Making Sense of the American Election to a Non American Audience
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the US election and processes. So here’s a quick summary answering the most frequently asked questions in one post for everyone’s convenience :
1. Was this election close?
Don’t let the delay fool you, this was not a close win for Biden — it was thoroughly comprehensive! I wouldn’t call it a blow-out, but it was comprehensive. To give a cricket analogy, think 7 wicket victory chasing 300 rather than a 10 wicket victory.
Biden has won 306 electoral votes, the same number as Trump did in 2016. At the time, Trump called it an “electoral college landslide” and this time Biden has a popular vote majority of over 6mn votes — only the second largest margin in American history.
Trump won Michigan by 10k and Pennsylvania by 40k votes. Biden has won those two states by 146k and nearly 50k votes respectively. The Wisconsin margin is roughly the same. In addition, Biden won Georgia and Arizona — two deep red states.
Election narratives shouldn’t be determined by what the count looked like with 60% of votes counted. Things should be gauged only once all the votes are counted. Also, it’s very difficult to beat an incumbent US President — Trump is only the 4th incumbent in the last 100 years to lose. This also happens to be the highest margin of victory when beating an incumbent — the previous highest was by FDR.
2. If it was so comprehensive, why did it take so long?
Simply put, votes were being counted.
The more nuanced answer is that this year because of COVID-19, approximately two-thirds of the votes were cast through mail-in ballots (think postal votes in Sri Lanka, but not restricted only to government officials and available to most voters). In other years, two-thirds of votes are cast in-person on election day. The US usually uses voting machines, which is why they are able to report results within hours in the past.
Even then, usually it takes a few days to make a complete count of all the votes. However, based on result trends when the probability of a candidate winning a state is 99.5% certain, media organisations “call” that state — which means that they project a winner. So if you look closely at previous elections, including the 2016 one, when Trump was declared President, all the votes hadn’t been officially counted but there was a very high certainty of the outcome. That’s why you hear coverage saying, “CNN projects, Fox News projects, etc.”. So if someone accepted the media projection in 2016, that same logic should apply to an election where the margins are even larger.
Anyway, this year, since so many were mail-in (approx 2/3, some times higher), you first had to verify the authenticity of the ballot by making sure that signatures, addresses, etc of the voter and ballot matches what is on record. Just because a mail in ballot is received doesn’t mean that it gets counted. There are multiple checks to ensure that fraud doesn’t take place. That takes a very long time. It is only after this verification (the US calls it processing ballots), that they can put it through their scanners and count.
3. How come Trump was leading in most of the states early and then suddenly Biden led later? That looks fishy, doesn’t it?
Again, simply put, votes were being counted.
Since its much easier to tabulate in-person votes, many states reported those results first. Mail-in ballots were processed, counted, and reported after that. Republicans prefer in-person voting (rough party split is around 55–45) and approximately 70–80% of mail-in ballots were cast by Democrats. This is why you saw an initial lead for Trump and then saw a swing towards Biden.
The reverse of this happened in states like Ohio. They reported mail-in results first and it showed Biden leading significantly. However, once the in-person votes were reported results shifted towards Trump and he ended up winning the state by around 7 percentage points. So no one was “finding” ballots randomly. They were all votes that were already cast. Just that they were being counted.
Think of it this way, when Colombo District results are announced, if only Central Colombo results are announced, the UNP/SJB has a massive lead. But when you start releasing the Maharagama, Kotte results, that lead starts evaporating. This shift is similar.
What I’m saying is, these shifts are perfectly normal and in fact all the experts predicted that it would take a few days to count ballots and determine the winner exactly because of these shifts taking place.
4. Are the mail-in ballot results we’re seeing now include ballots that arrived after election day?
No, the current results are of only ballots that were received on or before election day.
Some states allow ballots to be counted even if they arrive a few days after election day, so long as it has been posted on or before November 2nd (election day).
This policy is a bit controversial and the Supreme Court asked authorities to keep these votes separately and they haven’t started counting or reporting them yet. They will be counted only after all other ballots have been counted and reported. Reports suggest that the number of ballots that have come in after election day are at most a couple thousand and won’t make a difference at the end. The Pennsylvania Secretary of State (the largest of these states) just announced that they had received only 10,000 votes after Nov 2nd — Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania is 45,000.
5. Why did Democrats vote so overwhelmingly using mail-in ballots?
Three major reasons:
(i) Biden voters tended to take the risks of COVID-19 more seriously and therefore didn’t want to stay in line for long hours to vote,
(ii) Trump continuously criticised mail-in votes and thus his voters were less likely to do so,
(iii) unlike in Sri Lanka, you’re not guaranteed paid leave to go and vote. Therefore, low-income/daily wage earners tend to find it difficult to go in-person and will use the mail-in option when available.
6. How come Florida was able to report so fast while Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania took so long?
In the US, the elections are run at the state level and there are no national laws per se. In Florida, their state legislature passed a law that allowed them to start processing (verifying) mail-in ballots two weeks before the election. This meant that, on Tuesday, around 90% of mail-in ballots had been processed and all they had to do was put them through the scanners and count.
