Monthly Archives: October 2024

Election Night Preview — Part Three — Prime Time Hour Two (9:00 To 9:59 P.M. Eastern)

By tmess2 | Published October 31, 2024

As the major networks into the second hour of coverage, the focus begins to move from exit polls to actual returns.  Counting the split states in their main time zone, polls have now closed in the overwhelming majority of states.  For the first group of states (the ten that closed before 8:00 p.m. Eastern), you now have a good chunk of the returns from rural counties and you will have most of them by the end of this hour).  For the second group of states (the twenty that closed between 8:00 p.m. and 8:59 p.m. Eastern), those returns are just starting to come in.  In both cases, the people doing the math are comparing those returns to the results from 2016 and 2020 to see what, if anything has changed (percentages, margins, turnout).  And while you tend to have good exit polls for the statewide races, many congressional districts need these early returns to confirm the anticipated results.

This hour will see the remaining polls close in Michigan, Kansas, South Dakota, and Texas.  We will also see the polls close in Nebraska, which like Tennessee in the previous hour, opts to close all polls at the same time even though the state has two time zones (so the eastern part of the state closes at 8:00 p.m. local time and the western part of the state closes at 9:00 p.m. local time).  You have the last of the Eastern Time Zone states, New York, close its polls at 9:00 p.m. local time.  You have four Central Time Zone states — Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, and most significantly Wisconsin — close at 8:00 p.m. local time along with the eastern half of North Dakota.  Finally, polls close at 7:00 p.m. local time in four states located in the Mountain Time Zone of which the most significant is Arizona but also includes Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming.  At the end of this hour, we will only be waiting on polls to close in ten states.

Arizona is one of the two big states closing this hour.  While the easiest way for Kamala Harris to win the election is by sweeping the northern blue belt states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), winning in Arizona would allow Vice-President Harris to win if she loses Wisconsin.  At the Senate level, the unpredictable Kyrsten Sinema read the writing on the wall and decided to call it at one term.  Representative Ruben Gallego is favored to keep the Senate seat in Democratic hands but chief election denier Kari Lake will make it closer than it should be and will fight in court for the next three years if she does not win.  The Democrats are favored to keep the three seats that they currently hold in the House, but have fighting chances in three of the six seats held by Republicans.  The first district is a toss-up district (R+1) in which the Democrats have a well-funded challenger.  But we have seen this story before and Representative David Schweikert always seems to find a way to survive.  The second district is a little more of a longshot as it is a lean Republican district (R+6).   While the Democratic candidate has enough funding to run a strong campaign, unlike the first district, Republican Eli Crane has more money than his opponent.  The second is only likely to fall in a Democratic wave.  The last close district in Arizona in the sixth district.  Representative Juan Ciscomani narrowly won in 2022 and is facing a rematch this year.  The fundraising total for both candidates is approximately even. Continue Reading...

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Election Night Preview — Part Two — Prime Time Hour One (8:00 to 8:59 p.m. Eastern)

By tmess2 | Published October 28, 2024

While there are some significant states that close before 8:00 p.m. Eastern, that time marks when election coverage truly kicks off.  Aside from the realities of the broadcast networks that as for two basic reasons.  First, as discussed last weekend, vote counting is slow.  Since people in line when the polls “close” can still vote, it takes some time to actually shut down a polling place (both in getting the last people processed and out and in the procedures to secure the election materials after the polling place closes).  And then the counting usually have to be transported to some central location for the local election authority.  Thus, the first hour of returns tend to be the results of early voting and absentee ballots (in those states which release those separately from the election day returns) and a handful of smaller counties.  It is only in the second and third hour of counting that you start getting the rest of the smaller counties and the first returns from the really big counties.  Second, not every state closes at 7:00 p.m., local time, and a good chunk of the states are not in the Eastern time zone.  Only two states (Indiana and Kentucky) close at 6:00 p.m. local time.   While 7:00 p.m. is one of the more popular local times to close, only nineteen states close then (and only five of those are in the Eastern time zone).  Four states (Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia) close at 7:30 p.m. local time.    The most popular poll closing time is actually 8:00 p.m. when twenty-two jurisdictions close their polls.  You have two states (Tennessee and Nebraska) which despite being split in two time zones have opted to have all the polls close at the same real time (meaning in the eastern part of the state, the polls close at 8:00 p.m. local time while in the western part of the state, the polls close at 7:00 p.m. local time).  Lastly, two states (New York and North Dakota) close at 9:00 p.m. local time.

So when 8:00 p.m. Eastern time rolls around, you have polls closing in the ten jurisdictions wholly in the Eastern time zone that close at 8:00 local time.  You also have the polls in the western part of Florda closing at what is 7:00 p.m. local time in that part of Florida to finish out Florida.  You have the polls closing at 8:00 p.m. local time in the part of Michigan in the Eastern time zone (all but the Western part of the Upper Peninsula), You have the polls closing simultaneously at either 8:00 p.m. local time or 7:00 p.m. local time in Tennessee.  You have all of the polls closing at 7:00 p.m. local time in Alabama, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, and Oklahoma.  And you have polls closing at 7:00 p.m. local time in the eastern parts of Kansas, South Dakota, and Texas.  Of those last three states, only South Dakota is roughly evenly divided geographically between Central and Mountain time and only tiny slivers of Kansas and Texas are in the Mountain time zone.  In short, you go from approximately ten jurisdictions being closed, to the majority of almost thirty jurisdictions being closed.  For all intents and purposes, election night starts at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.

