Increased mail-in voting this year and the stark partisan divide surrounding it may mean initial results on election night are misleading or confusing, polls and analysts suggest.
Many states have removed barriers to vote by mail as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic makes the safety of in-person voting questionable. Overall, polls have suggested a record number of voters, about one-third, will cast mail-in ballots for the general election, according to the analysis website FiveThirtyEight.
But polls also suggest Democrats are more likely than Republicans to use this method to vote.
Mail-in voting has been a contentious topic as the election nears. Democrats have pushed for increased access to mail-in voting while President Donald Trump and other Republicans have said without evidence that it will lead to increased fraud and hurt his chances of reelection.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll of 900 registered voters between Aug. 9 and Aug. 12 found that while 47% of Joe Biden supporters plan to vote by mail, only 11% of Trump supporters plan to. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.27 percentage points.
Another poll of 5,545 registered voters between Aug. 6 and Aug. 12 and released by the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape project found 48% of voters who plan to vote for Biden plan to vote by mail, while 23% of those who plan to vote for Trump plan to vote by mail, USA Today reports. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.
Experts have said that, in many states, the results of the election may not be clear “by the late hours of Election Day” and that they may not be clear for days or even weeks, according to an analysis from The Washington Post.
Several “major states” have laws against counting mail-in ballots prior to Election Day and many states will have significantly more mail-in ballots to count than in previous elections. Additionally, not all states have the resources to count all the ballots in a “timely manner” and they’re focusing on being “accurate rather than fast,” the Post analysis says.
Americans don’t have too much faith in having answers on election night.
Only 36% say they think the winner of the presidential race will be announced on election night, according to an Axios/Ipsos poll released Tuesday. The poll included 1,100 interviews and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
“The time stamp is less of an issue than the legitimacy of the results,” Cliff Young, president of Ipsos U.S. Public Affairs, told Axios. “The real issue is, is the losing side going to think the other side’s legitimate?”
A study from researchers at Stanford University previously found vote by mail does not swing the election in favor of either party.
The partisan divide surrounding it, however, could mean initial results are misleading.
Hawkfish, a Democratic analytics firm, told Axios that it’s “highly likely” Trump will appear to have won on election night, possibly by a landslide, before all the votes are counted because so many more Democrats are expected to vote by mail than Republicans.
Josh Mendelsohn, CEO of Hawkfish, called the scenario a “red mirage,” according to Axios.
A delay in knowing the outcome is what prompted Hillary Clinton last week to urge Biden not to concede on election night “under any circumstances,” NBC News reports.
Trump has previously refused to say if he will accept the election results.
“No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either,” he told Fox News.
FiveThirtyEight forecasts a similar possibility of misleading results.
If more Democrats do end up voting by mail, “votes cast on Election Day would skew heavily toward Trump, and votes cast by mail would skew heavily toward Biden,” the analysis says.
“It might not be until days later, after a good chunk of the Democratic-leaning mail vote is counted, that Biden pulls ahead,” it says.
