NOTE: We asked elections data guru Joe Handrick to provide us what political scientists refer to as “some quick back-of-the-napkin” analysis of how the Wisconsin election returns should be analyzed this evening.
He makes a few points before even beginning his number crunching. First, we don’t know the actual percentage of the early vote Joe Biden received in 2020 because it’s part of the city’s total vote. But it’s logical to assume it was probably a few points higher than the percentage he received for each city overall figuring that the early vote was more DEM than the election day vote.
And then for this year, we don’t know the Harris percentage of the early vote, but it’s probably a few points less than what Biden won in 2020 because more GOP voters voted early this election.
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Why Trump will want to be up 100,000 votes in Wisconsin before the big city absentee ballot counts are reported
By Joe Handrick (@joeminocqua on X)
Some Wisconsin’s cities utilize a central count for absentee ballots. This means that election-day vote for each ward will be reported, and then later (sometimes hours later) the early votes at the central count is completed and gets reported en masse.
When this happens, you can expect a Trump lead (if there is one) to shrink each time a central count is completed for a city.
For each of the cities listed, I’ve done some real quick back-of-the-napkin math to estimate how much Harris will gain in term of raw votes when their central count is reported. There are multiple assumptions in these calculations. For example, we know how many absentees there were at the end of this past Sunday, but we don’t know how many more came in the mail on Monday and Today (or get dropped off today).
Republicans also have done a better job of voting early this year, so the GOP percent of the absentees will likely rise, but no one knows by how much. In this exercise I put the GOP early vote percentage a few points higher than 2020. While this is not precise, the important point I am trying to make is that when the central counts are reported, a Trump lead will suddenly be reduced on TV screens across America (especially when Milwaukee reports).
This is not fraud – it’s math.
With all those disclaimers put forth, below is an estimate of how much Harris could gain on the margin (how many more vote she will receive than Trump receives) after each of these 9 municipalities report their central absentee count. These 9 cities sum to nearly 100,000 votes in her favor. The early vote margins for Democrats are lower than 2020, however. Recall that, while in-person voting is up in 2024, mail voting is way down in the cities compared to the COVID year of 2020. For example, the city of Milwaukee had nearly 170,000 absentees in 2020 but will be closer to 110,000 this year.
As the central count tallies are added to the vote totals for each municipality…
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