The Election Lowdown

Certainty.

 Looking at weekly (exp 9th) implied/breakeven moves in key FX, with 68.2% and 90% level of confidence - needless to say traders expect movement. Naturally, if markets expect movement this has huge consideration for position size if you choose to play this coming week. #FX pic.twitter.com/UMle9Ymbhs— Chris Weston (@ChrisWeston_PS) October 31, 2020 

Most pollsters say the six most important swing states are Florida, which has 29 Electoral College votes, Pennsylvania, which has 20, Michigan (16), North Carolina (15), Arizona (11) and Wisconsin (10).

Mr Trump’s victory in 2016 over Hillary Clinton was propelled by razor-thin wins in the upper Midwest states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Four years later, the Trump campaign thinks these battlegrounds are again key to the president’s re-election, and Republican and Democratic analysts alike see Pennsylvania as a “tipping point” state with the potential to decide the overall national outcome.

But Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin will not begin counting early votes until election day, meaning final results and projections are less likely on the night.

Instead, all eyes will be on Florida, a bellwether state where the victor in 13 of the last 14 presidential elections has gone on to win the White House.

The “Sunshine State” has a well-established system for early voting, and has already started counting ballots, leading most pundits to predict it will be among the first states to be called on election night.

Polls in Florida’s western panhandle close at 8pm ET (01:00 GMT), and the state’s first results are expected to be released shortly after, while the counting process is still under way.

Should be relatively quick.

Counties were allowed to start processing absentee ballots on Oct. 19, and only ballots mailed from overseas may arrive after Nov. 3.

“For races that aren’t too close, we’ll have those results” on election night, the secretary of state told WSB-TV.

“For the races that are very, very close, we believe that we’ll have them by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest.”

Each county treats absentee votes differently, and with (Democratic-leaning) absentee votes being reported at different times throughout the state, it’s possible we’ll see some miniature red and blue shifts on the county level, which may cancel each other out statewide.

Most results will be announced quickly, but we’ll have to wait for the rest. By 8 p.m. Eastern, each county is required to announce the results of all absentee ballots (including early in-person votes) that were received by Election Day.

Results from Election Day polling places will then follow throughout the night.

However, Ohio also counts absentee ballots that arrive by mail until Nov. 13 — but counties will not announce those results until their official canvasses on Nov. 14-18 (interim results will not be reported).

That said, counties will report the number of outstanding absentee ballots late on election night, so we will know whether there are enough ballots remaining to affect the winner of the election.

The first results on election night (absentee ballots) will probably skew Democratic. Then, we’ll probably see a red shift as Republican-leaning Election Day votes are counted. Finally, the last vote dump on Nov. 14-18 (more absentee ballots) could benefit Democrats.

Initial results will come very fast, but the rest will take time. 

Election officials estimate that up to 80 percent of the total vote could be announced right after polls close at 7:30 p.m., including in-person early votes and all mail ballots received by Nov. 2.

Election Day returns will then trickle out over the course of the next several hours (those results are expected to take longer than usual because equipment must be sanitized after polling places close).

However, North Carolina counts absentee ballots that arrive as late as Nov. 12, so there will definitely be some counting for at least nine days after Election Day.

The question is whether there will be enough late-arriving ballots to keep any races uncalled.

The first dump of results (which will be entirely mail and early votes) will probably be too good to be true for Democrats.

A red shift will likely occur as Election Day votes are reported.

However, late-arriving mail ballots may help Democrats claw their way back during the Nov. 4-12 count.

Should be very fast.

Florida is accustomed to handling a heavy volume of mail ballots and has laws (like letting counties process absentee ballots weeks in advance and not accepting most ballots that arrive after Election Day) that encourage an early count.

In other words, results should be nearly complete within a couple hours of polls closing.

That said, counties are allowed to take their time if needed, so some larger counties may still be tabulating mail ballots on Wednesday or later.

That means that if a race is close, we might not know who won on election night.

The first batch of results, consisting of early votes and pre-tabulated mail ballots, is due to the secretary of state within 30 minutes of polls closing and will probably be skewed toward Democrats.

Expect a red shift as Election Day votes are reported, however.

If there are still mail ballots being counted on Wednesday or later, though, that could lead to a late blue shift.

It’ll be slow going.

Although around half of Pennsylvanians are expected to vote absentee, those ballots can’t start being processed until 7 a.m. on Nov. 3.

Simply put, that’s not enough time for many counties to count them all before the day is over. (For example, Bucks County plans to count ballots 24 hours a day and still doesn’t expect to be done until the end of the week.) Some places aren’t even going to try; Cumberland and Erie counties, for instance, say they won’t count absentee ballots until they’re done with Election Day votes, which could be as late as Wednesday morning.

And even counties that manage to count all the ballots in their possession on election night will have to wait until Nov. 6 — the deadline for most mail ballots to arrive — to consider their results complete.

