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Bath
So someone correct me is I'm wrong US counting is ducking weird from a UK perspective. For one the order they count votes is diffrent state to to state some are count postal's in the lead up, some after they close and others after they've counted the ballots they cast on the day. They also release the counting numbers periodically after they start counting, not just the final tally. There's also where they declare districts even though its a state wide poll. This lead to news stations declaring the result before the official result is even given this because somewhere like New York they can't pretty much be certain after a certain % of votes have been counted that its going to stay blue and no amount of additional counting will likely change that (like 80% of vote have to be for Trump and it isn't going to happen). It can lead to issue for example in 2000 some did call Florida for Gore which we know turned out to not be the case (its more complicated than that). So even though the count is not officially finished in a candidate will concede because they know its extremely statistically improbable they'd win. So its possible we'll know the result but the count is actually finished. Its really a case of it hinges a few really tight states (may see long portracted legal battle) or its pretty definitive for example Clinton needed lots of things to go her way in 2016 if she were to contest the count as she'd lost too many states but in 2000 it really did hinge on one wafer thin count. The question is how many results will Trump or Biden have to overturn for the result to be in their favour.
We actually get a similar effect in the UK counts are observed by a candidates nominated people (I've been one) and long term operatives know roughly what wards they have to win (or lose) by a rough % and if the numbers aren't looking good they know very quickly if they're likely to win or lose. For example back in 2017 Cheltenham was lost the LD's by 4.5% and was declared officially at roughly 6-7am but the LD observers had pretty much given up at about 11pm as they knew the numbers weren't where they needed to be.
God I hope the poll are right this time...
We actually get a similar effect in the UK counts are observed by a candidates nominated people (I've been one) and long term operatives know roughly what wards they have to win (or lose) by a rough % and if the numbers aren't looking good they know very quickly if they're likely to win or lose. For example back in 2017 Cheltenham was lost the LD's by 4.5% and was declared officially at roughly 6-7am but the LD observers had pretty much given up at about 11pm as they knew the numbers weren't where they needed to be.
God I hope the poll are right this time...