(OPINION) Michael Snyder – Did you watch the presidential debate? All over America, people are still buzzing about it, because it was definitely unlike any presidential debate that we have ever seen before. But despite all the chaos, the debate gave us tremendous clarity on one very important issue.
Unless there is a blowout of historic proportions, it is exceedingly unlikely that either side will be willing to concede on the night of the election or any time shortly thereafter. In other words, the winner of the election may not be known until a long time after November 3rd, and this is being called “the nightmare scenario Wall Street wants to avoid”…
The winner may not be known for days or weeks — and even then, the election could be contested. That’s the nightmare scenario Wall Street wants to avoid. “It was chaos,” Kristina Hooper, chief investment strategist at Invesco, said of the debate. “I walked away from last night thinking there is an even greater chance of a contested election.”
The election of 2016 was very close, but Hillary Clinton conceded fairly rapidly because enough votes had been counted to make it clear that she was not going to be able to get enough electoral votes to win. But this time around it is being projected that up to 40 percent of the population will vote by mail, and counting votes that are sent in by mail is a very slow process.
And many of the votes that are sent in by mail will not even be received until a number of days after the election, and that will just prolong the period of uncertainty that we are potentially facing… One of the major uncertainties is how long it will take to count the surge of mail-in ballots that are expected because of the pandemic. Some states don’t even begin that process until Election Day. Others accept mail-in ballots received after Election Day if they are postmarked by a certain date. READ MORE
