Some call it a Red Mirage others call it a Blue Shift, but there is growing concern that this phenomenon could lead Donald Trump to declare a false victory on election night.
Such an outcome, which could have disastrous flow-on effects, was once considered so unlikely that few people thought much about it. But no more.
The coronavirus pandemic will result in the largest number of mailed-in votes in history for the November 3 election as voters try to avoid the health risks associated with in-person voting.
But because Democrats are substantially more likely to mail in their vote compared to Republicans, an unprecedented pro-Democrat chunk of the ballot will not be counted on election night.
This is because voting rules in many states and cities do not allow the reporting of mail votes until after in-person votes, often days later — a throwback to when mail-in votes were an insignificant part of total votes.
So for the first time, the in-person vote tallies on the night that networks traditionally use to project the winner and which the candidates and the rest of the country rely on may bear little relation to the final result.
“We are sounding an alarm and saying that this is a very real possibility, that the data is going to show on election night an incredible victory for Donald Trump,” says Josh Mendelsohn, chief executive of the group Hawkfish, a data group backed by Democrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg.
“When every legitimate vote is tallied and we get to that final day, which will be some day after election day, it will in fact show that what happened on election night was exactly that, a mirage.
“It looked like Donald Trump was in the lead and he fundamentally was not when every ballot gets counted.”
The potential fallout from such a scenario is not difficult to imagine for a president who is staunchly opposed to mail-in votes because he says they are ripe for voter fraud.
“There is NO WAY (Zero!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent,” Trump has tweeted.
He has also tweeted: “Must know Election results on the night of the Election, not days, months, or even years later!”
The President has already declared that the only way he would lose in November is if the election was “rigged”. So he would be unlikely to concede gracefully if a Red Mirage/Blue Shift saw him lose after initially appearing to have won.
If Trump openly questions the election outcome, it is almost certain that his supporters — at least one-third of the electorate — would also not accept the result, leading to potentially explosive protests and civil unrest. Trump may even be tempted not to leave office voluntarily.
So how likely is this scenario which, until the pandemic, was never taken seriously?
According to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, almost half (47 per cent) of Biden supporters plan to mail in their votes compared with less than one-third of Trump supporters.
The phenomenon of the Red Mirage/Blue Shift predates this election and this pandemic, but is likely to be the most pronounced because of it.
Edward Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, who first coined the term Blue Shift, has studied the trends over the years and found that since 2004 the number of votes counted after election night — via mail-in and also provisional votes — grew in size and began to substantially favour the Democrats. But Foley says he can’t fully explain why Democrats are historically more prone to do mail-in votes than Republicans.
Yet the phenomenon has steadily grown and was most noticeable during the 2018 mid-term congressional elections when the net Democrat gains on election night looked to be a modest 26 seats — a disappointment compared to polling predictions. Yet by the time all mail-in and other votes were counted, the Democrats ended up winning 41 seats.
The Republican candidates running for the senate and for governor in Florida took a narrow lead on election night, only to have their lead whittled down by mail-in votes that favoured Democrats. Both Republicans went on to win but not before Trump had vented his fury, claiming that “large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere … an honest vote count is no longer possible — ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”
Foley says the virus is likely to guarantee the strongest Blue Shift yet in the November election, one that could potentially lead to a mirage victory on the night, especially if it appears to be a narrow Trump win.
“We’re likely to see a significantly dramatic blue shift in multiple states because of the virus,” Foley told The New York Times.
“How will the public process the concept that election night might end in uncertainty, and this phenomenon is not fraud, it’s just the counting process?”
As things stand, 12 states — including the battleground states of Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — do not allow mail-in ballots to be processed on election day, likely leading to delays in the final result if it is close.
Most of these states are ill-prepared for the deluge of mail-in votes likely to come their way in November.
In Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold of the swing state of Pennsylvania, a vote-counting fiasco unfolded in a primary contest in June because the city was unprepared for the large numbers of mail-in votes as a result of the pandemic. It took two weeks for all votes to be counted — a situation that would be a disaster if repeated on November 3.
“Pennsylvania is likely to be ground zero for the Red Mirage,” Ellen Konar, vice-president of voter research at Hawkfish told Politico. “Ninety per cent of Trump supporters plan to use the polling place; only 10 per cent (vote-by-mail). And for Democrats, it’s 36 per cent in the polling place versus 64 per cent by mail,” she said.
Election experts agree that the Red Wave/Blue Shift is certain to affect the final results. If either Trump or Biden win in a landslide it will be irrelevant, and if Biden is in the lead when the pundits go to sleep on election night, the Blue Shift is likely to merely solidify his victory. But if Trump appears to have had a narrow win on election night and declares victory, the delayed Red Wave/Blue Shift could come into play, potentially changing the course of history in the days that follow.
This nightmare sequence of events would not be the recipe for a peaceful transition of power.
Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia
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