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 the Blue Shift,
as the former political director of Fox News
has testified.
So in every election, and certainly a national election,
you expect to see the Republican
with a lead, but it's not really a lead.
So this Red Mirage, that's really what you expected
to happen on Election Night?
Happens every time.
But in 2020, Trump pretended
the Blue Shift was surprising and suspicious.
"We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually.
And then our numbers started miraculously
getting whittled away in secret."
No.
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.
"The Democrats " more of our people vote early that count.
Theirs vote in mail.
And so they're going to have a natural
disadvantage and Trump's going to take advantage of it "
that's our strategy.
He's gonna declare himself a winner.
Bannon said that in October of 2020 "
before the election!
And that's just what Trump did
on Election Night.
"We were getting ready to win this election.
Frankly, we did win this election.
We did win this election."
Trump's nonsense claim
that the votes counted earlier in the night
were more legitimate than those counted later
became the underpinning of the entire Big Lie,
culminating in the January 6th
attack on the Capitol.
The 2024 election will be close, and early in the night,
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 exactly what to expect
on Election Night.
