There's been lots of talk lately that the upcoming U.S. presidential election could be a rehash of the 2000 election, when a winner is not known on election night and the country has to wait a bit longer for results. There seems to be a perfect storm brewing with the pandemic, the increase in calls for mail-in voting, the seemingly intentional dismantling of the USPS, the President's love of conspiracy theories, and the litigious nature of, well, everybody--there certainly is a non-zero chance that we will not know who the next President will be as soon as we usually do. In this thread, we'll all guess when this fucking waking nightmare will actually end.

Rules:
1. Your goal is to guess which day the election will be decided. We will count forward and backward; no screwy "going over" rules here. You have to select a month and a date, but you do not have to select the actual winner of the election. You don't have to guess exactly how it'll end, but feel free to speculate. Everyone is allowed only one guess.

2. We'll be going by the time in the U.S. on the East coast; use Washington, DC as your point of reference.

3. In the simplest scenario, we'll count the loser's concession speech as the end of the election, as that definitively marks the time when the campaign for the presidency is over (see below for a list of recent concession speeches and when they've come in relation to the election). We're working with the major two party candidates here, so it's either Trump or Biden. I don't care if Vermin Supreme continues to contest the results.

4. If there's no concession speech from the eventual loser, things get dicier (and more interesting), but we can let history be our guide. A contingent election in the House of Representatives (as in 1801 and 1825; see below) would mark the deciding date of an election if it came to that. If things get wrapped up in the courts, a final decision by the Supreme Court would decide the election in the case of no concession speech (so if Gore hadn't conceded in 2000, the election would've "ended" a day earlier). If Congress got involved, such as in 1876, we'd have to wait for the outcome of that to figure out what counts as the election's "last day." The absolute farthest we will go would be inauguration day; no matter what happens before it, it'll be called once a new President is sworn in (currently scheduled for 1/20/21). If the end date is unclear, I will convene a conference of RMers who will help decide; however, just like on RuPaul's Drag Race, my decision will be final.

5. You can guess between now and October 15, 2020 (recently extended!). Once someone chooses a date, it's taken, and you'll have to choose something else. Now get to guessing!

Important Upcoming Days:
November 3, 2020 - Election Day
December 14, 2020 - Electoral College Votes
January 3, 2021 - 117th Congress Sworn In
January 6, 2021 - Electoral College Votes Counted
January 20, 2021 - Inauguration Day

Recent Elections Ending With Concessions:
2016: Election Day November 8; Hillary Clinton conceded November 9 (1 day later)
2012: Election Day November 6; Mitt Romney conceded on November 7 (1 day later)
2008: Election Day November 4; John McCain conceded on November 4 (same day)
2004: Election Day November 2; John Kerry conceded on November 3 (1 day later)
2000: Election Day November 7; Al Gore conceded December 13 (36 days; this was the day after Bush v. Gore was decided at the Supreme Court)
1996: Election Day November 5; Bob Dole conceded November 5 (same day)
1992: Election Day November 3; George H.W. Bush conceded November 3 (same day)

Historical Elections Ended In Some Other Manner:
1800: Election Day ~mid-November; Thomas Jefferson defeated Aaron Burr in a contingent election in the House of Representatives on February 17, 1801 (approximately 3 months later). If you've seen Hamilton, this was in Act II. There was no set election date in 1800, but Wikipedia reckons it between the end of October and early December. Jefferson and Burr tied in the Electoral College on the same ticket, and TJ won on the 36th ballot in the House after 6 days of voting and jockeying for position.
1824: Election Day ~mid-November; John Quincy Adams defeated Andrew Jackson in a contingent election on February 9, 1825 (approximately 3 months later). America, what are you doing? Again, there was no set election day. Neither Adams or Jackson received enough electoral votes to win outright in the Electoral College. Adams won on the first ballot in the House.
1876: Election Day November 7; Rutherford B. Hayes was sworn into office on March 2, 1877 (115 days later) as a result of the Compromise of 1877. His opponent, Samuel J. Tilden, apparently never conceded. This has not been made into a broadway musical yet, probably because it was too depressing: Southern Democrats basically let Hayes have a highly contested election in exchange for federal troops being withdrawn from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction and ushering in the Jim Crow era.

