Blue shift (politics)

The phenomenon was first identified by Edward Foley of Ohio State University in 2013. He found that Democratic candidates are significantly more likely to gain votes during the "canvass" period, which is the votes counted after election night. The growth in the persistent blue-shifted overtime vote began with the 2004 United States presidential election. However, Foley has stated that political scientists have not fully "pinned down causality" of this phenomenon. One notable instance of this occurring was the 2010 California Attorney General election. Republican Steve Cooley was up by several points with Los Angeles and Alameda counties, two of the state's largest, scheduled to report most of their ballots around midnight. In order to meet evening newscasts, Cooley declared victory at 11 pm, but continuing results from the urban counties led to the race being declared too close to call by most media outlets, and Cooley ultimately losing to Democrat Kamala Harris by 0.7 percentage points. States vary in their rules for processing mail-in ballots. While some require they be received by the elections office by election day, others allow them to arrive later and still be counted, provided they are postmarked by election day. Some states allow ballots to be processed as they are delivered, while some force elections offices to wait until election day to verify signatures and open envelopes. These factors can influence the difference between the vote that is announced on election night and that counted later. == 2018 elections ==

One example is the 2018 California's 39th congressional district election. This was a closely contested race for an open seat in the United States House of Representatives that included portions of Orange, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino counties in Southern California. Republican Young Kim was running against Democrat Gil Cisneros. On election night, November 6, Kim held a lead of 3 percentage points and over 15,000 votes over Cisneros. However, as the votes were counted over the ensuing weeks, Cisneros overtook Kim in the vote count, and won the election. Another notable example of blue shift was the 2018 United States Senate election in Arizona between Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. McSally led the vote count on election night, but Sinema ultimately won the election due to mail-in ballots. Democrats initially thought that they had lost that election, when they had actually won. In addition to these examples, blue shift has been documented in California, among other states. == 2020 elections ==

Foley expressed concern that this phenomenon, along with difficulties in conducting the election during a pandemic, could lead to "a perfect storm" in the 2020 United States presidential election. Given Trump's repeated attacks on mail balloting, nonpartisan experts warned that he could attempt to block the blue shift by building up a lead among ballots cast on Election Day, and then disputing the legitimacy of mail-in and absentee ballots. The United States Postal Service had cost-cutting policies put in place by its new director Louis DeJoy, who was a top donor and fundraiser to Donald Trump, and these cost-cutting policies further slowed delivery of postal ballots. Trump had openly stated that he opposed USPS funding, specifically to prevent mail-in ballots, due to his fears that it could hurt his chances of re-election. These changes have become known as the 2020 United States Postal Service crisis. Some accused Trump of "intentionally kneecapping the postal service in an attempt to sabotage the election." These concerns were echoed by former president Barack Obama, who described Trump's threats as "unheard of". For this reason, election experts advocated that postal ballots be mailed weeks in advance of Election Day. As an alternative solution, Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times advocated that Democrats vote in person if they were able. Predictions U.S. data and analytics company Hawkfish predicted that on election night in 2020, U.S. Republican party nominee and presidential incumbent Donald Trump would receive more in-person votes than Joe Biden, his Democratic party nominee and principal challenger, but when absentee, provisional, and mail-in ballots were counted, the election would swing against Trump in a classic "red mirage" or "blue shift" scenario. Hawkfish's survey asked 17,263 American voters whether they planned to use absentee ballots or go to the polls. Vote counts Within hours after the earliest poll closings on the evening of November3, 2020, Trump claimed victory in several states that had Trump leading, but in which his margins were shrinking as mail-in ballots were counted. At 2:30a.m. EST on Wednesday, speaking to supporters, he said, "We want all voting to stop." By 8:30a.m., with counting of absentee ballots underway, Biden had pulled ahead in Michigan and cut Trump's lead in Pennsylvania to 610,000 votes; as Biden continued to increase his lead in Michigan, the Associated Press called the state for him at 5:56p.m. EST. At 11:25a.m. EST on November 7, four days after Election Night, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, the Associated Press, CNN and Fox News all called the election for Biden based on his large lead in Pennsylvania and the fact that the outstanding vote total, mostly from heavily Democratic areas, would be nearly impossible for Trump to overcome. == 2022 elections ==

After the January 6 Capitol attack, Democrats repeatedly sounded the alarm that this phenomenon in the last two election cycles could lead to "a perfect storm" in the 2022 United States elections. The blue shift will decide the election. In the end, Democrats had an unexpected and historic strength in state-level and senatorial elections. 2022 is the first midterm since 1934 in which the president's party did not lose any state legislative chambers or incumbent senators and the Democrats did so under a DNC president after winning in Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. It was also the first midterm since 1986 in which either party achieved a net gain of governorships while holding the presidency, and the first time ever in a disadvantageous position. == In other countries==

There are differing reports in other countries as to whether mail-in or early ballots have a notably different political makeup than election day in-person votes. In Germany, mail-in voters tend to be more urban than in-person voters, tend to be more certain about their voting decisions, and favor bigger parties. A "shift" does not usually feature in news coverage as both in-person and mail-in votes are counted beginning at 18:00 when polling booths close. Mail-in votes that arrive later than 18:00 on election day are discardedeven if they only arrived late due to circumstances outside of the control of voters. However, given that exit polls are based only on in-person voters, the first prognosis of the election result, which is released immediately after polls close, often differs from the final result among other reasons due to the effect of mail-in ballots. The 2020 Bavarian local elections had their runoff election held as all mail-in (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and some observers discounted that it had any partisan effect. Germany has seen an increase of mail-in voting at federal elections since their introduction in 1957 from less than one in twenty in 1957 to more than one in four in 2017. In the May round of the 2016 Austrian presidential election, exit polls correctly pointed to a narrow lead for Norbert Hofer among those who voted at a polling station. The postal votes, which made up about 12% of the total vote, were slightly but definitively in favour of his rival Alexander Van der Bellen, and ultimately gave Van der Bellen victory. == See also ==