2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

[Non Swing Voter]

https://twitter.com/davebjerke/status/1310697919985713152

[Non Swing Voter]

The WI and VA numbers are pretty incredible.

[Non Swing Voter]

https://twitter.com/DaNumbersGuy/status/1311078308273098752?s=20

is that of total registered voters?

[Non Swing Voter]

The idea that early voting means nothing is crazy.  Democrats are banking tons of votes in some of these states.  They can just check these voters off the list and focus on others.  Republicans need to make sure they get a huge turnout on Election Day during a pandemic, while their candidate is turning everyone off to politics and when the campaign is financially strapped compared to Democrats. 

[Non Swing Voter]

The idea that early voting means nothing is crazy.  Democrats are banking tons of votes in some of these states.  They can just check these voters off the list and focus on others.  Republicans need to make sure they get a huge turnout on Election Day during a pandemic, while their candidate is turning everyone off to politics and when the campaign is financially strapped compared to Democrats. 

Yes the "early voting means nothing" canard is based on the assumption that both parties equally engage in early voting. That's just not true this time.

Right, and I think Republicans have gotten used to their base being educated, upper income, reliable voters who they didn't even have to reach out to but would vote absentee or show up on Election Day, which would offset the fact that there are simply more democrats than republicans in this country.  Now they have a situation where Democrats are handily winning educated, reliable suburban voters.  Even worse, Trump is alienating old people, another reliable bloc.  So basically the current math is = More Dems nationally, more Dem votes being banked before Election Day.  Republicans are hoping for a Hail Mary of massive turnout of low propensity Trump voters on Election Day, which is unlikely to materialize in the kind of numbers they need to offset all of the above facts. 

[Non Swing Voter]

https://twitter.com/davebjerke/status/1311399431271591936

[Non Swing Voter]

so is turnout higher or lower than we expected at this point?  I'd say some states like South Dakota, Virginia, and Wisconsin have surprisingly high turnout.

[Non Swing Voter]

Still too early, but these 200k first FL votes look great for Democrats.

because of 131k votes? LOL dems are expected to do well in early voting if not they are def losing.

There are actually about 237k votes in and Dems have 54% of those or a 62k vote advantage. As it was said it’s still early but generally the split is much much more even.

yup i agree - if the spread gets to like 300k dem advantage than repubs should be worried

at this rate it very well could in a couple of weeks...

[Non Swing Voter]

I don't think it's worth paying much attention to early voting until right before election night. We still don't have enough data at all.

With some states already approaching 25% of their 2016 turnout more than a month still out, I disagree.

Right, and Trump's entire re-election strategy seems to be suppress turnout so his base makes up a disproportionate share of the electorate.  Based on WI and VA numbers it's clear that's not going to happen so Trump needs to come up with a strategy to actually convince voters.

[Non Swing Voter]

I don't think it's worth paying much attention to early voting until right before election night. We still don't have enough data at all.

With some states already approaching 25% of their 2016 turnout more than a month still out, I disagree.

You're citing statistics that mean absolutely nothing of predictive value. Let's see what turnout is right before the election.

Banking a huge proportion of your voters a month early is a helpful indicator of what's happening.

[Non Swing Voter]

I think this thread should focus more on reporting early voting numbers and looking at them from a numerical standpoint and not get into long back and forths about who's going to win based off the numbers.

[Non Swing Voter]

Seems unfair that some counties get ballots before others in the same state...

[Non Swing Voter]

https://twitter.com/chucklindell/status/1311718569189806089

Seems unfair that some counties get ballots before others in the same state...

Larger counties need to get them earlier because of how long it would take to process/send them.

It seems the opposite is happening.  Miami Dade sending them out slower than small rural FL counties...

[Non Swing Voter]

Current Florida returned ballot composition:

Democrats: 181,020 (53.93%)
Republicans: 91,563 (27.28%)
NPA: 59,153 (17.62%)
Others: 3,938 (1.17%)

Advantage: D+89,457

https://public.tableau.com/profile/dave.trotter#!/vizhome/2020FloridaElectionData/VoteComposition

Is this around what we were expecting?  It looks good to me considering there's nothing in from Miami, but maybe that includes a lot of Dixiecrats.

