Ned Foley alerted the world to the “blue shift” that has begun to characterize the trends in vote totals after the initial tranche of results are released on election night. The blue shift is the tendency for presidential vote results to trend in a Democratic direction as the count proceeds from ballots counted on Election Day to ballots counted during the canvass period — both absentee and provisional ballots. …
California is one of the biggest contributors to the nationwide blue shift — although there is a blue shift of some size in most states — because of the large number of provisional and mail ballots in the Golden State. Although 14.2 million votes were eventually counted in California, only 8.8 million were accounted for on election night. In the process, Clinton’s lead grew from 61.49%-33.22% to 61.48%-31.49%, for a blue shift of 1.72 points.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that a significant blue shift showed up in California’s recent top-two primary. Let’s take a look. CONT.
Charles Stewart III (MIT), Election Updates
