CLEVELAND, Ohio – After a grueling, seemingly never-ending onslaught of campaigning, commercials, scandals and rallies, the end of the 2020 election is in sight.
Voting commenced a month ago, but Election day is in just two days, with no clear sign of what will happen in a state that has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic. Cases continue to spike as COVID-19 remains the prevailing issue in the election.
Hardly any two politicos around the state can agree on what the official outcome could be. There are simply too many variables – what early voting looks like, how upset they are with Republican President Donald Trump’s mismanagement of the virus and whether Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden can overcome Trump’s decisive 2016 margin in the state.
But some clues are available that may help predict what happens when results are tallied Tuesday – though prognostications on the 2016 election proved wildly unfruitful.
Polling
If 2016 was an indictment on public polling, 2020 has the chance to be the conviction of it. Or its exoneration.
Polls in the final month of the 2016 election showed anything from a tie race between Trump and Democratic former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Trump winning by 7 percentage points. Trump’s RealClearPolitics polling average – an aggregate of polls – showed him up 2.2 percentage points in Ohio.
Instead, Trump won by 8 percentage points, a 450,000-vote rout of Clinton en route to a stunning Electoral College victory. The polls were wrong all over the place, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the Democratic Midwestern firewall that was supposed to seal the deal for Clinton.
Criticism was heaved on the polling industry, which undertook some examination of how the figures could have been as off as they were. Surveys started weighting based on education, a factor they hadn’t previously considered but a key indicator in support for Trump and Clinton. Undecided voters also broke heavily toward Trump in the final days of the election, something that’s hard to capture in polling.
The polling in Ohio as of late has generally shown a close race between Trump in Biden, with Trump barely up within the margin of error as of late. However, the latest poll from Quinnipiac University showed Biden up 5 percentage points and was one of the few in 2016 that showed Trump with a big lead in 2016, also at 5 percentage points.
The RealClearPolitics polling average had Trump and Biden tied in the state as of Friday. The FiveThirtyEight polling average, which takes the quality and recency of polls into account, has Trump up by 1 percentage point.
FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast model, which takes polls, economic indicators and prior voting patterns into account, gives Trump a 55% chance of winning Ohio. The Economist, which uses polls and economic projections and factors in uncertainty in the race, gives Trump a 59% chance of winning Ohio.
Even with pollsters making corrections to their method, it doesn’t mean that polling is now perfect. In fact, polling was never perfect. It’s meant to be viewed as a snapshot in time of the likelihood of something happening.
Diane Feldman, a retired pollster whose former clients include Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, former Gov. Ted Strickland and Rep. Tim Ryan, said it is important not to take polls as dogma, especially individual head-to-head numbers.
But the polls can give some insight into the dynamics of the race, she said.
“On the horse race, there are sample fluctuations and there are also changes that can occur,” Feldman said. “I think it’s safe to say Trump is not having a strong close. The stock market is going down. COVID is going up and he’s just attacking Biden as an incumbent president. That Biden is growing a little seems to me to be a little credible. When these things happen, stop and ask yourself why they would happen. The answer about why they happen is probably more interesting than the horse race.”
Some numbers to consider
Coronavirus and the economy have been the prevailing issues over the course of the election – understandable as they’re the most pressing despite there being a litany of other policy issues that need to be addressed in the near future.
Trump has tried to focus on what happened before the coronavirus, maintaining that his administration is not to blame for any of the effects of the pandemic. The Biden campaign has focused on the totality of Trump’s term in office, especially calling out Trump’s mismanagement of the virus.
Here are some important numbers to focus on. The figures are the latest available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the state of Ohio.
28,000 – The number of Ohio jobs created Trump’s first year in office
53,000 – The number of Ohio jobs created Trump’s second year in office
1,300 – The number of Ohio jobs created Trump’s third year in office
82,000 – The total number of Ohio jobs created from the time Trump took office through February of this year
410,900 – The number of Ohio jobs lost between February and September
328,900 – The total number of Ohio jobs lost during Trump’s first term
22,000 – The number of Ohio jobs created during Democratic President Barack Obama’s first term in office
285,800 – The number of Ohio jobs created during Obama’s second term in office
200,000 – The previous high for Ohio job losses in a single term since 1990. This occurred from 2001-2005 during Republican President George W. Bush’s first term in office.