In contrast, even though the election officials of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania begged their state legislatures to pass similar laws, they declined to do so. Mind you, these legislatures are controlled by Republicans. For example, by law, Pennsylvania election officials weren’t allowed to even start processing ballots until 7am on election day and there were around 2.5 mn mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.
7. Why did they they stop counting in the middle of the night in some places?
People processing the votes are mostly volunteers and more importantly, humans. They’ve been working through the night and in most cases there are way too many ballots to count. Therefore, they took a break to resume counting in the morning. All the ballots were stored safely in locations guarded by federal and state level officials.
8. Trump has demanded a recount in all these states, doesn’t this mean that the decision could change? Why was Biden declared the winner before these recounts?
The only two states where an automatic recount will take place is in Georgia and Arizona (because the difference is less than 0.5% (Biden’s lead is about 15k in both states). Biden doesn’t have to win either of these states to win the election. He has 270 electoral votes without any of them.
Wisconsin also allows a candidate to request a recount, so that will probably take place as well.
That said, historically, recounts haven’t changed much at all. The biggest margin of votes that changed after a recount in American Presidential election history is… 1200 votes. The smallest margin Biden is leading by in a State is, 14,000 votes — that too in Georgia, where he doesn’t have to win. And you may remember that Bush won Florida in 2000 by just 537 votes.
This is why all the experts across the political spectrum (including Fox News, the New York Post, Drudge etc.) were comfortable enough declaring the election in favour of Biden (refer my answer about when news orgs declare a winner above).
9. What is happening with Trump’s court cases?
It’s going exactly how you would expect a Trump court case to go — he’s losing! By my count as of yesterday, 12 out of 13 cases that have been decided were tossed out of court by judges because Trump’s lawyers couldn’t show credible evidence of what they were accusing in public.
Even the US Supreme Court refused to stop Pennsylvania from counting the remaining ballots and simply reiterated its previous order to keep the ballots that arrive after Nov 2nd separately and count them separately as well.
The only case that was not tossed out was one where the judge allowed observers of both parties to be 6 feet away from counting tables rather than 12 feet. In a similar case in Pennsylvania, even though in public Trump lawyers claimed that their observers were not allowed inside, in court they acknowledged that they were allowed. If you read the script, the judge literally says, “then what’s your problem” before tossing the case out.
Also, the Trump campaign has now opened a hotline to gather evidence to substantiate their claims. Last I checked, people find evidence before making claims. But clearly it works the other way round in Trump world — make a baseless claim and then try and find evidence.
Here’s a link that summarises all the cases filed thus far since election day:
https://www.theguardian.com/.../donald-trump-longshot...
10. Why is Trump pursuing these cases if it’s not going to mean anything?
One obvious reason could be that when you live in an information bubble where you genuinely believe that you can never lose, you automatically assume that something fraudulent has happened. If you live in an alternate reality, of course reality will seem fraudulent. We’re talking about a particular group of people who very seriously thought Trump could win California or New York.
The second is that in Trump’s fundraising emails for these law suits, the fine print says that half of the money raised will be used to pay off the campaign’s existing debts (not the lawsuits). So honestly, these lawsuits seem to be more about getting enough money to pay off debts rather than actually influence the result of the election.
A third explanation is more to do with a longterm strategy. So long as he doesn’t appear a loser and his base is convinced that the only reason he’s not President is because of a deep conspiracy against him, he could potentially rally back for a run in 2024. The truth is probably a combination of all of these and there could be many other logical and illogical reasons of course.
11. What are all these tweets and videos I’m seeing about fraud?
I don’t have time or space to go through every nutty conspiracy theory shared on Facebook. But not for the first time in his life, Trump has alleged fraud when things don’t go his way.
Remember, this is the same guy who said Obama was not born in the US and sent investigators to Hawaii to “reveal the truth”. This is also the same guy who appointed a committee to investigate voter fraud in 2016 — that committee closed shop after a few months because they couldn’t find any evidence.
If there’s actual evidence, then Trump can take the case to courts. But like I said, he has lost almost all the cases he has taken to court about this election so far since Tuesday.
Also, as has been roundly reported, Republican elected officials in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada are all saying that there’s no evidence of voter fraud. It’s only the Trump campaign, their surrogates, and some ultra Trump fans on social media who seem to be living in an alternate reality that are saying these things.
Fact-checking sites have all responded and disproven these alleged claims. All these claims have been roundly debunked. Sadly, certain people are ignorant of processes or unwilling to acknowledge reality. In addition, as of today, we learnt that a US Postal Worker who alleged fraud earlier in the media has confessed to have lied when his report was investigated by the authorities.
Finally, Biden has won Arizona and Georgia. The entire election apparatus (Governor, Secretary of State, etc) are all Republicans who were endorsed by Trump and in fact the respective Governors themselves have endorsed Trump in return. In fact, even the top elections official in Philadelphia (where a lot of these accusation of fraud are) is a Republican. So make of that what you will. Also, Republicans have done reasonably well in Congressional races — and these are the same ballots that were counted and whose results are being accepted as legitimate.
All what I’ve detailed above is easily verifiable. All it takes is a quick Google search and an open mind to consume facts rather than fiction.
I’ll post something about Biden’s policy positions and challenges to Sri Lanka separately, but this is just to give a summary of what’s happened because there’s a lot of misinformation being shared.
