Votes tallied on Election Day tend to favor Republicans in a phenomenon known as the “red mirage,” while a so-called blue shift occurs as Democrats make gains in post-election ballots—a reporting gap that’s expected to be less prominent this year as fewer voters cast absentee ballots compared to 2020 and more Republicans are voting early.
Former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the McCamish Pavilion in Atlanta, ... [+]
The “red mirage” refers to early vote totals that favor Republicans on Election Day, while a “blue shift” occurs as absentee and provisional ballots are totalled, since Republicans tend to favor in-person voting on Election Day, while more Democrats vote by mail than Republicans.
The “red mirage” phenomenon was identified in a study by the data firm Hawkfish, funded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in 2020 that correctly predicted then-President Donald Trump could appear to be winning the race by the end of Election Day, but Joe Biden could ultimately pull out ahead.
Ohio State University election law expert Edward Foley coined the term “blue shift” after the 2012 election, reporting in a 2019 paper that the Democratic candidate in the previous four presidential elections picked up at least 22,000 votes after Election Day.
In addition to more Democrats voting absentee, the blue shift is also fueled by election reforms after 2000 that made it easier for voters who experienced issues with their registration to cast provisional ballots, a scenario that more often affects people who lean Democratic, such as lower-income voters and college students, The New York Times reported.
Vote totals typically take longer to calculate in more densely populated urban areas that favor Democrats, opposed to smaller rural precincts that lean Republican, which can also skew early results.
In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton ended up winning the popular vote, but at the time she conceded (after Trump had reached the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the election) Trump was also up in the number of raw votes nationally.
The “blue shift” in 2020 was similar to 2016, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Lab analysis, which found counties Biden won counted ballots slower, on average, than counties Trump won, leaning Biden to gain one point in votes counted after the Thursday following the election, nearly identical to Clinton’s net gain in 2016.
How long it will take to call the election. In an election this close, with polls showing Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris polling within less than two points of each other in all seven battlegrounds, the race might not be called on Election Day. Federal law requires states to complete recounts and resolve any disputes about the results by Dec. 11. There are some reasons to believe results will be counted quicker this year than in 2020, including record-breaking in-person early vote totals in several states, and fewer absentee ballots than the previous election, which took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading more voters to cast ballots by mail. Some states, such as Michigan, have also changed their laws since 2020 to allow absentee ballots to be counted before Election Day, while others have tightened restrictions, including North Carolina, which enacted a new law last year requiring officials to wait until 7:30 p.m.—after polls close—to begin tabulating results, opposed to doing so in real time.
Trump used the “red mirage” to allege there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, insisting only votes counted on Election Day were valid. He prematurely claimed victory in 2020 at 2 a.m. on election night, when at least a half-dozen battleground states had yet to be called, declaring “we want all voting to stop . . . we don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.” The election was called for Biden on Nov. 7, after his win in Pennsylvania put him over the 270 electoral votes needed to secure victory, but Georgia and North Carolina weren’t called until Nov. 19 and Nov. 13, respectively. In an attempt to preempt a loss, Trump claimed without evidence during his 2020 campaign that mailed ballots were susceptible to fraud, a narrative he has abandoned during his most recent campaign, encouraging his supporters to vote in any way possible.
Trump also claimed without evidence during the 2018 midterms that shrinking leads for Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Gov. Ron DeSantis—who both ended up winning their elections but by smaller margins than initial Election Day tallies—were a result of “large numbers of new ballots” having “showed up out of nowhere,” he tweeted, adding “Must go with Election Night!”
Trump has said he has not seen any signs of voter fraud so far in the 2024 election, but he’s also suggested repeatedly he won’t accept the results if he loses, insisting Democrats can’t win unless they “cheat.” Trump is laying the groundwork to contest the results by falsely claiming Democrats are allowing undocumented migrants to vote, and that his legal cases, Harris’ replacement of Biden at the top of the ticket and negative media coverage of his campaign all amount to election fraud.
More than 9.5 million.. That’s how many Democrats have cast early ballots this year as of Oct. 29, compared to roughly 8.8 million Republicans, according to Florida Election Lab data for states that track partisan affiliations among early voters. The numbers show a greater share of Republicans appear to be voting early this year compared to 2020, when nearly 11 million Democrats had cast early ballots nine days before the election, compared to around 5.1 million Republicans.
Trump-Harris Early Voting Trends: GOP Cuts Into Democratic Advantage (Forbes)