2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

[forsythvoter]

I wonder if Montgomery County could see some pretty large swings to Biden this year. My county (Forsyth) in GA seems pretty similar (outer suburban, large planned communities similar to the Woodlands) and has a large contingent of Trump'16 voters defecting to Biden this year.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY (Houston suburbs)
2012:   15,021       5.7%
2016:   20,432       6.6%
2018:   20,158       6.0%
2020:   20,874       5.7%

LOL, one of the counties showing no bump is one of the Republican bastions of the state. They'd better hope the voters show up on Election Day now that the rest of Texas is becoming a functioning democracy for the first time.

Hi Forsythvoter--- and belated welcome to the Forum!

Not totally in a position to do a complete compare / contrast analysis between both Counties as part of a Senior Project or Grad School Paper.

Still, having lived in NW Harris County for 4-5 Years, places like Magnolia, TX was just right down the road, drop over to Spring (No Prob), The Woodlands fun place to always visit with co-workers and friends that lived all around the area way back roughly from '12> '15, this naturally attracted my attention, and might at least be able to speak a bit on your original question.

Naturally, in order to more properly examine an extremely fast-growing place such as Montgomery County (9th fastest growing in TX by POP and/or % Increase), we must first examine where the voters reside.

The Woodlands gets a lot of sex appeal, as perhaps it is the most well known Community within Montgomery County, because of it's location along I-45, a major Music Venue, where me and my wife saw Black Sabbath reunited back in the early / Mid 2010s, awesome place where "The Villages" was essentially part of a decentralized structure of Municipal Government, and honestly had we been planning in staying in Texas for longer, while well have forked over the $$$ to buy a condo or rent an apartment and deal with the long commutes down the SH's.

Still only one joint in a sprawling county with about 600k residents... almost large enough to get it's own CD if you follow Oregon style districting laws...

Let's just briefly attempt to break down the vote by vote share by place looking at the 2016 GE PRES results and raw votes.



Now let's look at it from a % by Place Scenario:



These numbers are potentially devastating for DEMs in one the fastest growing counties in Texas...

PUB's grabbing a +100k Raw Vote Margin, not gonna be good, especially if low turnout elsewhere within Metro H-Town / Space City...

Still, maybe we have some good numbers from 2018 to help us continue our rush caused by the '18 GE-TX-SEN numbers?

Here are the Raw Vote Numbers by Place in Montgomery County Texas for US SEN in 2018:



Naturally, we also need to look at this in terms of % of the Vote for the 2018 SEN Election:



So... maybe potentially some good news for DEMs to cut down PUB margins in Montgomery County significantly, but Cruz holding virtually steady in The Woodlands in '18, and only dropping a few points in the Montgomery County areas around Spring, do not indicate a massive DEM swing here in 2020, unless Biden ends up winning Texas.

Sure the numbers from Magnolia zip codes might suggest some hope for DEMs in 2020 PRES & SEN swings, and help shave a few % off the margins.

Awesome analysis - thanks! I think Cruz is also from the Houston area so he might have done a few percentage points better in that region than the underlying trend in 2018.

Montgomery Area, not sure how many of y'all ever been out there, but +15k Trump>HRC and +15k Cruz>Beto with roughly 68% GE PRES Margins in '16 and +67% PUB Margins in '18, doesn't really look like we will see massive swings, despite COVID and Biden increase support levels among White Catholics and White Evangelicals...

ExtremeRepublican might have some interesting perspectives with compare/contrast, since Montgomery County might perhaps be somewhat similar to Williamson County, TN, which perhaps might even be more portable when it comes to places like Forsyth County, Georgia.

[forsythvoter]

Excellent analysis, thanks NOVA Green! Only other comment is that Cruz is also from the Houston metro area so he might have done a few percentage points better than the underlying trend would suggest.

[redjohn]

Dane county remains ahead of Milwaukee in raw vote count. I imagine Milwaukee jumps ahead after in-person absentee voting opens up, but it's pretty clear the majority of voters in Milwaukee county will vote on election day. I hope the city is prepared to deal with the turnout.

[kireev]

=it's pretty clear the majority of voters in Milwaukee county will vote on election day.=

I actually don't think so. 45% of registered voters in Milwaukee county requested mail ballots. And we have in-person early vote is coming up.

[ExSky]

I think we are beginning throws of Montgomery county shifting to purple. I believe there will be a large close in the gap this cycle but it’ll take a couple of cycles to truly be competitive

[redjohn]

=it's pretty clear the majority of voters in Milwaukee county will vote on election day.=

I actually don't think so. 45% of registered voters in Milwaukee county requested mail ballots. And we have in-person early vote is coming up.

You may be right. Depends on how many eligible, non-registered voters show up on election day.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1316720006160408579

[Penn_Quaker_Girl]

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1316720006160408579

I'm guessing that exceeds expectations?

