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Biden only gets lucky in PA a full day after that if you look at vote share per batch, well after in-person votes are counted, and the later you go, the luckier

• tgb 6y ago
  This was literally predicted ahead of time based off the known demographics of the regions and the time it would take to count the ballots in different counties and the expected differences between in-person and mail-in ballots. It's absolutely misinformation to pretend that this is suspicious and should be investigated. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-pennsylvanias-vote-count-could-change-after-election-night/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-pennsylvanias-vote-...
  • m0zg 6y ago
    Why is this not happening in non-swing states other than Virginia? And why does Biden's luck improve over time when _only_ mail in ballots are counted?
    • tgb 6y ago
      Mail ballots come from different counties with highly different demographics. You get massive Biden support in one city and massive Trump support in another rural county - it's not surprising at all. There's also differences in when the ballots arrived: some states could process ballots ahead of time so the late counted ones are only those that arrived late and may be more or less D/R leaning. And different states have different voter registration policies; that's why Arizona has had relatively good Trump performance on the later counts since there are a large number of Republican voters using vote-by-mail and there always have been in Arizona. There is boundless discussion of the specifics of this on twitter, etc. I don't think swing state/non-swing state is a useful categorization here. Just look at the where the ballots are coming from directly.
    • ElijahLynn 6y ago
      Because Trump told all his base to NOT vote by mail.
    • Lewton 6y ago
      Because smaller rural districts finish counting early, leaving only the heavily blue urban districts towards the end
    • dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Why is this not happening in non-swing states other than Virginia? On what basis do you say its not?
    • newacct583 6y ago
      It is! It's happening right now in NY and CA, which (being big, lazy, and mostly single-party) count their ballots like mollases. Biden's lead there has been steadily and inexorably climbing. And this despite the fact that they are neither swing states nor Virginia. Can I flip the question around: can you show me a state with late mail ballot counting that is not trending toward Biden? The only exception I can think of is AZ over the past few days, but they're processing primarily provisionals in red counties at this point. The blue counties are done. Edit: or alternatively, why is Arizona not evidence of fraud by Trump, given that it counted up very rapidly to Biden, leveled off when the early vote was complete, and then began processing different ballots that skewed differently. CLEARLY Trump is cheating with those provisionals, right? The whole thesis is just silly. Different counties count at different rates. Different populations vote by different mechanisms, and the reported vote over time is an essentially random walk within that space. There's no mechanism by which you'd expect a consistent rate of margin growth. It doesn't even make sense.
    • watwut 6y ago
      > Why is this not happening in non-swing states other than Virginia? And why does Biden's luck improve over time when _only_ mail in ballots are counted? Cause voting is not luck based. Democrats are more likely to vote by mail. Partly because of covid, which they are more likely to believe is an issues. Plus, Trump and republicans discouraged mail voting and claimed it is fraudulent long before election. They did also tried to stop the mail counting and slow down post. So, republicans were less likely to trust mail and more likely to vote in person.
• DeRock 6y ago
  Its not "lucky" at all, this was an orchestrated outcome. Theres 2 components to this: 1. Mail in ballots were heavily partisan. The president made a point to instruct Republican voters to vote in person, and not by mail. And many other correlated factors (eg. COVID and social distancing has also been heavily politicized, influencing whether a voter would vote in person vs mail in). 2. Mail in ballots were delayed. This happened both legally (https://www.npr.org/2020/10/14/922202497/in-swing-states-laws-add-pressure-prevent-officials-from-processing-ballots-earl https://www.npr.org/2020/10/14/922202497/in-swing-states-law...), as well as though strategic dismantling of USPS mail processing facilities. And now this pre-meditated orchestration, set up by a Republican president and Republican State house, is being used as evidence of some grand conspiracy. Its not, and has been predictable for months now, with countless news articles about it.
  • m0zg 6y ago
    Did this only happen in swing states and VA though? And why does drift happen _well after_ in-person vote is already counted? And do you have data to support your point #1? Because people claim that, but I don't really see any evidence to support the claim.
    • DeRock 6y ago
      Because mail delays were strategic against the swing states. Florida, for example, where they're allowed to count mail in votes well before election day, did not see much shift in voting ratios as time went on. Have you done any searching for evidence? It is trivially easy to find. Paper looking at partisan voting methods: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/40/24640 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/40/24640 One of the presidents attempts to discredit mail in voting: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1288818160389558273?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/12888181603895582... And of bigger importance, the election that just occurred, where mail in ballots were heavily partisan.
