When you’ve had the real pleasure and delight of dealing with a lot of elections, you end up appreciating the value of some practical election-related material. Here is some:
Links
First off: The New York Times helpfully put in one place every state’s closing time, and their deadlines for mail-in and absentee ballots, and when officials have said they’re likely to have a strong sense of the results.
(General gist: States like Florida and North Carolina are extremely likely to have like 97, 98 percent of their ballots counted by early Wednesday morning; states like Michigan and Pennsylvania are not. They’re also doing the hated needle, but only for Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina.)
Here is a Twitter list, titled #help, of the best election-returns experts (for what’s happening in a given state), a handful of political reporters, and a few election law/courts experts.
Daniel Nichanian puts together a big PDF with everything the ballot that’s notable — if you scroll to the later pages, he gets into which states are voting on, e.g., changes to policing rules or if Rhode Island will take “plantation” out of its state name. This is progressive-/criminal-justice-focused but very useful for lots of stuff.
Rick Hasen, wrote a sober take on Sunday night that we should all use caution and context when examining social media videos about election-day chaos or trickery.
Nate Silver outlines here how, though he is really not favored to win, Trump could still win (and what that would mean about the polls).
Lastly, Dave Wasserman wrote last month about bellwether counties — I wouldn’t like sit around looking at them all night myself, but reading this would give you an idea of the kinds of places that might flip this year in the Midwest, South, and Southwest.
My former colleague, Ben Smith, recently wrote about the Fox News decision desk, which is widely respected, and how they operate on election night.
Also check out: This college student has been putting together county-by-county maps of early voter turnout, which was explosive in Texas and notable in North Carolina.
Then, in more like… A Read to keep you occupied today:
New York Mag published all of Olivia Nuzzi’s pool reports yesterday from traveling with Mike Pence, which quickly go into like an absurd journey and are pretty entertaining.
Harris County (Houston) opened for 24 hours a set of polling sites catered to shift workers, like those who work in the oil industry or at a major medical center. My colleague went to them all over a stretch of 24 hours and talked to new mothers, vets, doctors, etc., about voting.
My colleagues interviewed a bunch of Trump supporters at rallies the last week about what happens if he loses: Most said they didn’t think he would, but if he does, well that’s that, and they’ll go about their lives.
Not a link but a thought: Among the many what if’s of the last few weeks, I think one under-covered has been: What if the election is kind of what it seems like, and we’re actually witnessing a largely (if not exclusively) peaceful moment of massive civic engagement? We shall see!