219,100 – The previous high for Ohio job losses in a single term since 1990. This occurred in 2008 during Bush’s final year in office.
8.7% – The unemployment rate in January 2009 when Obama took office
11.1% – The unemployment rate at its peak under Obama in January 2010
5.2% – The unemployment rate in January 2017 when Trump took office
17.6% – The unemployment rate at its peak under Trump in April 2020
8.4% – The unemployment rate as of September 2020
14% – The previous record unemployment rate, from December 1982 and January 1983 under Republican President Ronald Reagan
212,782 – The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Ohio, as of Friday
3,845 – The total number of newly confirmed coronavirus cases in Ohio on Friday, a record
5,291 – The total number of Ohioans who have died from coronavirus, as of Friday
Investments
The Trump and Biden campaign have taken much different approaches to the 2020 election. Biden has refrained from holding large, in-person rallies, not wanting to contribute to the spread of the coronavirus. When the campaign does hold events, they’re mostly limited to around 50 people, with social distancing enforced and masks required.
Trump has not cared about that and routinely holds rallies with thousands of people packed tightly together, most of whom don’t wear masks.
Still, both have made appearances in the state. And in recent weeks, the Trump campaign has especially sent some of its most high-profile surrogates in a bid to boost turnout despite insisting weeks ago that the state was locked up already.
When it comes to spending, Biden has the advantage after Trump pulled nearly all his advertising, save for around $3.7 million in the final week of the election. He’ll not only be outspent by Biden, who put $6.2 million into Ohio, but billionaire and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who put around $4 million in during the final week, according to figures from Columbus-based media consulting firm Medium Buying.
“Ohio is a state where basically since the start of October, you’ve seen Biden escalate spending because they thought it was worth going after,” said Nick Everhart, co-founder of Medium Buying. “The president, while he’s had to shepherd resources and compete with a spending disparity, he feels he needs to be spending in the state.”
The Trump campaign has stated it is focusing on traditional campaigning despite the pandemic. As of Friday, volunteers and staffers in the state had knocked on more than 3.5 million doors and made 10.9 million contacts via phone this cycle, according to the campaign.
The mood
Ask any two people involved in politics in Ohio and they’ll give you different answers on what they think is going to happen when votes are tallied.
But there is a general feeling that the state is, at the very least, competitive, an especially glaring change from Trump’s 2016 landslide win.
“There’s just a lot of uncertainty as to how and what unaffiliated and independent voters are going to break,” Everhart said. “I think the consensus is it’s close. No one is going to win this by more than 2 or 3 points.”
David Niven, political science professor at the University of Cincinnati, said dissecting the 2016 vote provides some clues to how the race stands today. Clinton lost union households, seniors and white voters with a college degree, aiding heavily in Trump’s victory.
Polling doesn’t show that to be the case this time around, however, consistently showing Biden massively outperforming Clinton in those demographics.
“Those three groups, union households and senior citizens and white voters with a college degree are all pro-Biden right now,” Niven said. “At least that’s what we’re seeing in the polls. That’s why we have a real race in Ohio this time.”
Brown, a Democrat who won his U.S. Senate race in 2018 as Republicans held almost every other statewide office, said he’s been impressed by the Biden campaign’s work, with more focus on working-class issues and drawing on differences to Trump. It’s the formula Brown said he relied on during the midterms.
“I think people make the contrast that Biden really is the dignity of work candidate and Trump has betrayed workers,” said Brown, who has been helping with Biden’s Ohio campaign. “Biden is on fire in the suburbs. He’s getting more and more support from former Republicans in the suburbs. He’s doing good get-out-the-vote in the Black community. I just think we’re seeing good signs all the way around.”
