Early signs to who’s winning?

[Tekken_Guy]

What will be the first signs to look at regarding who is winning the election?

[brucejoel99]

Strictly speaking with regards to the "early states" (IN, KY, & VT), the first warning sign for Trump would be Biden doing better than Hillary in - as both TrendsareUsuallyReal & voice_of_resistance point to - Hamilton County, IN, or Jefferson County, KY in the first results. Rural VT (near the Canadian border) would also be good to watch, as it provides a good perspective into how Northern non-college educated, secular white voters are swinging.

In general, between 7 & 8 pm ET, if margins in the suburban/exurban counties near Orlando & Tampa are significantly below 2016 levels, then that'd suggest that Biden is gonna have a good night not only in FL, but also in the Midwest (since this region has many ex-Midwesterners). A good particular example would be Pasco County, which typically reports its early/absentee voting totals almost immediately after polls close. If the initial result is a Biden lead or only a narrow Trump lead, then Biden is probably on track to win FL (& if Biden is winning FL, then he's winning the election).

By 8pm, we should have exit polls from OH, PA, NC, FL, & VA, which should give us a good idea of what sort of race we're looking at.

[Ferguson97]

If Trump isn't winning Sumter County, FL by at least 2:1 margins, he's not winning the state or the election.

[SaneDemocrat]

Look for what West Virginia looks like. If Trump is slightly underperforming or matching his 2016 numbers, long night.

[Tintrlvr]

Given how much the election hinges on Trump maintaining the very narrow wins he managed in a bunch of relatively similar Midwestern states, just watch the margins in Indiana as it comes in. If the overall swing is more than 1% to Biden on average across Indiana counties (though important to wait long enough to get some representative rural, urban and suburban areas), Trump loses, and it's just a matter of margin otherwise.

[redjohn]

I agree with others that watching IN (and most importantly, waiting for counties to have a sizable % of precincts reporting votes) will tell us a lot about the midwest. FL is another pivotal state that reports quickly and relatively early in the night, but the constantly changing voter patterns there will make me very cautious to make any predictions based on the early voting reporting.

The most important thing is making sure counties you're comparing to 2016 are reporting most precincts in the county. Early in the night in 2016, it looked like Trump was underperforming Romney in lots of counties in Kentucky, which kind of lessened lots of fears about non-college educated white voters swinging to Trump. Obviously, all but five counties in KY swung further to Trump, some by giant margins.

[ProgressiveModerate]

IN. It'll tell us a good amount about the Midwest, but also has cities, suburbs, and rural areas that will be able to tell us quite a bit.

[Hope For A New Era]

The nice thing about Indiana is that it's a pretty effective microcosm of the Midwest. Watch Hamilton for how the suburbs are going, watch Porter and LaPorte to see how urban WWC are going, watch the rest of Indiana to see how Plains areas are going (doesn't really tell you much for Presidential races, but maybe some indications of how Bollier and Greenfield are likely to do?) and watch Perry to see how rural WWC/ancestral Dems are going. You can watch eastern Kentucky for that too (could Elliott County shock everyone? Beshear won it by 21 points...)

[Non Swing Voter]

I'm sure there's a lot more going on there but, LOL, every time I see "Pasco County" mentioned here I think of the nonsense that goes on there on Live PD when that show was running.