vox--2020-11-01--9 questions about 2020’s record-breaking early vote, answered

More than 92 million Americans have voted so far in 2020 , an enormous figure that by the time you read this might already be out of date .
The early vote in 2020 has already far surpassed the total early vote in 2016 .
The early vote surge indicates turnout in 2020 could be the highest in a century , at around 65 percent of the voting-eligible population , or about 150 million voters .
And 2016 wasn ’ t exactly shabby in turnout : About 60 percent of those eligible voted .
“ We ’ re seeing a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ re seeing a public , I think , that is responding to a message that you need to cast that ballot early this year , ” Paul Gronke , a professor of political science at Reed College who runs the Early Voter Information Center , said .
Enthusiasm among both Democratic and Republican voters is high .
President Donald Trump is the reason : His supporters are extremely motivated to reelect their guy , and the other side is extremely motivated to vote him out .
Voters also absorbed the “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by safety concerns about voting during the coronavirus pandemic , and by rhetoric around the integrity of the election system , from the Trumpian attacks on mail-in voting to Democratic concerns about a dysfunctional US Postal Service .
But rather than deterring people from voting , it may be driving them to the polls right now .
“ People are responding — thankfully , not by not casting a ballot , but by casting an early ballot , ” Gronke added .
Beyond turnout , the early vote data offers only partial clues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hints at who ’ s voting , and how , and where they are on the electoral map .
But what it absolutely can ’ t do is forecast the thing that many are fretting about : who is actually going to win .
That will have to wait until at least Election Day , and very likely many days after .
But in the meantime , Vox is here to answer all the questions you have about the early vote : what it looks like , what it means , and whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America votes , for good .
1 ) What does early voting turnout look like in 2020 ?
Due to a combination of the coronavirus pandemic and increased enthusiasm , early voting and mail-in voting are more popular than ever .
Last week , with 11 days left to go before the election , the number of early votes officially surpassed 2016 early vote numbers .
Now , the weekend before Election Day , more than 92 million people have cast early votes — 67 percent of the entire 2016 turnout .
All @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , though the specific rules and deadlines vary by state .
Nine states — California , Colorado , Hawaii , Nevada , New Jersey , Oregon , Utah , Vermont , and Washington — along with Washington , DC , mailed ballots to all eligible voters .
Others — Indiana , Louisiana , Mississippi , Tennessee , and Texas — required specific reasons to get a mail-in ballot .
In Texas , early voter turnout has surpassed total votes in 2016 .
In other states , early vote numbers are nearing total 2016 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent ) , North Carolina ( 91 percent ) , and Florida ( 87 percent ) , suggesting total voter turnout might end up being higher than in 2016 .
2 ) How many people are voting by mail versus in person ?
The majority of early votes are coming in the form of mail-in ballots , which make up two-thirds of the more than 92 million early votes , according to data from the US Elections Project , run by the University of Florida ’ s Michael McDonald .
Trump has sought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a disinformation campaign , but mail-in voter fraud is extremely rare .
The mail-in option has also been stymied by Postal Service delays .
If you have a mail-in ballot that you haven ’ t turned in yet , don ’ t mail it .
Instead , you should now drop it off at an election drop box or vote in person in order to guarantee your vote is counted .
People have also been turning out to a lesser extent to vote in person ahead of the election , with 33 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for early voting can be seen in long lines across the country .
3 ) Who , exactly , is voting early ?
According to the US Elections Project , in the 20 states that report party registration , Democrats have a 16 percentage point lead in early votes over Republicans .
However , that data is likely skewed by the inclusion of states like California ( a highly populous and Democratic state ) and the unavailability of data from states like Texas ( also highly populous and more Republican ) .
TargetSmart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voter file data in addition to consumer data to model early voter demographics in states where that information is unavailable , shows that Democrats have more like a 7 percentage point lead over Republicans .
Of course , partisan affiliation , while indicative of how a person might vote , doesn ’ t guarantee a person will vote for their party ’ s candidates .
Perhaps most notable are the early turnout numbers among people who didn ’ t vote at all in 2016 .
“ Over 16 million people voted already who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier told Vox last week .
“ Those are the people who have the ability to change the composition of the electorate relative to 2016.
” Only a quarter of these new voters are under 30 , suggesting these aren ’ t just people who are newly of voting age .
Those new voters , he said , are also more likely to be Democrats and more likely to be Asian or Hispanic than the electorate at large .
This group also includes seniors over 65 , who may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of these voters returned in the 2018 midterms , part of the reason for the “ blue wave ” back then , Bonier said , but they ’ re returning again in 2020 .
Younger voters are also turning out , and so far it ’ s an “ astronomical ” difference compared to 2016 , according to Kristian Lundberg , an associate researcher at the Center for Information Research & Civic Learning and Engagement ( CIRCLE ) .
In Texas , for example , more than a million voters ages 18 to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as of October 27 , compared to just a little more than 100,000 who voted early in 2016 .
Total youth turnout was 1.2 million in Texas in 2016 .
4 ) What kind of problems are we seeing with early voting ?
The biggest headlines from the early vote are about long lines , long lines , long lines .
Long lines are sometimes celebrated as a sign of high voter enthusiasm .
Pandemic safety protocols , a reduced number of polling sites , and poll worker shortages in some places also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ glitches at voting sites cause delays , which ripple throughout the day .
And observers often point to the hours-long wait times that many voters face as part of a pattern of voter suppression .
Voters in many of America ’ s peer democracies don ’ t spend hours standing in line to cast their ballots , and US voting advocates believe reforms such as expanding early voting and standardizing some voting procedures and resources could ease wait times .
That would also cut down on more nefarious suppression tactics , such as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minority neighborhoods .
In 2020 , experts see a combination of the problems that have long plagued US voting , along with the unpredictable realities of this strange year of voting in a pandemic .
Typically , states open many more polling sites on Election Day , compared to the early voting period .
Election officials have to do their best to anticipate how many people are going to vote , and when , but that ’ s always an imperfect exercise .
And especially in places that are just trying out early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are offering expanded vote-by-mail options , it can be hard to precisely predict turnout and rush times .
Ivelisse Cuevas-Molina , an assistant professor of political science at Fordham University , pointed out that in New York , the lines are long , but the state is also deploying early voting for the first time in a presidential election .
Some growing pains are to be expected as the state adjusts to a new system .
“ But in places like Georgia , where they ’ ve had early voting for a while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ efficiency , ” she said .
“ And when you don ’ t see efficiency in places like Georgia , with early voting , you can make the conclusion that there is voter suppression happening in a place that is supposed to be experienced.
” Technical glitches also happen , as they did in Fulton County , Georgia , which caused delays as officials had to reboot the software .
Officials in Fort Bend County , Texas , had to extend polling hours at the start of early voting because of a technical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up in places and add to wait times — although , that ’ s one major benefit of early voting .
It ’ s usually not someone ’ s last chance to vote .
Finally , some voting advocates have expressed concerns about voter intimidation , fueled by some of Trump ’ s rhetoric around voter fraud and his encouragement to supporters to “ watch the polls.
” In Pinellas County , Florida , law enforcement officials posted sheriff ’ s deputies at polling sites after two armed security guards claiming to represent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ location .
( The Trump campaign denied any affiliation in a statement to reporters . )
In Pennsylvania , the Trump campaign video-recorded voters dropping off ballots in drop boxes , which could potentially constitute illegal voter intimidation .
So there have been a few troubling examples of possible voter intimidation but , so far , no large-scale threats to voters .
Voter intimidation is always illegal , and voting advocates say voters should report any possible violations .
The Election Protection hotline is one helpful resource .
5 ) What kind of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mail ?
Mail-in voting is a bit more complicated to track , because only some states , like Florida , have started processing mail-in ballots .
Plenty of other states , including the swing states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin , can ’ t begin to even process or count ballots until Election Day .
The biggest concern around mail-in ballots is the rejection rate — that is , the number of ballots that are tossed out ( for whatever reason ) as a percentage of the total number submitted .
Mail-in ballots typically have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cast in polling places .
This isn ’ t because of voter fraud , but because humans are , well , human , and make mistakes .
Mail-in ballots can get rejected in some states if a voter ’ s ballot signature doesn ’ t match the one in their voter registration file .
Sometimes voters forget to sign at all , or use the wrong color ink .
And many ballots are disqualified because they arrive too late to be counted .
In 2016 , slightly less than 1 percent of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But the number of people voting by mail this year is much higher — nearly 59 million people have turned in mail ballots in 2020 — and that likely includes many voters who ’ ve never cast ballots by mail before .
“ There is a definite concern this year that there will be higher ballot rejection rates as new people are voting by mail and mistakes are made , ” Gronke said .
If the race is super close in certain swing states , that rejection rate could be the difference @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump , remember , won by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states in 2016 .
Gabriel R. Sanchez , a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico and a principal at Latino Decisions , said that based on the data he has seen , Latinos , African Americans , and younger voters are among those whose mail ballots are more likely to have problems that get them tossed .
“ That ’ s something obviously that concerns a lot of folk , ” he said .
“ Regardless of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of those segments of the electorate feeling like they have their vote counted.
