is based on earlier incidents like the mail-in hassles in the NY primary, for example. Some of it is due to Trump's own nonsense about needing to know on election night. Some of it around the vast increase mail voting and the rule changes around those in various states. Now it's possible some states not used to that volume of mail-in will take longer to count, but really, how big a deal is that?

To start with, all states take days to count votes. All of them. Election night results are based on projections and statistical analysis and is a new phenomenon to accommodate TV. But there's a reason that states have until December to certify their counts and pick electors. There's a reason we don't install a new President until January (it used to me March!!!). Votes have to be counted and certified.

Of course, often those counts won't matter except for very close races. On election night if NY still has a lot of mail-ins to count, does anybody think that Trump is going to win NY? No. How about someplace like Alabama? Is Biden going to win Alabama? No. Now PA might take longer, but interestingly FL, which already has mail-in voting, can count fairly quickly. If it becomes apparent on election night that Biden will win FL, will anybody care about PA? If Trump wins FL but loses MI, MN, and WI, then PA will become far less important. The west coast is baked but counting problems probably won't be much of an issue in states that are less populous like NV or in a state like AZ where, again, mail-in happens with regularity.

Bottom line is that I think we may well know how this will go on election night or almost certainly within a day or two, unless we have more than one swing state that are within less that 1 percentage point difference. I don't think that's likely to happen.