Early & Absentee Voting Megathread - Build the Freiwal

[RI]

Latinos do not typically vote early.

What I said takes this into account as I was considering only the early/absentee vote.

[Aurelio21]

Cumulative Texas early vote report, in-person + mail-in/absentee.

Clinton Counties

Harris County: 36.59% of reg. voters, 87.56% of 2016.
Dallas County: 39.66% of reg. voters, 96.33% of 2016.
Bexar County: 37.71% of reg. voters, 87.77% of 2016.
Travis County: 47.43% of reg. voters, 97.45% of 2016.
El Paso County: 30.51% of reg. voters, 92.46% of 2016.
Fort Bend County: 46.14% of reg. voters, 93.30% of 2016.
Hidalgo County: 31.68% of reg. voters, 81.93% of 2016.
Cameron County: 26.37% of reg. voters, 84.96% of 2016.

Trump Counties

Tarrant County: 41.49% of reg. voters, 90.41% of 2016.
Collin County: 49.39% of reg. voters, 94.85% of 2016.
Denton County: 45.96% of reg. voters, 95.29% of 2016.
Montgomery County: 41.42% of reg. voters, 88.08% of 2016.
Williamson County: 48.97% of reg. voters, 100.01% of 2016.
Galveston County: 42.41% of reg. voters, 88.84% of 2016.
Nueces County: 32.96% of reg. voters, 90.36% of 2016.

Averages

Trump Counties: 43.23% of reg. voters, 92.55% of 2016.
Clinton Counties: 37.01% of reg. voters, 90.22% of 2016.


Overall, Trump counties saw higher turnout both in terms of registered voters and relative to 2016's numbers.

Drilling into specific regions, one of the most energized counties was Travis County, which is bad news for the GOP since it's heavily Democratic. But on the flip side, Republicans also have reason to be optimistic due to lackluster enthusiasm in overwhelmingly Democratic South Texas. That suggests that perhaps the Hispanic voter surge, which is said to be coming every election year, might not too big after all.

Thx for the estimates and table. Are these the final numbers including friday?
I am by no means a Beto fanboy. Yet shoud be mentioned, that Collin, Denton and Williamson County had a swing >10% away from Trump, and only in Montgomery County the absolute margin Trump/Clinton was comparable with the margins of Harris and Travis County.

I expect Cruz to win at least with a margin of 5%. O'Rourke does not want to go negative and wastes his chances. This should drive the Hispanics on the Southern Border despite being socially conservative into the Democrat's camp.
How about a misleading add/misleading twitter campaign in spanish by an anonymous PAC "Mi derechos cívicos " distorting Mr Trump's confabulation of executive orders repealing the birthright citizenship amendment for children born by illegal immigrants into repealing the citizenship of ALL HISPANICS close to the border? ;-)

Mrs McCaskill and Beto should exchange their bodies, she would not hesitate doing this. ;-)

[SuperCow]

Has it occurred to anyone that anybody who votes early will not be voting on election night?

[SCNCmod]

Cumulative Texas early vote report, in-person + mail-in/absentee.

Clinton Counties

Harris County: 36.59% of reg. voters, 87.56% of 2016.
Dallas County: 39.66% of reg. voters, 96.33% of 2016.
Bexar County: 37.71% of reg. voters, 87.77% of 2016.
Travis County: 47.43% of reg. voters, 97.45% of 2016.
El Paso County: 30.51% of reg. voters, 92.46% of 2016.
Fort Bend County: 46.14% of reg. voters, 93.30% of 2016.
Hidalgo County: 31.68% of reg. voters, 81.93% of 2016.
Cameron County: 26.37% of reg. voters, 84.96% of 2016.

Trump Counties

Tarrant County: 41.49% of reg. voters, 90.41% of 2016.
Collin County: 49.39% of reg. voters, 94.85% of 2016.
Denton County: 45.96% of reg. voters, 95.29% of 2016.
Montgomery County: 41.42% of reg. voters, 88.08% of 2016.
Williamson County: 48.97% of reg. voters, 100.01% of 2016.
Galveston County: 42.41% of reg. voters, 88.84% of 2016.
Nueces County: 32.96% of reg. voters, 90.36% of 2016.

Averages

Trump Counties: 43.23% of reg. voters, 92.55% of 2016.
Clinton Counties: 37.01% of reg. voters, 90.22% of 2016.


Overall, Trump counties saw higher turnout both in terms of registered voters and relative to 2016's numbers.

