BTRTN: Could Joe Biden Be Declared the Winner Outright On Election Night (That Is, With No Delay)?

Tom assesses the potential of an old-fashioned Election Night call.

In the last month Donald Trump has had three plans to win the presidency.  Plan A was to focus the post-convention stretch drive on a “law and order” message in response to the massive protests (and a few instances of violence) fueled by the killing of George Floyd.  While Trump still spins the fantasy of suburban threats that only he can resolve, Plan A clearly was a flop.  Plan B was devised on the fly, in the wake of Trump's bout with, and apparent recovery from, COVID-19.  This strategy featured Trump as the defeater of the virus, the conquering hero.  This one came with a series of grotesque set-ups: the Walter Reed drive-by event, the insane staged return to the White House with the ripping-off-the-mask theatrics, and the resumption of absurdly risky campaign rallies.  And it too has been a failure thus far, as each event has simply reinforced the impression of most Americans, that Trump’s attitude toward the virus has been cavalier, at best, and consequently needlessly deadly for tens of thousands of Americans.

Plan C has always been the back-up:  to delegitimize the election itself, based on substantial use of mail-in ballots due to COVID risks inherent in in-person voting.  Since Democrats are far more likely to use the mail-in option than Republicans, Trump’s ploy is to claim that the mail-in balloting processing is rife with fraud, despite no evidence to support the claim and ample evidence of the contrary.  Trump has at times simplified his action plan, saying that a winner must be declared on Election Night, and that all remaining uncounted votes should be void.  The uncounted votes at that point will be the mail-ins, which skew to the Democrats, thus Trump might claim victory by virtue of being ahead on Election Night (a claim that has no legal basis).

And as a last resort, if the ultimate verdict were a Biden win, Trump could find a few fraud cases (perhaps deliberately planted) and make a court challenge on that basis, counting on the conservative leanings of the Supreme Court to render a Bush v. Gore-esque GOP victory.

A Biden rout, however, could undercut any Trump claim of fraud.  The further Biden is ahead, the greater the burden would be on Trump to prove the level of fraud was enough to overcome the verdict.  Though there will be few instances of fraud and they would not be material in almost any scenario, clearly the bigger the win, the better.

But another pre-emptive scenario could be if Biden could actually be declared the winner outright on Election Night, sometime before, say, 6 AM Wednesday morning

This is quite unlikely.  We have been warned that with all the mail-in ballots – possibly up to 80 million of them – it will take weeks to count the votes, and America will have to sit on its hands.  We have been told that we will have to endure the excruciating prospect of Trump indeed taking an Election Night lead that will ultimately diminish over days and possibly weeks as the counting is completed.

But while an Election Night Biden declared win is not likely, that does not mean it is impossible.  Is there a “Biden Declared Winner on Election Night” scenario?

The answer really hinges on two variables – how close is the election, and how quickly will the ballots be counted?  Various media organizations have interviewed state election officials to get at the latter, and we have aggregated their results and applied our own view of the race and some judgment.

The answer is that there is at least some outside chance that Biden could be declared the winner outright on Election Night.

To help us understand those chances, take a look at this chart, which we will take you through below.

 