” Still , rhetoric on “ making your vote count ” has likely helped motivate voters to make sure their ballots are accepted .
Election officials and voting advocacy groups have emphasized that voters need to carefully fill out ballots , and many states allow voters to track their ballots to make sure they ’ re received , processed , and accepted .
“ Cure ” processes have also been set up in most places so voters can remedy discrepancies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their ballots being rejected .
Still , experts point out that these procedures are far from perfect , and some are still being litigated .
For example , election officials might not have a voter ’ s current phone number or email address to swiftly contact them if their ballot is rejected .
Sanchez said his data shows that some Latino voters , for instance , have had to change addresses because of Covid-19 financial hardships , which means they may never get a notice that there ’ s a problem with their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ballots can be “ cured ” for signature problems or other errors , there ’ s nothing voters can do if their ballots arrive at election offices past the deadline .
( Which is why , if you still plan to vote with a mail-in ballot , you need to drop it off at a designated location . )
Bonier , of TargetSmart , said that , so far , there isn ’ t any evidence of disproportionate numbers of mail-in ballots being rejected this year .
“ But the absence of evidence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that phenomenon , ” he said .
“ The hope is that those numbers will be reasonably low , ” he added .
“ But , unfortunately , I think in a lot of these places , we just won ’ t know , until we get there.
” 6 ) What do the early voting numbers mean for overall 2020 turnout ?
The early voting turnout in 2020 is unprecedented .
In 2016 , about 41 percent of voters cast ballots before Election Day , which breaks down to about 24 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early in person , according to the US Election Assistance Commission .
So far , in 2020 , voters have cast two thirds of the total number of votes in 2016 , and early voting extends through the weekend in many places — so expect millions more people to vote early this year than did in 2016 .
Plus , around a third of voters are still expected to vote on Election Day , according to the Democracy Fund .
“ It is , of course , enormous , and of a scale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” said John Fortier , the director of governmental studies at the Bipartisan Policy Center and author of Absentee and Early Voting : Trends , Promises and Perils .
“ And usually , I do caution people , we shouldn ’ t read the tea leaves about early voting too much .
Because , of course , you could see many people showing up early , and then the other people don ’ t show up later — and then we don ’ t have higher turnout.
” “ But , I mean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ amount that we ’ re seeing , is just off the charts , ” he added .
Fortier also pointed out that sometimes , the novelty of the new method of voting — whether early or by mail — can sometimes generate interest and enthusiasm , so “ there is a crush at the very beginning of that period ” that might taper off , before picking up again on Election Day .
Of course , this year is also different because of the coronavirus .
“ People are obviously getting the message @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that there ’ s some incentive to get your ballot in early , ” Fortier said .
“ Also , we tend to think of very early voters as being the most committed to candidate or party.
” But even with all of that , forecasters still think the United States could hit 65 percent turnout — which , while still leaving out many voters , could be the highest in a century .
Turnout was about 60 percent in 2016 , at about 137 million people .
The website FiveThirtyEight is predicting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ based on polls of voter enthusiasm and other data .
It could still be a record , and anything in the high 60s , or close to 70 percent turnout , Fortier said , “ would be just extraordinary.
” 7 ) What do the early voting numbers mean for the outcome of the election ?
Not much !
Sorry to disappoint those of you who really want to read the tea leaves , but the reality is that the early voting data just isn ’ t useful for predicting the outcome of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an edge in early voting overall .
Registered Democrats voted early at a higher rate than Republicans , but that number is narrowing .
Democrats are voting in much greater numbers by mail , which is a big reason they have such a big advantage in the early vote count .
This was expected , especially as President Trump ’ s false but nonetheless repeated claims about voter fraud filtered down to his supporters .
So Republicans are showing up for early in-person voting , and even more are expected to turn out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we can safely say at this point that , yes , Republicans are just more likely to vote in person , whether it ’ s early in-person or on Election Day , ” TargetSmart ’ s Bonier said .
“ But then , the remaining question is : Will enough of them do so in order to offset the Democratic advantage that ’ s been built in mail balloting , which in some of these states is hundreds of thousands of votes ?
” Nationally , maybe not — especially with populous blue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But that doesn ’ t really matter because the popular vote isn ’ t how America elects presidents .
And in places like Florida , Republicans are chipping away at Democrats ’ early vote lead .
Again , party registration itself is an imperfect metric , because it doesn ’ t predict with certainty whether someone will vote for Biden or Trump .
And not all voters affiliate themselves with a political party ; unaffiliated voters cast about a quarter of all early votes in states where that data is available .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t try to make predictions about the outcome of this election based on early voting trends , because it will enormously stressful and still fruitless .
8 ) Ugh , okay , fine .
But what does all this early voting mean for how soon we ’ ll know the results of the election ?
Might that at least come in early ?
We ’ ll know the results when we know the results .
Depending on how the electoral map shakes out , it might be possible to get a sense of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election night .
But more likely , if the election is very close , it ’ s going to take a lot longer to declare an official winner , even if some news organizations anoint a presumptive winner .
States have different rules on vote processing and counting , and that will make a huge difference in how results are reported .
Some states , such as Florida and Arizona , have already started to process and count mail-in ballots .
North Carolina has also begun processing ballots — basically making sure the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ files — and though it can ’ t count until Election Day , putting the ballots in counting machines is the easier part .
But states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania can ’ t even start processing mail-in ballots until Election Day .
Michigan can start processing ballots the day before Election Day .
Those disparities in vote counting could make for a few “ mirages ” — both red and blue .
Because Democrats have an edge in early voting , specifically in mail-in voting , states like Florida and North Carolina @ @ @ @ @ @ @ favorable to Democrats early in the night .
This could be a so-called “ blue mirage , ” where it looks like Biden is about to win a state like North Carolina only to see those results tighten and tighten .
Meanwhile , a “ red mirage ” could happen elsewhere on the map , specifically those states like Pennsylvania , Wisconsin , and Michigan that are processing and counting ballots much later .
Here , the opposite phenomenon could happen : A “ red mirage ” might give the impression that Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his lead shrink and shrink .
It ’ s going to take much , much longer to count ballots in those states , and it may take days to declare a presumptive winner .
Election officials are preparing for this .
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said she is asking counties to update their election results periodically , rather than all at once , to avoid the appearance of massive shifts that might feed conspiracy theories .
The important thing for voters , however , is to expect to wait .
9 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all its forms , going to be a permanent thing now ?
2020 is a truly unusual year : a pandemic , an economic crisis , political rhetoric that ’ s undermining democracy and making people fearful of being disenfranchised .
All of that makes it hard to know whether the explosion of early voting this year is an outlier , or the start of a new normal .
As experts pointed out , the number of people voting early , either in person or by mail , was already increasing gradually , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that have happened this year , it was expected to grow .
This year just supercharged everything : Voters who ’ d typically go to the polls opted to vote by mail .
And many , many states changed to make it easier to vote by mail .
What emerged from necessity could become more permanent , as both voters and election officials realize there might be better ways to run elections .
Once you make it easier for people to vote , either by mail or in person , they ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back .
This is the “ habituation effect , ” as Gronke , of Reed College ’ s Early Voter Information Center , calls it .
“ When people cast their ballot via one of these new methods , they tend to do it again .
And so I do think we ’ re going to see a lot of people who previously had thought , ‘ Oh , polling places is the way to do it , ’ vote by mail [ this year ] and say , ‘ Wow , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I liked that.
’ So I do think that this is going to be a permanent shift.
” And it ’ s not just voters .
Election officials might have a few epiphanies , too , especially when it comes to voting by mail .
It ’ s easier to run and staff elections that way , and it can be a lot less expensive than running in-person elections .
“ It ’ s possible in places like Nevada , Montana , New Jersey , Vermont , DC , these states that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they may decide to do so on a more permanent basis in the future because it ’ s just cheaper , ” Michael McDonald , of the US Elections Project , said .
Gronke predicts another spurt of election reform , similar to what happened after the 2000 election , and the Florida recount , in the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore , including possible proposals at the federal level to expand the franchise .
House Democrats have already passed a voting rights bill , and should Democrats retake Congress @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely pursue that as a top priority .
Still , the 2020 election has shown how partisanship has leaked even into the ways people choose to vote , not just whom they vote for .
Democrats , so far , have overwhelmingly favored voting by mail , while Republicans have preferred voting in person , in part because of the president ’ s rhetoric .
Depending on the outcome of the election , those divides could harden even more , and become a roadblock to reform .
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Nearly 100 million Americans voted early in 2020, an enormous, record-breaking figure heading into Election Day.
The early vote in 2020 has far surpassed the total early vote in 2016. The early vote surge indicates turnout in 2020 could be the highest in a century, at around 65 percent of the voting-eligible population, or about 150 million voters.
And 2016 wasn’t exactly shabby in turnout: About 60 percent of those eligible voted.
“We’re seeing a very energized, interested electorate, and we’re seeing a public, I think, that is responding to a message that you need to cast that ballot early this year,” Paul Gronke, a professor of political science at Reed College who runs the Early Voting Information Center, said.
