Philip Bump: “The nadir of a year riddled with uncertainty, stress and tumult might arrive in early November, when an unusual presidential contest spurs a multistate fight over absentee ballots and confirmed results. While we’ve seen close presidential races in the past, we haven’t seen a contest in the modern era in which we can justifiably expect a number of state contests to be resolved only after days of ballot-counting. It poses a unique opportunity for bad actors to inject misinformation into the situation and for fury and frustration to build. Or, perhaps, things won’t be that bad after all. A national poll from Quinnipiac University published Wednesday afternoon presented new data on how Americans plan to vote and when they expect to learn the result.”

“As has consistently been the case in Quinnipiac’s polling this year, former vice president Joe Biden holds a national lead over President Trump, with members of each party broadly supporting their party’s candidate. While this is one poll and doesn’t include consideration of absentee or early votes counted before or on Election Day itself, Trump will almost certainly declare that the results tallied that day should stand, as he has in the past. It will be incumbent, then, that the public broadly understand that the results counted at that point aren’t necessarily reflective of the eventual outcome. The good news is that most people do. Only about 3 in 10 Americans think we’ll know who won the election on Nov. 3 itself. The large majority say we won’t — including Democrats and Republicans in equal measure.”