Where we saw red and blue mirages -- or, as I wanted to headline it, "Election Night was a marshmallow test for the country, and we failed".

@wiederkehra, @baseballot and I look at vote counts 1.5, 12 and 72 hours after polls closed in each state:

https://53eig.ht/3lkZmvC 

In some states, generally those where absentee votes were processed before Election Day, the race looked competitive after 90 minutes, only for Election Day ballots to conclusively put Trump in the lead. (Missouri and Montana are also in this category.)

In other states, generally those where absentee ballots were counted after the election, what appeared like an early lead for Trump disappeared as more ballots were counted, like in Michigan, which was unable to process ballots before election week.

And then there's Pennsylvania, where Biden led on Election Night, the votes counted over the next several hours were good for Trump, but the absentee ballots counted after that showed that Biden had won.

To be clear: this isn't fraud, just the slow wheels of democracy turning.

And none of this was surprising! @geoffreyvs and @jazzmyth wrote this prescient article on Oct. 29:

https://53eig.ht/35LkowC