The absentee/early vote thread

[Adam Griffin]

The huge number of absentee ballot requests among college-aged voters in NC: did that happen four years ago as well?

[Adam Griffin]

Absentee ballots started going out in Georgia yesterday, according to the data available from SoS. It's a shame that they don't have an option for viewing all of the state's data at once: it's broken down into individual files for each county regardless of how you sort it. No data on race or age in there, either. Here are the mailed absentee totals for the 25 counties with the most requests (60% of state's population):

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[Adam Griffin]

An early advantage for Clinton in Ohio:

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In 2012, Cuyahoga County accounted for 11.5% of the vote in Ohio. 17% of the absentee ballots are from Cuyahoga

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/10/06/clinton-campaign-claims-three-battleground-states-could-be-locked-through-early-voting/

Encouraging news.

She badly needs max turnout from Cuyahoga to carry Ohio.

Or the Democrats may just be cannibalizing their Election Day vote. That's what happened in Georgia in 2014: based on early vote totals, it appeared that the electorate was going to be 6 points blacker than in 2010 and with much higher turnout. Instead, turnout in 2014 was slightly lower than in 2010; you just had a lot more people show up during early voting overall, and disproportionately more Democrats on top of that. Democrats have increasingly becoming good at mastering early voting. It's part of the reason that the GOP has recently developed a hate-boner for it.

[Adam Griffin]

http://www.politico.com/blogs/charlie-mahtesian/2012/10/georgia-black-turnout-on-record-pace-147409

In 2012, the early vote was 33% black, and I think due to low election day turnout, was around 30% overall. Wouldn't be surprised to see black turnout down eventually (diehards out today).

But if we still see 30%+ 2 weeks from now, #BattlegroundGeorgia.

The black share of the early vote in Georgia will continue to climb over the next 3 weeks, likely to the point that it will fool those who don't know the state into thinking there's going to be a huge black turnout. In 2014, for instance, the black share of the early vote crept up from the high-20s gradually through early voting and ultimately ended up around 35%. Unfortunately, that was due mainly to cannibalization of Election Day vote, as the final black share of the electorate was 29% in 2014.

[Adam Griffin]

Indiana: Democrats leading the early voting surge according to survey

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That's actually really pathetic. Does Indiana limit early voting, are these absentee mail ballots, or what?

Marion County has 900k people: my relatively tiny county of 100k - of which 15% are undocumented - has been averaging 800 voters per day this week with just one early voting location.

[Adam Griffin]

It's one thing to take at face value the data in states that show partisan affiliation, massive numbers of newly-registered Democrats and unlikely Democrats voting, but in states where we don't have that specific data yet, I'd be cautious about celebrating higher early vote totals compared to four years ago. Between every two comparable election cycles over the past 10+ years, early vote totals have tended to increase, but it's just mainly Election Day vote being cannibalized.

[Adam Griffin]

Even when isolated to where sites weren't reduced, Blacks are 91% of where they were, whites 128%.

That number isn't potentially all that bad. Is this for advance in-person voting only, or is it all ballots cast thus far? Assuming it's the former:

Looking at the non-rogue counties...what is the status of absentee mail ballots at this particular point (accepted)? The Democratic ballots were off-the-chart compared to 2012 last I recall; I believe it has narrowed since.

I know I talk a lot about AIP voting cannibalizing ED voting, but Democrats are increasingly pushing it a step further; trying to convert early in-person voters into ABM voters. Is it possible that it is playing a role here; that the surge in mail ballots has cannibalized what was previously AIP vote, which before that was ED vote?

[Adam Griffin]

As of yesterday, Georgia crossed the one million mark in early votes/ballot requests (1,049,670). As a share of registered voters, 20.02% have voted or requested ballots thus far.

Here are two maps: one showing the percentage of early voters to have voted/requested thus far, and the other showing that number as above/below the statewide percentage. You can click on each county for more information.

County EV (10/26) Turnout As Share of RV (Click on the "map of geometry" tab at the top, since for whatever reason, I can't get this map to directly link this morning)

County EV (10/26) Turnout As Share of RV: Above/Below State Turnout

[Adam Griffin]

Cool! Is that requests though? (check Ballot Status = A)
http://www.electproject.org/early_2016

It says Michael has 1.04M requests, and 936K voted.

It's all entries by county from the absentee spreadsheet available via SoS, so I guess it does include requested-but-not-returned ballots. I didn't think to check for that; I just counted the number of rows in each spreadsheet...all 159 of them, unfortunately, since SoS is no longer putting all of them into one file.

[Adam Griffin]

Not sure if anybody has posted this yet, but it's kind of interesting:

https://floridaturnout.com/