Donald! Trump!

On Radio4 yesterday they were saying that the election campaigning isn’t about trying to convince people to change their mind about who to view for (views are pretty entrenched and floating voters are very rare in their political system).

The campaigning is to encourage people to get off their bum and vote as many just can’t be bothered. There are millions of people who are disengaged but their votes could be critical. Hence Harris and Trump’s slightly left field activities this week in key areas.

Do they count and declare the mail ins and early votes separately?

That would probably depend on which state it is. Each state is responsible for administering its own elections, they aren’t administered federally.

Thats the odd thing really – and part of the reason that the republican candidates in particular can win with a minority of votes. The presidential election isn’t one election, it’s 50 elections. Each state manages its election in its own way. I was looking at an example of a (I think Iowa) ballot paper from 2016 – voters would have turned up at the voting station to find 10 candidates for president on the ballot paper.  Even when it comes to the electoral collage they again manage that differently. In some states all the ‘electors’ will vote for the candidate that won that state – so a candidate could win a state by one vote and all that state’s electoral college votes will go to the that candidate, in others the state will split their electors proportionally between the candidates so a candidate can lose convincingly and still gain a significant number votes towards the electoral college..

There is a bit of an odd anomaly with early, particularly mail-in voting which is they don’t necessarily count the votes but they know who has voted. Many voters declare their affiliation on their voter registration, so without counting the votes you know how many ‘Registered Republicans’ and ‘Registered Democrats’ have voted and that information is often made public ahead of poling day.

In the last election, I think the postal votes were actually counted last in many states (at least in the swing states that mattered). This was known before the election and was part of the trumpers plans to discredit the result due that creating the apparent late democrat surge as the postal votes were counted.

views are pretty entrenched and floating voters are very rare in their political system

The way floating voters are portrayed has always been something of a myth, it has always been largely disparate groups, that are either encouraged or not to get out and vote, rather than people who will flip between parties. It is unfortunate that in both the US and the UK both major parties are more happy to disenfranchise voters rather then even try to offer progressive changes.

In the last election, I think the postal votes were actually counted last in many states

Also, as I understand it, the ballot has to be postmarked by election day, but it can be received later (which is fair because there are service members all around the world whose mail-in ballots might be delayed through no fault of their own.) So it actually makes sense to count the mail-in ballots last because they will be received last.

California mail-in ballots can be received one week after election day, if they are postmarked on or before election day, for example.
https://www.usvotefoundation.org/california-election-dates-and-deadlines