Dispatches From the Fortress – Day 233

Nate Silver's 538 website has been busy predicting who'll win what races in the upcoming election but now they're also predicting when each state will finalize its vote-counting. It may not take us as long as their charts would indicate. For instance, they put California and Utah in the category of "Only some of the vote will be counted on Election Night" but I think we all know where those two states' electoral votes for president are going.

Then again, there's going to be human error and ballot-counting machines are going to fail and there will be places where they keep the polls open all night because there's still a long, long line of folks who've waited hours to cast their ballots.

They think Florida will be completely counted on Election Night. Well, maybe. If it is and Biden wins that count, that probably means Biden wins the White House. The converse is not true. Florida is only one of many "must win" states for Trump. There are a lot of 'em…especially Pennsylvania, which 538 thinks won't report for a day or three. Just be prepared for anything. And we have no idea where or how Trump may be mounting legal challenges and if they'll go anywhere.

The best list I've found of which states are in play and how many of 'em Trump has to take if he's going to pull off a surprise win is on Charlie Cook's site in this PDF file. And you might want to read this essay by Mr. Cook about what has gone wrong for Mr. Trump in a electoral sense.