Tips for watching election night like a pro

[Non Swing Voter]

1) CNN or MSNBC or some other news channel besides Fox.

2) Browser Window 1: Load Website that updates maps with county totals fast.

3) Browser Window 2: Load this site, which will probably crash.

4) Browser Window 3: Follow an experts twitter feed.

Fox isn't just Hannity and Tucker screaming. Their decision desk is actually pretty good, and I think they were the first network to call the House for Democrats in 2018.

Yes their Decision Desk is accurate and it's ok to watch until Karl Rove or some other lunatic is dragged to their room disputing the Ohio results.  If the election is going particularly bad for Trump I might turn it on to get personal amusement from their suffering, especially if Tucker's on.

[G_Master]

Florida, Texas and Arizona. All three should be able to be called on election night. If Biden wins all three, it’s game over. Hell if Biden wins either Florida or Texas it should be game over.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

We have 90 days to ED and we are gonna have outstanding ballots due to VBM and legal challenges,  the ED isnt gonna be over in one day, stop making threads like this

You're no fun anymore

[YE]

We have 90 days to ED and we are gonna have outstanding ballots due to VBM and legal challenges,  the ED isnt gonna be over in one day, stop making threads like this

You're no fun anymore

In three days he'll flip back and it'll be amazing to see the contrast.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I usually keep PredictIt on auto-refresh during election nights.  That will help me stay abreast of critical updates even if CNN isn't immediately covering them.

[Dr. MB]

Like a pro? Start drinking early in the day. Have champagne (in case you win) and vodka (in case you lose) on hand. Snacks are good, start with the healthy stuff (crudités, grapes, cheese, etc) and break out the junk later if you're getting nervous.

I'm only 15 so I guess I can't be a pro then, but noted for 2024.

You can do anything you put your mind to you know

[SingingAnalyst]

From your intro it sounds like you're in school.

Ask your teacher or professor if you can document your election night experience as an extra credit project.

Take the advice of other posters (such as watching rural KY, FL, etc.) Your professor will think you're a genius! Throw things in like you don't want to get overly optimistic because in 2016 Clinton was leading in Ohio early in the evening. Feel free to use my 2016 story as a cautionary tale: I went to bed at midnight after Colorado was called for Clinton, and slept soundly for three hours. I awoke at 3 AM to the AZ, PA calls along with "Trump wins" and tossed and turned the rest of the night; I couldn't sleep. So, get a good nights sleep Sunday and Monday nights.

Write your thoughts using your own personal writing style, whatever that is, being sure to use correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

I hope that helps!

[TheTide]

As I recall, in 2016 I knew or at least felt that Trump was going to do better than expected as I was watching the very first returns from Indiana, based upon comparing both the presidential and senate race numbers on a county-by-county with those from the previous election. And crucially, Indiana, while not generally a swing state, happens to of course border both Ohio and Michigan.

Oh, and don't take the exit polls as gospel. I also recall seeing the Georgia exit poll and it having Clinton only 1 or 2 behind. Based on that I changed my earlier opinion about Trump doing well and went off doing something else for a while. When I came back, most of the battleground states were leaning towards Trump.

[GeorgiaModerate]

I posted a set of tips just before the 2018 midterms (the whole thread is here).  Here they are again, with the added caveat that due to the high level of mail voting things are going to take even longer to become clear.

(From 2018):

Election Day -- one of the days we election junkies live for -- is just around the corner, so I'd like to share a few of my personal tips for getting the most out of it.  (This is the 50th anniversary of the first election I followed closely, and the 10th anniversary of the first one I followed on Atlas.)  Some of these are for general election watching and some are Atlas-specific.  Feel free to add your own!

General tips:

1. Pace yourself!  It's going to be a long day and night, and the main event doesn't start until the evening hours.  If you can manage it around work or school, sleep late or take a nap during the day.  Don't stay glued to coverage during the day and burn yourself out early.  Take breaks; talk to your family, go for a walk, play with the dog.

2. Don't read too much into anecdotal weather and local turnout reports.  They have little or no predictive value.  Final turnout reports, OTOH, may (but don't always) provide some useful information.

3. Be very skeptical of reports of outrageous incidents, like people being scared away from polling places, unless they're confirmed by a reputable news source.  Please DON'T repost them on Atlas, social media, or anywhere else without confirmation.

4. Take early exit polls with a grain of salt.  They often don't reflect the actual state of the electorate.

5. Remember that early returns sometimes don't hold up, especially if they're mostly early votes.  Election Day votes can change things dramatically; see the CA-45 House and FL-GOV (D) primaries for examples.

6. If your side does well, always remember that it could have been better ("Damn, we almost got Rep. Dorque.")  If your side does poorly, remember that it could have been worse ("Whew, at least Dorque survived.")  It's OK to celebrate or mourn the results, but try not to lash out at others in the process.

7. Be careful of pronouncements that the results, whatever they are, signify a major change or realignment.  Such events are very rare.  If there's one consistent long-term trend in American politics, it's that the pendulum always swings back again.

8. If you drink or use other mood-altering substances, try to do so in moderation, unless you get to the "drowning your sorrows" stage.  Think twice before posting while drunk; you'll probably regret it in the morning.

