This is, without a doubt, the most intensely scrutinized election in modern US history. It is also the most emotionally charged and anxiety-ridden. That it is happening during a global pandemic and that it will take days, or even weeks, to count all the votes only heightens the tension and stress of the days and weeks and possibly months ahead.

There is no way to pay attention to the election and think about the stakes without feeling some degree of apprehension and anxiety. There is nothing I can say that wouldn’t be an outright lie or distortion that would make this process feel good or worry-free. That said, the clearer our expectations are, and the more informed we are about how this process works, the easier it will be to take the news in stride and to not feel so emotionally invested in each new piece of information that comes in.

With that in mind, here is an election day/week/month primer to help explain what’s going on and what you should expect to happen.

1) The Electoral College

If you’re not familiar with how national elections work in the US, the most important thing to understand is the next president is not decided by who gets the most votes. The popular vote doesn’t matter - the electoral college vote does.

In the simplest, the electoral college is a proxy voting system. When you cast your ballot, you’re not voting for the president directly, instead you’re voting for how you want your electoral college representative to vote. Each state is assigned a certain numbers of electoral college representatives, each given one vote, and thus, each state carries a certain number of electoral votes. Crucially, this number is not proportionate to the population. This means that states with lower populations have an outsized say in who wins the presidency. It also means that who wins the presidency is not about who wins the most votes or who’s ahead in the national polls, it’s about who wins a key number of “swing” states - states whose electoral college votes are up for grabs by the Democrats or Republicans.

California, for instance, has the most electoral college votes in the country. It also always goes for the Democratic candidate. When the results come in on election night, we don’t pay attention to California because we already know how it’s going to go just as we know most of the South will always go for the Republican.

What we focus on instead are the states that sometimes go for the Democrat and sometimes go for the Republican. You will see Trump win a bunch of states on election day and in the days ahead and that’s okay - we expect him to and it frankly doesn’t really matter that he does. Knowing which states matter most in terms of Biden’s path to victory - the states whose “swing” votes he needs in order to have enough overall votes to win - is what’s most important. The rest is a distraction.

To help prepare your nerves then, here are the swing states where you should expect Trump to win:

Florida
Ohio
North Carolina

Here are the swing states you should expect Biden to win:

Virginia
Minnesota
Colorado
New Hampshire
Michigan

Here are the states that are uncertain and will ultimately decide the election:

Nevada
Iowa
Pennsylvania
Wisconsin
Arizona
Georgia

These are the expectations based on polling but remember, polling isn’t perfect and any one of these states could go in an unexpected direction.

Ultimately, whichever candidate reaches 270 electoral college votes wins. It is possible for each candidate to win 269 votes and to come to a tie. This has never happened but according to current models, it actually has a higher than usual chance of happening. It would be extremely funny and absurd if it did, but it won’t and you can safely ignore anyone suggesting it will (in the event of a tie, the House of Representatives decides who wins and the House is controlled by Democrats so Biden would win).

On election night, then, and in the days ahead, the vote counts that we really care about are with the states listed above since every other state is basically set in stone in terms of who its votes will go to.

Delayed Results and Victory Speeches

While the electoral college is the only institution that has the power to decide who is president (unless there’s a lawsuit like in 2000 - we’ll come back to that later), there are no restrictions on either candidate declaring premature victory. And that is what will happen tomorrow. Trump will declare that he has won and will be the next president of the United States no matter what happens on election night. This is something to be prepared for and expect and also nothing to worry about. He can declare it all he wants, it doesn’t make it true, and the road ahead will not be determined by what he says on election night.

Still, it’s important to understand that it may at first seem that he did legitimately win. Unlike previous elections, a huge percentage of votes will be cast by mail and by early voting. But many states do not allow vote counting to begin until election day, and mail-in ballots are not counted until after in person ballots, which means the results on election day will favor whoever gets the most in person votes.

And because Trump supporters overwhelmingly believe mail-in ballots are a scam, they will mostly be voting in person. Which means the first results we see will likely favor Trump in most swing states, even though he will likely end up losing many of those same states once all the votes are counted.

