trump supporters to shout “Fox News sucks!”

2) Many of these are mail and provisional ballots that take much longer to count. Military ballots can arrive as late as Nov. 10.

Re: Questions About Election Results

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 6:32 pm
by Estonut
jarnon wrote:
Sat Nov 07, 2020 5:56 pm
1) Most networks haven’t declared Arizona yet. Fox News did, which led Trump supporters to shout “Fox News sucks!”
I got the numbers from AP, which, I'm sure, is used by many news outlets. Right now, they show:

Code: Select all

Arizona · President
From The Associated Press
90% reporting · The Associated Press has called this race · 11 electoral votes · Learn more
Candidates				Vote %		Vote count
Joe Biden	Democratic Party	49.6%		1,627,902
Donald Trump	Republican Party	48.9%		1,606,714
Jo Jorgensen	Libertarian Party	1.5%		49,204

Re: Questions About Election Results

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 6:38 pm
by bazodee
(1) As others have said, votes received is an estimate. Nobody knows how many there are until they are counted.

(2) North Carolina numbers have not moved since Tuesday, by design. They allow ballots to be received well into next week and have consciously chosen not to update totals until then. With other states, there is a later date for military/overseas ballots, and many of the remaining ballots are provisional ballots, all of which need to be individually adjudicated. Then there are just some technical/procedural problems that require individual handling. One example of this is in a rural county in Georgia that printed its ballot on a non-standard size sheet. This caused the bubbles on the ballot not to align properly with the scanner. Each of those ballots needed to be individually transferred to a standard sized ballots so that it could be automated. It's shit like this that slows the process.

Re: Questions About Election Results

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 6:51 pm
by Bob78164
Estonut wrote:
Sat Nov 07, 2020 6:32 pm
jarnon wrote:
Sat Nov 07, 2020 5:56 pm
1) Most networks haven’t declared Arizona yet. Fox News did, which led Trump supporters to shout “Fox News sucks!”
I got the numbers from AP, which, I'm sure, is used by many news outlets. Right now, they show:

Code: Select all

Arizona · President
From The Associated Press
90% reporting · The Associated Press has called this race · 11 electoral votes · Learn more
Candidates				Vote %		Vote count
Joe Biden	Democratic Party	49.6%		1,627,902
Donald Trump	Republican Party	48.9%		1,606,714
Jo Jorgensen	Libertarian Party	1.5%		49,204
MSNBC, which still hasn't called Arizona, said that it was getting it's numbers directly from county Web sites.

In my opinion, Fox News and AP jumped the gun when they called Arizona, though based on what I've seen lately I do think Biden will be seen to have won Arizona when the vote-counting is finished. --Bob

Re: Questions About Election Results

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 10:43 pm
by Ritterskoop
538 said for days that Arizona was called too early (by those who did, which I think included my employer, McClatchy), though they agreed it would likely end up correct.

Since my state was on pause for days (NC), I stayed current with national counts at 538 (they used ABC News as their decision desk on when to call states).

Re: Questions About Election Results

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2020 6:40 am
by silverscreenselect
In these last handful of states, the major networks have tried to reach out to the various county election boards to get a more exact idea of what type of votes are remaining and about how many in each county. Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight website has done occasional updates on that.

In most of these states, the last votes to be counted have been heavily Democratic, even in Republican-leaning counties. In Arizona, for whatever reason, it's the opposite. So, in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, each new result total added to Biden's lead (or cut his deficit). For whatever reason, in Arizona, it's the other way around.

In Alaska, neither the Presidential nor the Senate races have been called because none of the mail-in votes have been counted. The Democratic Senate candidate believes he has a realistic chance of a win once those votes come in (that's obviously a lot more important at this stage than the three electoral votes).

Re: Questions About Election Results

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2020 9:22 am
by Bob Juch
silverscreenselect wrote:
Sun Nov 08, 2020 6:40 am
In these last handful of states, the major networks have tried to reach out to the various county election boards to get a more exact idea of what type of votes are remaining and about how many in each county. Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight website has done occasional updates on that.

In most of these states, the last votes to be counted have been heavily Democratic, even in Republican-leaning counties. In Arizona, for whatever reason, it's the opposite. So, in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nevada, each new result total added to Biden's lead (or cut his deficit). For whatever reason, in Arizona, it's the other way around.

In Alaska, neither the Presidential nor the Senate races have been called because none of the mail-in votes have been counted. The Democratic Senate candidate believes he has a realistic chance of a win once those votes come in (that's obviously a lot more important at this stage than the three electoral votes).
The reason it's different here is that they counted mail-in ballots ahead of Tuesday. My vote was tabulated over a week ahead. The later counts were from people who voted in person. There are mail-in ballots that came in late to be counted too.