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Election Battleground State Changes

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Re: Election Battleground State Changes

#41

Post by mthoms »

brational wrote: post #6
mthoms wrote: post #3

This is really useful. Nice work. The description for the "Block trend" column could perhaps be a little clearer. It currently reads: >How has the trailing candidate's share of recent blocks trended? Computed using a moving average of previous 30k or more votes (or as many as available). To me that says "We compute the moving average using the last 30k votes, except when we use more or less than that.".

To me it reads “We aim for 30k but take what we can get.” You can see that the update sizes from the nytimes source vary greatly.

That's over-simplifying by leaving out the "or more" part (which presumably exists because they only want to count full blocks). I do understand the gist of what they are saying but there's got to be a better way to word it.

I also wonder if theres a good statistical reason for only counting full blocks. Why not just stop at 30k?

Re: Election Battleground State Changes

#43

Post by myroon5 »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #34

Can someone explain why 400k+ vote still being counted but Arizona result is called. No I am not want to dispute or argue. Just number. Thanks.

Most organizations have not called Arizona's result yet:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/upshot/networ...

Re: Election Battleground State Changes

#45

Post by pwinnski »

leetcrew wrote: post #33
tathougies wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? This constant finding of ballots, along with the allegations of not being allowed to observe the counting by international election watching groups, and the withholding of counts (see AZ and NV), makes the process seem extremely opaque. This is what I expect of a 3rd world country, not America. It was not difficult to get your ballot in on time. They've been out for weeks.

there have been substantial delays in the mail (possibly by design). if a ballot is postmarked before the deadline, authorities are obligated to make every effort to count it. I'm not sure what the deal is regarding the withholding of counts. seems unnecessary now that the polls are closed.

The people who need to speak to reporters to release counts are the same people overseeing the counting itself. So if hourly updates mean counting goes on until Sunday, while daily updates means we get final numbers Friday or Saturday, I'll take the daily updates.

Re: Election Battleground State Changes

#46

Post by Analemma_ »

nicklevin wrote: post #13
nicklevin wrote: post #11

There’s a row in PA listing Biden with 104.3% of the vote in a block with 1285 votes (the differential increased by more than the total number of votes). Data error?

I also see 3 blocks in PA of 25k+ votes with 90%+ Biden (one is 97%) - can someone better at statistics tell me how likely that is due to chance given the other values (assuming the data is reporting accurately)?

Philadelphia normally goes for the Democratic candidate by around 80%, and mail-in voters this year are disproportionately Democratic, so it is not unusual that some blocks of main-in ballots in Philadelphia county would be 90% Biden. Note that the total vote (mail-in + election day) in Philadelphia county for Biden is exactly 80%, so there doesn't seem to be anything anomalous here.

Re: Election Battleground State Changes

#47

Post by noahtallen »

tathougies wrote: post #28
dragonwriter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do the estimated vote counts keep going up? The same reason they are estimated counts in the first place, there's not hard counts of ballots before the, um, count of ballots. > Why has this process dragged on for days. Because its a manual process that normally takes days. > Where do they keep losing ballots? They don't, that's why the estimated numbers go up, not down. > Why isn't there a deadline? There is, b…

In my home state of Oregon, ballot results are released pretty much immediately, because the ballot deadline for receipt is 8 pm on election day. The same was true of California when I lived there. Why are the rules suddenly changed? Did no one foresee that this would cause one of the worst elections in American history?

Why is it causing one of the worst elections in American history? I’ve heard that the votes received after the day, but postmarked on time, only number in the hundreds. If that’s true, they may not be consequential. States are still processing ballots which were received on time, like you say. So that’s not even a factor in why it’s taking so long yet.

The difference between PA and OR is that PA could not begin processing its mail-in ballots earlier than Election Day. Additionally, Oregon has had decades to perfect its mail-in system. Other states are processing the most mail-in ballots they’ve ever gotten, so we should expect that it won’t be very fast or smooth yet.

Additionally, if CA was a swing state, we’d be in the same position here. It’s still counting ballots and still releasing updates. It just doesn’t have a razor thin margin like the rest of the states, so it was projected to go blue very early.

What we’re seeing is expected given how tight the races are in each state, as well as how many more people voted by mail this year!

Re: Election Battleground State Changes

#48

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

credit_guy wrote: post #37
tathougies wrote: post #15

Why do the estimated vote counts keep going up? Why has this process dragged on for days . Where do they keep losing ballots? Why isn't there a deadline? Why are only these states still counting? Great resource BTW!

> Why isn't there a deadline? How could there be? Voting is a state business. Each state is responsible for how it chooses the electors, via what procedures, on what timetable, etc. Here's what the Constitution has to say on this matter (Article 2, Section 1): "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representative…

Yeah, but what that definitely doesnt say is "Congress shall make no law requiring that the electors be chosen on a specific timetable"

Re: Election Battleground State Changes

#49

Post by dragonwriter »

tathougies wrote: post #28
dragonwriter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do the estimated vote counts keep going up? The same reason they are estimated counts in the first place, there's not hard counts of ballots before the, um, count of ballots. > Why has this process dragged on for days. Because its a manual process that normally takes days. > Where do they keep losing ballots? They don't, that's why the estimated numbers go up, not down. > Why isn't there a deadline? There is, b…

In my home state of Oregon, ballot results are released pretty much immediately, because the ballot deadline for receipt is 8 pm on election day. The same was true of California when I lived there. Why are the rules suddenly changed? Did no one foresee that this would cause one of the worst elections in American history?

> In my home state of Oregon, ballot results are released pretty much immediately, because the ballot deadline for receipt is 8 pm on election day.

Oregon is still counting, with a little under 90% of ballots counted by the latest numbers I can find.

> The same was true of California when I lived there.

It hasn't been in the 40+ years I've lived here, so I don't know what you're on about. Yes, since California did a quick flip between being a Republican lock and a Democratic lock in Presidential elections, you usually have a projected Presidential winner immediately. But the actual vote count usually takes quite a few days.

That's just California being noncompetitive in Presidential elections, not especially fast at vote counting.

> Why are the rules suddenly changed?

To the extent rules were changed for this election, it was because of a major public health emergency that raised concerns about the danger to both individual voters and the wider community from the usual level of in-person voting in places that don't already have predominantly mail-in elections.

> Did no one foresee that this would cause one of the worst elections in American history?

Nothing about the actual election itself, other than the abuse of the Postal Service in an attempt to prevent delivery of lawful votes, has been particularly bad. Yes, the fact that results are close in a number of states means that there isn't a projected electoral college winner yet. That's not a big deal.

Re: Election Battleground State Changes

#50

Post by Rebelgecko »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #34

Can someone explain why 400k+ vote still being counted but Arizona result is called. No I am not want to dispute or argue. Just number. Thanks.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21535103/when-will-w...

tl;dr is that many of the remaining votes are in parts of the state that are more liberal than the parts of the state that have already been counted. If Biden wins a county that is 50/50 D/R, then they're assuming that he will also win a county that is 60/40 D/R (oversimplifying a bit because turnout can very from county to county and mail-in ballots might have different demographics than in person voters). However it was a bit controversial that Fox called AZ as early as they did, I don't think any of the other TV channels have followed suit

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