We should not expect to have definitive or confident results tomorrow night. Instead, what we will have are initial results that heavily skew in favor of Trump and only over the course of Wednesday and Thursday and Friday will we know the full picture. In the meantime, Trump will insist he won and that any votes still being counted aren’t legitimate. He has no power to throw out ballots or challenge vote totals, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try and there will likely be legal battles ahead to ensure that all votes get counted and that the electoral college actually follows the public will.

On the other hand, any state where Biden is ahead on election night is almost certain to go to him in the end for all the aforementioned reasons. Mail-in ballots overwhelmingly favor Democrats, which means if Biden is ahead in person, mail-in ballots will only strengthen his lead as they get counted.

The picture may look grim by the end of election night but that’s okay and it should be expected - a Biden victory is not likely to look like it on election night simply because it will take more than one day to count all the mail-in ballots, the vast majority of which will go to Biden.

Possible outcomes

The focus has so far, understandably, been on the presidential election. But the US Senate is also up for grabs on election day and while it isn’t quite as important as the presidency, it’s very close. Here are the four possible outcomes and what they mean, starting with the best going down to the worst.

1) Biden wins the presidency and the Democrats win the Senate

This is the best outcome for obvious reasons. But the full implications are even better than they seem at first glance.

If Biden wins but also gains control of the Senate, that means the Democrats would have total control of the two policy branches of government - executive and legislative (there is little-to-no risk of Democrats losing the House of Representatives). Normally, this would be fine but not revolutionary. Democrats are infamous for maintaining the status quo and doing very little to flex their power.

However, some things have changed over the years, not least of which is the newfound prominence of a real Left in the US.

Bernie Sanders and AOC are two of the most popular politicians in the country and if the Democrats take back the Senate, Bernie Sanders becomes the budget committee chairman. This is a wonky title but in practice it would mean Bernie Sanders would be the most powerful person in the legislative branch when it comes to what the government does with its money. Bernie would have massive influence in every policy arena and would have practical control in the Senate over what budget proposals get taken up.

This - it cannot be overstated - would be huge. And it’s just one example of what it would mean for the Democrats to take back the Senate.

With Biden as president, there would be no structural barrier to pushing for a left policy agenda with the only barrier (still big and still real) being popular will and organizing. It’s not an easy fight nor one we could assume we’d win, but with complete Democratic control, and with all the organizing momentum built up over the years on the left, there would be a very real and tangible opportunity to push the US government to the left and build socialist momentum for greater victories and more power down the road.

2) Biden wins and Republicans hold onto the Senate

This is simple: Republicans want Biden to fail and so oppose him on most things, but cave on a few as the more careerist Republicans fear too much obstruction will risk their seat.

In this scenario, things don’t get worse, but they get better slowly and in fits and starts as most of the progress comes from executive orders and gradual institutional change within different government bodies the president oversees - the EPA, Justice Department, etc.

3) Trump wins and Democrats win the Senate

With complete control of the legislative branch, Democrats would have the power to stop just about anything Trump wanted to do. Moreover, they’d have full authority to remove Trump from office. Whether or not they would is unclear, but with Democratic control of Congress, there would be little Trump could to further his agenda and most of the next two years - until the next election - would be spent at a standstill with little change for the better, but also little for the worse.

That is, assuming Democrats don’t decide to remove Trump office, which their base would be pressuring them to do every single day for two years.

4) Trump wins and Republicans hold onto the Senate

This is obviously the worst outcome and there’s not much to say here. It would be more of what we’ve had the last two years. It’s not apocalyptic - local and state power doesn’t vanish just because the federal government is working against us. But it does mean our work becomes harder and the same stressors and barriers we’ve faced would continue for at least another 2 years.

This is also the least likely outcome. There is no reason to make predictions about the outcome of election day - there’s simply too many variables to say anything with confidence. That said, paying attention to models and polls isn’t worthless and there’s little point in spending much time or energy over the next days or weeks analyzing and worrying about the least likely outcome. If it happens it happens, but it’s nothing any of us should become preoccupied thinking about.

Legal challenges and a coup

Trump can, and will, challenge any results that don’t favor him. He will try to get mail-in ballots thrown out and declare election fraud in any swing state that doesn’t go his way. His doing these things doesn’t in itself matter, but it does lay the groundwork for a long drawn out process and uncertainty in the weeks and even months ahead.

