2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

[Asta]

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?

They claim they predict it based on demographics and consumer interests.

NYT/Siena poll shows that Democrats are dominating among those that already voted in MI and WI yet TargetSmart shows -2% and 9% lead for Democrats, respectively. Based on their modeling, in some states, Democrats are actually doing worse this year than in 2016. They clearly are doing something wrong.

[Asta]

Wisconsin: Mails in ballots requested: R +2
                Mails in ballots and early in person ballots returned: D +2

Is this data collected by looking at whether someone previously voted in the Democratic or GOP primaries? We don’t have party registration so I’m wondering as to what they’re getting this from.

That's what they claim: voting history, demographics and consumer interest. But this completely conflicts with polls showing that those that voted already are overwhelmingly democratic. I think 25% of Democrats in WI that were polled already voted early; only 5% of Republicans according to Siena/NYT poll.

Either polls will be historically atrocious or TargetSmart is up to something.

[Asta]

Wisconsin: Mails in ballots requested: R +2
                Mails in ballots and early in person ballots returned: D +2

Is this data collected by looking at whether someone previously voted in the Democratic or GOP primaries? We don’t have party registration so I’m wondering as to what they’re getting this from.

That's what they claim: voting history, demographics and consumer interest. But this completely conflicts with polls showing that those that voted already are overwhelmingly democratic. I think 25% of Democrats in WI that were polled already voted early; only 5% of Republicans according to Siena/NYT poll.

Either polls will be historically atrocious or TargetSmart is up to something.

Well given TargetSmart's history they're up to smth alright, being massively off as per normal for them lol

I don't know their history so you fill me in. In WI's case, Democrats are actually doing worse (42-33) at this point than in 2016 (51-35). It defies logic.

[Asta]

https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/

In TX, the age looks more favorable for Democrats at least compared to 2016.
(2016) in parenthesis

18 = 9.3% (1.8%)
30-39 = 12.3% (0.6%)
40-49 = 14.9% (0.5%)
50-64 = 30.0% (3.6%)
65+ = 33.5% (93.5%)

I mean their modeling is funky. 94% of early voters in 2016 were 65+ year old? That can't be right.

Nonetheless, I still think TX age is far more favorable to Democrats, at least compared to 2016. That said, TargetSmart really needs to fix their modeling.

[Asta]

Weird that weekend voting is slower than weekday. Who are all these people who have a free hour to vote during the week but not on the weekend?

Just me but I would rather vote on weekday than weekend.

Now that I work remotely, I like to take more time off here and there to go out to get some breeze. That wasn't possible when I went to my office. I use weekend to either catch up on shopping, have more family time and binge on sports/TV.

[Asta]

Steve Schale regarding Florida:

"For historical purposes, yesterday:
VBM: 150,907 votes (Dem +12,132)
Early: 366,406 votes (Dem +261)
In total, 3,025,778 have voted, and D's hold a 482,762 voter edge."

"Republicans will "win days" in early voting.  For context, there are about 450K more GOP voters with voting history in the 16 and/or 18 elections than there are Democrats left to vote in that cohort.   In other words, their pie of certain to nearly certain voters left to vote is simply bigger - so it becomes a math question more than anything. "

[Asta]

I feel like citing raw # of lead in Florida rather than by % to portray the dynamics of the race is misguided.
Just look at the Siena/NYT poll.

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/flpa-0930-crosstabs/16c21b7ab34ed4d1/full.pdf

Vote intention (D/R/I)

Mail (42/24/38)
Early voting in person (34/23/25)
Voting on election day (18/48/35)

In other words, Democrats are supposed to have a lead in both mail and early voting in person. The fact that Republicans are outpacing in early voting so far might mean that either greater % of Republicans than estimated are demonizing mail voting, or that Democrats are over-worried about covid and sticking to mail voting.*

The latter seems unlikely to me, at least enough to the point that it skews the picture of the race. Not a doomer, but I'm not sure that Democrats are doing as well as people are suggesting.

Edited*