How Many Provisional Ballots are Actually at Stake in the PA Lawsuit?

The most recent Trump campaign legal complaint in PA argues, in part, that in Biden-leaning counties, voters were given notice and an opportunity to cure absentee ballot defects and vote a provisional ballot, while voters in Trump-leaning counties were not.

For perspective, here are the numbers for provisional ballots cast statewide in PA (assuming I’ve added up correctly the numbers at the PA’ Department of State website:

Biden: 51,866

Trump: 47,333

Jo Jorgensen: 1,218

In advance, the expectation was that provisional ballots would tilt heavily toward Biden, as did absentee ballots. That’s because voters who show up at the polls and have the types of problems that lead them to have to cast provisional ballots are more likely to come from the groups that tended to support Biden.

In fact, as it turns out, Biden’s vote share among the provisionals was very close to his vote share for all the votes cast in PA. Statewide, Biden has won 50.0% of the vote, based on the most recent numbers, which are still not fully complete. Based on the numbers above, Biden won about 51.65% of the provisionals. If he had won only 50% of the provisionals, consistent with his overall statewide support, he would have had about 1,600 fewer provisional votes.

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