Biden Is Projected To Be The President-Elect. Here’s How It All Went Down.

If Trump loses reelection, one of the main reasons why will be because he lost support compared to 2016 among white voters. Back in mid-October, we compared preelection polling from Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape to 2016 data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to see how different demographic groups were shifting.

Among the takeaways was Trump’s reduced support among white voters, who will make up around 7 in 10 voters in this election. Whereas Trump won white voters by double digits in 2016, it appears his margin could be halved, mainly because Biden is attracting more support from white women and white voters without a four-year college degree than Clinton did four years ago.

At the same time, it looks like Trump may have improved his standing among voters of color. For instance, his support has gone up a bit among Black voters, mainly younger Black voters and Black men, as has his backing among Hispanic voters, including those with a college degree. While Trump will likely lose badly among voters of color, a slight uptick in GOP support with those groups could be important if Trump also does better among white voters than preelection polling has suggested.

While in-person voting is taking center stage today, mail-in ballots will still be trickling in. Some of them will be deemed invalid, and as the data is tabulated, we’ll get a sense of just how many absentee ballots were rejected.

In every election, a certain percentage of absentee ballots are rejected (the exact share depends on the state and who you ask). Most commonly, this is due to ballots arriving past the deadline, or missing some key information, like a signature. Because a record number of voters are expected to cast ballots by mail this year due to the pandemic, rejected ballots are a bigger concern than usual.

The mistakes that lead to ballots being rejected are more common among voters who have never voted that way before — it’s hard to do something for the first time — and disproportionately affect young voters and voters of color. Some states allow voters to “cure” a ballot with a mistake so their vote still counts, but not all. There have already been signs that ballot rejections could be higher this year: An NPR analysis of 30 state presidential primaries this year found more than half a million ballots were rejected, compared to the almost 319,000 absentee ballots rejected in the 2016 general election. In a few weeks, when all the ballots are counted, we’ll have a better picture of whether rejected ballots were a big issue in 2020, or if it was par for the course.

I’m also keeping an eye out for disinformation making the rounds today. Surprisingly, one of the biggest examples wasn’t spreading online, but over the phone. Robocalls telling voters the election is actually tomorrow or telling voters to stay home have been reported in Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, North Carolina and Kansas. The FBI is now investigating. It should go without saying that today is Election Day. If you want to vote, don’t stay home!

There’s also been a fair amount of fearmongering playing off the few technical glitches I mentioned earlier, with right-wing media framing the hiccups as only impacting pro-Trump districts and raising the specter of something more sinister. Sean Hannity’s website, for example, posted about the voting machines in Spalding County, Georgia, which were down this morning but are now functioning, according to local media. Hannity’s site headlined the story “‘All Voting Machines Go Down in Georgia County That Trump Won by 24% in 2016.” Firstly, districts that went for Trump are not the only ones facing difficulties. Franklin County, Ohio, where e-poll books were malfunctioning, went for Clinton by 26 percentage points in 2016, for example. Secondly, Georgia replaced all of its voting machines less than a year ago, and any time election officials or voters are interacting with new equipment, the risk of a problem goes up.

I’ll be watching for more misleading or false information making the rounds, but feel free to send me examples (on Twitter or email) if you spot anything or have questions.