Enthusiasm among both Democratic and Republican voters is high. President Donald Trump is the reason: His supporters are extremely motivated to reelect their guy, and the other side is extremely motivated to vote him out.
Voters also absorbed the “vote early” directive, likely motivated by safety concerns about voting during the coronavirus pandemic, and by rhetoric around the integrity of the election system, from the Trumpian attacks on mail-in voting to Democratic concerns about a dysfunctional US Postal Service.
But rather than deterring people from voting, it may have driven them to the polls. “People are responding — thankfully, not by not casting a ballot, but by casting an early ballot,” Gronke added.
Beyond turnout, the early vote data offers only partial clues about the electorate in 2020. It hints at who’s voting, how, and where they are on the electoral map. But what it absolutely can’t do is forecast the thing that many are fretting about: who is going to win.
That will have to wait until at least election night, and potentially days after. But in the meantime, Vox is here to answer all the questions you have about the early vote: what it looks like, what it means, and whether this election year might radically change how America votes, for good.
1) What did early voting turnout look like in 2020?
Due to a combination of the pandemic and increased enthusiasm, early voting and mail-in voting were more popular than ever. Last month, with 11 days left to go before the election, the number of early votes officially surpassed 2016 early vote numbers. By Election Day, more than 99 million people cast early votes — 72 percent of the entire 2016 turnout, according to US Elections Project, run by the University of Florida’s Michael McDonald.
All states offered early voting or mail-in options, though the specific rules and deadlines vary by state. Nine states — California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington — along with Washington, DC, mailed ballots to all eligible voters. Others — Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas — required specific reasons to receive a mail-in ballot.
In Texas, Washington, Montana, and Hawaii, early voter turnout surpassed total votes in 2016. In other states, early vote numbers are near total 2016 turnout numbers, including North Carolina (95 percent), Georgia (94 percent), and Florida (94 percent), suggesting total voter turnout might end up being higher than in 2016.
2) How many people voted by mail versus in person?
The majority of early votes are coming in the form of mail-in ballots, which make up about two-thirds of the more than 99 million early votes, according to data from the US Elections Project.
Trump has sought to discredit this type of voting through a disinformation campaign, but mail-in voter fraud is extremely rare. The mail-in option has also been stymied by Postal Service delays. If you have a mail-in ballot that you haven’t turned in yet, don’t mail it. Instead, you should drop it off at an election drop box or vote in person in order to guarantee your vote is counted.
People have also been turning out to a lesser extent to vote in person ahead of the election, with nearly 36 million doing so thus far. High turnout for early voting can be seen in long lines across the country.
3) Who, exactly, voted early?
According to the US Elections Project, in the 20 states that report party registration, Democrats have a 15 percentage point lead in early votes over Republicans.
However, that data is likely skewed by the inclusion of states like California (a highly populous and Democratic state) and the unavailability of data from states like Texas (also highly populous and more Republican).
TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm that uses voter file data in addition to consumer data to model early voter demographics in states where that information is unavailable, shows that Democrats have more like a 6 percentage point lead over Republicans. Of course, partisan affiliation, while indicative of how a person might vote, doesn’t guarantee a person will vote for their party’s candidates.
Perhaps most notable are the early turnout numbers among people who didn’t vote at all in 2016. So far, 26.5 million people voted in 2020 who didn’t vote at all in 2016, according to TargetSmart data. “Those are the people who have the ability to change the composition of the electorate relative to 2016,” TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier told Vox.
Just over one-quarter of these new voters are under 30, suggesting these aren’t just people who are newly of voting age. Those new voters, he said, are also more likely to be Democrats and more likely to be Asian or Hispanic than the electorate at large. This group also includes seniors over 65, who may have sat out in 2016. Some of these voters returned in the 2018 midterms, part of the reason for the “blue wave” back then, Bonier said, but they’re returning again in 2020.
Younger voters also turned out, and so far it’s an “astronomical” difference compared to 2016, according to Kristian Lundberg, an associate researcher at the Center for Information Research & Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). In Texas, for example, more than 1 million voters ages 18 to 29 had voted early in this election as of October 27, compared to just a little more than 100,000 who voted early in 2016. Total youth turnout was 1.2 million in Texas in 2016.
4) What kinds of problems did we see with early voting?
The biggest headlines from the early vote were about long lines, long lines, long lines. Long lines are sometimes celebrated as a sign of high voter enthusiasm. Pandemic safety protocols, a reduced number of polling sites, and poll worker shortages in some places also slow down the process. Sometimes technical glitches at voting sites cause delays, which ripple throughout the day.
And observers often point to the hours-long wait times that many voters face as part of a pattern of voter suppression.
Voters in many of America’s peer democracies don’t spend hours standing in line to cast their ballots, and US voting advocates believe reforms such as expanding early voting and standardizing some voting procedures and resources could ease wait times. That would also cut down on more nefarious suppression tactics, such as reducing the number of polling stations in minority neighborhoods.
In 2020, experts see a combination of the problems that have long plagued US voting, along with the unpredictable realities of this strange year of voting in a pandemic.
Typically, states open many more polling sites on Election Day, compared to the early voting period. Election officials have to do their best to anticipate how many people are going to vote, and when, but that’s always an imperfect exercise. And especially in places that are just trying out early voting for the first time, or are offering expanded vote-by-mail options, it can be hard to precisely predict turnout and rush times.
Ivelisse Cuevas-Molina, an assistant professor of political science at Fordham University, pointed out that in New York, the lines were long, but the state was also deploying early voting for the first time in a presidential election. Some growing pains are to be expected as the state adjusts to a new system.
“But in places like Georgia, where they’ve had early voting for a while now, we should be seeing more efficiency,” she said. “And when you don’t see efficiency in places like Georgia, with early voting, you can make the conclusion that there is voter suppression happening in a place that is supposed to be experienced.”
Technical glitches also happen, as they did in Fulton County, Georgia, which caused delays as officials had to reboot the software. Officials in Fort Bend County, Texas, had to extend polling hours at the start of early voting because of a technical error. Issues like these do crop up in places and add to wait times — although, that’s one major benefit of early voting. It’s usually not someone’s last chance to vote.
Finally, some voting advocates have expressed concerns about voter intimidation, fueled by some of Trump’s rhetoric around voter fraud and his encouragement to supporters to “watch the polls.”
In Pinellas County, Florida, law enforcement officials posted sheriff’s deputies at polling sites after two armed security guards claiming to represent the Trump campaign came to a voting location. (The Trump campaign denied any affiliation in a statement to reporters.) In Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign video-recorded voters dropping off ballots in drop boxes, which could potentially constitute illegal voter intimidation.
So there have been a few troubling examples of possible voter intimidation but, so far, no large-scale threats to voters. Voter intimidation is always illegal, and voting advocates say voters should report any possible violations. The Election Protection hotline is one helpful resource.
5) What kind of problems did we see with voting by mail?
Mail-in voting is a bit more complicated to track, because only some states, like Florida, have started processing mail-in ballots. Plenty of other states, including swing states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, can’t begin to process or count ballots until Election Day.
The biggest concern around mail-in ballots is the rejection rate — that is, the number of ballots that are tossed out (for whatever reason) as a percentage of the total number submitted.
Mail-in ballots typically have a higher rate of rejection than ballots cast in polling places. This isn’t because of voter fraud, but because humans are, well, human, and make mistakes. Mail-in ballots can get rejected in some states if a voter’s ballot signature doesn’t match the one in their voter registration file. Sometimes voters forget to sign at all, or use the wrong color ink. And many ballots are disqualified because they arrive too late to be counted.
In 2016, slightly less than 1 percent of the 33.4 million mail-in ballots submitted were rejected. But the number of people voting by mail this year is much higher — more than 63 million people have turned in mail ballots in 2020 — and that likely includes many voters who’ve never cast ballots by mail before.
“There is a definite concern this year that there will be higher ballot rejection rates as new people are voting by mail and mistakes are made,” Gronke said. If the race is super close in certain swing states, that rejection rate could be the difference between who wins and who loses. Trump, remember, won by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states in 2016.
Gabriel R. Sanchez, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico and a principal at Latino Decisions, said that based on the data he has seen, Latinos, African Americans, and younger voters are among those whose mail ballots are more likely to have problems that get them tossed.
“That’s something obviously that concerns a lot of folks,” he said. “Regardless of the horse-race element, just in terms of those segments of the electorate feeling like they have their vote counted.”
Still, rhetoric on “making your vote count” has likely helped motivate voters to make sure their ballots are accepted. Election officials and voting advocacy groups have emphasized that voters need to carefully fill out ballots, and many states allow voters to track their ballots to make sure they’re received, processed, and accepted. “Cure” processes have also been set up in most places so voters can remedy discrepancies or errors that might have led to their ballots being rejected.
Still, experts point out that these procedures are far from perfect, and some are still being litigated. For example, election officials might not have a voter’s current phone number or email address to swiftly contact them if their ballot is rejected.
Sanchez said his data shows that some Latino voters, for instance, have had to change addresses because of Covid-19 financial hardships, which means they may never get a notice that there’s a problem with their ballot should one occur.
