[News Terms] Red Mirage and Blue Shift

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"How former U.S. President Donald Trump utilized the ‘red mirage’ during the vote counting process to contest the 2020 presidential election results."

On the 5th (local time), The Washington Post (WP) used this headline while referring to the controversial election fraud issue during the 2020 presidential election. It described the phenomenon in key states where former President Trump initially took the lead in the early vote count but was later overtaken by President Biden, coining the terms ‘red mirage’ and ‘blue shift.’ The red mirage and blue shift refer to the phenomenon where, immediately after polls close on election night, the Republican Party, symbolized by red, appears to be leading, but as the counting progresses, the Democratic Party, represented by blue, gains strength and reverses the outcome.

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The term first appeared in 2013. Edward Foley, a professor at Ohio State University who coined the term, discovered that during the campaign period, more votes were secured by Democratic candidates through early voting than on election day. Based on this, academia and the media view the biggest factor causing the reversal during the counting process as the difference in mail-in voting participation by party affiliation. Democrats tended to vote by mail more than Republicans, and since mail-in ballots take longer to process than in-person ballots, their results were reflected later.

This pattern intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. On November 3, 2020, election day, in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, former President Trump appeared to be leading early in the count, but the results gradually reversed starting the next day. Michigan and Wisconsin saw reversals on November 4, the second day of counting, while Pennsylvania and Georgia experienced reversals on November 6, the fourth day. The vote margin between President Biden and former President Trump in these four battleground states was only 0.2% to 1.2 percentage points. Notably, the winner in Pennsylvania, expected to decide the U.S. presidential election, was confirmed only on November 7, ultimately leading to President Biden’s final victory confirmation.

Besides mail-in voting, the red mirage and blue shift are also analyzed to result from a combination of geographic factors, voting procedures, and counting order, such as strong Republican support in states where voting and counting occurred earlier, and delayed reflection of results from large cities like California, which have strong Democratic support.

This pattern is expected to continue this year as well. With the extremely close race between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the situation in seven battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) is expected to directly determine the election outcome. These seven states prohibit the processing of early votes before the election.

However, the ‘blue shift’ phenomenon is expected to be relatively less pronounced in this election. In 2020, Republican supporters largely did not participate in mail-in or early voting, but this time, former President Trump has encouraged voting and participated in early voting himself, making it uncertain which candidate early voting results will favor. Professor Foley predicted, "A smaller-scale blue shift is expected in Pennsylvania this year."