What are the red mirage and the blue shift and why they are key to understanding the voting results in the US (and when will we know who won)

Four years ago, Donald Trump announced on the same night of the vote, before the results were known, that he had won the election.

“On voting night he was leading the race solidly in many key states. Then, one by one, the votes began to magically disappear,” Trump said in 2020.

On that occasion, Trump accused the Democratic Party of having “stolen” the election from him even though there was no evidence then and there was none in the following four years.

The audits ruled out any manipulation, as did the courts.

Trump took advantage of what is known as “red mirage”, a phenomenon that defines the moment when the first results on election night project an apparent victory for the Republicans, to establish their complaint of fraud.

But as early votes and data from large cities in key states begin to be added, the difference is reduced and the trend may even reverse, in what is known as “blue shift”the color of the Democrats.

According to analysts, this could be repeated in this Tuesday’s elections, although with less force than in 2020.

The result is usually known on the night of the vote. But in the 2020 elections, it took almost four more days to know who the winner was due to the close results in key states and the vote by mail, which was much greater due to the pandemic.

In that margin of time that opens between the first partial results and the final scrutiny, the “red mirage”a supposed reality that may end up not being one.

This phenomenon describes the moment in which Republicans, identified with red, based on the first results usually from rural areas that do not necessarily represent the entire electorate, appear to be winning the election.

But as the count of early votes, in person and by mail, arrives, as well as information from large urban centers, the distance that the Republicans achieve begins to decrease and may even be reversed.

“The red mirage describes the advantage of a candidate at the beginning of the election night that decreases until it disappears as more ballots are counted,” he tells BBC Mundo Alauna SafarpourPhD in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland.

The concept of “red mirage” arose from the Hawkfish consulting who in 2020 correctly predicted that Trump could initially achieve a favorable lead but that Biden could surpass him thanks to the counting of votes by mail and in urban areas.

In 2020 the “blue shift” came to define the presidency in favor of Biden, while four years earlier, the Democratic advantage in some states was not decisive nor could it reverse the trend and Hillary Clinton He ended up admitting defeat.

The phenomenon of the Democratic candidate managing to widen his lead after voting day has occurred in each of the last five elections, according to Edward Foley, an election law scholar at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. .

It was Foley who disseminated the concept of cambio blue after the 2012 elections in an attempt to explain why disputed states may end up being the cause of vicious legal fights between the two major parties.

First of all, these two interrelated phenomena find an explanation in the complex and decentralized electoral system of this country.

The United States does not have a national electoral authority like Latin American countries, but each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia (DC) have their own electoral rules and register votes in different ways.

Before the voting centers opened on Tuesday morning, millions of people had already cast early vote in person or sent your absentee ballotwhich makes the count more complex and slows down the process.

In many states, technological advances and electoral rules mean that the counting and transmission of results are known shortly after the polls close. While in others, a definitive result may take several days.

The state of Floridafor example, is among the fastest states to publish the final result because it can begin processing mail-in and early votes before the election.

On the contrary, states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania –the key state that distributes the most electoral votes – are one of the slowest in publishing the results. This is because mail-in ballots cannot begin processing until the morning of voting day.

There are even states that allow mail-in ballots to be counted. They arrive the day after the electionwhile there are others that do not allow it.

The second reason is the different counting speed between small rural towns and large urban centers within the same state.

Votes typically take longer to be calculated in more densely populated urban areas, which tend to favor Democrats, as opposed to smaller rural districts, which lean Republican.

“Counties with higher populations take longer to count votes,” Safarpour explains.

The MIT Election Data and Science Lab’s election report on the 2020 elections reached the same conclusion: “Counties won by Biden took longer to complete their recounts than counties won by Trump.”

In an election like this Tuesday’s, where polls show Donald Trump and Kamala Harris less than two points away in several of the most fought states, the winner may not be known on election night.

That is why, according to specialists, the phenomenon of the “red mirage” and subsequent “blue shift” could repeat itself, although with less force.

This year, voting by mail is expected to be lower than in previous elections, and records show a greater amount of early voting by Republicans than in 2020, according to data from the Florida Election Laboratory.

“This year we may see the same phenomenon although possibly a little less pronounced because the Republican Party has been encouraging its voters to vote in any way, including voting by mail,” Safarpour says.

This is seen in states like Pennsylvania, where 65% of mail-in votes in 2020 were from Democratic voters compared to 24% from Republicans. While in 2024, the distance is narrowing: 56% of vote-by-mail requests have been from Democrats, and 32% from Republicans.

Some states like Michigan changed the 2020 election rules to allow early voting ballots to be counted before Election Day, which could speed up the process, while other states like North Carolina They have tightened the conditions of the count.

Although it is likely that in these elections the results will depend less on voting by mail than in 2020, when many participated by mail because the world was going through the covid-19 pandemic, it is possible that the scenario will be repeated.

“The great partisan divide It is still valid although this year a little more equal than in previous elections. Therefore, as more mail-in votes are counted, we can expect an increase in Harris’ lead over Trump in the states,” says Safarpour, the electoral systems specialist.

For analysts it is recommended “be patient” on election night.

“We will have the election results in due time. But it probably won’t be on election night,” Safarpour says.

Subscribe here to our new newsletter to receive a selection of our best content of the week every Friday.

And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.