Sure. But you could say the same about in-person election day votes and provisional ballots. That doesn't mean almost all of them won't have been counted late in the night already, since the ballot deadline is also November 3rd. Also, inferences that will be made based on exit polls and the numbers from bellwether counties when the press decides to call the outcome etc.

Unless you're expecting a 2000-like situation there.

If Florida yes, but in NC, the deadline isn't actually until the 12th if the ballot is postmarked by the 3rd I believe. I think Arizona and arguably Nevada are the only swing states with a 11/3 deadline besides Florida. And Florida and Arizona seem close enough that they may not be able to call them quickly. 

TBH I don't know what to expect. I don't know how much longer it might take, if they may be shortstaffed due to Covid concerns, etc. Or maybe because of all the early voting states can actually be called quicker.

I'm hoping for the best preparing for the worst. Best is Florida and Arizona getting called quickly for Biden. In that case, Biden would only need one of the 4 rust belts states... and since Iowa will likely be called (and maybe Ohio too but they let in late ballots as of now) we can probably tell whether or not there's any chance of Trump making a clean sweep there. 

Worst case scenario would be Trump winning Florida, Arizona, and Iowa by like 5. That would leave us with some uncertainty at least till Pennsylvania gets called.





Of course the like, best best scenario would be Texas, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Iowa all getting called on election night, but we have to be at least a little realistic here.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/19/politics/presidential-debate/index.html

They finally made a button to mute Trump. Sadly, only works during the debate.

Had to be done, the last debate was awful.  Still gonna be a lot of talking over each other though, but at least there will be two minutes of not having to worry about it...

Yup. And Trump's campaign is arguing that the fact that he can't interrupt is unfair to him. 

I think this could be be a good thing for Biden. Maybe it's just the low bar set by the Trump campaign claiming he has dimentia, and by Trump being Trump, but I think he's been doing really well in speeches and in the town hall. He really knows policy. If anything, he tells you too much. He's also been good at attacking Trump without becoming like Trump (at least when Trump isn't actually interrupting him ever two seconds). His answer about the DOJ potentially going after Trump was pretty much perfect.

At some point Trump will definitely try to bring up Hunter Biden... I think if Biden wants to be clever he finds a way to address it first. Take the punch out of the big gotcha Trump think he has. How exactly to address it, I don't know. I don't have enough of the details. But come out early, say how proud he is of his son, blast the release of photos of him struggling with addiction, and point to the Senate probe finding nothing I guess. I think that's the play.

Looks like the Senate will be swinging to the democrats:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdYRE1Vp9WU

I live in Texas and there's a crucial piece of the puzzle that I think you're missing here: Unlike nationally, in Texas the college-educated suburban middle class has continued to vote Republican overall during the Trump years and continues to lean toward Trump and the GOP in the polls overall. Why, you ask? Because, unlike nationally, in this state said group continues to be heavily influenced by the "evangelical" Christian churches, and by the Southern Baptist Convention in particular. (This is the buckle of the Bible belt.) They're more socially conservative than their counterparts in most other states as a result. They tend to be more anti-gay, more anti-abortion, all that sorta thing. This demographic is the main one that has actually switched from voting Republican to voting Democratic nationwide during the Trump years so far, so the fact that the Republicans so far have managed to keep their loss of support among this group finite in Texas is likely decisive here. Joe Biden's coalition doesn't work without that group. Without that group he would lose and he doesn't quite have it here in Texas. He does nationwide overall for sure, but not here.

The Democrats picked up 41 seats in the House of Representatives in the 2018, which was the most they had won in any midterm cycle since 1974: the year Nixon resigned in disgrace to avoid otherwise inevitable impeachment. Democrats got 8.5% more votes in the 2018 midterm elections than Republicans did overall. For perspective, Obama won the 2008 presidential election amidst the onset of the Great Recession and the Iraq War by 7 percentage points. It wasn't close. Biden is polling ahead of Trump right now by a similar margin nationwide. This year looks to me a lot more like 2018 than like a repeat of 2016.

There has been one continuous trend in elections throughout the Trump years. The Democrats won the 2017 off-year elections, the 2018 midterm elections, the 2019 off-year elections, and appear poised to win this year's presidential election by a similar margin. The pattern has been pretty consistent all in all. The fact is that Trump is an anchor around his party's neck, weighing the whole institution down. He's been and continues to be a massive political liability for them, which is why they're running away from him as fast as they can right now. The Democratic candidates sometimes run on their party association with the Biden-Harris ticket. The Republicans aren't generally running on their ties to Trump. They seem to fear the association anymore.

Trump appears to now be embracing the vote by mail after months of sowing doubt on it: https://globalnews.ca/news/7403460/trump-vote-by-mail-ads/
It's not surprising when looking at the early vote stats https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html
on States that reports ballots by registered affiliation:
8.4M Dems have voted so far VS 4M Republicans
24M Dems have requested a ballot and only 13.4M Republicans have done so

This is not surprising giving the president stance on mail in ballot certainly had more effectiveness on it's own electoral base. So Republicans are expected to vote en masse in person but the thing is: https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=us+covid&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Covid 19 daily cases are spiking and would probably be hitting all time high this week and additional federal/red state measures seems to be a far cry giving the president stance on this.

With all this information, it is possible that sowing doubt in mailing voting will backfire spectacularly on republicans?
Do you think republicans officials are now afraid their voter base gonna be afraid to go vote on election day and hand many surprise victory to Democrats based on early voting?

Trump has never been against mail in ballots, he's been against Biden ballots in whatever form they take. 

Whether a Covid-surge will effect republicans depends on how enthusiastic Trump supporters are and how seriously they take the virus.

The difference is more likely to be felt among older voters and independents. I don't think that on the whole it will make or break the election, but in a place like Florida it may have enough of an impact to turn the tide, and if Florida votes Biden, then that's it.

That may be true, but I think the analysis kind of accounts for it. 

Basically in Pennsylvania there's not much shift in the demographics to my knowledge. So, whatever change happens is attributed mostly to Trump and the situation in general. There we're seeing what looks like a 6-8% shift.

In Texas, if there were no change in demographics, then I agree the shift would not be as big. Maybe 4-6%, in line with what we see in North Carolina and Georgia which are more similar in terms of evangelical influence.

But considering how much Texas shifted left in 2016 when the country generally went right, you'd have to consider that demographics on their own would cause a shift of 2-3%. If that's the case, an overall shift of 6-9% would be possible, and if it's on the high end of that range, Biden would have a very realistic shot.

That's oversimplified obviously, but the point is even with college whites as a buffer preventing the same kind of loss in Trump support we see in other states, I think the change in demographics can make up for that difference.