We Should Have Some Good Tea Leaves To Read By 9:00 PM Tuesday. South Carolina And Vermont Close At 7:00 PM
Those early results could give us a good clue as to what to expect in Pennsylvania and everywhere else.
In terms of who they vote for, Vermont and South Carolina couldn’t be more different. But they have a few important characteristics in common that could tell us sooner, rather than later, on Tuesday night, what the outcome of the election will be.
Both states close their polls at 7:00 PM, an hour earlier than most states in the Eastern Time Zone. And according to fivethirtyeight.com, both states should be able to count their ballots and report their results faster than almost all the other states.
So you’re probably saying to yourself, “big deal, we’ll know early on, that Vermont voted for Biden and South Carolina voted for Trump.”
But there’s also a possibility that we’ll know a lot more than that. In all likelihood, well before the time that you normally would go to bed on a non-apocalyptic election night, Vermont and South Carolina could have show us some trends that will tell us who has won the presidential election.
In addition to conveniently closing their polls early, and by discouraging their election officials from making careers out of counting mail-ballots, the two states provide an additional amenity for election junkeys desperate to learn who won the 2020 Presidential Election.
Both Vermont and South Carolina, in their own Blue and Red ways, have followed the national trend consistently since 2008.
Vermont was Democratic in 2004, got more Democratic in 2008, voted slightly less Democratic in the Election of 2012, and then even less so in 2016.
Similarly, South Carolina was Republican in 2004. It didn’t vote quite as Republican in 2008, but then became progressively more Republican in 2012 and 2016.
If the two states continue their trends from the last two Presidential Election cycles (more Republican), then President Trump will probably be re-elected. But if both states, moving in lockstep, vote even slightly more Democratic than they did in 2016, then we will very likely see a Biden win.