Why watching election results is like a baseball game - but not in a way you think
Vote counting order can make results look like a dramatic back-and-forth game when its really just revealing pre-determined outcomes. This misleading view caused problems in past elections
In game 5 of this years World Series the LA Dodgers and NY Yankees showed us how result-reporting order changes everything: a seven-run lead switched sides making the game look totally different depending on when you tuned in (but the final score stayed same)
The way we watch election-night results has the same issue — its not really a live game at all. When Kamala Harris gets 50k votes from one county and Donald Trump gets 35k from another it looks like some kind of real-time competition but thats not whats happening: these votes were already cast‚ weʼre just seeing them counted in random order
Heres what happens when votes get counted:
- Early votes might be reported late
- Big vote dumps look suspicious but arent
- Different counties report at different times
- Mail-in ballots often get counted last
This random-order counting caused big problems back in 2020 when Trump used it to make false claims. In places like Pennsylvania early-cast votes got counted after election day votes which made it look like a last-minute shift — but those votes were actually cast first
Tomorrow night as results come in remember: theres no real back-and-forth happening; its just us discovering pre-determined numbers in semi-random order (like pulling baseball scores from a hat). The final result is already set — we just dont know it yet
