Why vote count spikes are a normal part of elections

Early voting in the U.S. midterm elections is underway. Voters are deciding which party will control Congress, as well as numerous state legislatures and governors’ offices. Snopes’ fact-checkers are flagging rumors surrounding the election, debunking false statements by candidates and suspicious voter fraud claims with nonpartisan research and expert sources. Join our effort to keep this election fact-focused by becoming a Snopes member.

As the 2026 midterm elections near, misinformation from election cycles past lies poised to reappear online. 

For example, Snopes has previously reported on so-called “ballot drops,” which is when a large number of votes suddenly changes the outcome of an election.

Though “ballot drops” generally have specific and legitimate explanations that we will cover below, prominent figures such as U.S. President Donald Trump have attempted to frame them as examples of election fraud. 

During the vote count for the 2020 presidential election that former President Joe Biden won, Trump suggested (archived) on X that “ballot dumps” lost him several states where Republicans had been leading:

Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the “pollsters” got it completely & historically wrong!

Two years later, after the 2022 midterm elections, PolitiFact reported that the businessman Mike Lindell, then a highly visible Trump supporter, spread a number of graphs he claimed showed election fraud in the form of “ballot drops” that helped Democrats overtake Republicans in a number of races.

Despite the persistence of the “ballot drop” election fraud theory, sudden spikes in votes during ongoing counts usually have specific, legitimate explanations. Though it can appear that a lot of votes suddenly “enter” a count when a vote spike happens, it’s important to remember that those votes have been processed and counted by elections officials to verify they came from real, registered voters. 

The fact that a batch of votes is submitted to a count all at once reflects normal election procedures and is not in itself a sign of fraud, even if those votes lean heavily toward one party or the other.

Why do vote spikes happen?

In the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 midterm elections, clerical errors caused some vote spikes that officials later corrected. Other spikes were the result of election officials in an area that leaned heavily Democratic or Republican registering a large batch of counted votes all at once. 

The timing of vote spikes sometimes has to do with what types of ballots are in a given batch. For example, according to a report by the MIT Election Data + Science Lab (Page 10), Democratic voters were historically more likely than Republican voters to use mail-in ballots, meaning vote spikes that benefit Democratic candidates can happen when election officials start to count and report those ballots.

The Election Integrity Partnership, a nonpartisan coalition that reported on topics it found “demonstrably harmful to the democratic process” during the 2020 and 2022 elections, wrote about “ballot drops” in 2022 after Lindell shared graphs he claimed showed the alleged fraud in action.

The group wrote that vote spikes were “commonplace” but that people often misinterpreted graphs showing the spikes. It gave four main reasons for vote spikes:

• Vote counts are reported in batches and varying intervals.
• There can be delays in counting and tabulating in-person votes.
• Some states legally allow absentee and mail-in ballots to be counted prior to polls being closed, and thus those vote counts may be reported en masse.
• Voting “spikes” can also be caused due to clerical errors and are not limited to any particular political party or individual. 

This article will discuss these four reasons in turn. 

The law and policy institute the Brennan Center for Justice and the legal organization Campaign Legal Center also wrote about the spread of the “ballot drop” theory after the 2020 presidential election. Both organizations pointed to similar legitimate explanations for vote spikes during a count.

Batch reports and count delays

Snopes previously investigated one instance where officials reporting a large batch of counted votes created a “vote spike” that favored a Democratic candidate. On Nov. 18, 2020, we reported that the claim (archived), also shared by Trump, that Biden received a fraudulent “ballot dump” to eventually win Wisconsin was false. 

Rather than a fraudulent “ballot dump,” local media reported that Biden took the lead in Wisconsin when Milwaukee, the most-populous city in the state, reported its “overwhelmingly Democratic” 170,000 absentee votes around 3:30 a.m. Nov. 4.

Wisconsin is one of a few states in the U.S. where, by law, elections officials cannot begin to process mail-in ballots before Election Day, meaning they must verify and count mail-in ballots after polls open. Because counting mail-in ballots requires more verification than ballots filled out in person, this process can take longer, meaning those votes may be reported later in the count.

PolitiFact reported that a vote spike (archived) that appeared to favor Georgia’s Democratic candidate for Senate, Raphael Warnock, in the 2022 general election actually reflected Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, reporting a large batch of votes that skewed Democrat. 

Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, reportedly told PolitiFact, “In Georgia, we call a 9 p.m. upload toward one candidate ‘the Atlanta metro has reported.'” Sinners’ statement suggested that if votes from the Atlanta metro area created a vote spike, that was merely due to the city’s large population.

Elections officials in Georgia can process but cannot count any votes before polls close, meaning counts from races in the state can take longer to complete.

PolitiFact reported in 2022 that some — mainly Democrat-voting — cities lagged behind their states in how quickly they finished their counts meaning that in some places, large batches of “blue” (Democratic) votes came in comparably late in the count, which could also cause a legitimate vote spike.

The outlet wrote:

Because large cities are almost uniformly Democratic these days and small-population rural counties are almost always Republican, it’s easy to cast blame for slow counting on partisan factors. But the reality is that a lot depends on simple math.

Along the same lines, as examples from Wisconsin and Georgia show, vote spikes can often be attributed to demographics and math rather than conspiracy.

Mail-in ballots

As seen in Snopes’ report on the election results in Wisconsin in 2020, large batches of mail-in votes can change an election result late in the count. However, the Election Integrity Partnership wrote that mail-in ballots can also appear to give candidates a head start. 

For example, 33 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico allow elections officials to scan, meaning count, mail-in ballots before Election Day, though the results cannot be released before polls close. States that may have already counted some mail-in ballots will be able to release some results very quickly after the close of polls. 

In states that allow early scanning of mail-in ballots, early election-night results could skew Democratic because these voters are more likely to have used mail-in voting. Though this might look like a vote spike, the difference between the candidates will likely narrow as counts come in from areas with more in-person or Republican voters. In this scenario, no candidate is “finding” or “losing” votes. Rather, the early results reflect how an individual state has decided to count its votes.

Clerical errors

If vote spikes aren’t caused by the ballots themselves, they also can be caused by human error. 

For example, in the 2020 presidential election, a county clerk in Shiawassee County, Michigan, accidentally added a zero to Biden’s vote tally, reporting 153,710 votes for the Democrat instead of 15,371.  

The clerk in question, Caroline Wilson, reportedly told Agence France-Presse that officials corrected the mistake shortly after, suggesting that existing systems to catch such incidents were working. Trump went on to win the county after officials corrected the vote tally.

Likewise, in 2022, Rob Farbman, the executive vice president of Edison Research, which provides polling data to media outlets, reportedly told AFP a roughly million-vote spike for incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois happened because someone at Edison Research “added a 9 at the beginning of Duckworth’s number in Rock Island.” 

The mistake happened after the race had been called for Duckworth, the AFP reported, and Edison Research fixed the mistake shortly after it occurred.

Neither of these mistakes materially affected the result of the races, and both suggested that elections officials and companies such as Edison have systems in place that work to catch and correct vote-tally errors introduced by humans.

The bottom line

If readers encounter “ballot drop” theories as votes roll in during these midterm elections, they should stop and consider whether any of the above reasons might provide a specific, legitimate explanation for an apparent vote spike.

It is also worth remembering that the results reported on election night are never the final, certified results. In most races, media outlets are able to mathematically eliminate one candidate using the information from the counts provided and “call” the race. These media estimates are not, however, final results. 

Rather, elections officials will canvass and audit the counts from election night before certifying the result. This process allows officials another chance to review vote spikes and ensure that they happen for legitimate reasons.

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