Today, Explained - What to expect when you’re electing

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

Vox’s Andrew Prokop explains how Joe Biden — or President Trump — could win 270 electoral votes. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos for them. Tomorrow is Election Day. It's today explained. I'm Sean Romsferm. Tomorrow is election day. This is election week. And let's really hope it doesn't turn into election month, but it's 2020.

So don't be surprised if it does. We figured it's high time we talk about the path to victory for Joe Biden or President Trump. Andrew Prokop, Vox, you've been writing about the paths. What can you tell us? So to understand how the presidential election is going to play out, you have to understand the magic of the electoral college. T-O-R-A-L. Electoral College. We've got a tail to tell. So Biden has led pretty significantly in polls of the national popular vote all year. But that doesn't matter. What matters is whether Biden or Trump can win enough of the key swing states to put together a coalition of 270 electoral votes.

That's enough for a majority. 270, that's the number everyone's got to be looking out for tomorrow. 270 to win, as the saying goes. So you need 270 to become the president of the United States. 270 is the magic number. Again, they need 270 to win. president of the United States. 270 is the magic number. Again, they need 270 to win. And that's a magic number. So as usual, the contest has really zeroed down on a few key states.

Depending on how you define them, there could be maybe as many as 14 swing states. But election analysts think that this is really going to come down to how six key states go. If most of these six states and the electoral votes they have go toward either Biden or Trump, that person will win. OK, beautiful. Let's start with the six states. Can I guess them? I'm going to guess Florida. Yes. Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona. How am I doing? You got one more. I cheated. I looked at the notes. North Carolina. I'm sorry, but I got the first five from memory. That's pretty good. That's a passing grade. Okay, great, great. So those are the big six. Those are the big six. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Michigan,

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. Are the famous upper Midwest or nearby upper Midwest trio that flipped from voting for Democrats for many years to voting for Donald Trump in 2016. And the wall comes tumbling down. This is the blue wall that Hillary Clinton had talked about. This is a state. And then you have Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina. They all also voted for Trump in 2016, but they were less close then. As you can imagine, the crowd here, very loud, very happy, very boisterous.

OK, and what do we know about these six states going into the election? So you can really think of them as split up into those two groups. The Florida, Arizona and North Carolina group. It's not a regional group, but, you know, when you look at the polls they're all pretty similar what the polls show is um biden up by a little bit on average but not a ton so they appear to be if the polls are accurate and um you know they could of course be, but they appear to be true toss-up states, maybe with a slight Biden advantage. Then you have the other three, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

And Biden has had a larger lead in those states, according to polls. And Trump won them very narrowly in 2016. Trump won all three of those states by less than one percentage point over Hillary Clinton. So in a national race trending toward Biden, where Biden is polling generally better than Hillary Clinton, it would make sense if these crucial three states are also trending in Biden's direction. And that is what the state polls show. But the state polls in these states were off by several points in 2016. Now, pollsters have tried to fix this problem since then. which is polarization based on levels of education is now a really important predictor of voting behavior with the non-college educated voters more likely to support Donald Trump. Many pollsters did not wait for that in their sample.

So they ended up missing a lot of those non-college educated voters who preferred Trump. So a lot of pollsters have adjusted their practices to account for that. Will it be enough to fix the problem? We won't know until the votes are counted. Donald Trump won all of these six states last time. Biden is currently ahead in state polls in all six of these states this time. How many of them does he need to lock down the 270 electoral votes? Well, the math is a little complicated because they all have different numbers of electoral votes. But basically, so long as Biden holds on to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, he doesn't even need necessarily Florida or North Carolina or Arizona. And if Biden manages to win, especially Florida, he has almost certainly won the presidential election. Florida is a big state,

29 electoral votes, and it's a must win state for Trump based on his electoral math. If Trump loses Florida, he is almost surely losing the election. And Biden picking off Arizona and North Carolina would obviously help him get closer to that magic number of 270 also. But Biden can survive the loss of North Carolina, Florida and Arizona so long as he holds on to that trio of Wisconsinisconsin michigan and pennsylvania wisconsin michigan and pennsylvania but if trump flips for instance pennsylvania as well as those uh other three florida north carolina and arizona then trump would be the winner okay so there are various combinations.