Plenty are still bullish on Trump’s prospects of winning the Buckeye State. While Trump has slipped in favorability, his approval ratings haven’t dropped drastically like they have in other states. While traditional campaigning has been upended by the pandemic, the Ohio Republican Party does maintain a strong organizational arm.
Mike Hartley, a Republican strategist from Columbus, said he thought that Trump would be able to hold together his coalition from 2016.
“The coalition that he built of working class and rural voters holds,” Hartley said. “It’s probably a little closer than it was in 2016, but I don’t know by how much. He always overperforms the polls.”
Hartley said there may be some myopia with the constant focus on the pandemic and economy. While still the two most important issues, the protests sparked by George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police – which sometimes devolved into rioting – gave way to a call for police reform, often with the tagline of “defund the police.”
Biden does not support defunding police departments, though Trump and Republicans have frequently framed it that way in their attacks on him. If those attacks stick, it could prove enough to push Trump over the finish line in the suburbs, where Trump’s support has waned.
“If Trump is re-elected and the suburban wave is underwhelming from what is expected, I think the safety and security and defunding the police message hurt Democrats,” Hartley said.
How the coronavirus will affect voting
A major X-factor in this year’s election is the coronavirus pandemic. It will have implications for what voters can expect on Tuesday, and also could affect the elections results themselves.
But first, the basics.
If you plan to vote early/absentee
Early, in-person voting will be offered at each county Board of Elections on Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and on Monday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Voters who have requested an absentee ballot but decided they want to vote in person instead can still vote early and in-person, which elections officials have reported happening more than expected this year.
Voting in person requires a voter to prove their identity, can mean showing a government ID, but other forms of accepted identification include a current utility bill, bank statement, government check or paycheck.
Voters who still plan to mail in their absentee ballot must postmark it by Monday for it to count. Elections officials will open and count the ballot, as long as it arrives before Friday, Nov. 13.
Voters who have completed absentee ballots but not returned them can still physically deliver them to their county Board of Elections on Tuesday before polls close at 7:30 p.m.
But you can’t return them at your polling place. If someone attempts to – and voting-rights advocates are worried this will happen a lot on Tuesday – poll workers are supposed to tell them to take their ballot to their county elections office. If voters are unable or unwilling to make the extra trip, they will be told to cast a provisional ballot at the polling place, a more complicated type of vote that won’t be counted until after Election Day.
If you plan to vote at your polling place on Election Day
Polls will be open for traditional voting on Tuesday from 6:30 a.m to 7:30 p.m., although if a voter is in line when polls close, they will be allowed to vote.
Like voting early in person, voters must bring a form of ID. Voters should check their polling place to make sure it hasn’t changed. They can either call their county Board of Elections or check online at VoteOhio.gov.
Also like early in-person voting locations, voters at polling places will be asked to wear a face mask for safety reasons. But they don’t have to. Those who refuse a mask will be offered curbside voting, and if they refuse that, they will be allowed to cast a normal ballot.
Polling places will include socially distanced lines, PPE, spaced out voting machines and cleaning equipment. But curbside voting will be an option for voters who may have recently been exposed to COVID-19, who fall into a vulnerable medical category, or don’t feel comfortable entering.
To set up curbside voting, try calling your county Board of Elections headquarters in advance to coordinate. If that doesn’t work, a voter can send someone else into the polling place to ask poll workers to come out, or as a last-ditch effort, go in themselves and ask for curbside voting.
If a voter already has requested an absentee ballot but not completed it, and tries to vote on Election Day, they will be told to vote provisionally. This involves filling out a security envelope, similar to a mail-in ballot, that requires a voter to write down their name and birthday. Make sure to read the envelope carefully and sign it.
If a voter has mailed in their completed ballot, but is concerned it hasn’t been accepted, they can call their Board of Elections or check VoteOhio.gov/track.
As a last resort, a voter who is worried their mailed ballot has gotten lost in the mail may consider casting a provisional ballot on Election Day, according to Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Elections Officials, which represents county boards of election.