[Non Swing Voter]

https://twitter.com/davebjerke/status/1311769598342189058

[Non Swing Voter]

It's fairly insane that almost 600,000 people have already voted in Virginia, which doesn't really have many competitive races this year.  This is just pure unmitigated hatred of Trump.  Even more stunning, when you consider that the votes are hardly rolling in from Fairfax because they haven't opened the satellite precincts yet.

[Non Swing Voter]

Wisconsin has updated numbers: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/WI.html

437,000 returned.

[Non Swing Voter]

Does high turnout in wisconsin around the board benefit dems or repubs? dane had 218k votes in 2016, curious to see how far they can go if they break 80-20 for biden.

Wasn't some of the post-2016 analysis that low turnout in Milwaukee really hurt Clinton?  I'm keeping my eye on turnout in places like Milwaukee, Philly, Detroit, Minneapolis. 

I presume college educated white suburban voters are already turning out no matter what.

[Non Swing Voter]

Does high turnout in wisconsin around the board benefit dems or repubs? dane had 218k votes in 2016, curious to see how far they can go if they break 80-20 for biden.

Wasn't some of the post-2016 analysis that low turnout in Milwaukee really hurt Clinton?  I'm keeping my eye on turnout in places like Milwaukee, Philly, Detroit, Minneapolis. 

I presume college educated white suburban voters are already turning out no matter what.

exactly i agree especially in philly area + detroit area- Milwaukee suburbs looks very high at the moment too, but they should be very good for trump - biggest ? mark is how the south west part of the state goes.

Yeah I wanna see the margins there.  I also wanna see the margins in Pittsburgh, its suburbs, Detroit suburbs and Kent County, MI.  Of course I am presuming that across the board rural areas will go for Trump around the same margins elsewhere, though perhaps that's not a fair assumption either. 

[Non Swing Voter]

Just looking at WI and NC, it looks like early voting is particularly strong in college counties and more neither-here-nor-there in major urban centers. I suspect students who might be doing school remotely are more keen to get voting out of the way as early as possible and might have been planning to vote absentee regardless while the concept might be newer to more settled urban types.

I think the urban numbers will also pick up considerably when in person early voting becomes more prevalent and/or more offices are open. 

[Non Swing Voter]

https://twitter.com/davebjerke/status/1312132028511383557

holy crap!

[Non Swing Voter]

What states are we most surprised and/or impressed by in terms of early turnout?

I'm surprised at South Dakota (seems random) and impressed with Wisconsin.

[Non Swing Voter]

What states are we most surprised and/or impressed by in terms of early turnout?

I'm surprised at South Dakota (seems random) and impressed with Wisconsin.

Yeah, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Virginia, and North Carolina are off the charts.

Virginia is pretty hilarious because it's not even a battleground state this time.  This is just turnout to show hatred and disgust to Trump.  Even I, who despises Trump, would not wait 2 hours in line to do that.

[Non Swing Voter]

Michael McDonald
@ElectProject
South Dakota #earlyvote update in. At least 2.9 million people have voted in the 2020 general election https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-202

This link is broken but South Dakota also only has about 900,000 people total. Maybe meant South Carolina?

South Dakota has a little under 90,000 votes.

https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/SD.html

[Non Swing Voter]

Does high turnout in wisconsin around the board benefit dems or repubs? dane had 218k votes in 2016, curious to see how far they can go if they break 80-20 for biden.

Wasn't some of the post-2016 analysis that low turnout in Milwaukee really hurt Clinton?  I'm keeping my eye on turnout in places like Milwaukee, Philly, Detroit, Minneapolis. 

I presume college educated white suburban voters are already turning out no matter what.

https://twitter.com/CodyHausman/status/1311867765859520513?s=19

God yes.  Would be great if Biden can put away this state early.