Overall, election officials estimate that “the overwhelming majority” of votes will be counted by Friday.

That said, don’t rule out an even longer wait. During the June primary, about half of counties were still counting a week after the election.

No matter what, we’ll definitely know the outcome by Nov. 23 — the deadline for counties to stop counting.

Election-night results are expected to be disproportionately made up of Election Day votes, which will probably skew Republican.

Then, as absentee ballots are counted in the ensuing days, the state will probably experience a blue shift.

The bulk of the results will be known on election night. 

Early votes, Election Day votes and (thanks to a generous ballot-processing window) absentee ballots received by 7 p.m. local time on Nov. 3 will all be counted that night, which should give us a pretty clear picture of the state of the races there.

However, domestic absentee ballots are allowed to arrive as late as 5 p.m. local time on Wednesday, which could add a fair number of ballots to the hopper.

In most counties, absentee and early in-person votes are the first to report; these could be disproportionately good for Democrats.

When Election Day votes are reported, expect Republicans to gain.

Finally, absentee ballots that arrive on Wednesday could give Democrats a small boost.

Most votes should be counted on election night, but full results may take a few days. 

Early and absentee votes cast by the weekend before the election should be pre-counted and those results are expected to be released shortly after 10 p.m. Eastern (3 a.m. GMT & the earliest time results can be reported in Arizona, under state law).

Election Day votes are also expected to be announced on election night. Together, these two categories are expected to constitute the vast majority of Arizona’s total votes.

However, absentee ballots received at the last minute will not be reported until perhaps Thursday or Friday.

So if it’s a close race, we might have to wait for those last few ballots before knowing who won.

The very first batch of results on election night is expected to be early and absentee votes, which will likely lean Democratic.

Then, the results may shift toward Republicans later in the evening as Election Day votes are counted.

However, they may then shift back toward Democrats in the days after the election as the last few absentee ballots are tallied.

Most, but not all, results should be in on election night. 

With two weeks of advance absentee-ballot processing, votes in the state’s possession should be quickly tallied on Nov. 3.

The secretary of state has warned that close races may take a while to call, but “it's far more likely that we'll have winners, outcomes either on election night or shortly thereafter.”

Any absentee votes counted after Election Day could cause results to shift in Democrats’ favor.

It’s going to take a few days. The earliest absentee ballots can be processed is Nov. 2, which likely does not leave enough time to count them all by election night.

The secretary of state estimates that it could take until Friday, Nov. 6, for all ballots to be counted and a winner to be declared.

Margins will probably shift toward Democrats in the days after Nov. 3 as mail votes are added to the results.

It may take all night, but we should have all results by Wednesday morning.

Despite not being able to process absentee ballots until Election Day (which originally stoked fears of a delayed count), many counties say they will be able to count everything on election night: Washington County plans to have all results by 10:30 p.m. Eastern; Kenosha, Sheboygan and Fond du Lac by 1 a.m. Eastern; Waukesha County by 4 a.m. Eastern; and Milwaukee County sometime between 4 and 7 a.m. Eastern.

The governor has predicted that we will know the outcome of the election “hopefully that night and maybe at the latest the very next day.”

Most municipalities count absentee and Election Day votes together, but others — including Milwaukee — count them separately and may release absentee votes all at once toward the end of the night, which could nudge races toward Democrats.

Hard to say.

Nevada is one of a handful of states that is mailing a ballot to every active registered voter for the first time, and it is only requiring that ballots be mailed back by Nov. 3, not received by then.

In other states, that’s been a recipe for slow results; indeed, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state told Politico not to wait up for a call on election night.

However, the ability to count mail ballots early has put Clark County (home to 71 percent of the state’s voters) in position to report tallies of in-person votes and any mail ballots received by Nov. 2 on election night.

If that happens, we might get most results on election night, though we’ll still have to wait until at least Nov. 10, when the state stops accepting mailed ballots, for full results.

In other states, late-arriving mail ballots have historically trended Democratic, so don’t rule out a blue shift in the week after Election Day.

Most votes will be counted quickly, but some will continue to trickle in after Election Day. 

Thanks to a new rule allowing for earlier processing of absentee ballots, election officials are confident that ballots received by Election Day will be counted that night, although they are also leaving open the possibility that the high volume will make that impossible.

However, Iowa law also requires officials to count mail ballots that arrive by Nov. 9 (as long they’re postmarked by Nov. 2), so results won’t be final for about a week.

The question is how many ballots will arrive at the last minute.

Late-arriving mail ballots will probably skew Democratic, producing a blue shift in the days after Nov. 3.

 🇺🇸 PiQ Election Tracker 🇺🇸

💡 A simple spreadsheet to help you through #Election2020 night.

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(huge h/t to @skeughered)https://t.co/NpQBwlglx4 pic.twitter.com/HPG5Kk4mRi— PiQ (@PriapusIQ) November 1, 2020