2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

[prag_prog]

So Harris County is already at 40% of 2016 raw turnout..that's just crazy. Based on what I read on twitter, one of the reasons for this huge turnout in Harris County is due to their County Judge Lina Hidalgo, a progressive who won in 2018

[prag_prog]

How reliable is TargetSmart for early voting? I've been seeing their Texas model shared a bunch on Twitter (Admittedly by conservatives) which shows Republicans leading the early vote 50-42.

I'm just confused considering there's no political party registration in Texas. Do they track who voted in the March primaries or something?

So, based on what I understand, for the states which don't have party registration data, they try to project using modelling based on demographics and some other historical voting data they have. I went through their data for Michigan, Wisconsin (both these states don't have any party registration) and it just doesn't make any sense. Data clearly shows that the states where we have party registration data available, Dems are having 2:1 or even 3:1 advantage when it comes VBM.  Even all the polls show VBM and Early voting will be dominated by Dems by significant margin.Why would it drastically be different just in these states? So I just think they have a flawed model for these states with no party registration.

[prag_prog]

One thing I am concerned about is ballots not being accepted after Nov 3rd in Michigan even if they are postmarked by Nov 3rd. Michigan state Dems initially passed the law to count the ballots even after Nov 3rd for 2 weeks as long as they are postmarked by Nov 3rd but then the Michigan court of appeals blocked this extention. Similar thing happened in Wisconsin too. Gotta hope that USPS doesn't experience any delays in next few weeks. Luckily, similar kind of extension was approved Pennsylvania.

[prag_prog]

I always thought Texas is the state where there is largest room to increase turnout if voting is made more accessible...their turnout % in general is pretty terrible, they were bottom3 in last general election.

[prag_prog]

Today's EV count at Harris will be around 70,000

[prag_prog]

Regarding Nevada, I looked at the recent NYT/Siena Nevada poll and they did ask about how the voters plan to vote. This is the breakdown I have from that poll -  

The poll has -

Dems:
42% - VBM
42% - Vote in person before Election Day
11% - Vote on Election Day.

Reps:
12% - VBM
45% - Vote in person before Election day
37% - Vote on Election Day

Based on this, the In Person voting numbers before Election Day should be fairly similar for both Ds and Rs. While Dems are expected to have overwhelming lead in VBM, Rs are expected to have overwhelming lead in Election Day voting.