How to Watch Tonight's Results and Stay Somewhat Sane

Here's my guide on what to watch - and not watch - as the votes start getting counted.

It’s Election Day. Depending on when you are reading this, you still have hours to convince people to go vote for Kamala Harris. You know that one friend who said they were going to vote, but you’re not really sure? There is still time to call and remind them to go to the polls. We must run through the tape. Besides, Election Day doomscrolling on Twitter and parsing out-of-context and unverified anecdotes about line lengths is bad for your health.

Once the polls close in your state, make yourself a cocktail (or something stronger) and sit down to watch the results. The last two presidential election nights were pretty traumatic. In 2016, we got cocky. The only question on our minds was how large of an ass-kicking Trump would get. Once the votes started coming in, it was immediately obvious that something was very off. In 2020, we weren’t cocky. Our confidence was based on Joe Biden’s eight-point lead in the national polling average. As soon as the votes started coming in, it was clear that, once again, the polls underestimated Trump’s support. Although Biden won, it was much closer than we ever imagined.

Anything can happen, but we may still see a similarly large polling error this time. I wrote up why HERE, if you are interested.

As the results come in, here are some things I will (and will not) be watching to help me understand what is happening.

1. Ignore Florida (with One Exception)

Florida reports early and they process the early and mail votes in advance of Election Day. Therefore, when the polls close in most of Florida at 7 PM Easern, it will report a massive number of ballots. We will have a good idea of how things look in the Sunshine State very early in the night. The Florida results set the tone. The media will begin comparing the 2024 vote to the 2020 results when Trump won by 3.4%.

Trump may exceed his margins in Florida, but that is no reason to panic. Florida has almost certainly moved to the Right since 2020. There has been a flood of new residents — mostly Republicans looking to live under the MAGA rule of Ron DeSantis. A New York Times/Siena poll from early October found Trump winning Florida by 13 points. Perhaps this poll is an outlier, but the NYT’s methodology makes it most likely to capture political changes over the last four years. The idea that Florida shifted Right is buoyed by the results of the 2022 midterms. Florida Republicans had an amazing year, while the GOP struggled throughout the rest of the country. Even if Florida is Trumpier than usual, that tells us very little about tonight’s outcome.

There is one thing that I will be watching in Florida. Osceola County, which is near Orlando, is more than half Latino and a third of the population is Puerto Rican. If Harris is overperforming in Osceola it might be the first evidence of backlash to the offensive joke told at the Trump rally. Such backlash would be a big deal in Pennsylvania where there are more than 300,000 voting-age Puerto Ricans.

2. Watch Indiana (Seriously)

On Saturday, Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register released the poll heard round the world. They had Harris leading Trump by three in a state he won by eight in 2020. This result shocked everyone . For most pollsters, a poll like this would be immediately dismissed. But Ann is the best in the business and has a long record of nailing the result in Iowa. In a Substack chat with paid subscribers, I offered three possible theories:

1. The poll is accurate and Harris is about to win in a landslide;

2. The poll is junk. This happens periodically; or

3. Harris isn’t winning Iowa, but the poll is directionally correct and capturing late-stage momentum that would bode well in states demographically similar to Iowa like Wisconsin.

A fourth theory also exists. The poll is capturing the backlash to Iowa’s severe abortion ban. The evidence in support of this theory is that, in the Selzer poll, Harris’s lead comes from a massive gender gap.

The polls in Indiana are the first in the nation to close at 6:00 PM Eastern. Like Iowa, Indiana put in place a 10-week abortion ban with very few exceptions. If women voters are surging to the polls in response to state abortion bans, we will see it in Indiana first. The phenomenon would bode well for Georgia and potentially North Carolina. Less so in the Blue Wall states where abortion access is protected in state law.

3. Two Things to Watch in Michigan

The polls close in Michigan at 8:00 PM Eastern. There is really no path to 270 for Kamala Harris without Michigan. It’s the battleground state where she has polled the best and Biden won by the most in 2020. The focus will be on the suburbs where Democrats got huge margins in 2020 and 2022. However, I am focused on two things tonight.

The first is the turnout in Detroit. The magic number for Democrats has been a turnout rate of 50% in the Motor City. When Obama won in 2008 and 2012 the rate was 53% and 51% respectively. In 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost, it dropped to 48%. This year, based on the early vote, the city clerk is estimating a turnout between 51% and 55%. If that is correct, things will be looking very good for Harris.

The second is Dearborn, a primarily Muslim area. Biden netted about 30,000 votes out of Dearborn in 2020. There has been a lot of discussion about the political impact of the Biden Administration’s approach to the War in Gaza. I will be watching to see if Trump overperforms his margins in Dearborn or if there is an unusually large third-party vote.

4. The WOW Counties in Wisconsin

Wisconsin is much whiter and more rural than Pennsylvania or Michigan. That’s why the margin for error is so much smaller. If Harris loses any of Biden’s vote share among white working-class voters, she must make it up in the suburbs of Milwaukee. Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington Counties — colloquially known as the WOW counties —  will be key to her victory. She has room to grow there because these counties have not shifted as dramatically as the suburban counties in the other battleground states. Trump won Ozaukee by 19 in 2016 and by 12 in 2020. Harris needs to move that number even further in her direction.

5. The Latino Vote

One of the biggest questions overhanging the election is whether Trump can make gains with Latinos. The polling has painted a mixed picture. He could gain nationally in places with large Latino populations like New York, California, and Texas, but what really matters in terms of the presidential election is how he fares in Nevada and Arizona. In particular, we should watch the returns in Clark County, Nevada and Maricopa County, Arizona.

6. Ohio and the Senate

The Democrats have a difficult path to hold their Senate majority. They have no path without Sherrod Brown in Ohio. The Buckeye State tends to count its votes very quickly. If Sherrod Brown bucks the political winds in a state Trump is expected to win easily, Democrats may have a fighting shot. If not, get ready for a Republican majority.

7. When to Expect Results

Theoretically, we could know who won faster than in 2020. There is much less mail voting and states are better prepared to count those quickly. The 2016 election was closer than 2020 and we knew that Trump had won by 1:30 AM Wednesday morning.

The Harris campaign estimates that we could know the result in Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia on Tuesday night and in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin on Wednesday. Arizona and Nevada tend to take a little longer. All bets are off if the margin is so close that the provisional and mail ballots could be determinative.

Good luck. It’s going to be a long night/week for all of us, but I remain cautiously hopeful based on how Kamala Harris has closed this campaign.