The Red Mirage and the Blue Shift

There’s a dirty Trump trick you need to look out for. He used it in 2020 to try to overturn the election, and he’s going to do it again. But it doesn’t work if you know it’s coming. 

Watch out for Trump to exploit something elections experts call the “red mirage” to prematurely declare victory before all the votes are counted. 

You see, in almost every election, Republicans appear to take an early lead. That’s the red mirage. Then that lead gets smaller throughout the night, which is called the “blue shift.”

This happens because Republican votes tend to be counted before Democratic votes. 

It’s not magic. Votes are counted by precinct, and Democrats tend to live in more densely populated, urban precincts, while Republicans tend to live in more sparsely populated, rural ones. It just takes longer to count the votes in a precinct with a lot of people than in a precinct with fewer people.

In Georgia, for example, there are more than 300 times as many people living in Fulton County as in deep-red Glascock County. If Fulton County has 300 times as many ballots to count as Glascock, obviously Glascock is going to finish counting first.

In 2020, when numbers came in from counties like Glascock first, it made it look like Trump was leading in Georgia, when he really was not. It was a red mirage.

Also, Democrats are more likely to vote by mail, and mail-in votes take longer to count.

Anyone who follows elections knows about the red mirage and blue shift, as the former political director of Fox News, Chris Stirewalt, has testified: “In every election, and certainly a national election, you expect to see the Republican with a lead, but it’s not really a lead.”

But in 2020, Trump pretended that the blue shift was surprising and suspicious. He said: “We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually. And then our number started miraculously getting whittled away in secret.”

There was nothing miraculous or secret about it. But it’s easy to see why people who don’t know about the red mirage could be tricked into thinking that something unusual had happened.

According to Trump ally Steve Bannon, that’s exactly what Trump was counting on: “What Trump’s going to do, is just declare victory, right?” Bannon said before the 2020 election.

“But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just going to say he’s the winner. The Democrats — more of our people vote early that count. Theirs vote in the mail. And so they’re gonna have a natural disadvantage, and Trump’s gonna take advantage of it. That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”

Bannon said this in October of 2020, before the election. And this is exactly what Trump did on election night.

Not incidentally, Bannon is advising Trump to do the same thing again tonight.

As Trump said on Election Day 2020: “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.” Wrong.

Trump’s nonsense claim that the votes counted earlier in the night were more legitimate than those counted later became the underpinning of his entire Big Lie, culminating in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. 

It looks as if the 2024 election will be close. Early tonight, Trump is likely to appear to be ahead and again use that early lead to falsely claim victory. 

Mirages can be confusing, but if you know what they are, you won’t be fooled by them.

Please help spread the word about the red mirage so people know what to expect tonight.

Robert Reich