What signs in the early returns in FL on Election Night will indicate Biden or Trump will win it?

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

To be honest there really aren't any reliable ones. What mattered in 2016 led many people to believe Gillum and Nelson would win comfortably based on early returns in 2018 when they led easily in Pinellas County and also had leads in Duval, Seminole, and St. Lucie Counties. It ended up not mattering since they underperformed Clinton a lot in Miami-Dade.

Add in that the early returns this year will probably be heavily Republican-skewed with most Democrats voting by mail, and you just won't have really good indicators.

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

To be honest there really aren't any reliable ones. What mattered in 2016 led many people to believe Gillum and Nelson would win comfortably based on early returns in 2018 when they led easily in Pinellas County and also had leads in Duval, Seminole, and St. Lucie Counties. It ended up not mattering since they underperformed Clinton a lot in Miami-Dade.

Add in that the early returns this year will probably be heavily Republican-skewed with most Democrats voting by mail, and you just won't have really good indicators.

This site says they can start Election Day: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-16-when-absentee-mail-ballot-processing-and-counting-can-begin.aspx

Florida can count mail ballots before Election Day so we’ll have 98% of the state probably that night.

Yeah we have been doing this for 20 years now we're good at counting votes early. We should have almost all the state reporting on E-night

Well, let's pray to God Biden wins it. That would destroy Trump's inevitable "the election was stolen" when late returns in other states put them in the D column

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

I'm curious how the rural areas that report early (if any) vote.  I feel like if Trump has any slippage (in turnout or margin) he's toast nationally.  I suspect turnout will be slightly higher in big cities and Trump is going to lose a lot of ground margin-wise in the suburbs.  So I think Trump really needs to accelerate his 2016 gains in the rural areas and exurbs.  Just a repeat probably won't be enough.

That's one thing I'll be looking for too early in the night. If anything, Trump needs to somehow squeeze more votes out of rural and exurban America (Pasco) than he did in 2016 because the suburbs are going to be nasty for him. Just keeping his 2016 rural and exurban margins probably isn't enough for any states to the left of Georgia.