[Non Swing Voter]

https://twitter.com/HarrisVotes/status/1316773808808882178

[Flabuckeye]

Florida Dems poised to surpass entire 2016 VBM totals today

Entire Dem Vote By Mail 2016-   1,049,809
Dem Vote 10/15 (19 days left)-  1,043,514

[Holmes]

I’m looking forward to seeing what turnout is like today for North Carolina’s first day of in person early voting.

[Non Swing Voter]

6 states over 1 million votes locked in:

Florida
California
Texas
Michigan
Virginia
New Jersey

[Holmes]

6 states over 1 million votes locked in:

Florida
California
Texas
Michigan
Virginia
New Jersey

Wild. I expect Georgia to join them today and North Carolina probably by the end of the weekend now that early voting has begun.

[Dr. Arch]

6 states over 1 million votes locked in:

Florida
California
Texas
Michigan
Virginia
New Jersey

Wild. I expect Georgia to join them today and North Carolina probably by the end of the weekend now that early voting has begun.

Wisconsin and Minnesota should be there by the end of next week easily, since early voting starts next Tuesday.

[GP270watch]

Florida Dems poised to surpass entire 2016 VBM totals today

Entire Dem Vote By Mail 2016-   1,049,809
Dem Vote 10/15 (19 days left)-  1,043,514

Surpassed!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17YKazYaUMZ33vmd4YHDKcVdlTkP5DmnHQQlAttwOzL0/edit#gid=1837208868

 We'll really get a good sense of the race in Florida next week when early voting starts.

[swf541]

Can we just talk about early voting in this thread please

[Rep Jessica]

Florida Dems poised to surpass entire 2016 VBM totals today

Entire Dem Vote By Mail 2016-   1,049,809
Dem Vote 10/15 (19 days left)-  1,043,514

Surpassed!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17YKazYaUMZ33vmd4YHDKcVdlTkP5DmnHQQlAttwOzL0/edit#gid=1837208868

 We'll really get a good sense of the race in Florida next week when early voting starts.

What was the republican total mail in ballots in 2016?  

[GP270watch]

Florida Dems poised to surpass entire 2016 VBM totals today

Entire Dem Vote By Mail 2016-   1,049,809
Dem Vote 10/15 (19 days left)-  1,043,514

Surpassed!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17YKazYaUMZ33vmd4YHDKcVdlTkP5DmnHQQlAttwOzL0/edit#gid=1837208868

 We'll really get a good sense of the race in Florida next week when early voting starts.

What was the republican total mail in ballots in 2016?  

https://dos.myflorida.com/media/697363/early-voting-and-vote-by-mail-report-2016-gen.pdf

Republican - Vote by Mail: 1,108,053

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

So how bout that early voting!

[Flabuckeye]

Republican total VBM in Florida for 2016 was 1,108,053

[Non Swing Voter]

holy crap, Texas is already up to 18.3% of its TOTAL 2016 vote after 2 days of early voting and it seems like the numbers are steady (though not quite as big) today!

[kph14]

holy crap, Texas is already up to 18.3% of its TOTAL 2016 vote after 2 days of early voting and it seems like the numbers are steady (though not quite as big) today!

It's actually over 20% as of yesterday as the statewide numbers only have around 60,000 early voters in Harris county. We know though that Harris had over 240,000 voters in two days of early voting

[Rep Jessica]

Florida Dems poised to surpass entire 2016 VBM totals today

Entire Dem Vote By Mail 2016-   1,049,809
Dem Vote 10/15 (19 days left)-  1,043,514

Surpassed!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17YKazYaUMZ33vmd4YHDKcVdlTkP5DmnHQQlAttwOzL0/edit#gid=1837208868

 We'll really get a good sense of the race in Florida next week when early voting starts.

What was the republican total mail in ballots in 2016?  

https://dos.myflorida.com/media/697363/early-voting-and-vote-by-mail-report-2016-gen.pdf

Republican - Vote by Mail: 1,108,053

wow, republicans led in 2016 in the mail ballots, while democrats lead this year by 425,000 and the vbm share of the total vote is going to be far higher then 2016. Not good for Trump.

[Holmes]

I think Florida’s early voting will give us a really good sense of how the state is shaping up. There’s over 5 million mail ballot requests in the state which will almost all be returned probably, and if a few million more vote early, it won’t matter how Republican the Election Day vote is if the vast majority of votes will already have been cast.

[Non Swing Voter]

OK here is what I think the early vote might be pointing to so far.  Trump might be doing slightly better in the upper midwest than the polls indicate.  On the flip side, the polls might not be capturing all of Biden's vote in the south.  TX/GA/FL/NC might be a little bit better for Biden than people currently think.