Summary
Donald Trump is likely to claim victory on election night, despite the vote count possibly extending over several days.
Early tallies may lean Republican, reflecting in-person votes, while absentee ballots counted later may shift toward Democrats, creating a “blue shift.”
Key states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada may take extra time to declare results due to laws and ballot processing delays.
Trump might exploit early Republican leads to allege fraud.
He’ll probably declare victory as soon as the polls open.
Scary to think that in the future, some parts of the country may talk about the 2020 election the same way they do about “The War of Northern Agression.”
It’s scary to think what the last 10 years will be taught as 50 years from now… regardless of the outcome
The first sign of a weak man is that he cannot accept reality.
Most of those don’t have an army of sycophants trying to rewrite reality in realtime for them.
Anything you say against their worldview is automatically “misinformation” even when you have peer studies to back up your claim.
That’s what it means to live in a “post-truth” world. There are essentially two overlapping but competing worldviews each with their own “reality”. Which is fucking sad. When I was young I imagined the internet being what would eventually connect us all and truly inform everyone. Instead, we got echo chambers festering into actual terrorism.
The democrats could lead the entire election from the very first vote onwards, and he will still declare himself the winner. The next weeks will be very bumpy for the Americans. Let’s just hope it will only be weeks.
I would pay good money to have Trump be in sort of a Truman Show situation, where he’s Truman and everyone around him are actors.
He gets to be president but inside his little bubble.
He can be a dictator and then have his long lost father make an appearance around sweeps.
We get a sane president.
The courts have prepared for expedited process for election cases, shortening deadlines and speeding up cases, so hopefully it should cut short legal schenanigans, and actually resolve shit wayyy before certification deadlines
That’s certainly a possibility because he’s a chronic liar. But true or not, his followers will believe him and go to bed happy. Then when the final count is over they will refuse to believe he lost because in their minds they literally saw him win. This is his con man skill in action - the one thing he’s actually good at - plant a lie in people’s minds, and because it was there first it makes a nest and fights off other ideas that try to displace it.
Trump can declare whatever he wants. No one is going to listen to him.
They will. This is the entire reason for the attempted coup last time. Trump was up early, declared victory, then absentee ballots were counted and …. It must be fraud
His fans will listen, and that’s the plan. He did this in 2016 and 2020 - declare victory during the “red mirage” portion of the evening, when he’ll probably be ahead, because Republicans tend to live in low-population areas that finish their counting early because they have fewer ballots. This is a well known phenomenon on national election nights. Democratic votes tend to come in later, because more democrats live in larger urban areas that take longer to count. After Trump declares victory based on these early returns, his fans will go to bed happy. Then when all the votes are in and it turns out he lost, they’ll “know” the election was stolen because in their minds they already “saw” him win.
Early voting in the blue wall states is blocked for count until after precinct counts. So you will see early in the night, a mirage where perhaps Trump is up. This is when he’ll say he won, but by early morning, and the early vote count, the story might change. However Florida does count its early vote first.
