By David Gordon, associate editor
A delay in determining the final results of Tuesday’s presidential election would not be a new phenomenon, according to Prof. Geoff Peterson, an expert local observer of elections.
Peterson, who chairs the UW-Eau Claire Political Science department, said close elections normally remained in doubt for several days until the 1970s, when news organizations first used exit polls to help them call results before final tallies were in. This year’s avalanche of absentee and early voting makes election day voter responses much less representative of the total turnout and will likely reduce or eliminate exit polls.
“We got spoiled by exit polling,” Peterson said.
His comments came during a Thursday interview with the CVPost about this year’s campaign, as well as what to look for in Tuesday night’s election reports. During the wide-ranging conversation, Peterson said:
* COVID-19’s huge impact on the campaign has “made the whole election hard to figure;”
* the 18-29-year-old cohort appears to favor former Vice-President Joe Biden heavily over President Donald Trump and could play a decisive role in the outcome if voters in that age group turn out this year the way they did in the 2018 mid-term election.
* if Biden wins the election, his victory margin will be key to what happens in the aftermath; and
* unless the election is a nail-biter, we should know the results by the end of the week.
Some early results may be useful
Peterson suggested several early results that could be good indicators of the final outcome regardless of the TV networks’ almost certain hesitancy to make early calls. He said voting in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina ends at roughly the same time Tuesday evening and results of at least the in-person vote totals should be available at a reasonable hour.
Trump won each of the three states in 2016 by less than a 5% margin and is expected to be ahead among in-person voters there this year. If he isn’t leading when those returns are tallied, it bodes badly for him, since absentee ballots are generally expected to favor Biden. If Trump loses all three states, he isn’t going to win nationally, Peterson said.
Ohio could be another early indicator, because absentee ballots there can be counted starting on Saturday and near-final totals should be available Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, Peterson said. Ohio is regarded as a key swing state, and no Republican candidate has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio.
Overall, Peterson said, “I think we’ll have some states in pretty quickly” on Tuesday, though which ones they will be is hard to predict.
“This is going to be an election unlike any other,” he said.
Other key factors
Peterson said that Trump’s stance in regard to COVID-19 “has alienated a lot of independents” and added that the president should have faced that issue squarely back in July, so as to appear to be taking the pandemic seriously. He said Biden’s campaign has made “no egregious mistakes” and was smart to let the election “become a referendum about Trump,” particularly his responses to COVID-19.
“They’ve played this about as well as they could have,” Peterson said.
He noted that polls have showed there is a “surprisingly one-sided” gap between the candidates among voters 18 to 29 years old, with Biden up by perhaps as much as 30% in Wisconsin and some other states. All the evidence shows a similarly large nationwide gap, as did the 2018 election statistics, he said.
This poses a major long-term problem for the Republican party, Peterson said, since Trump is strongly supported by white males over 65 who will be leaving the voter pool as the current 18-to-29-year-olds are maturing and voting in greater numbers.
‘There’s little doubt that (this gap) is a substantial one,” Peterson said, adding that Trump also appears to be bucking a gender gap, with women showing greater support for Biden.
Will Trump accept a Biden win?
As to whether Trump is likely to accept a Biden victory, Peterson said “a lot will depend on how close the election is.” Losing narrowly would make Trump more likely to contest the result, as would a situation where the results remain uncertain.
Peterson expressed the hope that the overall results would be clear sooner rather than later.
“The longer it drags out the worse it is,” he said. “We need to move on to what’s next.”
Peterson said there may be a clear indication of the victor by Thursday of next week, since many states allow the counting of absentee ballots to begin before election day. He said a final, though unofficial, result could be available as soon as Friday (Nov. 6).
Norms, not rules
Peterson noted that some of the uncertainty about what will happen after Tuesday night is because “the election system is far more reliant on norms than it is on rules.” Rather than a mass of laws governing the process, the country has relied more on a “this is the way we do it” approach.
That works well when procedures aren’t challenged but has led to disputes and court battles this year, especially in regard to the record number of mail ballots submitted. As of Thursday, that number stood at more than 53.6 million, according to University of Florida Prof. Michael McDonald and the United States Elections Project. Nearly 28.4 million more people had voted early in person.
Peterson predicted that, if Biden wins and the Democrats capture the Senate, there will be legislation intended to “make it harder for states to impose restrictions” on voting and voters, although specific regulation of voting is left to the states. Some states make it harder to vote than others do, and the result is a weakening of the “one person, one vote” concept, he said.
Transition?
As for whether there will be a smooth transition if Trump loses, Peterson said Biden’s margin of victory will be important. If he wins decisively – with 55% of the popular vote or victories in states with 350 or so electoral votes – many top Republicans in Washington but outside the White House are likely to pressure the president to transfer power normally, Peterson said.
He added that armed resistance by Trump followers is “possible but it’s improbable” if the president is soundly defeated, except perhaps for isolated incidents. But if a close result produces challenges by the Trump campaign, “you open the door for sympathetic voices to join him” and that could include some militia action.
Trump would become only the second Republican president to lose a re-election bid if he is defeated, Peterson noted, joining President George H. W Bush in that category. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992.
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