Early US election results between Trump and Biden could be a ‘mirage’

The massive surge in early voting in the United States could cause havoc on election night and give us the wrong impression of who’s winning.

We are now six days out from the votes being counted in the US presidential election, and it seems as though there will be no shortage of them.

According to the latest data from the US Elections Project, at least 75 million people have already voted early, either in person or by mail. That is well over half of the total turnout from 2016, when a tick under 130 million Americans cast ballots.

The man behind the Elections Project, University of Florida Professor Michael McDonald, has predicted this year’s final tally could reach 150 million.

If that does happen, it will be the highest turnout for a presidential election since 1908, more than a century ago, with about 63 per cent of the voting-eligible population taking part.

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Reuters reports the Democrats hold a “roughly two-to-one” advantage over the Republicans among those who have already cast or sent in ballots, based on voter registration numbers. That advantage has narrowed, however, in the last couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, public opinion polling shows the people voting on election day itself will favour Donald Trump over Joe Biden by a similarly wide margin.

To give you an example, let’s break down today’s Post-ABC polls of the swing states Michigan and Wisconsin.

Among respondents who said they planned to vote on election day, Mr Trump led with 65 per cent support in Michigan and 70 per cent in Wisconsin.

Among those who had already voted, or said they planned to vote ahead of election day, Mr Biden was leading with more than 70 per cent in both states.

In total, Mr Biden led 51-44 in Michigan and 57-40 in Wisconsin – though all the usual caveats about polling accuracy obviously apply here.

So what? Why would it matter that the early vote is going to favour Mr Biden, and the election day vote is going to favour Mr Trump?

The answer is rooted in the fact that each state sets its own rules. Some allow officials to start counting early votes before election night itself, while others prohibit them from doing so until the polls close.

This means the order in which the votes are reported will vary from state to state, creating something US media is referring to as a “mirage” early on election night.

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Donald Trump. Picture: Isaac Brekken/Getty Images/AFP

Joe Biden. Picture: Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP

Florida and North Carolina, for example, are two swing states which allow the early votes to be counted ahead of time.

So, when they start reporting their vote tallies on the night of November 3, a disproportionate amount of the initial total will be early, Biden-leaning votes.

This is the “blue mirage”. You might think Mr Biden is running away with Florida and North Carolina early on, only for the election day vote to trickle in and bring Mr Trump back into contention.

In Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, on the other hand, early votes cannot be counted ahead of time.

Because mail ballots take longer to count than in-person votes, this means the early results from these states will skew the other way, making Mr Trump’s support appear stronger than it really is.

This is the “red mirage”. Over the following hours or even days, depending how quickly the count unfolds, Mr Biden can be expected to claw his way back.

The President seems to know this will happen, because he has spent recent days suggesting the courts should stop the states from continuing to count after election night.

“It would be very, very proper and nice if a winner were declared on November 3, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate, and I don’t believe that that’s by our laws. I don’t believe that,” Mr Trump said yesterday.

“Hopefully the few states remaining that want to take a lot of time after November 3 to count ballots, that won’t be allowed by the various courts. Because you know, we’re in courts on that. We just had a big victory, yesterday, in Wisconsin on that matter. So hopefully that won’t be happening,” he said today.

The case he mentioned, concerning Wisconsin, involved an attempt to extend the deadline for accepting mail-in ballots in the state.

Under the extension, ballots would still have been counted if they arrived by November 9, as long as they were postmarked by November 3.

To be clear about this, there would be nothing remotely unusual about the vote count continuing for a couple of weeks after the polls close. That always happens, to ensure that all valid votes are counted and that the final results are accurately reported.

The states have until December 8 to report their final tallies.

The basic lesson here is that you should be extremely cautious about predicting the results of the election early in the night. A number of states might initially look like they’re in for a blowout, only to tighten later.