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The United States woke up this Wednesday without knowing who will be president in the next four years. In some states, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, the margin between Donald Trump and Joe Biden has narrowed in the past few hours, in favor of the Democratic candidate, as the votes have been counted. Trump wasted no time and went to Twitter to make it clear that this approximation of the results is synonymous with fraud, with the appearance of “surprise” urns.
“Yesterday [terça-feira] at night I was ahead, often solidly, in many key states, almost all led and controlled by the Democrats, ”defended the still President of the USA.
But, he continues, “then, one by one, they began to disappear as if by magic, while the ballot boxes were counted. It is VERY STRANGE and the investigations were completely and historically wrong! ”, He concluded.
Last night I was driving, often solidly, in many key states, in almost all democratic managed and controlled cases. Then, one by one, they began to magically disappear as the surprise ballots were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the “pollsters” have understood completely and historically wrong!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020
As in other previous messages, this one was also classified by Twitter as containing “questionable” and possibly “incorrect” information about “how to participate in an election or other civic trial”.
Shortly thereafter, the still President returned to the topic: “Why every time mail-order votes matter, they are so devastating in their percentage and destructive power?” He asked.
Why is it that every time they count the ballot papers by mail they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2020
But let’s go in parts. Did Trump win, in some cases “solidly”, in several “key states”, “almost all managed and controlled by the Democrats”? Let’s look at these “key states”. Even if Trump didn’t explain them, he would have spoken swing states, those argue that both tend to be Democrats and Republicans, and therefore tend to be decisive.
At the beginning of the night in the United States (as early as dawn in mainland Portugal), there were essentially five states that could decide the elections and for which there was still no declared winner at that time. That list included the file Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin. And yes, except for Georgia, they are all governed by Democrats.
But has Trump led these decisive states by an “often solid” margin, as the president said? This is true, for example, in Pennsylvania. At 4:00 (Portugal time), the official tally indicated, with 32% of the votes counted, a difference of about ten percentage points – Trump concentrated 54.2% of the votes, while Biden stood at 44.4%. That difference widened about an hour later. At the time, Trump was 14.5 points advantage. At 2pm, just before the Republican posted the tweet, the margin had it it dropped to 11.4 points, at a time when 75% of the votes had already been counted. And, at 20:00 on Wednesday, with 80% of the votes counted, the difference was 7.7 points. In other words, it is confirmed that in this state the margin between the two has been reduced.
The same is also true for Michigan, for example. Around 4 in the morning, with 37% of the votes counted, Trump won with 54.7% and Biden stood at 43.5%. Wednesday at 2pm they were ready to go. With almost 90% of the votes considered, the projections came to give the victory to Biden, but by an extremely short margin (only 0.1 percentage points). Wednesday before 20:00 and with more than 90% of the votes counted, Biden was leading by 0.7 points. A turning point, then.
Trump links this narrowing of the margin between the two fraud candidates and claims that “by magic” he was losing to Biden as the “surprise” ballot box was counted. To analyze this sentence, a context is needed. It’s just that Donald Trump has consistently argued that postal voting and early voting lead to fraud and that the winner should be known right on election night, so it would be preferable to stop counting votes after that date.
“Trump’s claims are unfounded.” Twitter checks tweets from the president of the United States
These accusations arise later 100 million voters voted in advance or by post in the United States in these presidential elections, an absolute record and the more than dobro face a 2016. But there are no reports of election fraud, nor have Trump’s statements about it been supported by any kind of factual element. Furthermore, the counting of the votes proceeds as expected: due to this record, it is normal that more time is needed for the counting of the votes, for the knowledge of the official results and for the declaration of the winner.
This is how votes are counted it varies a lot from state to state. In some, only the votes that arrive until the end of election day are counted (as in Wisconsin), in others those that arrive several days later are also counted. In Pennsylvania, for example, all votes posted on election day are accepted as long as they have their respective stamps, meaning they can only reach authorities on Friday – that’s why the state says it will only have a final count from that. day. Incidentally, Pennsylvania extended mail-order voting to all voters this year.
Then there is another point. According to this text from the FiveThirtyEight journalistic project, written days before the election, October 29, in Pennsylvania, the postal ballots they can only start counting at 7am on election day – and never before, even if they arrive early. So the results take longer. In fact, several politicians, such as Commonwealth Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, have already predicted that the bulletins could take days to count and that only Friday could the count be finished – and between Tuesday and Friday there could be a large fluctuation in the numbers. results.
CNN has built a map where you can see when early votes, such as mail order votes, start counting. If in the case of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or Georgia they can start being tried only on the morning of the 3rd, in the other states the tolerance is greater: for example, Illinois allows votes to arrive at their destination by November 17th and Carolina from North until the 12th. As for counting, some Michigan cities begin to be able to process ballots on the 2nd, the day before the election. The New York Times also has a table that allows you to perceive variations in the way different votes are counted: there have been those who tend to count votes first in person (like Rhode Island), in others there is no such differentiation.
There is another factor that can lead to this fluctuation when votes are counted – and this explains why Biden has regained (and in some cases reversed) Trump’s first lead. Is that, according to the Pew Research Center, Democratic voters tend to vote more by mail than Republicans. In this account think tank, Trump supporters are twice as likely as Biden supporters to vote in person. Therefore, not only was the count expected to take a long time, but it was already known that postal voting tends to favor Biden by a large margin.
Donald Trump connoted postal and early voting, where Republican voters have less presence, with fraud. And on election day he again insisted on this point. The president of the United States said, and rightly so, that he was losing edge to his opponent in the “key states”, mostly governed by Democrats, but implied that this difference was reduced by “magic” as votes were counted. “surprise” polls. That is, he implied that there would be fraud in the voting and counting of votes. But there are no reports that this is true. Additionally, there is data showing that Democratic voters tend to vote more than Republicans in advance or by mail – and these votes may take longer to count due to the attendance record through these methods. So, over time, count Joe Biden’s favors more. It is therefore not a question of “magic urns” or “surprise urns”. On the contrary, these are trends that are already predicted.
According to the Observer classification, this content is:
Mistaken
NOTE: This article was produced as part of a fact-checking partnership between Observer and TVI.
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