There is a lot of consternation about the election in PA tomorrow. First this will be nothing like the 2016 election. To start with there is no popular 3rd party candidate. Secondly there is no Green Party candidate on the ballot. Thirdly Dems are united behind Biden. This last thing is something I just cannot forget. In 2016 in the last few days before the election CNN was talking to democrats in Hazelton and this one guy is standing in the parking lot of a very large shuttered building and said that although he was a Dem and his gut told him that Clinton would be better than Trump, he just could not vote for Clinton. Trump is known and I would bet that guy is solidly for Biden and there will be many more people throughout the state that feel the same way. That is why I think that Biden will get at least on average 5% or more in every PA county.
Now there are a few concern that need to be addressed. First there are the 7 counties that may or not start counting ballots tomorrow. The state SOS Kathy Boockvar has asked them to. The 7 counties as of yesterday have 144,977 mail in ballots to count. 5 of the counties Dems probably have no chance in. These counties have been red since 2008 and some, like Beaver have gotten redder since 2008. Monroe county has been blue since 2008. The only county that we might have a chance with is Cumberland, that county also has the most mail in ballots of the 7 to count. Cumberland went for McCain in 2008 giving him 56% of the vote. In 2012 Romney improved on that and got 58.5% of the vote and then in 2016 Trump underperformed and received less that McCain and Romney with 55.9% of the vote. So maybe Cumberland county with a very high vote tomorrow can be blue. I know that would be tough, but at the least I would like to see that trend towards blue continue.
Now those 7 counties only have 144,977 ballots returned and maybe those mail in ballots break for the Dems by 60%-40% so that would give democrats 86,986 votes. Now if they don’t count them tomorrow. I am thinking that someone is ready to announce a lawsuit to not count any of these ballots. That is why I think they do not want to start on Tuesday. Now I doubt the lawsuit would succeed, but it could stop the counting for a day or two. So we could lose about 87,000 votes.
Now the weather in PA will be very nice tomorrow and we should see more voters than in 2016 when we saw 6.1 million votes cast. I think we can see a total of 6.5 million voters this year. Most of the voters in Pennsylvania comes from SE PA and we should see 2.25 million ballots in just those 5 counties, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia. In 2016 just between Trump and Clinton there were 1,988,872 ballots cast.
I think Philadelphia will easily see 725,000 votes cast. Biden should get at least 86% of those votes. So that is 623,500 votes. In 2016 the average percentage that Clinton won in those 4 counties was 54.5% I think those 4 counties should give Biden at least 58.5 or more. I think we will see Biden get 892,125 votes in rest of SE PA. So those 5 counties could see Biden with 1,515,625.
In Alleghany County in 2016 there were 627,097 votes cast and Clinton won with 55.9%. I think in Pittsburgh we could see 650,000 ballots cast tomorrow and Biden to win those by at least 60% and that is another 390,000 votes. Adding that to SE PA we now have Biden with 1,905,565 votes from just 6 counties and Trump with 914,375 and I think that is a bit to much as with 14% of Philly giving him 101,500 votes. So at this point Trump is down by 991,190 votes.
In 6 other counties, 5 that went for Clinton and 1, Erie went narrowly for Trump in 2016 there were 638,427 votes cast I think we could see 660,000 votes cast tomorrow in those counties and I expect Biden to win Erie county. Now Biden should win these 6 counties with an average of 51.5%. That would give another 339,900 votes for Biden. So the Biden total is now at 2,244,565 and Trump now has 1,234,475. The lead for Biden is over 1.0 million votes now.
Now that accounts for 3.56 million of the expected 6.5 million votes. Now there are 67 counties in PA and there are probably be another 1.5 million votes in the next 10 biggest counties and in 2016 these counties had 1,433,939 votes cast and some are very red. On average Trump won these 10 counties with 58% of the vote. Two of these counties are where Biden was born. I do expect Biden to improve on Clintons numbers. These 10 counties may have 1,580,000 votes tomorrow and Trump should get around 55.5% giving Trump 876,900 of those votes and Biden 703,100. Now that leaves Biden with 2,947,665 votes and Trump with 2,111,375 votes. And that is now a total of 5.05 million votes and Biden leads by 836,290 votes.
So we have maybe 1.45 million votes left to consider. All of these are very red counties. However none of these counties gave Trump 80% of the vote. The best was in Potter county where Trump did receive 79.5% of the vote, but that county had less than 10,000 votes, most are even smaller. However an average of the vote Trump received would probably be around 65%-66% in these counties. So with 1.45 million votes left and Trump winning 66% he receives 957,000 for a total of 3,068,375 total votes in PA and Biden with a total of 3,440,665 votes for a difference of 372,290 votes. And that is a 5.7% Biden win. So what I have written is a conservative case. I did not use Biden getting 5% more than Clinton did anywhere. It is lower than that.
Now lastly how are all of these mail in ballots going to get counted? Well there is good news as Philadelphia has said they will be able to count 32,000 ballots per hour. If Philly receives 95% of the ballots back that would just over 415,000 and that would take just under 13 hours. So starting at 7:00 they would be finished by 8:00 PM when the polls close. All of the big counties have bought in more vote counting equipment after the primary fiasco and most will have 75%-80% counted by 8:00 PM. These counties are also bringing in other county workers to help with the vote count.
abcnews.go.com/...
Now with beautiful weather across the Keystone state for tomorrow we could see 6.75+ million votes cast. That would only be a benefit for Biden as most of those votes would come from SE PA. SO lets GOTV!