And while ballots can be “cured” for signature problems or other errors, there’s nothing voters can do if their ballots arrive at election offices past the deadline. (Which is why, if you still plan to vote with a mail-in ballot, you need to drop it off at a designated location.)
Bonier, of TargetSmart, said that, so far, there isn’t any evidence of disproportionate numbers of mail-in ballots being rejected this year. “But the absence of evidence doesn’t equal the absence of that phenomenon,” he said.
“The hope is that those numbers will be reasonably low,” he added. “But, unfortunately, I think in a lot of these places, we just won’t know, until we get there.”
6) What do the early voting numbers mean for overall 2020 turnout?
The early voting turnout in 2020 is unprecedented.
In 2016, about 41 percent of voters cast ballots before Election Day, which breaks down to about 24 percent by mail and 17 percent who voted early in person, according to the US Election Assistance Commission.
In 2020, voters cast three-quarters of the total number of votes in 2016. Plus, around one-third of voters are still expected to vote on Election Day, according to the Democracy Fund.
“It is, of course, enormous, and of a scale that we haven’t seen,” said John Fortier, the director of governmental studies at the Bipartisan Policy Center and author of Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises and Perils. “And usually, I do caution people, we shouldn’t read the tea leaves about early voting too much. Because, of course, you could see many people showing up early, and then the other people don’t show up later — and then we don’t have higher turnout.”
“But, I mean, the enthusiasm here, and the amount that we’re seeing, is just off the charts,” he added.
Fortier also pointed out that sometimes, the novelty of the new method of voting — whether early or by mail — can sometimes generate interest and enthusiasm, so “there is a crush at the very beginning of that period” that might taper off, before picking up again on Election Day.
Of course, this year is also different because of the coronavirus. “People are obviously getting the message — I think a good message — that there’s some incentive to get your ballot in early,” Fortier said. “Also, we tend to think of very early voters as being the most committed to acandidate or party.”
But even with all of that, forecasters still think the United States could hit 65 percent turnout — which, while still leaving out many voters, could be the highest in a century.
Turnout was about 60 percent in 2016, at about 137 million people. The website FiveThirtyEight is predicting turnout of about 154 million people, based on polls of voter enthusiasm and other data. It could still be a record, and anything in the high 60s, or close to 70 percent turnout, Fortier said, “would be just extraordinary.”
7) What do the early voting numbers mean for the outcome of the election?
Not much! Sorry to disappoint those of you who really want to read the tea leaves, but the reality is that the early voting data just isn’t useful for predicting the outcome of the election.
Yes, Democrats have an edge in early voting overall. Registered Democrats voted early at a higher rate than Republicans, but that number is narrowing.
Democrats are voting in much greater numbers by mail, which is a big reason they have such a big advantage in the early vote count. This was expected, especially as President Trump’s false but nonetheless repeated claims about voter fraud filtered down to his supporters. So Republicans showed up for early in-person voting, and even more are expected to turn out on Election Day.
“I think we can safely say at this point that, yes, Republicans are just more likely to vote in person, whether it’s early in-person or on Election Day,” TargetSmart’s Bonier said. “But then, the remaining question is: Will enough of them do so in order to offset the Democratic advantage that’s been built in mail balloting, which in some of these states is hundreds of thousands of votes?”
Nationally, maybe not — especially with populous blue states like California in the mix. But that doesn’t really matter because the popular vote isn’t how America elects presidents. And in places like Florida, Republicans chipped away at Democrats’ early vote lead.
Again, party registration itself is an imperfect metric, because it doesn’t predict with certainty whether someone will vote for Biden or Trump. And not all voters affiliate themselves with a political party; unaffiliated voters cast about one-quarter of all early votes in states where that data is available.
So do yourself a favor and don’t try to make predictions about the outcome of this election based on early voting trends, because it will be enormously stressful and still fruitless.
8) Ugh, okay, fine. But what does all this early voting mean for how soon we’ll know the results of the election? Might that at least come in early?
We’ll know the results when we know the results.
Depending on how the electoral map shakes out, it might be possible to get a sense of whether Biden or Trump has won on election night. But more likely, if the election is very close, it’s going to take a lot longer to declare an official winner, even if some news organizations anoint presumptive victors.
States have different rules on vote processing and counting, and that will make a huge difference in how results are reported. Some states, such as Florida and Arizona, have already started to process and count mail-in ballots. North Carolina has also begun processing ballots — basically making sure the ballot is accepted and matches the voter files — and though it can’t count until Election Day, putting the ballots in counting machines is the easier part. But states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania can’t even start processing mail-in ballots until Election Day. Michigan can start processing ballots the day before Election Day.
Those disparities in vote counting could make for a few “mirages” — both red and blue.
Because Democrats have an edge in early voting, specifically in mail-in voting, states like Florida and North Carolina could very well post results that look favorable to Democrats early in the night. This could be a so-called “blue mirage,” where it looks like Biden is about to win a state like North Carolina only to see those results tighten and tighten.
Meanwhile, a “red mirage” could happen elsewhere on the map, specifically those states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan that are processing and counting ballots much later. Here, the opposite phenomenon could happen: A “red mirage” might give the impression that Trump is way ahead, only to see his lead shrink and shrink. It’s going to take much, much longer to count ballots in those states, and it may take days to declare a presumptive winner.
Election officials are preparing for this. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said she is asking counties to update their election results periodically, rather than all at once, to avoid the appearance of massive shifts that might feed conspiracy theories.
The important thing for voters, however, is to expect to wait.
9) So is early voting, in all its forms, going to be a permanent thing now?
2020 is a truly unusual year: a pandemic, an economic crisis, political rhetoric that’s undermining democracy and making people fearful of being disenfranchised. All of that makes it hard to know whether the explosion of early voting this year is an outlier, or the start of a new normal.
As experts pointed out, the number of people voting early, either in person or by mail, was already increasing gradually, and even without all of the crises that have happened this year, it was expected to grow. This year just supercharged everything: Voters who’d typically go to the polls opted to vote by mail. And many, many states changed to make it easier to vote by mail.
What emerged from necessity could become more permanent, as both voters and election officials realize there might be better ways to run elections. Once you make it easier for people to vote, either by mail or in person, they’re just not going to want to go back.
This is the “habituation effect,” as Gronke, of Reed College’s Early Voting Information Center, calls it. “When people cast their ballot via one of these new methods, they tend to do it again. And so I do think we’re going to see a lot of people who previously had thought, ‘Oh, polling places is the way to do it,’ vote by mail [this year] and say, ‘Wow, that was easy. That was really convenient. I liked that.’ So I do think that this is going to be a permanent shift.”
And it’s not just voters. Election officials might have a few epiphanies, too, especially when it comes to voting by mail. It’s easier to run and staff elections that way, and it can be a lot less expensive than running in-person elections. “It’s possible in places like Nevada, Montana, New Jersey, Vermont, DC, these states that moved temporarily to all-mail ballots, that they may decide to do so on a more permanent basis in the future because it’s just cheaper,” McDonald, of the US Elections Project, said.
Gronke predicts another spurt of election reform, similar to what happened after the 2000 election, and the Florida recount, in the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore, including possible proposals at the federal level to expand the franchise. House Democrats have already passed a voting rights bill, and should Democrats retake Congress and the White House, they will likely pursue that as a top priority.
Still, the 2020 election has shown how partisanship has leaked even into the ways people choose to vote, not just whom they vote for. Democrats, so far, have overwhelmingly favored voting by mail, while Republicans have preferred voting in person, in part because of the president’s rhetoric. Depending on the outcome of the election, those divides could harden even more, and become a roadblock to reform.


vox--2020-11-01--Daylight saving time ends Sunday: 8 things to know about “falling back”

On Sunday , November 1 , at 2 am , daylight saving time ended .
We set our clocks back one hour , heralding the end of daylight saving time for much of the country .
The biggest consequence : The change shifts daylight back into the morning hours .
That means sunrise happened one hour earlier on November 1 ( sadly , it means sunset will occur one hour earlier as well . )
For weekend workers , at least , it means an additional glorious hour of sleep on Sunday .
Hurrah !
Yet as simple as it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of confusion about daylight saving time .
The first thing to know : Yes , it ends in the fall , just as the decrease in daylight hours is becoming noticeable .
Let ’ s sort it all out .
1 ) Why do we need to “ save ” daylight hours in the summer ?
Daylight saving time in the US started as an energy conservation trick during World War I and became a national standard in the 1960s .
The idea is that in the summer months , we shift the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the evening .
So if the sun sets at 8 pm instead of 7 , we ’ d presumably spend less time with the lights on in our homes at night , saving electricity .
It also means that you ’ re less likely to sleep through daylight hours in the morning ( since those are shifted an hour later too ) .
Hence “ saving ” daylight hours for the most productive time of the day .
Overall : We agree , the name is kind of confusing .
No , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time.
” Not plural .
Be sure to point out this common mistake to friends and acquaintances .
You ’ ll be really popular .
3 ) Does it actually lead to energy savings ?
As Joseph Stromberg outlined in an excellent 2015 Vox article , the actual electricity conservation from the time change is unclear or nonexistent : 4 ) Why doesn ’ t Arizona or Hawaii change its clocks ?
