That’s when Election Day turns into election night, and each state starts reporting its vote totals. Virginia is an example of a state that usually has a geography-driven red mirage early on election night. Another factor that can cause vote mirages is partisan differences by vote mode — mail ballots, early in-person votes, Election Day in-person votes, and so on. This will produce a vote mirage if there are partisan differences between the earliest-returned mail ballots and the later-returned ones. As Election Day votes were reported in the next few hours of election night, the size of the blue mirage shrunk to about 3.5 points.

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