President Donald Trump’s campaign is expressing confidence at early voting numbers, telling The Washington Examiner that a “red wave” may be possible if Republican voting numbers trend the way they have been.
“Our people are showing up,” one campaign insider reportedly told the newspaper.
“We’ve done better” at getting out the vote, said another.
Still, the election is expected to be tight — and no winner may be declared on Tuesday.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign has also expressed confidence, saying they have more paths to 270 electoral college votes than Trump.
They’re also reporting that the rejection rate for mail-in ballots has been lower than is traditionally the case — a good sign for Democrats, who voted by mail in much larger numbers than Republicans who have focused on day-of mailings.
If a large percentage of those mail-in ballots were being rejected, it would harm Biden’s chances disproportiately.
Trump campaign advisor Bob Bauer said Republican fears of “mass election day chaos and fraud have not occurred.”
https://twitter.com/CharlotteAlter/status/1323667022111232000
Voters will spend Tuesday casting the last of what will likely be a record number of ballots despite a global pandemic that has upended long-established election procedures and triggered hundreds of lawsuits.
Election officials warned that millions of absentee ballots could slow the vote count, perhaps for days, in some key battleground states. Trump has threatened legal action to prevent ballots from being counted after Election Day.
Problems occur every election, and Tuesday was no different. There were long lines early in the day and sporadic reports of polling places opening late, along with equipment issues in counties in Georgia and Ohio. This was all expected given past experience, the decentralized nature of voting in the U.S. and last-minute changes due to the pandemic.
At least 98.8 million people had already voted before Election Day, about 71 percent of the nearly 139 million ballots cast during the 2016 presidential election. Given that a few states, including Texas, had already exceeded their total 2016 vote count, experts were predicting record turnout this year.
The Associated Press contributed to this article