As the hour starts, we should have already had some expected projections from the early states.  And the early news is more likely to be bad news than good news, but it is expected bad news that should not cause people to panic.  Barring a miracle, by 8:00 p.m. Eastern, the networks and the AP will have projected Donald Trump the winner in Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, and West Virginia.  They will also have projected the Republicans as winning two Senate seats (Indiana and West Virginia) to one for the Democrats (Vermont) for a gain of one although it is possible that the Virginia Senate seat might also be projected before 8:00 p.m.  And most of the early House seats projected will be Republican with a couple of seats gained in North Carolina. Continue Reading...

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Exit Polls and Projections

By tmess2 | Published October 27, 2024

While working through this year’s “what to expect on election night” posts, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to do a brief refresher on exit polls and projections.

To start with, projections have no legal meaning.  Legally, there is no winner until several weeks after the election when canvassing boards certify the official results.  Instead, a projection is a media company’s prediction of who will be the winner once all votes are counted.

In practice, all of the media companies isolate their projection team from those reporting the election results.  Thus, the number crunchers do not know what the talking heads are saying.  On the other hand, the number crunchers aren’t idiots.  They know what the expectations are and what races are probably going to determine who wins. Continue Reading...

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Election Night Preview — Part I — Pre-Prime Time

By tmess2 | Published October 26, 2024

The U.S. is somewhat unique among major democracies in having national elections run by state governments (which in turn mostly delegate the actual running of the election to local governments).  While Congress has set a uniform election day for federal offices (including the election of presidential electors) and most states have decided to hold state and county elections at the same time, each state gets to choose the time when polls close in that state.  In other countries, there is either a uniform closing time (mostly in countries with a single time zone) or polls close at the same local time (creating a gradual move from east to west with additional polls closing every hour).  The result in the U.S. is that rather than a stately progression, you have something of a zig zag.

But this zig zag process creates a rolling story for election night (and creates a way for us to break down what to look for on election night.  In this (and following posts), I will designate poll closing times by local and Eastern Daylight times.

Putting to the side the territories, polls start to close at 6:00 p.m. Eastern (which is also 6:00 p.m. local time) in the parts of Kentucky and Indiana in the Eastern Time zone.  These two states are deep red and very gerrymandered.  In other words, there should be nothing to see in these two states.  Indiana has an open Senate seat as the current Senator is running for governor and one of the Republican representatives is running for the Senate seat.  But this state is not on any body’s list of states likely to flip even though the candidate the Republicans nominated for lieutenant governor is extremely controversial (which could make the race for Governor/Lieutenant Governor closer than it otherwise would be).  And none of the House seats in the Eastern time zone are competitive with the closest race having a PVI of R +11.  The only seat worth watching in Indiana’s first district which is mostly in the central time zone.  That district is only D+3, but the Republican candidate is viewed as a long shot.  The early votes are in the more Republican half of the district.  So the first hour or so of return may make the race look close, but, by the end of the night, the Democrat should be up by 10% or more.  In Kentucky, there are no Senate races or state races and the two closest races are +9 PVIs.    In other words, if anything is happening with the House seats in either state or the statewide races in Indiana, that could be a sign that polls are very off.  The most significant races in these two states are two ballot questions in Kentucky.  One is a “throw red meat to the base” proposal to ban voting by non-citizens (which is already illegal).  The other would allow public funding for private schools (which would include religious schools). Continue Reading...

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Voting and Vote Counting 101

By tmess2 | Published October 20, 2024

Once again, we are facing the possibility that early election returns on November 5 will be very misleading.  In large part, this is due to the efforts of one candidate (he who shall not be named) to demonize one form of voting which means that there will likely be significant partisan differences based on the mechanism showing.  This problem is made worse by certain states which would rather make voting difficult in the name of preventing the tiny amount of fraud that exists rather than actually preventing fraud.

There are basically four types of voting in the U.S.:  1) Absentee/Mail-in voting; 2) Early (in-person) voting; 3) In-person (election day) voting; and 4) provisional voting.  Each state has slightly different rules for these types of voting.  This difference is most pronounced for absentee and early voting.  For early voting, the difference mostly comes down to the period for early voting (when it starts and when it ends) and the days/hours when early voting locations are open.

For absentee voting, there are two big areas of difference.  First, states differ on whether a reason is required for an absentee ballot and what reasons are accepted.  While almost every state now allows early voting, many states still require an excuse before a person can cast an absentee ballot.  Second, there is a wide variety of rules governing the deadline for casting an absentee ballot.  The big difference is whether the ballot must be received by election day or merely postmarked by election day.  However, six states (Alabama, Connecticut, Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and West Virginia) require any absentee ballot dropped off by the voter to be dropped off by the day before the election, and two states (Louisiana and New Hampshire) require any ballot mailed to be received by the day before election day, and three states (North Dakota, Ohio, and Utah) require that mail-in ballots be post-marked by the day before the election.       Overall, thirty-five states are “received by” states and fifteen states (and the District of Columbia) are “post-marked by” states (but each of these states have a different post-election deadline for the receipt of ballots).  Of the crucial states (at least at the presidential and Senate level), only Nevada, Ohio, and Texas are “postmarked by” states. Continue Reading...

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Understanding the Polls

By tmess2 | Published October 13, 2024

We are at that time of the election cycle where every close poll causes Democrats to have panic attacks.  But it is important to understand the exact imperfections of polls rather than the myths about polls.

First, almost every polling company tries to be accurate.  There are a couple of exceptions that are really propaganda companies that use slanted polls to push a political agenda, but most polling companies depend on having a reputation for accuracy.

Second, every poll has a margin of error.  The margin of error is tied to sample size.  To use a real world statistical example, we know that a coin flip will come up heads 50% of the time.   But if you flip a coin twice, you will only get a 1-1 split 50% of the time.  If you flip a coin 100 times, 95% of the time, you will get between 44 and 56 heads (a margin of error of 6%).  If you flip a coin 1000 times, 95% of the time, you will get between 480 and 520 heads (a margin of error of 2%). Continue Reading...

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