10 Things to Watch on Election Night
A Few Items to Pay Attention to that May Determine the Outcome
WE MADE IT. IT’S FINALLY HERE. THANK GOD, IT COULDN’T COME FAST ENOUGH.
All right, all that’s left to do is finish voting and count the ballots.1 As with any election day, we here at PurpleAmerica are anxious and excited to see what the final resutls are. To be sure, it probably will NOT be ascertained tonight who actually won, given how close so many states are and how much of the counting will go late into the night. One of my favorite people to watch on election night is Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, who prefaces every decision with “I’ve seen enough…” If he sees things in the data that would indicate a clear winner, he’ll say it, but my guess is this won’t be coming until Wednesday at the earliest.
Nonetheless, that won’t stop everyone from looking at what’s there and trying to read the tea leaves. Here are ten things we at PurpleAmerica are particularly interested in which will likely determine who wins the White House.
What does the Women’s vote look like? We already know Harris is going to clobber Trump with women. It won’t be close. The real question though is by how much? The higher her margins here, the more she can lose men by, who are likely to go to Trump in big numbers, and still win. We’ll put the over/under at 62% of the vote, and a +25% margin. If Harris does better than that, she should be in great shape. For comparison, Clinton and Biden both got 55% of the Women’s vote. The difference between the two campaigns though? Biden did better with men. Which leads us to #2…
What about men? In particular, white, male, non-college voters who are disproportionately represented in the midwestern Blue Wall states. In 2016, Clinton got an abyssmal 28(!)%. Biden improved on that to 33%, which is why he eked into the White House and Clinton didn’t. White non-college voters make up 42% of the voting public, so this demographic is large and stretched out coast to coast. I’ve been harping on this for awhile, largely because progressive activist rhetoric was so alienating to this group, and knowing that Harris still needed about 33% of them if she was to win. Is Harris going to get there? Who knows. But you know what? She still may do better than Clinton did in 2016, and a LOT of normally GOP male voters are leaving the top line blank or voting third party. It seems even they want someone new and while still voting GOP in every other race, aren’t backing Trump. Will it be enough? We’ll find out. But the better Harris does here on the margins, the more likely she’ll be the first Madam President.
Watch the total vote counts in swing states (particularly in the counties and areas “Magic Wall” mavens like John King and Steve Kornacki highlight) with active Senate races; WI, MI, OH, etc. What you want to watch are the total voting in the Senate and how much less is voting at the Presidential level for the two candidates. If less are voting the top of the ticket by any sizeable number, Trump is finished.
Speaking of the Senate, there are some REALLY good tight races to keep an eye on. Wisconsin with Tammy Baldwin. Michigan with Elissa Slotkin. Montana with Joe Tester. Ohio with Sherrod Brown. Texas with Colin Allred. Arizona with Ruben Gallego. Fischer in Nebraska is worth paying attention too as well. All of these are going to be close, and determine the Senate. GOP already has a pickup in WV after Manchin retired, so all in all, these races will determine if it stays Democrat or if it goes GOP. Seriously, it can come down to a 50-50 Senate and whoever wins the White House gets the tiebreaker.
House seats. As the races have become more polar and gerrymandered, there are less true “swing” states, and very few toss-ups. The thing is, these tend to move in small waves one way or the other during elections; it usually isn’t just the toss-ups that decide the majority. What you want to watch is which incumbents lose, where, and how big that wave may be. If “Leans GOP” seats start falling, particularly early, the GOP could be in for a long night. Likewise, if the reverse goes for Dems. I’m paying close attention to about 20 or so different races across the US, with early races in NY, PA and VA giving some insight into how this goes. Below is a breakdown of the close House districts by Cook Political Report genius Dave Wasserman. The ones boxed in Red are the ones I’m going to be watching, particularly early on in the evening, to see how things go. If someone in the Likely Republican or Likely Democrat groupings lose, it’s likely due to a huge wave one way or the other.
How goes it Mike Johnson? Things don’t even have to go particularly bad for Mike Johnson to have a very bad night. He could lose maybe 5 seats as House Leader, which would be indicative of a very status quo election, and can lose the Speakership. Worse yet, he can still maintain a majority of the House, and STILL lose the Speakership depending on how many MAGA nutcases win. The person with the most precarious place in politics at the moment is actually Mike Johnson.
Abortion referenda and turnout. Several states have anti-Dobbs abortion referenda on the ballots, intended by Dems to turnout women’s votes. Every time it has appeared on the ballot, Dems have won big. Women turnout in those states have exceeded prior years. What I want to see is how big the women’s turnout is in states with such a referenda versus states without them. You’ll get a huge sense as to how big this issue really is and how motivating a factor it can be in the off years coming up.
Who loses? There are ALWAYS surprises on election night, with unforeseen incumbents losing. The questions always are who, where and how? The bigger the wave one way or another, the more of these that occur. Local issues can also play a role. If you start seeing a few early, you’ll get a strong sense how the rest of the night is going to go. A few to highlight? Watch Republican House races in New York state and in North Carolina.
When does Trump claim victory. He’s not going to concede. He’s going to scream about how he won, whether he did or not. The earlier this happens, the more likely he’s getting creamed. If he holds off until 11 EST, the more it’ll look like a close race, which is what he wants so he can yell “Fraud!” when the inevitable happens.
Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. Whoever wins this state is going to win it all. It’s the 270th Electoral Vote center of the electorate right now. James Carville once famously described it as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh separated by Mississippi. Its very blue on the sides, with a very red streak down the middle. Early in the night, Trump should be ahead, because the counting in Pittsburgh and Philly won’t happen until later and the results won’t start coming in from these urban centers until late. What you will see though is people comparing on their magic walls the turnout in those red areas and the differences between 2016, 2020 and Tuesday night. They’ll be hyperanalyzed all evening. If the margins look more like 2020 than 2016, they’ll set the tone that Harris is doing strong. If not, they’ll start to say Trump is looking good. The earlier it looks like Harris is winning, the sooner they’ll call the election. If it looks tight all night, we could be in for a very long week, month, four years.
PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner
Watch the Matthew Broderick-Reese Witherspoon classic “Election” on election day. My favorite moments? When 3rd Party candidate/field crasher Tammy Metzler rants at the election pep rally that elections are dumb and that if she were elected she’d dismantle the whole thing. Then after they count the votes, she would have won but for the fact she was kicked out of the election.
PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day
Tiny little Dixville Notch, NH is the first to vote every election. Frankly, I’ll never know who decided they should go first like this, or why, but it is a fun little thing that happens every election just to see what the results are. I suppose someone has to go first. They open the polls at midnight and the citizens have 15-20 minutes to vote. They take it seriously too.
Now, I’m not going to get up in the middle of the night just to see who wins this little berg, but consider that last time, in 2020, Biden won all five of the votes. Granted, this was the middle of the pandemic, so the quantity was a little less than normal. In 2016, Hillary won four votes to Trump’s two and Gary Johnson’s (!) one.
As far as trends, it used to be strongly Republican (and by “strongly” I mean that there were usually 25+ votes, and they were overwhelmingly Republican) until 2008 when Obama won (the number of votes dropped in half and has declined every year since). In 2012, Obama and Romney tied, and its been all Dems ever since.
PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject
See you on the flip side…
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Footnotes and Fun Stuff
…and get past the election lawsuits, and the electoral college vote, and counting the electoral ballots and…