With the rising chance of a Trump presidency, there is also a very outside chance of a three-week Democratic majority. How would that come about? On the off-chance that the Democrats can take 50 Senate seats while Trump wins the presidency, the new Congress will be sworn in on Jan. 3. The new president doesn’t take office until Jan. 20, giving the sitting vice president — Democrat Joe Biden — three weeks to cast the tie-breaking Senate vote.
Carl Bialik
Betting Markets Missed Brexit. They Might Have Missed Trump.
Prices in betting markets implied that chances of a Brexit were just 15 percent heading into that vote, but then the U.K. voted to leave the European Union.
Heading into today, betting markets gave Trump about a 20 percent chance of winning the presidency. He’s up to 55 percent now.
Julia Azari
Poll Closings And Party Vote
A lot of the important decisions about elections are made by states, which means there’s a lot of variation. One example of that for those looking at early returns is when polls close. For states in the Eastern time zone, some closed as early as 6 p.m. and a few as late as 9 p.m. Is there a partisan pattern?
It turns out there is — as the chart below shows, when we look at the states that close later, the percentage of votes won by Mitt Romney in 2012 shifts way down. We should be careful about making causal claims — this pattern could be caused by any number of factors. But it’s an interesting pattern nonetheless.