Arizona has a simple way to deal with daylight saving time : Most of the state ignores it .
Fifty years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keep the clocks in most of the state in standard time all year .
One reason : Arizona summers are very hot , and an earlier sunset gives residents more time to enjoy tolerable temperatures before bed , as AZcentral explains .
Confusing matters : The Navajo Nation within Arizona does use DST .
Hawaii also doesn ’ t observe DST .
The island state is the farthest south of all states and rejected it because it doesn ’ t see a hugely noticeable daylight hour difference between winter and summer months .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of states pass laws making daylight saving time permanent ?
What happened with those ?
If you ’ re a bit confused about which states follow daylight saving time and which do not , I don ’ t blame you .
That ’ s because lately , a few states have looked into joining Arizona and Hawaii , but with a twist : They want daylight saving time to be in place all year long .
In the November 2018 election , Californians voted in favor of a ballot measure that paves the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which passed with 60 percent of the vote , simply grants the California Legislature the power to vote to change the clocks permanently .
Any changes would need to start with a two-thirds majority vote in the state legislature — which hasn ’ t happened yet .
And even then , the time change wouldn ’ t be a given .
The federal government would have to approve it ; that has uncertain prospects too .
In 2018 , the Florida government approved the delightfully named Sunshine Protection Act , which seeks to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( Essentially , it would mean that Florida will be one hour ahead of the rest of the East Coast during the winter months . )
Massachusetts has looked into a similar measure , too .
The bill is still waiting on approval from Congress before it can go into effect .
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has put forth a few bills to push forward the approval , but they haven ’ t moved at all .
Arkansas , too , passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wouldn ’ t go into effect until its bordering states changed their clocks permanently too .
Other states that have approved legislation to enact year-long daylight saving time include Washington , Tennessee , Oregon , Nevada , and Alabama .
Some Maryland legislators are interested , too .
But none of the changes can go into effect without approval from the federal government .
So for now , all these states will be changing their clocks on Sunday along with the rest of us .
Sorry !
6 ) What would happen if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if it were extended forever ?
It ’ s worth thinking about what would happen if Congress abolished daylight saving time ( or kept it going all year long ) .
How might our patterns change ?
Blogger and cartographer Andy Woodruff decided to visualize this with a great series of maps .
The goal of these maps is to show how abolishing daylight saving time , extending it all year , or going with the status quo changes the number of days we have “ reasonable ” sunrise and sunset times .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the sun rising at 7 am or earlier or setting after 5 pm ( so one could , conceivably , spend some time in the sun before or after work ) .
This is what the map looks like under the status quo of twice-yearly clock shifts .
A lot of people have unreasonable sunrise times ( the dark spots ) for much of the year : Here ’ s how things would change if daylight saving were abolished ( that is , if we just stuck to the time set in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s better , particularly on the sunrise end : And here ’ s what would happen if daylight saving were always in effect .
The sunrise situation would actually be worse for most people .
But many more people would enjoy after-work light — and there ’ s a strong argument to make that this after-work light is actually worth more .
( More on that below . )
In 2015 , Stromberg made the compelling case that the daylight saving time shift into the evening should be extended year-round .
Having @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a surprising number of ways : • People engage in more leisure activities after work than beforehand , so we ’ d likely do more physical activity over sedentary leisure activities .
Relatedly , studies show that kids get more exercise when the sun is out later in the evening .
• Stromberg also cites some evidence that robberies decrease when there ’ s more sun in the evening hours .
• There could be economic gains , since people “ take short trips , and buy things after work — but not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increases sales , ” he writes .
A bit .
When we shift clocks forward one hour in the spring , many of us will lose that hour of sleep .
In the days after daylight saving time starts , our biological clocks are a little bit off .
It ’ s like the whole country has been given one hour of jet lag .
In September , the American Academy of Sleep medicine called for the end of daylight saving time clock changes .
“ An abundance of accumulated evidence indicates that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ daylight saving time incurs significant public health and safety risks , including increased risk of adverse cardiovascular events , mood disorders , and motor vehicle crashes , ” the academy wrote in a statement .
One hour of lost sleep sounds like a small change , but we humans are fragile , sensitive animals .
Small disruptions in our sleep have been shown to alter basic indicators of our health and dull our mental edge .
And when our biological clocks are off , everything about us is out of sync .
Our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to keep up with our actions .
Since we usually eat a meal after waking up , we produce the most insulin in the morning .
We ’ re primed to metabolize breakfast before even taking a bite .
It ’ s more efficient that way .
Being an hour off schedule means our bodies are not prepared for our actions at any time of the day .
In 1999 , researchers at Johns Hopkins and Stanford universities wanted to find out what happens on the road when millions of drivers have their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fatal car crash data from the US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration , they found a very small , but significant , increase in road deaths on the Monday after the clock shift in the spring : The number of deadly accidents jumped to an average of 83.5 on the “ spring forward ” Monday compared with an average of 78.2 on a typical Monday .
And it seems it ’ s not just car accidents .
Evidence has also mounted of an increase in incidences of workplace injuries and heart attacks in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 8 ) How can we abolish daylight saving time , or extend it year-round ?
That ’ s easy !
Well , not really : All it would take is an act of Congress .
But I wouldn ’ t count on this happening anytime soon .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

On Sunday, November 1, at 2 am, daylight saving time ended. We set our clocks back one hour, heralding the end of daylight saving time for much of the country.
The biggest consequence: The change shifts daylight back into the morning hours. That means sunrise happened one hour earlier on November 1 (sadly, it means sunset will occur one hour earlier as well.) For weekend workers, at least, it means an additional glorious hour of sleep on Sunday. Hurrah!
Yet as simple as it seems, there is still a lot of confusion about daylight saving time. The first thing to know: Yes, it ends in the fall, just as the decrease in daylight hours is becoming noticeable.
Let’s sort it all out.
1) Why do we need to “save” daylight hours in the summer?
Daylight saving time in the US started as an energy conservation trick during World War I and became a national standard in the 1960s.
The idea is that in the summer months, we shift the number of daylight hours we get into the evening. So if the sun sets at 8 pm instead of 7, we’d presumably spend less time with the lights on in our homes at night, saving electricity.
It also means that you’re less likely to sleep through daylight hours in the morning (since those are shifted an hour later too). Hence “saving” daylight hours for the most productive time of the day.
Overall: We agree, the name is kind of confusing.
2) Isn’t it “daylight savings time” not “daylight saving time”?
No, it’s definitely called “daylight saving time.” Not plural. Be sure to point out this common mistake to friends and acquaintances. You’ll be really popular.
3) Does it actually lead to energy savings?
As Joseph Stromberg outlined in an excellent 2015 Vox article, the actual electricity conservation from the time change is unclear or nonexistent:
Despite the fact that daylight saving time was introduced to save fuel, there isn’t strong evidence that the current system actually reduces energy use — or that making it year-round would do so, either. Studies that evaluate the energy impact of DST are mixed. It seems to reduce lighting use (and thus electricity consumption) slightly but may increase heating and AC use, as well as gas consumption. It’s probably fair to say that energy-wise, it’s a wash.
4) Why doesn’t Arizona or Hawaii change its clocks?
Arizona has a simple way to deal with daylight saving time: Most of the state ignores it.
Fifty years ago, the state legislature opted to keep the clocks in most of the state in standard time all year. One reason: Arizona summers are very hot, and an earlier sunset gives residents more time to enjoy tolerable temperatures before bed, as AZcentral explains. Confusing matters: The Navajo Nation within Arizona does use DST.
Hawaii also doesn’t observe DST. The island state is the farthest south of all states and rejected it because it doesn’t see a hugely noticeable daylight hour difference between winter and summer months.
5) Didn’t a bunch of states pass laws making daylight saving time permanent? What happened with those?
If you’re a bit confused about which states follow daylight saving time and which do not, I don’t blame you. That’s because lately, a few states have looked into joining Arizona and Hawaii, but with a twist: They want daylight saving time to be in place all year long.
In the November 2018 election, Californians voted in favor of a ballot measure that paves the way for this. The measure, which passed with 60 percent of the vote, simply grants the California Legislature the power to vote to change the clocks permanently. Any changes would need to start with a two-thirds majority vote in the state legislature — which hasn’t happened yet.
And even then, the time change wouldn’t be a given. The federal government would have to approve it; that has uncertain prospects too.
In 2018, the Florida government approved the delightfully named Sunshine Protection Act, which seeks to permanently leave Florida in daylight saving time. (Essentially, it would mean that Florida will be one hour ahead of the rest of the East Coast during the winter months.) Massachusetts has looked into a similar measure, too.
The bill is still waiting on approval from Congress before it can go into effect. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has put forth a few bills to push forward the approval, but they haven’t moved at all. Arkansas, too, passed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent, but it included the condition that the changes wouldn’t go into effect until its bordering states changed their clocks permanently too. Other states that have approved legislation to enact year-long daylight saving time include Washington, Tennessee, Oregon, Nevada, and Alabama. Some Maryland legislators are interested, too. But none of the changes can go into effect without approval from the federal government.
