Election Impact Score Sheet
Election Impact Score Sheet
Do you know anyone in Arizona?
Research shows that reminders from friends and family to vote have a bigger effect on turnout than anything campaigns do.
One of the best ways you can help is to scroll through your contacts (or use apps like VoteWithMe) to find people you can check in with to see if they plan to vote or need help doing it.
This chart lets you tally the effect of your reminders on the outcome based on who you've contacted and where they live.
Election impact score sheet
*Multiplier based on 538 presidential vote impact, plus points for senate and local elections
In smaller text, to the right of the main score sheet, a duplicate of the score sheet with red tally marks and points is shown
Followed by an arrow, pointing to the "Your election impact" total box in the main table, is this text
Based on turnout experiments, 10 points on this scale has roughly as much effect on the  outcome as one average vote. For every 10 points you tally, it's as if you voted again!
Below the main score sheet table
[Click for printable version]
Share a pic of your score sheet with #Hashtag , and be sure to send a copy to Nate Silver to let him know to include those extra votes in his model!

This comic was published the day before Election day in the United States (November 3, 2020), which features a contentious presidential election between the incumbent, President Donald Trump , and the challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden . The United States does not elect presidents by popular vote, but instead uses an electoral college system, with each state getting a predetermined number of electoral votes, and a majority of electoral votes needed to win an election. The previous presidential election in 2016, which involved Trump and Hillary Clinton , was won by Trump, who lost the popular vote by 2 percentage points, but won the electoral vote 304-227 (270 was needed to win the election).
Electoral college votes are distributed based on the number of congressional representatives of each state, with the most populous state, California, receiving 55 votes, and the least populous states which are Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming receiving 3 votes each, along with the District of Columbia, which as of the writing of this comic was not a state. Because the United States Congress has two legislative houses, with only one (the House of Representatives) apportioning representatives to the states based on their percentage of the US population and the other (the Senate) allocating two senators to every state regardless of population, smaller states have a higher ratio of electoral college votes to population than larger states do.
Additionally, most states (all but Nebraska and Maine) give all of their electoral college votes to whoever earns the most votes in their state. This means that a small change in the percentage of voters who favor one party's candidate over another within a state doesn't make a difference on the final outcome unless that change tips the scales between the two candidates. Therefore, it's easy to predict the final electoral college votes of many states where one party has a clear lead. Other states, including some of the ones listed by Randall, are considered " swing states ", as they are competitive to both of the two major parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party .
Together, these factors make voting in some states - "swing states" with smaller populations - much more likely to influence the outcome of the election than others. Randall in this comic is encouraging his readers to " get out the vote " and encourage voting among their friends and family who live in these nineteen states which are most likely to affect the outcome of the election. The rest of the 31 states (and, presumably, the District of Columbia) are grouped under the "all other states" bucket, presumably as their election outcome is "safely" for Biden or Trump.
Per many analysts, the state of Pennsylvania is considered an absolute necessity for Trump, and considered very important for Biden. This is why Pennsylvania is weighted the most heavily in Randall's comic.
Of course, just because a state may be a clear win for one party does not mean the votes of anyone who votes for the other party are wasted. A higher percentage of voters voting for the losing candidate sends a signal that the state is more competitive than assumed, which forces representatives to compromise and could make future voters more likely to show up because they believe their vote is more likely to matter. Additionally, many "down-ballot" races, like races for governorships, US Congress, state legislatures, and county governments, may be more competitive than the presidential race, and may have just as much or more impact on most people's lives. Randall accounts for some of these local races in deciding how to rank the states on the scoresheet.
The text at the bottom says to post your scoresheet with #Hashtag . The "#" symbol (pronounced "hash") denotes a hashtag on platforms like Twitter, used to tag one's post as relating to the topic named following the symbol. However, this hashtag (said out-loud as "Hashtag Hashtag") would relate a post to the topic of hashtags rather than elections or votes, and so for the scoresheet is nonsensical and doesn't describe anything useful. It also refers to Nate Silver's famous election forecast model at FiveThirtyEight . Randall closes by urging people to contact Nate Silver to tell him to adjust his model to account for the added votes they have caused, but as the form doesn't indicate which candidate the filler has voted for or plans to vote for, never mind the people contacted, there's no way for him to know what sort of update to make.  Perhaps the flurry of posts bearing the hashtag "#Hashtag" and indicating an effort to increase civic engagement will be a heartwarming surprise on a day that will probably be very busy and stressful for him.
The title text explains that even if one thinks that their family and friends always vote, or that their reminder to vote won't work, they should do so anyway because of the chance they may be wrong.
As shown in previous comics ( 1756: I'm With Her and others), Randall was a supporter of 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton (who ran against Trump), but this announcement should be equally applicable to supporters of either of the two main candidates in the current presidential race.
The comic includes a link for a printable version: https://xkcd.com/2380/election_impact_score_sheet.pdf
As for all other states: President Trump won Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming; while former Vice President won California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington.
Do you know anyone in Arizona?
Research shows that reminders from friends and family to vote have a bigger effect on turnout than anything campaigns do.
One of the best ways you can help is to scroll through your contacts (or use apps like VoteWithMe) to find people you can check in with to see if they plan to vote or need help doing it.
This chart lets you tally the effect of your reminders on the outcome based on who you've contacted and where they live.
Election impact score sheet
*Multiplier based on 538 presidential vote impact, plus points for senate and local elections
In smaller text, to the right of the main score sheet, a duplicate of the score sheet with red tally marks and points is shown
Followed by an arrow, pointing to the "Your election impact" total box in the main table, is this text
Based on turnout experiments, 10 points on this scale has roughly as much effect on the  outcome as one average vote. For every 10 points you tally, it's as if you voted again!
Below the main score sheet table
[Click for printable version]
Share a pic of your score sheet with #Hashtag , and be sure to send a copy to Nate Silver to let him know to include those extra votes in his model!