Official Guesses

November 3, 2020 - 96583UP
November 4, 2020 - liebzz
November 5, 2020 - doug
November 6, 2020 - Mickey
November 7, 2020 - tree_
November 9, 2020 - Rob
November 10, 2020 - ruddo
November 11, 2020 - Jammer XCI
November 12, 2020 - blueviper
November 15, 2020 - Bi_3
November 20, 2020 - simple torture
November 24, 2020 - wease
December 4, 2020 - Argo
December 11, 2020 - chud
December 14, 2020 - Green Habit
December 25, 2020 - Jorge
January 20, 2021 - ellis
February 14, 2021 - burt

I'll start, and I'll give my explanation some other time when it's not the middle of the night: November 20, 2020.

I hope Kanye got enough signatures to get on the ballot in Wisconsin.

Not what this thread is about but ok.

Using the concession speech as the marker instead of the AP calling it really throws a wrench in the gears of my calculation. A situation where the votes have been counted, the AP calls it, and all reasonable people accept that Biden is the winner---yet Trump refuses to concede for invented reasons and his own pride, is a likely scenario. I think he would eventually concede, as there have been a lot of situations in which he has come out with a crazy stance and then quietly backed down from it to a more normal course a week or a month later. But that is hard to predict. The widespread mail-in voting is going to slow the vote count to an unpredictable level. Six weeks after the primary, there are still undecided congressional races in New York. That's obscene in a way only a few states are capable of. Unfortunately, one of those states is very definitely Florida, a state that has a chance of being decisive this year. In a normal year, with no pandemic and two reasonable candidates, with polling numbers like they are right now, I'd guess the concession speech would come a little after midnight on Wednesday morning, not long after polls close in Hawaii. This year, factoring in the excess time to count the vote and deal with Trump's ego, I'm going to guess:

December 4, 2020

Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride

If it wasn't clear from my original post, my reasoning behind this is that we're trying to predict, basically, when the campaigns for the presidency end and when the transition to either Trump's second turn or to the Biden administration begins. A concessions speech de facto ends someone's campaign, so that would be the easiest marker. There certainly are scenarios where either candidate could call for a recount in certain states, where those recounts might happen or not, where there could be court cases or acts of congress that muddy the waters, etc. Honestly, I'm more excited about the possibilities there and having to call an RM Great Council to determine when the campaigns actually end.

I can pretty easily see a scenario in which Trump loses and yet never concedes. If I was a gambler, I'd bet on never hearing a Trump concession speech.

January 20, 2021 - Inauguration Day, and Trump never concedes, but tweets about the crowd size from within a courtroom in NY.

My guess is this:

- we know the winner on election night and pretty handily. My guess is that Biden wins by a considerable margin.

- Trump does not give a concession speech but instead informs the press he is conceding despite irregularities “many people” are talking about despite the rout.

- Trump spends his last 2 months in office pardoning everyone he can, pushing through every policy to screw over the voters that spurned him all while demanding there shouldn’t have been an election and he deserves a do over because of how unfairly he was treated by the press, the deep state witch hunts, and that he doesn’t understand why he wasn’t easily re-elected since we’ve never had it so good than with him as president other than for fake news media that brainwashed the public.

-50/50 on whether he calls for armed conflict to install him as absolute ruler.

Give a date for this, my friend.

Early morning, November 4.

Chad will be mailed, not hung.


There will be 4 years of litigation, but current power structure is out.

November 10, 2020. Trump is already showing signs of buckling on the mail in thing. Republicans know that old people at risk of COVID, who will vote for Trump, want mail in. He's already encouraging it in Florida. But it will take a week to go over the results

September - rapidly increasing polarization leads to widespread bloodshed and reprisals

October - debates cancelled due to adrenochrome shortages reducing Biden to a babbling invalid

November - elections cancelled due to covid-20 outbreak. Post offices burned.

December - Trump declares martial law and anoints himself first emperor of America. West coast declares independence.

January - Trump suffers debilitating stroke. Military and deep state operatives seize power and begin purging opposition.

February - Hillary Clinton is installed as new president.

He just tweeted this

I'll say Novermber 11th since ruddo already said November 10th.

December 11th.

More specifically, SCOTUS decision comes down the Friday before the EC vote.