Mailed votes in some states in 2020 distort early returns. Will this trend repeat on Tuesday?

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Virginia did not shut down in November last year. Joseph R. Biden Jr. won there by 10 percentage points, which is about the same gap as the then-President Donald J. Trump won Alaska.

But within a few hours of the polls in Virginia, some of the returns showed that Biden was behind 9pm Eastern Time, and sometimes even led by a large margin—for example, about 18 percentage points.

Part of this is geography; rural conservative counties in southwestern Virginia tend to report election results before the Democratic stronghold of Northern Virginia, which is more populous. But it is also the product of something new: the so-called red mirage. With so many Democrats responding to the pandemic by mailing votes, and mailing votes takes longer to process, the early returns are so uneven that even an easy victory does not seem to be a few hours. And narrow victory? Well, look at Georgia or Pennsylvania. There has been no Biden these days.

Other states first started processing mailed ballots, creating a blue mirage. At about the same time Trump appeared to be running away with Virginia, Biden led by a narrow lead in Ohio, when in fact he fell behind by 8 percentage points in Ohio.

Now, the question is whether the mirage is a stranger thing in 2020, or is it now a long-term feature of American politics.

More specifically: should we expect to see mirages in important elections across the country next Tuesday? Like the governor of Virginia in the game between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glen Youngin? Or is it a race for a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court?

On the one hand, world conditions and American politics are different from last fall. The coronavirus case rate is declining, and about two-thirds of Americans have at least one dose of the vaccine, and there are fewer restrictions on daily activities. Although Trump’s lies about fraud in last year’s election permeated almost every corner of the Republican Party, his criticisms against early voting and mail voting are no longer daily headlines.

Christina Freundlich, a spokesperson for McAuliffe, said campaign data showed that many Democrats who voted by mail last year will resume voting in person on election day this year. On the contrary, my colleague Nick Colasanity reported that some Republicans realized that early defamation and mailing votes could hurt them, and encouraged their supporters to consider these methods. Together, these trends can narrow the partisan divide between early voting and election day voting.

But shrinking is not eliminating.

Take California as an example. California Governor Gavin Newsom (Gavin Newsom) completely defeated the Republican recall last month. After counting two-thirds of the votes, he was about five percentage points ahead of all the votes that were finally calculated. Although this change is irrelevant in a game where Newsom won with a huge advantage, if the game is competitive, it will be enough to give people the wrong impression.

McAuliffe's campaign expects the early return of Virginia to lean toward Jankin. This may be the case no matter who wins in the end.

If the 2020 elections are a guide, then part of Pennsylvania's results — voters will decide an expensive and controversial campaign for the state Supreme Court seat currently held by Republicans — may be equally misleading.

It is difficult to predict whether we will see mirages elsewhere, let alone their colors, because many states have revised their election procedures since November.

In New Jersey, the governor’s race is expected to be less competitive than Virginia (Democratic Governor Phil Murphy leads his Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli in the polls), early The results of the presidential election and the final results. But this may be because the elections in New Jersey last year were almost exclusively conducted by mail. Almost everyone voted in the same way. It is difficult to have a mirage. The country did not do so this time.

Other notable games next week are the Mayor of Atlanta (the red mirage in Georgia last year), Boston (there is no mirage in Massachusetts), Buffalo and New York City (there is no mirage in New York), and Detroit (the red mirage in Michigan) Mirage), Red Mirage), Minneapolis (there is no mirage in Minnesota), and Seattle (Washington has all-mail elections, so there is no mirage).

But if we cannot predict where the mirage will be, we can say this: They are by no means evidence of foul play, as Trump claimed so loudly and wrongly after his defeat. They are how our elections work now. Election management procedures vary from state to state, or some votes are easier and faster to count than others, which does no harm.

So don't celebrate or panic based on what you see at 9pm, you might just be in another universe where Trump won Virginia and Biden won Ohio.

Put on comfortable pajamas and come back in the morning to have a look.

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