MEMO: Another ‘Blue Shift’ Coming
TO: Editorial Board Writers, Columnists, and Other Interested Parties
FROM: Marc Stier and Erica Freeman, Pennsylvania Policy Center
SUBJECT: Another “blue shift” coming in PA election returns
DATE: October 23, 2024
In late October of 2020, we wrote for the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center a paper titled, “2020 Election Expectations: High Numbers of Mail-Votes and the Blue Shift.” We explained that due to Democrats being far more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, the initial count of the votes on Election Day would show Republicans ahead in many state-wide and local races—but that as mail ballots were counted, there would be a “blue shift” as vote tallies showed Democrats’ number of votes catching up to, and in many cases surpassing, the Republicans’. We warned that Donald Trump and his followers would use the blue shift to buttress their claims that the 2020 election was rigged—claims that began long before Election Day.
Unfortunately, our predictions about the vote and about how the Republicans would use it to spread lies about voting fraud turned out to be accurate.
This year in all-important Pennsylvania, 787,900 voters had successfully returned ballots as of Friday, October 18, per the most recent data update from the Pennsylvania Department of State. Democratic voters account for just over 500,000 of those ballots cast so far, while Republicans have sent in only 210,000.
We expect mail ballots to be counted a little more quickly in 2024 than in 2020 for two reasons. Counties now have two years’ experience in counting mail ballots. And they have more funding from the state to hire staff and the machinery to do it. But sadly, counties are still not allowed to pre-canvass mail ballots—that is open them, prepare them for scanning, and scan them without tallying results—until the start of Election Day. The Democratic-controlled House passed legislation to allow pre-canvassing. But the Republican Senate would not consider the legislation unless it also included mandatory voter ID for all elections, which we oppose because it would create an unnecessary barrier to voting.
So we still expect to see a blue shift as mail ballots are counted. It’s likely the initial election returns from voting machines will show Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris and Democratic candidates for row offices and for Congress in all but the districts with the most lop-sided voter registration might appear to be doing well. But many of these results will look different as mail ballots are counted.
In addition, because the election is likely to be very close and there may be a need to do recounts, we may not know who has won Pennsylvania’s electoral votes until a few days, or perhaps even a week, after the election.
Sadly, the blue shift and the time it takes to count the ballots will allow Trump and his supporters to again claim “fraud.” That is bad enough. We are also worried that they may mobilize armed people to get in the way of the count of mail ballots. However, we have little doubt that our elected officials are prepared for these threats.
We urge you to remind your readers that the blue shift, while a likely result, is not a sign of voter fraud. The last thing we all need in the aftermath of the 2024 election is another “Big Lie” about the election results.