CAN BIDEN WIN OUTRIGHT ON ELECTION NIGHT?
States	Elec. Votes	Latest Polls	BTRTN Rating	Start Counting Votes When? (Per NY Times)	Probably Done on Election Night	Cumulative Electoral Votes on Election Night
HAW	4	Biden well ahead (at least +10 points, usually much more)	D Solid	Upon Receipt	Yes	212 are a given and should be called on Election night
ILL	20
MASS	11
NJ	14
NY	29
VA	13
WAS	12
CAL	55			Before Election Day
COL	9
CT	7
DC	3
DE	3
ME	2
ME 1	1
MD	10
NM	5
OR	7
RI	4
VT	3
NH	4	Biden + 11	D Solid	Days Before Election Day	Maybe	Biden wins by decent margins in fast counting states - gets him to 237
MINN	10	Biden + 7	D Likely	Upon Receipt	Maybe
AZ	11	Biden + 5	D Lean	Upon Receipt	Maybe
FL	29	Biden + 2	D TU	Before Election Day	Maybe	The Big One!  To 266
NC	15	Biden + 3	D TU	Before Election Day	Maybe	Needs one of these to win on Election Night to get over 270.
OH	18	Biden + 1	R TU	Days Before Election Day	Maybe
IA	6	Biden + 2	R TU	Before Election Day	Maybe
GA	16	Biden + 1	R TU	Upon Receipt	Maybe
TX	38	Trump + 2	R TU	Before Election Day	Maybe
NV	6	Biden + 5	D Lean	Upon Receipt	No	These will not be completed on Election Night
MICH	16	Biden + 7	D Lean	Days Before Election Day	No
WI	10	Biden + 6	D Lean	On Election Day	No
PA	20	Biden + 6	D Lean	On Election Day	No
NE 2	1	Biden + 7	D Lean	Before Election Day	No
ME 2	1	Biden + 4	D TU	Before Election Day	No
	413

On the chart, we start with the premise that Biden has a shot at winning a total of 413 electoral votes in total, when all the ballots are counted.  These are the states on the chart -- the other states, with their 125 electoral votes, are solidly for Trump and are not needed for this analysis.  The states are sorted above in order, essentially, of the speed at which they could be declared a win for Biden.

The first assumption is that the “solid for Biden states” at the top, will be conclusive on Election Night.  Biden holds double-digit leads in all of them, many by very large margins, and those states will start counting ballots either on receipt or well before Election Day (as noted by the green shading).  Thus they will be in a position to have counted plenty, if not all, of the mail-in votes by the end of Election Night, and this, along with exit polling, will be sufficient for the Associated Press and the networks to call them for Biden without dispute.  That gets Biden to 212 electoral votes that night, needing 58 more.

He won’t get them from the states (and districts) at the bottom of the chart, the ones shaded in red, which only start their counting either a few days before Election Day, or on it.  Thus these are “slow counting” states where the results will not be known for days or even weeks.  If Biden is going to be declared a winner on Election Night, he’s going to have to do it without those states.

He can get within field goal range with wins in New Hampshire, another solid state, Minnesota, a likely winner, and Arizona, a leaner at this point.  These will all be closer races than most if not all of the solid blue states.  But all might just count the votes quickly enough so that, if Biden wins them by expected margins, he may have enough to get the network nod.  Winning those three states brings him to 237 electoral votes.

Then the big one:  Florida.  For Biden to be declared the winner on Election Night, he pretty much has to win Florida.  Winning Florida will be tough enough….in every recent election in the state, Democrats held a slight polling advantage (as Biden does now), within the margin of error, but lost at the ballot box.  (See: Governor race in 2018, Senate race in 2018, and Clinton-Trump in 2016.)  But – Florida is committed to counting the votes quickly, and if they do, and Biden wins by some decent (say, a +2 point) margin, there could possibly be a verdict in Florida by the wee hours of the morning.  That would get Biden to 266 electoral votes.

And then he needs one more.  It could be North Carolina, or Ohio, or Iowa or Georgia (we still can’t quite believe Biden can actually win in Texas).  Frankly, if he won several of them he might not need Florida.

The bottom line is, it will probably be too close in all those “yellow maybe” states in the chart for Biden to be declared the winner on Election Night outright.  Either some of these races will be too close to call, or Biden will need Michigan, Pennsylvania and/or Wisconsin to win.  And thus we may indeed wait for days or even weeks.

But an old-fashioned Election Night declaration for Biden has at least some chance of happening.  That will be a race of its own – not just for Biden to win, but to win fast.

And always remember this:

WARNING:  No matter how good the numbers look at any given time, the Democrats will not win any election unless they work hard to earn it – registering voters, calling, texting, donating – throughout the fall, up to and including Election Day.