So for now, all these states will be changing their clocks on Sunday along with the rest of us. Sorry!
(It appears other countries are also interested in getting rid of DST, or keeping it in place forever: Some members of the European Parliament, the governing body of the European Union, want to abolish clock changes there too.)
6) What would happen if daylight saving time were abolished? Or if it were extended forever?
It’s worth thinking about what would happen if Congress abolished daylight saving time (or kept it going all year long).
How might our patterns change? Blogger and cartographer Andy Woodruff decided to visualize this with a great series of maps.
The goal of these maps is to show how abolishing daylight saving time, extending it all year, or going with the status quo changes the number of days we have “reasonable” sunrise and sunset times.
Reasonable, as defined by Woodruff, is the sun rising at 7 am or earlier or setting after 5 pm (so one could, conceivably, spend some time in the sun before or after work).
This is what the map looks like under the status quo of twice-yearly clock shifts. A lot of people have unreasonable sunrise times (the dark spots) for much of the year:
Here’s how things would change if daylight saving were abolished (that is, if we just stuck to the time set in the winter all year). It’s better, particularly on the sunrise end:
And here’s what would happen if daylight saving were always in effect. The sunrise situation would actually be worse for most people. But many more people would enjoy after-work light — and there’s a strong argument to make that this after-work light is actually worth more. (More on that below.)
(Note: The length of light we experience each day wouldn’t actually change; that’s determined by the tilt of Earth’s axis. But we would experience it in times more accommodating for our modern world. Be sure to check out the interactive version of these maps on Woodruff’s website.)
In 2015, Stromberg made the compelling case that the daylight saving time shift into the evening should be extended year-round. Having more light later could benefit us in a surprising number of ways:
People engage in more leisure activities after work than beforehand, so we’d likely do more physical activity over sedentary leisure activities. Relatedly, studies show that kids get more exercise when the sun is out later in the evening.
Stromberg also cites some evidence that robberies decrease when there’s more sun in the evening hours.
There could be economic gains, since people “take short trips, and buy things after work — but not before — so a longer DST slightly increases sales,” he writes.
7) Is daylight saving time dangerous?
A bit. When we shift clocks forward one hour in the spring, many of us will lose that hour of sleep. In the days after daylight saving time starts, our biological clocks are a little bit off. It’s like the whole country has been given one hour of jet lag.
In September, the American Academy of Sleep medicine called for the end of daylight saving time clock changes.
“An abundance of accumulated evidence indicates that the acute transition from standard time to daylight saving time incurs significant public health and safety risks, including increased risk of adverse cardiovascular events, mood disorders, and motor vehicle crashes,” the academy wrote in a statement.
One hour of lost sleep sounds like a small change, but we humans are fragile, sensitive animals. Small disruptions in our sleep have been shown to alter basic indicators of our health and dull our mental edge.
And when our biological clocks are off, everything about us is out of sync. Our bodies run this tight schedule to try to keep up with our actions. Since we usually eat a meal after waking up, we produce the most insulin in the morning. We’re primed to metabolize breakfast before even taking a bite. It’s more efficient that way.
(There’s some good research that finds taking over-the-counter melatonin can help reset our body clocks to a new time. Read more about that here.)
Being an hour off schedule means our bodies are not prepared for our actions at any time of the day.
One example: driving.
In 1999, researchers at Johns Hopkins and Stanford universities wanted to find out what happens on the road when millions of drivers have their sleep disrupted.
Analyzing 21 years of fatal car crash data from the US National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, they found a very small, but significant, increase in road deaths on the Monday after the clock shift in the spring: The number of deadly accidents jumped to an average of 83.5 on the “spring forward” Monday compared with an average of 78.2 on a typical Monday.
And it seems it’s not just car accidents. Evidence has also mounted of an increase in incidences of workplace injuries and heart attacks in the days after we spring forward.
8) How can we abolish daylight saving time, or extend it year-round?
That’s easy! Well, not really: All it would take is an act of Congress. But I wouldn’t count on this happening anytime soon.


vox--2020-11-01--After Trump supporters surround a Biden bus in Texas, the FBI opens an investigation

A caravan of trucks and SUVs flying Trump flags that converged on a Biden campaign bus in Texas on Friday has become a flashpoint in the final weekend of the 2020 campaign .
The drivers ’ actions have been decried by Democrats , praised by President Donald Trump , and , according to CNN and the Texas Tribune , the incident is now under investigation by the FBI .
The bus was traveling from Austin to San Antonio on Interstate 35 , a major north-south artery through Texas , when it was surrounded by a convoy of trucks and cars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ volunteer shows the vehicles encircling and tailgating the bus on a Texas highway as well as at least one collision , when a pickup truck hit a SUV driving in the next lane over , immediately behind the bus .
The Biden campaign claimed , according to CNN , there were “ nearly 100 vehicles around the campaign bus , ” and that it was forced to slow from highway speeds to just 20 miles per hour .
Staffers called 911 during the incident , and Texas Democrats subsequently canceled three events scheduled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ safety concerns.
” “ Pro-Trump Protestors have escalated well beyond safe limits , ” Texas state Rep. Sheryl Cole , a Democrat running for reelection , tweeted .
The Biden campaign has paid increasing attention to Texas in the closing days of the presidential race , as polls show a close contest in the historically red state , which Trump won by 9 points in 2016 .
According to the FiveThirtyEight polling average for Texas , Trump leads Biden by only 1.5 percentage points , and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaign swing through the state was separate from the bus tour in the video , according to the Texas Tribune ) in order to energize the Democratic base , and sway undecided voters there .
Trump has cheered for the car and truck parades — including in Texas Trump vehicle convoys — along with their close relative , Trump boat parades — have become a recurring feature in the 2020 presidential race , with “ Trump Train ” events taking to the road on Sunday in Manatee County , Florida ; Washington , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kentucky , among other locations .
Convoys also shut down traffic on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey and on the Mario Cuomo and Whitestone bridges in New York .
But the conflict with the Biden bus in Texas was an escalation of these tactics — one that comes amid rising concern about violence around the election , and as Trump himself continues to cast doubt on the results .
Saturday , Trump approvingly tweeted a video of the incident with the caption “ I LOVE TEXAS !
” — a move @ @ @ @ @ @ @ widespread fears about violence surrounding the 2020 election .
According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll taken from October 23 to October 27 , fully 75 percent of likely voters are somewhat or very concerned about the possibility of violence on or after Election Day .
And Trump himself has a long history of glorifying and inciting violence .
As Vox ’ s Fabiola Cineas wrote recently , Trump has “ repeatedly proven that he has no interest in promoting peace.
” His Saturday tweet is just the latest example .
Will you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes .
It ’ s essential that all Americans are able to access clear , concise information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives , and the lives of their families and communities .
That is our mission at Vox .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone understand this presidential election : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

A caravan of trucks and SUVs flying Trump flags that converged on a Biden campaign bus in Texas on Friday has become a flashpoint in the final weekend of the 2020 campaign.
The drivers’ actions have been decried by Democrats, praised by President Donald Trump, and, according to CNN and the Texas Tribune, the incident is now under investigation by the FBI.
The bus was traveling from Austin to San Antonio on Interstate 35, a major north-south artery through Texas, when it was surrounded by a convoy of trucks and cars. A video by a Biden campaign volunteer shows the vehicles encircling and tailgating the bus on a Texas highway as well as at least one collision, when a pickup truck hit a SUV driving in the next lane over, immediately behind the bus.
These tactics have no place in Texas, my home state, and no place in America.
Please vote. Please volunteer this weekend. The future of our democracy is at stake. pic.twitter.com/G0O4yg2vnJ — Dr. Eric Cervini (@ericcervini) October 31, 2020
The Biden campaign claimed, according to CNN, there were “nearly 100 vehicles around the campaign bus,” and that it was forced to slow from highway speeds to just 20 miles per hour. Staffers called 911 during the incident, and Texas Democrats subsequently canceled three events scheduled for later in the day because of “safety concerns.”
“Pro-Trump Protestors have escalated well beyond safe limits,” Texas state Rep. Sheryl Cole, a Democrat running for reelection, tweeted.
The Biden campaign has paid increasing attention to Texas in the closing days of the presidential race, as polls show a close contest in the historically red state, which Trump won by 9 points in 2016.
Related The Vox 2020 presidential election live blog
According to the FiveThirtyEight polling average for Texas, Trump leads Biden by only 1.5 percentage points, and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris traveled to the state Friday (her campaign swing through the state was separate from the bus tour in the video, according to the Texas Tribune) in order to energize the Democratic base, and sway undecided voters there.
Trump has cheered for the car and truck parades — including in Texas
Trump vehicle convoys — along with their close relative, Trump boat parades — have become a recurring feature in the 2020 presidential race, with “Trump Train” events taking to the road on Sunday in Manatee County, Florida; Washington, DC; Houston; and Louisville, Kentucky, among other locations. Convoys also shut down traffic on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey and on the Mario Cuomo and Whitestone bridges in New York.
