ALERT - Inaccuracies regarding PA Mail-In Ballots Outstanding

[Roland99]

https://www.reddit.com/r/fivethirtyeight/comments/joqegq/inaccuracies_regarding_pa_mailin_ballots/

Inaccuracies regarding PA Mail-In Ballots Outstanding
Politics
TL;DR - There are roughly 340,000 mail-in ballots remaining (NOT 550,000). Also, figures may be slightly out of date by the time I finish writing this up.

e/ since posting this the votesPA website has been updated to be consistent with the election returns website



The PA SOS stated there were roughly 550,000 mail-in ballots outstanding, a figure which she seems to have been taken from this website: https://www.votespa.com/About-Elections/Pages/Counting-Dashboard.aspx. However, these values are out of date. For example, it lists Butler County as having 30,000+ ballots left to count but Butler County has already reported all of its votes. Butler County has been finished since some time yesterday (at least 16 hours

Link to tweet

), but has not been updated even though other figures have been. There are many other examples such as Chester County, which is listed as having 40,000+ ballots left to count. However, Chester County has counted all or most of its mail in ballots. The figures seem more up to date at this website: https://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/#.

According to https://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/# there are roughly 2.27M mail in ballots counted. Assuming the figure https://www.votespa.com/About-Elections/Pages/Counting-Dashboard.aspx has the correct number of mail-in ballots (a little over 2.6M), then current number of outstanding ballots is 340,000 (about 90,000 in Philly). This dramatically overstates Biden's potential lead, though it appears that he is still on track to take the lead.

Will need a 67/33 split from here on out and it will be a rather small lead. Likely less than 10k




......



More info:

Link to tweet

340k mail-in ballots remaining. Quite a bit fewer than many were thinking

https://votespa.com/About-Elections/Pages/Counting-Dashboard.aspx

[coti]

1. Yeah, it's just going to be a LOT tighter than the

100-200k vote Biden victory some experts had been predicting.

So critical we get real numbers from our people in charge.

[Mike 03]

2. Thank you!

I just updated the bad figure to the new accurate figure in another thread.

Much appreciated.

[VMA131Marine]

3. Biden needs 65% of the votes remaining to take the lead

If he takes 70% of those votes he will end up with a lead around 30,000 votes.

A 75% share would give a final lead of 73,000 votes

[mvd]

4. And that is plenty doable, right?

I have seen the benchmarks being met so far, and that continues?

[Roland99]

5. needs to be 67/33 and final estimate lead would be likely under 10k

[mvd]

6. Is there any reason to think we wouldn't meet that?

Biden was so calm and that reassures me. I think he gets good updates on the data.

[Roland99]

12. I don't know the make-up of the remaining counties.

Big ones are Philly (we're good there...about 92k left)

Allegheny (Pittsburgh but on hold till tomorrow...about 36k)
Bucks - 25k
Cumberland - 32k
Lehigh - 34.5k

[mvd]

17. Those all look good except for Cumberland

And fortunately we have been above 50% even in red counties.

[Amishman]

23. That 90k out of philly could easily run 80-90% biden

with that coming, getting 2 to 1 overall should be very doable.

[VMA131Marine]

7. That would be a worse share than he has been getting

[Abnredleg]

8. There are also outstanding Election Day ballots

That need to be added to the absentee ballots. That’s where the discrepancy comes from.

[triron]

13. Thank you. I think I feel better now.

[democrattotheend]

16. You shouldn't feel better about that

Biden is losing the in-person vote in EVERY SINGLE COUNTY EXCEPT PHILADELPHIA. If some of the outstanding votes are in-person and are from anywhere but Philly, we may be screwed.

[Abnredleg]

19. They're from Philadelphia/NT

[democrattotheend]

20. Okay, phew

Still not great, because it means Biden will probably only get 50-60% of those instead of 80-90%.

[Roland99]

14. wouldn't those tend to be more R?

[Abnredleg]

18. They're from Philadelphia /NT

[SidDithers]

9. They've been pretty steadily trending 80/20, I think...

Even 75/25 give Biden ~ 50k vote win.

I'd love to see then margin close a bit quicker than it has today, though.

Sid

[awesomerwb1]

10. Small lead would mean automatic recount?

I'm exhausted.

[Azathoth]

11. And here we go

First AZ, now PA.

[BannonsLiver]

22. It's baseless alarmism.

The state has made clear what’s left. There’s no reason to theorize on Reddit.

[Roland99]

24. and the PA SOS site doesn't matter?

[Azathoth]

28. Let's hope

The longer we go with a 100K+ vote deficit, the more skeptical I become.

[coti]

15. Those 35k Allegheny County votes "set aside" could end up

playing a critical role.

[Marius25]

21. Those are ballots left to be counted, not necessarily reported.

And it doesn't include all election day votes or provisionals which Sen. Casey said are 30k just from Philly.

It also doesn't mean there aren't more votes. They haven't reported all votes that have been counted yet. Sen. Casey said that number is higher than it appears. He expects Biden to win by about 100,000.

[MakeTXBlue2020]

25. Okay, good. That clarifies things a bit more

[Roland99]

27. Hope he's right. Signs still point to a win but it's tighter than we thought over the last 24hrs

[Marius25]

30. Maybe a bit tighter, but we're not sure if it's an issue

of actual counting or an issue of reporting.

Biden is destroying Trump in PA right now, winning even red counties with 73% of mail ins. There is only a 78k lead for Trump now, and 85k votes are still to be counted in Philly which Biden leads by over 90%.

CNN just estimated around 300,000 ballots left to count. Biden is winning over 70% of them.

[Abnredleg]

26. There will also be a lot of provisional ballots

That are not in the total. A lot of voters who requested absentee ballots decided to vote in person to ensure there vote is counted.

[DLCWIdem]

29. He is winning Philly by 90% according to Kornacki and areas by 80%