Republicans do."[10] In nearly "every election," Stirewalt elaborated, "Republicans win Election Day and Democrats win the early vote, and then you wait and start counting." It "[h]appens every time."[11]
President Trump's campaign team made sure the President was briefed on the timing of vote tallying. Stepien, his campaign manager, told the Select Committee that President Trump was reminded on election day that large numbers of mail-in ballots would still remain to be counted over the coming days.[12] Stepien added that he personally reminded the President that while early returns may be favorable, the counting would continue: "I recounted back to 2016 when I had a very similar conversation with him on election day … I recounted back to that conversation with him in which I said, just like I said in 2016 was going to be a long night, I told him in 2020 that, you know, it was going to be a process again, as, you know, the early returns are going to be positive. Then we're going to, you know, be watching the returns of ballots as, you know, they rolled in thereafter."[13]
Ordinarily, the "Red Mirage" anomaly does not create problems in the election process because candidates wait for the votes to be tallied before declaring victory or conceding. As Stirewalt emphasized, prior to President Trump, "no candidate had ever tried to avail themselves of this quirk in the election counting system."[14]