If Biden holds on to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, you know, he's sitting pretty. Florida will be decisive if Biden wins it. Trump kind of needs it to survive. What about these 14 states? What are we looking for once you sort of zoom out? Well, so once you get past the core battleground of the six most crucial states, there are a few states that would be more of reach targets for Biden. And there are a few that would be more of reach targets for Trump. So Biden is currently looking at Georgia and Iowa and Texas and Ohio. He is currently leading polls by a little bit in Georgia and trailing very narrowly in Texas and Ohio. But all of these are definitely polling in the realm of competitive states that could go either way. Is there some sort of situation in which Biden flips Texas where

it's just a done deal? So this is the Biden landslide scenario where, in addition to winning the six core battleground states, Biden reaches further into Trump territory and flips other states that are also essentially must-wins for Trump, building out a very big electoral college win. And of course, Democrats have long dreamed of flipping Texas, which is a massive prize. 38 electoral votes has voted consistently Republican for a very long time in presidential elections. And the polls really do show it close this year. Democrats have had their hearts broken before in Texas races that look competitive. But, you know, if Biden wins Texas, then Trump is toast. There's no way he can win. What about Trump?

What's he trying to achieve once you zoom out into these 14 states? So Trump's more optimistic targets, which are currently sort of less justified by what the polls show, but, you know, he'd like to flip them, is Nevada, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Maine. Now, some of these seem to have slipped a bit away from contention lately. Even though Trump did pretty well, he didn't win any of these states last time, but he was three points or less behind Hillary Clinton in all of them. So, you know, you can see why he may have thought that he had a chance of flipping them this time around. They clearly trended toward him to an extent. He didn't miss winning them by much. But again, the current polls show

them a bit out of reach for him. And they would probably only flip if if there is some serious polling error and the polls are really missing some Trump support out there. Is there any chance that they tie that they each get the same number of electoral votes? There very much is such a chance. It's not likely it's never happened in modern American history. But there is an even number of votes, electoral votes in the Electoral College. There's 538 of them. So it is possible that they could split in a 269 versus 269 tie. And if that happens, then, well, first of all, it would be crazy.

Secondly, what happens is that the election would be decided by the House of Representatives, but not ordinarily in a vote by the House of Representatives where each House member would vote. This would be a vote of House of Representatives state delegations, and it would be a vote in the next Congress. So basically in January, after the House elections are all settled, then each state in the House would have to determine who they would want to support for president. And basically, whichever party has the majority, a majority of states would end up determining the winner. So it's totally unclear how that would shake out. It depends on how the House races pan out in 2020. But, you know, just because the Democrats are widely expected to hold their majority doesn't necessarily mean that they'll have the majority in enough states.

Well, Andrew, that sounds like a nightmare scenario. Indeed. But we're just getting started with the nightmare scenarios. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos.

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making an already eternal election even longer. But there are other potential unpredictable nightmares in this unpredictable year, isn't it? This, of course, is an unusual year, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a year of unprecedented levels of male voting. And it's also a year in which there is a new phenomenon when it comes to who is choosing to vote by mail versus who is choosing to vote in person. It's overwhelmingly Democrats who are more likely to vote by mail. Trump, have been telling pollsters all year, and we're starting to see this in the data as well, that they are more likely to show up in person to vote. And this is probably because Donald Trump has spent months disparaging the idea of mail voting. Thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody's living room signing ballots all over the place.

No, I think that mail-in voting is a terrible thing. Accusing it of being unreliable, saying there is fraud with mail votings, and there, but the bigger picture is that mail voting is a time-tested and reliable system of voting that's been used by several states. And happens to be the president's method of voting of choice. Because I'm allowed to. Yes, Trump himself seems to think that his own mail vote submitted in Florida will be safe. So something smells rotten about all this, basically. Trump has been sowing the seeds of doubt, and there are some theories about what he might be up to, which is that on election night,

it's going to take in certain states a long time to count these mail ballots. They just take longer to count than in-person votes because you have to look at the envelope. You have to check the voter's signature to make sure that they're registered to vote in the district. You need to sort it. You need to open the envelope. You need to then put the ballot in the ballot machine. And this is when you're talking about millions and millions of mail ballots, that takes time. And the upshot is that certain states have really dropped the ball on preparing for this. Most

notably, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. You remember those three. Very crucial part of the core swing state battleground. And all three states have Republican legislatures and all three states have refused to allow a significant window of time before the election where that difficult paperwork of mail ballots can be done so that ballots can be approved or rejected and gotten ready for the count before election day itself or right beforehand. So Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are basically near certain to be counting their mail ballots very slowly. And if those mail ballots are overwhelmingly Democratic, then the in-person ballots are going to be counted first.

And it's going to look like Trump is winning in those states if you just look at the votes that come in as they are counted. And President Trump appears to be well aware of this. He sent a tweet last week that said, big problems, discrepancies with mail-in ballots all over the USA must have final total on November 3rd. And Twitter flagged the tweet for disinformation

because they said mail voting is safe and secure. But you see what he's trying to do there. He says must have final total on November 3rd because he expects in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, those very important states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, the count will show him ahead on November 3rd because they're going to be so slow at counting the mail ballots that will favor Democrats. So to be clear here, the very specific nightmare we're talking about is a ton of votes are cast by mail in these big three states we've been talking about. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.

