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

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, mail-in ballots are going to make up a significant chunk of ballots cast this election. One particular concern that some have with the integrity of mail-in voting is the potential for voter fraud from ballots harvested from deceased voters. Recent research from political scientists at Stanford University shows that ballots cast by deceased people are extremely rare. Over the course of 2011-18, the study’s authors found that only 14 of these sorts of ballots have been cast in the state of Washington (where the authors have unique data suitable to test this claim, since the state regularly conducts all-mail elections). This is consistent with other work showing that double-voting is extremely low, and that measures commonly used to address it mistakenly throw out 300 legitimate votes for each double vote detected.

So, we don’t know much at this point. But here’s one thing we do know: We are all experiencing the same snarling anxiety deep in our souls. Ninety percent of Americans agree that “the 2020 presidential election is the most important election in my lifetime.” More than 60 percent say they are “very afraid” if their candidate loses, and 80 percent say they are concerned about election-related violence. So yeah, if you are feeling a little jumpy at this point, you are definitely not alone.

Exit polls are usually a key part of election night reporting, especially before actual results come in. They can provide an early sense of who is leading and how different demographics are turning out and voting. But while it’s always a little dangerous to rely too heavily on exit polls on election night, particularly the early waves, which are released while polls are still open and generally are not representative of the electorate (skew toward older voters as many young votes vote late). But pandemic-related changes to the election mean that exit polls are even less reliable than usual this year.

That’s because the pandemic has undermined the major advantage exit polls have over other kinds of polls: Their ability to know they’re sampling actual voters. Because of how many people voted early this year, exit polls will include a phone poll component to reach these voters, and in some states there will also be exit polls of early in-person voters, but this has pretty severe limitations for two reasons. First, the phone poll will have to guess whether respondents who said they voted actually did, and second, Edison Research — the polling firm that produces the exit polls used by ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News — will have to estimate how heavily to weight the traditional exit poll respondents vs. the phone respondents and early voters. That means there’s more uncertainty than usual in the election night exit polls. And that extra uncertainty means that it’s hard to make a case for relying on them tonight — though they’ll still prove useful in telling us about how key demographics voted once they’re weighted after the election to match actual results.