24 United States The EconomistAugust 22nd 2020
21ery five ballots sent by mail were rejected—
more than three times the statewide rejec-
tion rate from 2016. In November, election
workers could be inundated with ballots
that could take weeks to count.
Using our election-forecasting model,
polls on how likely voters are to vote by
mail and how often postal votes typically
get rejected, we have tried to quantify the
effect that more postal voting might have
on the election. There are four factors to
consider: the share of voters casting ballots
by post; the share of those ballots that get
rejected (eg, because they arrive after the
deadline); the share of those ballots that get
cast for each candidate; and the overall
share of the vote going to Mr Trump or to
Joe Biden regardless of voting method.
We obtained data on these factors from
a variety of sources. For the likelihood of
voting by mail, we rely on a Pew Research
Centre poll of voters between July 27th and
August 2nd. According to this survey, 39%
of voters are planning to cast postal votes
this year. A 2018 canvass of state data from
the United States Election Assistance Com-
mission, which helps states with adminis-
trative issues related to voting, revealed
that the average rejection rate for postal
votes was about 4% in states with the least
vote-by-mail infrastructure and experi-
ence, and 1% in the best-prepared—though
rates in extreme cases can exceed 15%.
For the partisan composition of postal
votes, we analysed data from YouGov,
which conducts polls on The Economist’s
behalf, and found that roughly 80% of vot-
ers who are planning to cast their ballots
for either Messrs Trump or Biden by post
favour the Democratic candidate. Finally,
for the share of voters nationally who will
pick Mr Biden over Mr Trump, we took pre-
dictions from our presidential forecast.
There is no secret formula for combin-
ing these numbers. What happens, for ex-
ample, if even more people vote by mail,
but they are less Democratic? What if the
race is closer than we predict? To answerthese questions, we generated 100,000 dif-
ferent combinations of our four factors
and altered the results of our election fore-
cast accordingly. For each simulation,
Democrats get punished more by postal-
service and election-office inefficiencies
(deliberate or not), when the election is
close, when more votes are cast by mail and
if those votes lean towards Mr Biden. In
sum we find that slightly above-average re-
jection rates for postal ballots could clip
about 0.6 percentage points from the
Democratic candidate’s vote margin. But in
the very unlikely case where rejection rates
approach 10% in the average state—more
than three times the normal rate—Mr Bi-
den could lose closer to four percentage
points relative to his standing in a fair con-
test (see chart).
Although such a scenario is unlikely,
even small glitches with postal voting
cause a sizeable increase in the probability
of a recount in one of the decisive states.
Failure of election workers to attach post-
marks to ballots, voters assigning signa-
tures that do not match the state’s rolls
(typically because elderly voters have trou-
ble with the pen, or young voters have no
record against which to match), and failure
to deposit a ballot before the deadline are
all common errors that can lead postal
votes to be rejected—and they only become
more common when more people vote by
mail. According to our modelling, the
chance that a marginal state ends up in re-
count territory (typically when the margin
between the candidates is less than half a
percentage point) is around 5%, before fac-
toring in trouble with vote-by-mail. It
nearly doubles to 9% when these postal
simulations are taken into account. Few
Americans who voted in 2000 will have
forgotten that debacle, when after several
weeks Florida’s hanging chads decided the
presidency. A large increase in voting by
mail, plus a big increase in rejected ballots,
could lead to a repeat in November, even if
Mr DeJoy is as good as his word. 7Abnormal distribution
United States presidential election, 2020
100,000simulatedoutcomeswithvaryingamountsofpostalvotingandrejectedballotsSource:TheEconomistDecreaseinDemocratic
votemarginProbabilityofa recountin
atleastonedecisivestateMedian Median012
Decrease in Democratic vote margin,%points Probabilityofa recount,%Simulations,%34 5 10 15 20010128
6
4
210
8
6
4
2
012Simulations, %L
awrence otis grahamrecalls where
he first met Kamala Harris, last summer,
in Martha’s Vineyard. It was at the holiday
home of Spike Lee, a film director, who held
a $1,500-a-head fundraiser for the woman
who is now number two on the Democratic
ticket. “She is the new Barack Obama for
us,” says the thrilled Mr Graham, an author
and property lawyer from New York. By
“us” Mr Graham means African-Ameri-
cans, and in particular the glitziest end of
African-American high society.
He knows of whom he speaks. He made
a name in 1999 by publishing “Our Kind of
People”, a sympathetic insider account of
the habits, clubs and lifestyles of America’s
wealthiest black families. Early on the
book, now in its 37th printing, proved con-
troversial. Some whites were ignorant of
how black millionaires had thrived, a few
of them since the 1870s. “People often don’t
think of blacks having different socioeco-
nomic classes,” he says. Some fumed at be-
ing publicly named as part of a black aris-
tocracy; others were furious for being left
out. Some poorer black readers, in turn,
raged at the wealthy.
On average black Americans remain sig-
nificantly less well-off than whites, includ-
ing among the richest. Among the top 10%
of black earners, for example, the median
family has accumulated assets worth
$343,160, said a Brookings Institution re-
port in February. For the equivalent top 10%
of white families it was more than five
times higher, at $1,789,300. By one Federal
Reserve measure, around 2% of black fam-
ilies have assets worth more than $1m; over
15% of white ones do.
Yet even if the African-American elite is
not huge, it is influential, as a planned tele-
vised serialisation of Mr Graham’s book
will show. The most prominent black fam-
ilies long formed invitation-only clubs
where they socialised, created professional
networks and presented their children at
debutante balls. A prime example is Jack
and Jill of America, founded in 1938, a soci-
ety which claims 40,000 members in 247
chapters, and which is devoted to shaping
children into future leaders in business,
society and politics.
It continues to go strong. This week it
held its 44th national convention—a four-
day, virtual shindig. It is unabashedly for
the most successful. Danielle Brown, its
president, dislikes the word “elite”, but
says 98% of members’ children attend uni-CHICAGO
How does the black upper class
respond to Black Lives Matter?America’s black eliteOur kind of people