I took the Throggs Neck. Heard there was a pileup of chumps on the Whitestone https://t.co/Vbaug6OLjy — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 1, 2020
But the conflict with the Biden bus in Texas was an escalation of these tactics — one that comes amid rising concern about violence around the election, and as Trump himself continues to cast doubt on the results.
Saturday, Trump approvingly tweeted a video of the incident with the caption “I LOVE TEXAS!” — a move that isn’t likely to assuage widespread fears about violence surrounding the 2020 election. According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll taken from October 23 to October 27, fully 75 percent of likely voters are somewhat or very concerned about the possibility of violence on or after Election Day.
And Trump himself has a long history of glorifying and inciting violence. As Vox’s Fabiola Cineas wrote recently, Trump has “repeatedly proven that he has no interest in promoting peace.” His Saturday tweet is just the latest example.
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vox--2020-11-01--The “shy Trump voters” debate, explained

While visiting a farm in Loudoun County , Virginia , on Saturday , I met several gentlemen wearing Trump gear and eager to discuss the election with strangers .
They explained while polling looks bad for President Donald Trump , that his polling was basically the same in 2016 ( not true ) , that Trump voters were less likely to answer phone surveys , and that therefore Trump is underrated in the polls .
These gentlemen were nice enough , but weren ’ t exactly right .
But they aren ’ t alone in their beliefs , leading to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ shy Trump voters ” are distorting the polling .
And that discourse gets confused in part because the premise of the Shy Trump Voters thesis contains a measure of truth .
There are demographic attributes that correlate with both Trump voting and with non-response to polls , and if pollsters are careless with their work , this could lead them to underrate Trump .
That being said , there are a lot of things pollsters can do that , if they are careless , would lead them to underrate Democratic presidential nominee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ per se is almost certainly not the attribute that ’ s actually of interest here .
Trump fans are rather infamously vocal about their support for the president , and he boasts bigger rallies , more garish hats , more boat parades , and other visible signs of support than Biden does .
The real issue isn ’ t “ Are there potential distortions in survey response ?
” because there clearly are .
It ’ s “ Do pollsters adjust for these distortions ?
” And even more to the point , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to believe their methodological failures are systematically biased in one direction ?
” The answer to that latter question is basically no .
Polling errors happen , and while a polling error of the scale needed to generate a Trump win would be unusual , it ’ s not out of the question .
But a similarly sized polling error could happen in the other direction , too .
Pollsters make mistakes , but they ’ re not incompetent .
The most basic way to conduct a telephone poll of American public opinion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ random phone numbers , call everyone on the list , and ask the people who answer who they are planning to vote for .
Election polling of the past really did , more or less , work like that , which is one reason that the margin of error has traditionally loomed so large in reporting on polls , and in polling itself .
As you may dimly remember from a high school statistics class , a relatively small random sample of a much larger group of people can give you a fairly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is like .
And there ’ s a formula you can use that relates the size of your sample to the reliability of your estimate — thus allowing you to generate a 95 percent confidence interval and a margin of error that surrounds it .
But in the modern world , the problem you will have if you try to conduct a poll by calling random people has nothing to do with sampling error and everything to do with the fact that few people will answer the phone .
Poll response rates have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where you need to dial over 15,000 phone numbers to get 950 responses .
Worse for pollsters , the group of people who do answer the phone is going to be a non-random slice of the population .
Young people , people of color , people who do not speak English as their first language , and people with lower levels of education are all much less likely to answer surveys .
The only slight saving grace of a random phone poll will be that , in partisan terms , these biases somewhat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think in terms of local geographies , you ’ ll see that poll is going to be way off .
In an overwhelmingly white , more educated state like Maine , you ’ ll be massively biased toward Democrats because of the educational skew .
In a less educated , but ethnically diverse state like Nevada , you ’ ll be biased toward Republicans because of the racial skew .
If you happened to get the national numbers right , that would be a lucky coincidence .
So this is not actually how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are based on models of the electorate A more sophisticated approach to the problem starts with a model of what the electorate should look like , and then “ weights ” the poll responses to fit the model .
For example , suppose you have good reason to believe ( from the census , say ) that the electorate should be 12 percent Black but only 8 percent of your survey respondents are Black .
Then you can “ increase the weight ” of the Black respondents so that each of them counts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You could fiddle like this to weight up Black , Latino , and young respondents , and to weight down old white people .
This is where things went awry in 2016 .
If you weight by race and by age but not by educational attainment , then you end up correcting two pro-Republican biases while leaving out the anti-Republican bias of educational attainment .
Many pollsters did this in their 2016 state polls , and as a result ended up badly underestimating Trump .
That ’ s not because Trump voters are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of people of all types don ’ t answer polls these days .
It ’ s because pollsters deal with non-response by doing a lot of weighting and modeling , so poll accuracy is increasingly a function of how well you design your model .
It ’ s easy to say , “ Well , they should have weighted for education ” ( and indeed they should have ) , but it ’ s worth reflecting on the fact that these weighting decisions are difficult .
Some pollsters , for example , weight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be a useful master control on your sample .
On the other hand , you might think that doing that , in effect , rules out large changes in public opinion — you won ’ t detect a sharp swing against the Republican Party in Texas if you insist , as a matter of definition , that most of the Texas electorate has to be Republicans .
Should you weight for religious observance ?
For denomination ?
We know that a white person who goes to church weekly is way more likely to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attends services .
But the relationship goes the other way if you ’ re talking about a Black person who affiliates with a Black church ( but not another kind of church ) .
We also know that subgroups matter .
If it happens to be the case that half the Latinos in your sample are Cuban , that will bias your result — all the more so if you end up weighting them up due to a small overall number of Latinos .
Critically , these problems are more intense when you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ national polling , because the little state idiosyncrasies matter more .
In a broad national sample the fact that , say , Mormons or Jews vote differently from other white people sort of comes out in the wash .
But in the handful of states where LDS adherents are a large share of the population ( like Arizona ) , then it can matter a great deal .
When you try to poll states that don ’ t get polled a lot ( Alaska , for example ) then you are faced with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much track record of different weighting concepts — you ’ re just sort of guessing how to weight .
The most advanced phone polls try to gain a leg up on the competition by starting not with a set of random digits , but by acquiring a list of registered voters .
That lets you weight based on party registration — an objective variable that ’ s obviously politically relevant — but this costs money , and it ’ s not possible in every state .
These days , more and more pollsters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all .
Instead , they do surveys online or via text message with respondents who ’ ve agreed to be surveyed in exchange for money .
This is a non-random group , but since phone polling is so model-intensive to begin with , these days a well-designed online poll can outperform a phone poll .
All of this means that crafting accurate state-level polls is very difficult and nobody should be shocked that it goes awry sometimes .
But “ the polls might be wrong ” is a very different claim from “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the polls are underrating Trump.
” These days , for example , almost all well-regarded pollsters do weight by education .
It ’ s not clear polls have been “ fixed ” We can say with some confidence that pollsters will not make literally the exact same methodological mistake they made in 2016 .
But some people familiar with the education weighting issue have jumped too hastily to assuming that the polls have been “ fixed ” since Trump ’ s initial victory .
When Nate Cohn , of the New York Times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wake of the 2018 midterms , he found that on average the polls had become more accurate .
But in states where the polls overestimated Clinton , they also tended to overestimate Democrats in 2018 , and vice versa .
National polling , in both years , was more accurate .
The 2018 race was largely focused on the House of Representatives , so the state-level polling errors didn ’ t seem like a huge deal psychologically .
Democrats underperformed here and there and disappointed themselves , but also overperformed massively in California @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some surprise seats out west .
In the Electoral College , of course , underperforming the polls in Pennsylvania and Florida ( as Democrats did in both 2016 and 2018 ) and making it up in California would not be so benign .
All that said , just because the polls underestimated Republicans in Pennsylvania two elections in a row doesn ’ t mean they ’ ll do it a third time .
The size of the polling error there did shrink between 2016 and 2018 , and pollsters may have successfully shrunk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may end up overcorrecting and have an error in the other direction , underestimating Democrats .
Either way , there is no specific empirical or theoretical basis for believing that the polls are skewed in favor of Biden — they certainly might be skewed — but the professional pollsters are aware of potential biases and mostly try to correct for them .
Perhaps even more important , Biden ’ s polling lead is just really large at this point .
The polls could be off badly and he might win anyway .
Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden is up by 6 percentage points in Pennsylvania polling averages .
That means that if the Pennsylvania polls are exactly as inaccurate as they were in 2016 , he ’ d win Pennsylvania by 1 percentage point .
He ’ d also carry Michigan and Wisconsin by 4 points each , and Arizona by 2 points .
And because the 2016 poll errors in Georgia and Florida were much more modest , Biden ’ s narrow 2-point edges in those state poll averages would simply translate into narrow 1-point wins .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way , we ’ d likely end up remembering it as a solid Biden win and forgetting all the fuss about polling errors .
Nonetheless , particularly in the key Great Lakes states , these would actually be big polling errors .
The reason Hillary Clinton didn ’ t bother to campaign in Wisconsin is that the polls there were off by a staggering 6 percentage points .
If Biden ends up winning there by 4 percentage points rather than by 10 , that will still be a huge error — it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ To win the election at this point , Trump doesn ’ t just need the polling error to be in his favor again — he needs it to be giant , since Biden ’ s lead is bigger than Clinton ’ s was .
