As of this writing, more than 97 million Americans have voted, either in person or by mail-in ballot. That's roughly 70 percent of the total votes cast in 2016, an extraordinary number.
What do we know about the these votes? Very little, I'm afraid. Some states report party registration breakdowns in their numbers, many don't. But even if we had that information, the problem is that there's no way of telling who those voters actually voted for. While it's a good bet that more Democrats are voting early than Republicans, we don't as of yet know the margins.
We also have no way of knowing how many people will vote on election day, but I think it's safe to say that a majority of them will be Republicans. Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report is predicting a total of 160 million people will vote this year. Assuming he's right, that would mean more than 60 million votes will be cast tomorrow.
In my opinion, Biden and the Democrats will need to bank roughly 60 percent of the early vote, because Trump and the Republicans will run up the score on election day. I've compiled some numbers below to illustrate.
| Early Vote | | |
| D | 60,000,000 | 60.0% |
| R | 38,000,000 | 38.0% |
| L | 2,000,000 | 2.0% |
| Total | 100,000,000 | 100.0% |
| | |
| Same Day Vote | | |
| D | 22,000,000 | 36.7% |
| R | 37,000,000 | 61.7% |
| L | 1,000,000 | 1.7% |
| Total | 60,000,000 | 100.0% |
| | |
| Total Vote | | |
| D | 82,000,000 | 51.3% |
| R | 75,000,000 | 46.9% |
| L | 3,000,000 | 1.9% |
| Total | 160,000,000 | 100.0% |
Now none of this is etched in stone, mind you. For all we know Republicans will fare better in early voting and Democrats will hold their own on election day. My point is there are just too many variables for anyone to be able to predict how this will play out.
What we do know is this: the Trump campaign will declare victory election night despite millions of ballots still left to be counted. Jason Miller said as much in an interview he did on ABC yesterday. It's obvious this president and his surrogates will stop at nothing to disenfranchise millions of voters in order to hold onto power. As Michael Tomasky
writes, "Biden's winning the race. Next, he needs to win the knife fight." Barton Gellman
warns that Trump will "attempt a coup." Democrats must be prepared for every legal trick imaginable.
One bright spot. A federal judge in Texas who was appointed by George W. Bush just rejected a GOP lawsuit to toss out 127,000 drive-thru ballots that were cast in Harris County. Only one day earlier, the state's Supreme Court likewise rejected the lawsuit.
Leaving all the legal ramifications aside, what can we expect on election night? I believe it'll be a tale of two maps. In the north, the map will look like a sea of red, especially in the Rust-belt states, while in the south, early returns will skew the map blue. It will be up to the networks to be disciplined enough to resist the urge to call a state prematurely until all the votes are counted.
Florida will hold the key. It started counting mail-in ballots three weeks ago so we should know the results by midnight. If Biden wins the state, Trump is in deep trouble. According to Nate Silver, there is less than a five percent chance of Trump winning the electoral college without Florida.
Two other states to watch are North Carolina and Arizona. Like Florida, they also started counting mail-in ballots early so we could know the results in both states election night. One caveat to that is Maricopa County, which does sometimes take a long time to count. In 2018, it took five days before we knew who won Jeff Flake's Senate seat. It eventually went to Krysten Sinema. God only knows how long it'll take this year.
If Biden were to win all three, all he'd have to do is hold on to all the states Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 and he'd have 287 electoral votes, 17 more than the minimum needed to win the presidency. And that's without Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska's second district. FYI, he's ahead in all four. Now you know why most pollsters are bullish on Biden's chances.
As far as the Senate is concerned, Democrats have a good chance of flipping the upper chamber. The polling is so close in Arizona and North Carolina that whichever party wins the presidential race will most likely win the Senate race as well.
I won't be making any predictions this time around - not after what happened in 2016. While Biden may end up winning the popular vote by seven million or more votes, the margins in the battleground states will be extremely tight. It would not surprise me one bit if every single one is decided by 3 points or less.
What I will say is this: If Biden does lose legitimately, it will be because of two things: the failure of his campaign to reach out more assertively to the Hispanic community; and the failure to push back more forcibly against Trump's claim that he created the greatest economy ever. The fact is Obama created more jobs per month than Trump and Bill Clinton had far greater GDP growth than Trump.
Hunker down, people. The next few days will be the most gut-wrenching in our nation's history.
The entire world is watching. May Heaven help us.
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