8am Thursday: Biden looks in a terrific position (I would say > 95%) to win Pennsylvania, and in a reasonable position to win Georgia (I would say about 60%). Again, these are for insurance if AZ or NV flips to Trump (and I would give a 30% chance of that happening). OK.. I made up all the numbers above, but you can make your inferences based on the below.
Pennsylvania:
89% has been counted and Trump's lead has been steadily declining as seen in the plot below. The decline has been remarkably linear. The reason is that almost all of the votes are coming from mailed-in ballots in very heavily democratic counties (Mainly in Philadelphia where Biden has been winning 80-20). Also, in PA, Biden is crushing Trump 80-20 on the early vote. According to the plot, Biden will cross Trump when approximately 95% of the vote is counted and will win by about 200k. If the first or second derivatives show a change, I will spot it an update the prediction.
The main uncertainty is with regard to how many votes are left to count. If Biden maintains his current rate, he'd win with 350k votes left. Looks like there may be at least 650k votes left to count. So even if the rate of winning flattens out, he should be in a good position.
Georgia:
Georgia officials say that 61000 absentee ballots are left, and they are most highly concentrated in Fulton (Atlanta) and Chatham (Savannah). Biden is behind by 18500, meaning he'd need to win 68% of the remaining votes. He has been doing better than that over the past many hundred thousand votes.
Here is the clearest picture on how many are left, and where
https://www.ajc.com/politics/about-200000-absentee-ballots-still-need-to-be-counted-in-georgia/BYGJAXV5FRBGBAMA6JPIC7ZL34/?D
25000 left in Fulton, where Biden has been winning by 47% = 11700
7000 left in Clayton, where Biden has been winning by 70% = 4900
So Biden needs to gain roughly 3000 votes out of the remaining 29000. If these were general votes, that'd be more uncertain, but since this is absentee, he has a very good shot.
1:20pm Update. With 50401 votes left, Biden is behind by 13540. As reliable as it gets (from GA SOS). So he needs to win 63% of the remaining votes. Doable.
Arizona:
About 470k ballots are left and Trump is trailing by about 68k. If Trump wins by the same rate as he won last night (18%), he could come out front by about 10k. But there is no reason to assume linearity as in Pennsylvania for the following reasons:
- PA early votes have been 80-20 for Biden over the past two days CONSISTENTLY and what is left is from that pool. In AZ, there are different types of ballots left to be counted (drop-offs, mail-in, etc). No reason to assume they will all be the same... in fact, the remaining type seems to be less favorable for Trump compared to last night's batch.
- We just don't have enough data points (PA is based on the last 10 updates on nearly 2 M votes, and AZ is based on 2 updates on 50k votes)
- In AZ, ballots are mainly left in blue areas in which Biden has been winning