And some Atlas-specific tips (hopefully the mods will add their advice):

a. Please be civil.  Most posters here are human beings (there are a few I suspect are bots) and some of them have different views than you do.  This doesn't make them vile or your enemy.  To paraphrase what Sen. Mitchell famously said to Oliver North: it's possible for someone to be decent and patriotic and still think you're completely wrong.

b. OTOH, there are some trolls here, and they're usually easy to identify.  The goal of a troll is to stir up a reaction, not to discuss things in good faith.  Disagreeing with someone is not trolling; deliberately provoking them is.  Please don't respond to the trolls.  Just use the Ignore and/or Report buttons.   (There's nothing wrong with using Ignore.  You don't owe anyone your time to read their stuff.  I use it liberally and it's greatly enhanced my Atlas experience.)

c. Try not to clutter up the main result threads with side topics; they're going to be really busy.  Please take such discussions to separate threads.  Similarly, please don't clutter the main threads with empty quotes or other responses with negligible content.

d. Don't try to follow everything closely, and don't feel like you have to respond to everything.  There's just too much going on, and it's impossible to keep up with everything to the minute.  The best strategy is to pick just a few things you'll follow closely, and others you'll check on less frequently.

e. Disable the forum feature that warns on new replies when posting.  It's too hard to keep up on fast-moving threads, and this puts a strain on the server.  To do this, in your Profile under "Look and Layout Preferences", check the box for "Don't warn on new replies made while posting."  If this causes your reply to be a little out of continuity, it's OK.

f. Be wary of making overly quick projections or hot takes; it's not a race to see who can do it first.  Some people (who shall remain nameless) have been known to jump on early trends to make projections and be embarrassed by the final result.  Nobody remembers who was the first to make a correct projection, but everybody remembers who made the wrong ones.

g. Stay cool, be patient, and have fun!  The event itself is something we all enjoy, no matter how the results turn out.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I set up all my final modeling and pick counties (and states) I'm going to be keeping an eye on, and where I'm going to be keeping an eye on their results (with backups in case sites go down) the week before. There have been some excellent suggestions in this thread.

Make sure you're caught up on sleep, because between excitement and waiting for results you'll likely be staying up until you pass out. I'm making sure I have a full day of work planned for Election Day  itself (I'll be voting early), wrapping up about an hour before results start coming in. Plan on taking the next day off (if you can) to recover.

Plan for websites to go down (including this one), or get so laggy  they're unusable (PredictIt). Be prepared for a lot of incorrect hot takes on TV (and elsewhere) from early exit polling and initial results. When the networks start calling states they're usually right, but early in the evening they usually put far too much weight on small exit polls and even smaller initial returns. As others have mentioned, be aware of state's reporting patterns. When it comes to predictive weight, comparing counties to how they've preformed in the past is useful. What they add to the states vote totals, not so much.

This year in particular, I'd also prepare, mentally and practically, for a very unsettled week or even months after the election. I think it's going to make 2000 look like a sideshow, and not in a good way. If you're a democrat and in a swing state, be prepared to do your part and get out and protest if Trump and his Banana Republicans try to steal the election.

I hope that all the worry on the left about Trump's anti-democratic tendencies (and the GOP's willingness to keep supporting them) proves overblown, and that he loses and leaves office with as much grace as he can muster. (Expectations are so low for him that anything short of trying to hang onto the White House will likely be favorably received.) Hopefully in a little over five months our blue posters will all be mocking us for our fears and saying "see, both sides do it" as they complain about President Biden. But I fear that won't be the case. And I'm not exactly alone in that

https://mobile.twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1294244609573388288

[Stranger in a strange land]

When KY reports its results, note the margins in its rural counties. In 2016, the bottom really fell out for Hillary in rural KY, which in retrospect was an early indication of trouble for her nationally. If margins in those areas return to 2012 levels (or further left), that would be a good sign for Biden.

Atlas Favorite Elliott County is actually a good indication here: it's small and counts quickly, and while Trump is obviously going to win it,  if he only gets, say, 60% instead of the 70% he got last time, it's a disastrous sign for him because it means he's losing ground in similar areas in PA, & NC where he can't afford to lose a single vote.

[Podgy the Bear]

Specifically for FL, look at Tampa Bay (Hillsborough, Pinellas) and the surrounding counties (Pasco, Lake, Bradenton)--a good predictor of what will happen in the Rust Belt states.  Pasco in 2016 and the big jump in the Republican vote (30000 increase and a 14 percent increase from 2012) foreshadowed what eventually happened in MI, PA, and WI.  When I saw that on Election Night in 2016, I knew that Hillary was in serious trouble.

If Biden can hold down the margins in counties like Pasco, he'll win FL and therefore the election.

[hyouzel the predictor]

Bumping this thread for tonight

[pbrower2a]

Try this thread. If you trust me, then I have my own angle.

http://generational-theory.com/forum/thread-7031.html

I will be using Atlas colors... sort of. Blue and red will be for called races, and green and orange, respectively, for R and D leads. White will be for conflicting data.

Generational theory may be discussed, but note that the composition of the vote by age matters greatly. People over 55 (and I see no cause to distinguish such people in their voting pattern) are about 5% more R than D in their voting in a normal year. People under 40 are about 20% more D than R in their voting in a normal year.  People over 55 are the bulk of people who quit voting (death and debility), and people under 40 are the bulk of new voters. Figure that the average voter starts voting at age 22 and quits voting at age 82 (people who live to adulthood in America typically live into their eighties), and about 1.6% of the electorate leaves the electorate every year, almost exclusively in ages 55+, when death rates soar.

Generational identity is as much environment as almost anything else. People 65 and 25 have seen a very different world.

The shift between partisan affinity between old and young voters is now about 25%, so from 2016 you can assume that if nothing changes other than the generational composition of voters, then Trump loses because the vote will have swung 1.6% away from the Republican Party.

For anyone to believe that President Trump will win the Electoral College in 2020, one must assume that he has changed voting patterns due to some great achievement that makes him more popular. This crude estimate allows me to predict that Biden will swing Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida away from Trump, but do nothing else. This would make the election, if nothing else happened:

Biden/Harris 307
Trump/Pence 230      

Paradoxically the old pattern of no more than five states changing from one side to the other would hold -- but these four states comprise 75 electoral votes, nearly one-seventh of the total vote in the Electoral College.