What are red and blue 'mirages,' and how election night vote counts make it hard to tell who will win
Once the last voter casts their ballot in a state and the polls close, the process of revealing the winner begins.
Once the last voter casts their ballot in a state and the polls close, the process of revealing the winner begins. That’s when Election Day turns into election night, and each state starts reporting its vote totals.
Some states — like Florida, Georgia and North Carolina — report their vote quickly, while others like Arizona, Nevada and California typically take longer, upward of a week or two to tabulate most of their ballots. Within many states, the patterns of how votes are reported can make it difficult to tell in the middle of election night who the winner is going to be in the end.
For example, vote returns can skew toward one party early in a night because only a certain type of vote is reported first — like when mail ballots are counted before any in-person Election Day votes. These patterns can create what are sometimes referred to as “vote mirages.”
A vote mirage is when the current vote count shows a candidate getting a higher percentage of the vote than they will ultimately end up with in the final count. Mirages can be “red” or “blue” depending on which party appears to be benefiting — but “appears” is the really important thing here, because like any other mirage, a vote mirage is fleeting and doesn’t reflect the final reality.
Generally speaking, there are three factors that produce vote mirages: geography, vote mode and order of tabulation.
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