The “blue shift” is subtle enough that it only manifests itself in highly competitive elections. But what explains the phenomenon? ed_kilgore writes
Late mail ballot tabulators in California will encounter a lot of Democratic votes. Photo: Jeff Gritchen/Orange County Register/MediaNews Group via Getty Images In the many warnings about the possibility that Donald Trump will contest an election defeat and let slip the dogs of civil strife, the center of attention is usually and justifiably Trump’s intense efforts to demonize voting by mail along with claims that ballots counted after Election Night are presumptively fraudulent.
This phenomenon, known by academics as “the blue shift,” is subtle enough that it only manifests itself in highly competitive elections. But as David Graham explains in an overview of the evidence it became a big deal in 2018 when Democrats won several close U.S. House races in California as late mail ballots erased Election Night GOP leads.
What explains the “blue shift”? One factor has little or nothing to do with voting by mail per se: Democratic-leaning demographic groups tend to cast “provisional ballots” — ballots with minor flaws that are set aside to be counted after they can be further examined — more often than others. “Provisional ballots” were invented by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to reduce the number of ballots being tossed out peremptorily by local election officials.
There could be other explanations as well. One voting-by-mail expert told me privately she suspects that Democratic get-out-the-vote drives — which habitually occur shortly before election day –—may delay maximum Democratic voting across-the-board, and produce a “blue shift” in late mail ballots. Young voters tend to tune into electoral politics late if at all.
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