The Sweep: How Trump Can Win

Plus an update on the Senate map and voter scores explained.

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We made it to August, team! And for my fellow Pandemic Legacy fans out there who listened to my fangirl rant at the end of last week’s Dispatch Podcast, we all know that once you’ve made it through June and July things start looking up a little. 

It was another exciting week here of not leaving the house and being at the beck and call of an evermore demanding Brisket who was more formally attired in the picture I’ve linked to than either of his parents have been in months. 

And yet the campaign world kept spinning: The president was “just raising a question” about whether to delay our election for the first time in history, rumors swirled about Biden’s VP pick as Rep. Karen Bass potentially moves into front runner status (side note: after being pressed by Steve during our special Friday pod, that’s exactly who Joe Trippi picked ahead of the media reports), and the Trump campaign acknowledged they are undergoing “a review and fine-tuning of the campaign’s strategy” after Bill Stepien replaced Brad Parscale as campaign manager.

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  1. Tim

    Is it too simple to just move up the "postmark by" date to some reasonable (say 7 days before) date and just take the postal gaming delay out of the system? Couple that with PSAs to set reasonable expectation that results will not be available election night?

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  2. linda

    I'm trying to figure out why so many states are having a difficulty with mail in ballots. We voted on mail ins and 6 mos later we were doing mail ins with no big problems in my state. I voted against it and when they provided drop boxes for the ballots I was skeptical. They work quite well. They are cemented into the pavement and then bolted. Mine is in a park and ride less than a mile from my house. I toss it in and some poor soul is there to tell me thank you. Can't quite tell if this is the church equivalent of the women's hospitality committee or a guardian. Anyway it works. In the age of pandemic states should get on the ball because who knows how bad it will be in November.

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    Theirn Scott

    Well done. A great explanation that even a baby-boomer can almost understand. :-)

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    J.Seravalli

    But if 40% of the total 2020 vote is done by mail and Democrats go that route by a 3:1 ratio over Republicans, that means that 30% of the total vote is D and 10% is R, both by mail. Assuming a true 50% to 45% D to R preference on the election season, then only 20% of the total election day vote would be D while 35% of the total election day vote should be for Trump (R). Once the vote counting is completed, assuming that would indeed happen, both Biden and Trump would receive 42.5% of the total votes cast, assuming a mail vote failure of 25%. In other words, the vote would be 50:50 and Trump gets re-elected.

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      J.Seravalli

      Isn't the case anyway that the risk for coronavirus infection at the polls has been shown to be minimal (very few cases) if voters are 6 feet apart or more?

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    Steve Gordon

    Hmm...interesting what happens when you just analyze the numbers. We've been voting exclusively by mail here in WA state for a while. It too YEARS to tweak the infrastructure to get it reliable, with all the issues you point out. To think that states can just flip the switch and do it effectively is ... well what happened in the NY primary. You don't need fraud to gum up the electoral process and get folks to question the legitimacy of the results. Enjoying the "insider baseball" on election stuff immensely (as someone who does some work on elections myself). Great work and thanks!

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  6. KSchaefer

    Smart analysis and a great addition to the Dispatch. You raise an excellent point about how mail-in ballot "fail" rates have to be factored into the analysis. But an offsetting factor could be the ability to raise "turnout" using mail-in ballots. Turning out your voters on one day is hard. If Biden can raise the voting rate by encouraging mail-in voting, it can offset or exceed the "fail" rate. Which effect is bigger, is a key question. It's a tradeoff

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    Peter A

    This newsletter is great! I just can’t ‘like’ it because of the lede 🙁

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    Doran.78

    Trump winning the election because of a high mailed ballot failure rate coupled with the GOP losing the Senate is about the worst situation possible for the country. Social media toxicity would be on another level.

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    Earl King

    Mail in ballots. The USPS admits it loses mail all the time. Blanket sending out of registered voters addresses with a clean scrub is asking for problems. In CA a statistic I knew several years ago suggested people move every 3 years. It begs for fraud. Add in ballot harvesting and you have toxic mix. Al Gore losing FL by 500 votes changed the world. (Thankfully). A Congressional race was decided by a coin flip due to a tie. Did people not see the fraud committed in Paterson NJ this year? A district in NY still can’t call the race. Yes some states do it well. But we are not ready for blanket mail in voting, not by a long shot.

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    David Chen

    Its kind of bleak that the way I'm starting to assess parties these days is by asking "should people like me leave the country if you guys had total power?". Its even more bleak that the answer seems to be 'yes' most of the time. Only the libertarians, classical liberals, classical conservatives pass the test - basically the politically irrelevant for modern politics.

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