“If they’re really concerned, we would not prohibit, preclude or discourage them from being extra cautious,” Ockerman said.
But voting-rights advocates said Friday they aren’t recommending people cast a provisional ballot after sending in a mail-in ballot, since casting two ballots might expose someone to being charged with voting fraud. Instead, they’ve focused on pressuring elections officials to keep ballot-tracking systems up to date.
Election night reporting – and why the winner might be delayed
Election results will begin coming in shortly after polls close at 7:30 p.m. Absentee votes are already being processed and should be among the first to be counted. This quick reporting will set Ohio apart from other states in the Midwest. Elections officials in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin can’t even touch absentee ballots until after polls close, which could make for a late election night.
Ohio’s largest counties – including Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Summit and Stark – will be required to report votes every 15 minutes. Other counties will report every half hour. Early returns could tilt Democratic – the Oct. 29 Quinnipiac University poll found 70% of Biden voters planned to vote absentee, while 66% of Trump voters planned to vote on Election Day.
We’re hoping to learn who wins Ohio on Election Night. In 2016, because his lead was large enough, news organizations projected Trump as winning the state before 11 p.m. A winner could be projected quickly again this year.
But if either Biden or Trump’s lead is slim enough, and if there are enough outstanding absentee and provisional ballots to make a difference, it’s possible the result could hinge on late-arriving votes.
Again, absentee votes will be counted if they arrive within 10 days after Election Day, as long as they’re postmarked by Nov. 2. That’s why Secretary of State Frank LaRose is going to report outstanding absentees on election night. In the past four presidential elections in Ohio, post-Election Day vote counting has added to the Democratic candidates' margins, but not enough to change the outcome, and the race had been decided by then, so it wasn’t widely noticed.
As of last Friday, there were still 840,000 unreturned absentee ballots, according to LaRose. More current official information is not available. But the U.S. Elections Project, which scrapes voting numbers from the websites for more than 80 Ohio counties, including Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton counties, said Friday that 2.97 million early ballots had been requested, while only 2.59 million had been returned. That still blows away Ohio’s early-voting record, which was the 1.89 million votes cast before Election Day in 2016.
Final, official vote totals won’t be certified and reported until Nov. 18, under a deadline set by LaRose.
Longer lines possible
Long lines, especially in more densely populated urban areas, are the biggest, most common concern shared by voting-rights advocates this year. A large number of outstanding absentee ballots could cause increased provisional voting, if voters who have requested one show up at their polling place. That’s because voting takes longer to process, and so does curbside voting, so this could cause lines to back up.
Lines could also look longer, even if they’re not. Mike West, a spokesman for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said that could be a result of social-distancing measures.
“If there were 10 people in line under normal circumstances, in the COVID era, 10 people means 60 feet,” he said. “It’s really an illusion of a line that’s longer than it is. So be prepared, and don’t get intimidated by a long line.”
On the other hand, elections lines could be shorter than normal, since so many people have voted early.
Take Lorain County, where officials expect up to 110,000 people to vote early, not much less than 2008′s record turnout of 148,000 people.
“If you’re looking at 50-60,000 people showing up at the polls on Election Day, 50-60,000 people at the polls is like a municipal election, because so many people have voted early,” said Paul Adams, director of the Lorain County Board of Elections.
Other possible issues include confrontations at polling places – whether it’s over masks or between voters and self-designated “poll watchers” or protesters. Adams said the Lorain County BOE has hired 24/7 security for its early voting center for the first time ever, and has been in touch with law enforcement to prepare for Election Day, but isn’t aware of any specific threats.
Kayla Griffin, Ohio director of All Voting is Local, a nonpartisan voter-rights group, said a possible concern is aggressive protesters, which have been reported at some county early-voting centers. She’s also worried that the long lines for early, in-person voters in some counties could repeat themselves on Election Day.
She said elections advocates are setting up a hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE, where voters can call with any questions or concerns.
“If there is an issue, we are anticipating hearing about it well enough in advance to have it rectified before we have that large wave of folks during the afternoon and evening,” she said.
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