And the Winner Is...

November 3, 2020 2:09pm

When will we know who won today's election? Not today. And not tomorrow either.

Nationwide, 100 million people voted early or by mail. That's 75% of the 134 million votes cast in 2016. But most states haven't even started to count their mailed-in ballots until today; and many won't start until their polls close tonight. Only 15 states (AZ, CO, DE, FL, HI, KS, MD, MT, NE, NJ, NC, OK, OR, TX, and VT) have counted mailed-in ballots already.

We should know Florida's results tonight because Florida has been counting vote-by-mail ballots as they've arrived (but no human knows the count, only the tabulation machine knows). And state law requires that tally to be released within 30 minutes of the polls closing.

It doesn't matter that California, Massachusetts, and other dark blue states won't complete their mailed ballot counts for a while. Nor does it matter in dark red states like Alabama and Wyoming. But delayed counts in the battleground states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are problematic. Even delays in Georgia and Minnesota could be a problem this year.

It doesn't help matters that mailed ballots have historically weighed heavily in favor of Democrats. Add to that the fact that Democrats fear the coronavirus more than Republicans fear it (meaning they are more likely to vote by mail for that reason), and that sets up a scenario where Donald Trump's percentage of the vote will drop at the release of every post-Election Day report.

So unless it's a clear landslide, it's gonna be a while until we know who our next President will be. I expect us to go to bed tonight with the Electoral College vote tied at 218 each. The remaining 102 won't be known for many days.