Now, to be clear, this may not matter at all. If Biden has a strong win then Trump will shout about it but he will ultimately lose steam as the political machine coalesces around a Biden presidency. Remember: Biden’s a Democrat but not a Leftist. If he were a Leftist, the state would fight tooth and nail to prevent him from taking office. But he’s not. And as a result, if Biden comes in strong and wins big, the rest of the government will prepare itself for the transition and likely decide it’s better to support Biden than to risk the instability of backing a Trump opposition.

If, however, Biden wins but only by a little bit, many in the government will resist taking sides and instead want to wait to see how things play out. In particular, all eyes will be on the Supreme Court.

In 2000, the Supreme Court ultimately decided the presidency when vote counts in Florida left uncertainty about who won. The Court decided in favor of Bush, a decision that looms large over the popular understanding of the Supreme Court. There is, then, significant and understandable worry that if Trump disputed the results and the case went before the Court, they would rule in favor of Trump.

This fear is well founded. We already have an example of the Court making a Republican president after a disputed election and two of the current justices were on Bush’s legal team in 2000 when he went before the court. That Trump would try to steal the election by using the Supreme Court to hand him a victory is a very reasonable anxiety and is one that will likely remain until January 20th when the next president takes office.

That said, there are reasons to think that won’t happen.

For one, the most important thing to understand about the national government in any wealthy first world country is that the power and authority of industry matters more than political ideology. That is to say, ultimately money matters more to the people with power than party loyalty.

The Supreme Court has a couple ideologues on it and they would support Trump no matter what. But mostly, the Supreme Court is made up of people with economic loyalties to businesses and power brokers who have no ideology - they just care about making money and growing their businesses. And if they feel that Biden is a safer bet than Trump, they will put pressure on the courts and other legal instruments to support Biden over Trump.

There are many reasons to think that Biden is, for many in power, preferable to Trump. Biden supports more regulations and would likely dampen their profits in many ways, but Biden is also consistent and reliable and that matters a lot. The stock market has gone all over the place under Trump and that has cost a lot of powerful people a lot of money and a lot of industries a lot of turbulence. They don’t hate Trump, but a president who would provide a consistent regulatory and investment environment, not to mention one isn’t at risk of randomly Tweeting something that could crash the market, is somethin a lot of influential people want. Biden is that person.

Moreover, the Supreme Court is made up entirely of people (sans Clarence Thomas) who care about their reputation and legacy. Ego is one of the defining traits of people working in that part of the government and, strangely, it’s entirely possible and not unlikely they would support Biden if they thought it would reflect better on their legacy and earn them public praise. They have ideologies of their own, and it’s true most of them are right wing, but whether Trump or Biden wins they get to keep their jobs for life. The only threat to their power is if the public turns against them and decides that the court needs to be radically reformed or changed, which began to happen after 2000. Another decision like that that would be hugely damaging to the court’s reputation and they may every well decide that it’s in their best interests to let Trump lose rather than risk an insurrection against the court.

It’s impossible to game out what would happen in any of these scenarios and nothing I’m saying here should be taken for prediction. Instead, I hope to illustrate that - whatever Trump does, however he reacts - there is no obvious or certain outcome, nor is there any way to predict or be confident how the courts would react to a Trump challenge.

This is an initial primer for thinking about the election and for setting expectations for the results. In the days ahead, I will share posts examining other elements of the election as well as offering some guidance for what you can do on an individual level beyond voting to help affect political outcomes and to build resilience for the work ahead.

If there’s one thing to take away from the above, I hope it’s this: There will be lots of drama on election day and the days that follow, but the actual arc of this election will be decided gradually and with much more nuance than the vast majority of the coverage will provide. When in doubt, err on the side of calm and waiting for more information before reacting. We are not going to get definitive results immediately or quickly, but the media makes its money peddling panic and drama so things will likely seem much more dire and tumultuous than they actually are.

This is not to say that things will go well or that there won’t be issues - there’s plenty of room for genuine drama and grim news - but rather, that whatever happens won’t happen quickly and that our nervous systems will be benefit from us reserving judgment until later in the week when we have a clearer picture of what’s going on and where things are heading.