    • InitialLastName 6y ago
      It's substantially more noticeable in swing states because they're swing states and by definition divided roughly 50/50 on partisan lines (really usually 30/30/30[undecided/independent], but the latter varies from place to place). If a state is more heavily tilted one way than the other, the day-of vote is more likely to be just as representative of that tilt as the mail-in vote, especially if you stop paying attention when the state gets called (which was as soon as polls closed for many of the states whose tendencies were more obvious). To add, urban areas have been more heavily hit by covid (so are more likely to vote by mail) and even the in-person vote count in cities takes longer to count. Even in 2016, IIRC Clinton started to (ultimately unsuccessfully) close the gap in MI and WI later at night as the vote counts from Detroit and Milwaukee trickled in. edit: to balance parens
• ineedasername 6y ago
  COVID precautions are highly stratified by political affiliation: Republicans have received the message that many/all precautions are unnecessary. Many others have followed more cautious recommendations from medical experts. In addition, Republicans received the message the mail voting was inherently more subject to fraud, while Democrats, cautious of COVID and not believing the "fraud" message, frequently votes by mail. This had the exactly predicted result that Democrats voted by mail significantly more than Republicans, who were much more inclined to vote by person. Many states report in-person voting very quickly, while mail in votes take more time to process. This, again, had the easily predicted outcome of increasingly the tally of votes for Democratic candidates by a significant margin over Republican mail votes. A great example of this same phenomenon can be seen in states like Florida that are allowed to count such votes before election day. In those states, the predicted result of increased Democratic early/mail voting was fully born out by the results: Democrats lead the early available result, and as in-person votes on election day were tallied Republican votes significantly outpaced Democratic votes. Of course neither Republicans, or Democrats whose tallies suffered as more in-person results were processed, complained about this or alleged fraud, because again, it was the exactly predicted result Another consideration is that, while polls weren't perfect, the overall result of the election is supported by the polls. Yes, in any individual state the polls may have been outside the margin of error, but as a whole, and in national polls, the results of the election follow the direction of the polls, and the national popular vote is generally within the margin of error on display in national polls. While still not perfect in this election cycle, pollsters did rethink their methods after 2016, taking steps like weighting education level in their models in accordance with the 2016 outcomes, so it is not surprising that, overall, the polls more closely mirrored the results of the 2020 election. A final point with respect to the claim that Democrats are good at or routinely cheat in elections. The record of Democratic wins does not support this. If they were excellent at stealing elections, I would not expect them to have lost more than half of the presidential elections in the last 40 years. I would not expect them to occupy less than half of the state Governorships. I would not expect them to be in control of less than half of state legislatures. I would not expect them to lose very tight races in toss-up states. I would not expect election results in specific regions, counties, etc. to closely mirror party affiliation trends in voter registration. I would expect massive conspiracies that would require thousands of people across the country to collaborate to be just about impossible to hide. I would expect more concrete evidence of voter fraud to appear than claims that typically disappear on close inspection. I would expect the bipartisan group of election officials, poll workers, etc. to include substantial numbers of people from opposing parties to have witnessed systematic irregularities instead of the rare vague suspicion. In short, no available data has come to light to support any sort of widespread election fraud. Should any of the very small scale allegations being levelled by President Trump's campaign demonstrate concrete evidence, I fully support a rigorous investigation and legal proceeding to bring the incidents to light.
• ineedasername 6y ago
  In addition to my other comment: Mail votes increasing the Democrats' vote tallies is not unique to PA. If you track the overall popular vote from day to day, you will see it has increased drastically to a degree that far overshadows the late counts of mail votes in the few states that decided this election. This is because many other states that were not swing states, "red" and "blue", simply aren't getting any attention. But the late counted mail votes in those states have followed the same pattern as PA. If you believe PA is somehow special in this phenomenon, you are wrong. Finally, if you want to complain about your perception of a problem with late votes skewing things, the cause of that comes down to election laws in PA which prevent processing of such votes until election day, which was a law that PA sought to change so results would be known earlier, but they were blocked in this effort by GOP state legislature.
• Rebelgecko 6y ago
  It's only "luck" if votes are counted in a random and independent order, which I don't think is the case in PA