Alternatively , he needs to narrowly eke out a win in Florida ( which would only require a small poll error ) and try to get the courts to invalidate mail votes in the Great Lakes .
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If you have already contributed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t , please consider helping everyone understand this presidential election : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

While visiting a farm in Loudoun County, Virginia, on Saturday, I met several gentlemen wearing Trump gear and eager to discuss the election with strangers. They explained while polling looks bad for President Donald Trump, that his polling was basically the same in 2016 (not true), that Trump voters were less likely to answer phone surveys, and that therefore Trump is underrated in the polls.
These gentlemen were nice enough, but weren’t exactly right. But they aren’t alone in their beliefs, leading to a discourse around whether or not so-called “shy Trump voters” are distorting the polling. And that discourse gets confused in part because the premise of the Shy Trump Voters thesis contains a measure of truth.
There are demographic attributes that correlate with both Trump voting and with non-response to polls, and if pollsters are careless with their work, this could lead them to underrate Trump.
That being said, there are a lot of things pollsters can do that, if they are careless, would lead them to underrate Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. And “shyness” is almost certainly not the attribute of interest here. Trump fans are rather infamously vocal about their support for the president, and he boasts bigger rallies, more garish hats, more boat parades, and other visible signs of support than Biden does.
Are there potential distortions in survey response? Of course.
But the real issue is: Do pollsters adjust for these distortions? And even more to the point: Is there reason to believe their methodological failures are systematically biased in one direction?
Related The Vox 2020 presidential election live blog
The answer to that latter question is basically no. Polling errors happen, and while a polling error of the scale needed to generate a Trump win would be unusual, it’s not out of the question. But a similarly sized polling error could happen in the other direction, too. Pollsters make mistakes, but they’re not incompetent.
The basic challenge of polling, explained
The most basic way to conduct a telephone poll of American public opinion would be to generate a few thousand random phone numbers, call everyone on the list, and ask the people who answer who they are planning to vote for.
Election polling of the past really did, more or less, work like that, which is one reason that the margin of error has traditionally loomed so large in reporting on polls, and in polling itself. As you may dimly remember from a high school statistics class, a relatively small random sample of a much larger group of people can give you a fairly accurate estimate of what the larger group is like. And there’s a formula you can use that relates the size of your sample to the reliability of your estimate — thus allowing you to generate a 95 percent confidence interval and a margin of error that surrounds it.
But in the modern world, the problem you will have if you try to conduct a poll by calling random people has nothing to do with sampling error and everything to do with the fact that few people will answer the phone. Poll response rates have plummeted in recent years to the point where you need to dial over 15,000 phone numbers to get 950 responses.
Worse for pollsters, the group of people who do answer the phone is going to be a non-random slice of the population. Young people, people of color, people who do not speak English as their first language, and people with lower levels of education are all much less likely to answer surveys.
The only slight saving grace of a random phone poll will be that, in partisan terms, these biases somewhat offset each other. But if you think in terms of local geographies, you’ll see that poll is going to be way off. In an overwhelmingly white, more educated state like Maine, you’ll be massively biased toward Democrats because of the educational skew. In a less educated, but ethnically diverse state like Nevada, you’ll be biased toward Republicans because of the racial skew. If you happened to get the national numbers right, that would be a lucky coincidence.
So this is not actually how modern pollsters do things.
Modern polls are based on models of the electorate
A more sophisticated approach to the problem starts with a model of what the electorate should look like, and then “weights” the poll responses to fit the model. For example, suppose you have good reason to believe (from the census, say) that the electorate should be 12 percent Black but only 8 percent of your survey respondents are Black. Then you can “increase the weight” of the Black respondents so that each of them counts more than a non-Black respondent would. You could fiddle like this to weight up Black, Latino, and young respondents, and to weight down older white people.
This is where things went awry in 2016 — although the polls were still not so far off by historical comparisons. If you weight by race and by age but not by educational attainment, then you end up correcting two pro-Republican biases while leaving out the anti-Republican bias of educational attainment.
Many pollsters did this in their 2016 state polls, and as a result ended up underestimating Trump. That’s not because Trump voters are “shy” — the vast majority of people of all types don’t answer polls these days. It’s because pollsters deal with non-response by doing a lot of weighting and modeling, so poll accuracy is increasingly a function of how well you design your model.
State polling is really hard
It’s easy to say, “Well, they should have weighted for education” (and indeed they should have), but it’s worth reflecting on the fact that these weighting decisions are difficult. Some pollsters, for example, weight based on party identification, which could be a useful master control on your sample. On the other hand, you might think that doing that, in effect, rules out large changes in public opinion — you won’t detect a sharp swing against the Republican Party in Texas if you insist, as a matter of definition, that most of the Texas electorate has to be Republicans.
Should you weight for religious observance? For denomination? We know that a white person who goes to church weekly is way more likely to be a Republican than one who never attends services. But the relationship goes the other way if you’re talking about a Black person who affiliates with a Black church (but not another kind of church). We also know that subgroups matter. If it happens to be the case that half the Latinos in your sample are Cuban, that will bias your result — all the more so if you end up weighting them up due to a small overall number of Latinos.
Critically, these problems are more intense when you’re talking about state-level polling than national polling, because the little state idiosyncrasies matter more.
In a broad national sample the fact that, say, Mormons or Jews vote differently from other white people sort of comes out in the wash. But in the handful of states where LDS adherents are a large share of the population (like Arizona), then it can matter a great deal. When you try to poll states that don’t get polled a lot (Alaska, for example) then you are faced with the problem that there isn’t much track record of different weighting concepts — you’re just sort of guessing how to weight.
The most advanced phone polls try to gain a leg up on the competition by starting not with a set of random digits, but by acquiring a list of registered voters. That lets you weight based on party registration — an objective variable that’s obviously politically relevant — but this costs money, and it’s not possible in every state. These days, more and more pollsters aren’t doing phone polls at all. Instead, they do surveys online or via text message with respondents who’ve agreed to be surveyed in exchange for money. This is a non-random group, but since phone polling is so model-intensive to begin with, these days a well-designed online poll may outperform a phone poll.
All of this means that crafting accurate state-level polls is difficult, and nobody should be shocked that it goes awry sometimes. But “the polls might be wrong” is a different claim from “there is a specific reason to believe the polls are underrating Trump.” These days, for example, most well-regarded pollsters do weight by education.
It’s not clear polls have been “fixed”
We can say with some confidence that pollsters will not make literally the exact same methodological mistake they made in 2016. But some people familiar with the education weighting issue have jumped too hastily to assuming that the polls have been “fixed” since Trump’s initial victory.
When Nate Cohn, of the New York Times, surveyed state-level poll accuracy in the wake of the 2018 midterms, he found that on average the polls had become more accurate.
But in states where the polls overestimated Clinton, they also tended to overestimate Democrats in 2018, and vice versa. National polling, in both years, was more accurate. The 2018 race was largely focused on the House of Representatives, so the state-level polling errors didn’t seem like a huge deal psychologically. Democrats underperformed here and there and disappointed themselves, but also overperformed massively in California and made up for it by winning some surprise seats out west. In the Electoral College, of course, underperforming the polls in Pennsylvania and Florida (as Democrats did in both 2016 and 2018) and making it up in California would not be so benign.
All that said, just because the polls underestimated Republicans in Pennsylvania two elections in a row doesn’t mean they’ll do it a third time. The size of the polling error there did shrink between 2016 and 2018, and pollsters may have successfully shrunk it down to zero. Or they may end up overcorrecting and have an error in the other direction, underestimating Democrats. Either way, there is no specific empirical or theoretical basis for believing that the polls are skewed in favor of Biden — they certainly might be skewed — but the professional pollsters are aware of potential biases and mostly try to correct for them.
Perhaps even more important, Biden’s polling lead is just really large at this point. The polls could be off badly and he might win anyway.
Trump is down by a lot
Right now, Biden is up by about 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania polling averages.
That means that if the Pennsylvania polls are exactly as inaccurate as they were in 2016, he’d win Pennsylvania by 1 percentage point. He’d also carry Michigan and Wisconsin by a few points, and Arizona by 2 points.
And because the 2016 poll errors in Georgia and Florida were much more modest, Biden’s narrow 2-point edges in those state poll averages would simply translate into narrow 1-point wins. If the election ended up playing out that way, we’d likely end up remembering it as a solid Biden win and forgetting all the fuss about polling errors. Nonetheless, particularly in the key Great Lakes states, these would actually be big polling errors.
The reason Hillary Clinton didn’t bother to campaign in Wisconsin is that the polls there were off by 6 percentage points. If Biden ends up winning there by 4 percentage points rather than by 10, that will still be a larger than usual error — it’s just that nobody will care.
To win the election at this point, Trump doesn’t just need the polling error to be in his favor again — he needs it to be giant, since Biden’s lead is bigger than Clinton’s was. Alternatively, he needs to narrowly eke out a win in Florida (which would only require a small poll error) and try to get the courts to invalidate mail votes in the Great Lakes.