And a lot of those mail-in ballots are for Joe Biden. But a lot of the in-person voting on November 3rd, tomorrow, is for Donald Trump, and Donald Trump refuses to wait to hear about the results from the mail-in ballots, which take longer to count, and declares victory tomorrow before knowing the full picture. Yes. What happens then? Technically, it's up to state election officials to count these votes. And the count is not going to necessarily stop just because Donald Trump wants it to stop. But here we have to go back again to the Electoral College. And the Electoral College is made up of actual people. They are 538 people technically chosen by state legislatures.

Now, the state legislatures, they just choose the people that are nominated by the party who wins in their state, generally. Like, if Biden wins in Pennsylvania, then the 20 Democratic electors that the Biden campaign wants will be named the electors from Pennsylvania. Got it. But what happens if there's a dispute? Then again, it seems that the dispute might be able to be settled by state legislatures.

And in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, those state legislatures are controlled by Republicans. Then this sort of thing might go to the courts. And there was an interesting decision last week where two Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, made clear that they believe state legislatures have preeminent power over how elections in their state work. We don't know how, you know, the fuller Supreme Court thinks about this. But, you know, it's a little ominous, potentially, that if there are shenanigans pulled off by these state legislatures

controlled by Republicans in states where Biden has legitimately won, but Trump is disputing that victory due to mail ballots. What if those state legislatures go along with Trump? And what if the courts agree to stand back and let it happen? Because, you know, it's really up to the state legislatures and it's not up to the people in the end. Right. We covered this on the show last week with our colleague Ian Millhiser. It seemed like at least a few of the conservative justices were saying that elections need a clear ending and that ending should be tomorrow, November 3rd. And we should point out that this is completely ahistorical and frankly bizarre. It regularly takes states weeks to actually certify their election totals. There's no reason by law that the election has to be decided by election night.

It's simply not the case. In fact, if it takes longer to actually count votes, then you have to count every vote that's legitimately cast according to the rules is generally how things are supposed to work. And this is all just one more nightmare we'd have to deal with. And there are potentially more. Well, let me maybe alleviate a bit of this nightmare scenario first. So basically, the gist for this total nightmare scenario is that it can only really work for Trump if the election comes down to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. Biden can prevent that from happening by winning in the states where we are going to get a pretty good idea what the result will be on election night or soon afterward.

It is totally possible polls show Biden currently ahead in Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa. And so if Biden wins a few of those states, then he's going to be pretty clearly the presumptive winner of the election. Whether he actually gets over the magic number of 270 or whether he has to wait a bit for, you know, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to finish their count will depend exactly on which states flip into his column. But if Trump does have a plan to contest the results in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, that would only fly if Biden hasn't won states like Florida or North Carolina, which would pretty clearly position him as the winner. What about the nightmare we presently live in on the 2nd of November 2020, the one where Donald Trump hasn't even lost this election yet and he's already a sore loser, where he might declare victory prematurely and, you know, doesn't concede, where he doesn't commit to the peaceful transfer of power, you know, all of these things he's been saying for the

past few months. What if he loses and just doesn't go? If Trump just says, I won't accept the election, I don't see how he could pull that off. He needs a story to sell. He needs a narrative. He needs an excuse. And so he's been trying to float, you know, problems with mail ballots as that excuse. But I don't know. There are a lot of Republican-controlled states that use mail ballots, and they know that they are basically safe and fine. And so that's kind of a tough sell. You know, usually when Trump does get to the brink with this stuff, he is often convinced to back down. We saw that, for instance, with Trump wanted to fire Robert Mueller. And for some reason, he didn't. He let Mueller finish his investigation because he basically got word from the Republican Party that they wouldn't support, that that was too far.

He should just let the investigation play out. And there are various other things that Trump has tried to do that the party has signaled they won't go along with. Now, there are other things that they have gone along with. And so the question is, which category this hypothetical disputed election would fall into. Okay, so the election's tomorrow and there are three states that are going to be closely watched.

And those are Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. There are six states that will be essential. And those are those three plus Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona. Then there are 14 states that could play sort of this critical role. But most of all, it sounds like we should just all be prepared for election day to maybe be election week and hopefully not election month. But this is a pandemic and it's going to take time. Or it may not.

The result could be pretty clear on election night. We just don't know. It depends how close it is when those votes start actually being counted. It could take weeks. It could take a few days. Or we could learn the results on election night. That is still a possibility. So anything could happen.

Exactly. Well, Andrew, we'll see you on the other side. Thank you. All right. Andrew Prokop will be covering and explaining the election results along with the rest of the Vox newsroom this week at Vox.com. If you're still out there trying to figure out your voting plan, head to Vox.com slash vote for lots of helpful information. Stay safe. Thank you.