The exploding popularity of mail voting, combined with the immediacy of online results, has given rise to an odd phenomenon in election night reporting known as a red or blue “mirage.” Both could emerge in California in the coming hours and days.
Because mail ballots take extra time to process, results reported over the course of an election night can give the misleading impression that a candidate is significantly ahead, despite the large volume of ballots still to be counted. Sometimes those lingering votes take hours, even days, to show up in public tallies.
President Trump and other Republicans have sought to use this reporting quirk to their advantage, by falsely claiming it indicates fraud and that Democrats “dump” forged ballots into vote totals to win elections. No evidence has ever surfaced proving that claim.
Two main types of vote mirage can occur, and each is largely the result of Democrats tending to vote by mail in greater numbers than Republicans, who tend to vote on Election Day.
The Blue Mirage
This type of vote mirage typically appears immediately after polls close, and it gives the misleading impression that Democrats hold a commanding lead.
In many states that allow election offices to begin processing mail votes before Election Day, those vote totals are typically the first to appear in reported results. That’s because election officials are usually still tabulating the day’s votes but are able to publish their previously tabulated mail ballots with a few keystrokes.
California is just such a state where the very first reported results of the evening are likely to encompass these early mail votes. Since the 2020 election, when many more Democrats than Republicans embraced mail voting during the coronavirus pandemic, those mail votes have skewed heavily toward Democrats.
The Red Mirage
As the evening progresses, tallies of votes cast on Election Day will begin to trickle out. These results typically have favored Republicans, who are more likely to be suspicious of mail voting as a result of President Trump’s oft-repeated false accusations that the practice is rife with fraud.
There may come a time during the evening when a Republican candidate, such as Steve Hilton in the California governor’s race, appears to come from behind and take the lead. Sometimes, it’s a commanding one.
In this hypothetical example, the results are now displaying a red mirage.
This appearance of a lead can last for days, especially in a state as big as California. The state normally waits until after Election Day to begin processing late-arriving mail ballots — those that arrive very close to Election Day and those that are postmarked by Election Day and arrive in the legally permissible seven days that follow. More than 15 million voters cast ballots in California’s 2024 presidential election, making tabulation a slow and laborious process.
In addition, California counties are supposed to finish counting their ballots and release their results on or before the 13th day after the election. In 2024, the state was still counting votes a month after Election Day.
Those seeking to discredit an unfavorable result have seized on this prolonged period of uncertainty to cast doubt on the process. Mr. Trump castigated late ballot tallies as fraudulent “ballot dumps,” when in reality they were legally cast votes still being processed by election officials.
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
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