The ‘Big Blue Shift’ That Could Decide the Presidency

The outcome of the presidential election is turning in part on what’s known as the “big blue shift.” Partial results after polls closed on election night Nov. 3 showed President Donald Trump in a strong position and, as many analysts anticipated, he declared victory prematurely. As expected, further vote-counting in some places is shifting the advantage to his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. What’s unclear is whether the shift will be enough to become decisive.

The term was coined in a 2013 paper by Edward B. Foley, a professor who leads the election law program at Ohio State University. After studying presidential elections back to 2000, he found that Democratic candidates are more likely than Republican ones to make major gains during the official and complete tallying of all ballots. That includes so-called provisional ballots, which are cast with the understanding that local election officials will later review whether the voter was eligible. Foley used “blue” because in the U.S., Democratic victories are commonly shown as blue on a map, Republican ones as red. An example of a blue shift -- though not in a presidential election -- occurred in Arizona’s 2018 Senate race. Initial tallies on Election Day showed Republican Martha McSally with a small lead, but after almost a week of further ballot-counting, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema was declared the winner.