Drilling into specific regions, one of the most energized counties was Travis County, which is bad news for the GOP since it's heavily Democratic. But on the flip side, Republicans also have reason to be optimistic due to lackluster enthusiasm in overwhelmingly Democratic South Texas. That suggests that perhaps the Hispanic voter surge, which is said to be coming every election year, might not too big after all.


Its hard to know what to think about all of these early numbers.  One thought regarding higher turnout in Trump counties... Dems usually do not campaign in many of these area.  Since Beto has reached out to Trump counties... how much of the turnout in those areas are due to Beto voters who usually do not get much attention?  And on the flip side- Cruz isn't reaching out as much to Clinton counties- which could explain the more normal turnout in those counties.

Cruz may indeed win- but if Beto wins it will be because of cross over voters... So if Beto were to win- we would look back at these numbers and say Beto crossover voters make up a decent amount of turnout in the Trump counties.

Also- Beto should do really well among Ind's based on his style of campaigning.  What are those numbers and how do they factor in this year is the % that votes Dems moves up a fair amount.

[Ebsy]

Has it occurred to anyone that anybody who votes early will not be voting on election night?

You know, I don't think any of had figured out that a person can only vote once. Thank for pointing that out!

[Pandaguineapig]

Has it occurred to anyone that anybody who votes early will not be voting on election night?

You know, I don't think any of had figured out that a person can only vote once. Thank for pointing that out!

I think most people who follow elections know what vote cannibalization is, but I remember seeing idiots on CNN in 2016 saying stuff like "the Latino early vote is up 150% in Florida, therefore  the Latino vote is up 150% Nationwide"

[libertpaulian]

Early voted today.  I live in Lake County, Indiana, in a town that's considered a bedroom community outside Chicago.  I waited 1 hour and 40 minutes to vote, and then an extra 10 minutes to vote (including showing my ID and sitting in a chair to wait for a booth to open up).  Although the crowd was largely white, there were also a decent number of non-whites, as well as a couple young people who were voting for the first time.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

Have we gotten the final Arizona numbers

It's mail-in ballots. Shouldn't we be getting updates even on Tuesday?

[Adam Griffin]

An Atlanta EV location 2.5 hours after the polls closed last night:

https://twitter.com/TIAreports/status/1058532344099942402

2 things I don't get:

* why are there lines in the first place ? There should be enough early voting precincts and voters should be assigned to their precinct, so that there's a cap of 500-1000 voters per precinct. Which would mean there are no lines.

* why are these people waiting 5, 6 or 7 hours in a line to vote early ? If they could do so in 5 minutes on election day ? Or by postal ballot ?

At least in Georgia, early voting is not done at the local precinct.  My county (Forsyth) had early voting at the central elections office for the last two weeks, and at three satellite locations for last week only.  Any county voter can use any of these early locations.  This is a county with 230K people and 145K registered voters, and I think it's a bit more generous than the average county.  For Election Day, there are 16 precincts distributed across the county; on Election Day, you can only vote in your home precinct.

Stuff like this is always a recipe for disaster ...

For early voting, there should be the same precinct infrastructure in place as for election day.

Otherwise, you will always have these massive lines where people have to wait for hours and are likely to give up, go back home and not vote again. Which would be bad.

Election officials should be able to find enough (retired) poll workers to keep all the precincts open for a certain period (the week or so before election day).

It comes down to sheer cost. For the most part, Georgia tends to have one early vote location for every 50-75k people (my county, with over 100k, only has 1 location; this is why EV lines have consistently been 30 minutes to 1 hour for the past 2 elections).

In my county, Election Day voting costs about $30,000 to host. You need dozens of paid employees (who are not on any public payroll full-time, and many would not agree to do the work for 3 weeks straight when it only pays $10/hour and they already have full-time jobs) to staff precincts for 16 days.

Suddenly, you're talking about spending a half-million dollars for each of the potentially 4 elections every year (primary, primary runoff, general, general runoff). That's $2,000,000 or more per election cycle for a county with a general government budget of like $25,000,000. It's just too cost-exorbitant.

Early voting at centralized locations, in contrast, is much, much cheaper - in large part because you can use already-existing Board of Elections employees and have them run the show out of their workplaces.

[Adam Griffin]

Also, LOL: 47K Democratic firewall in Nevada.

You guys done panicking about NV yet?

[Person Man]

So how would we characterize the major Senatorial races and Gubernatorial races based on the end of EV?

[MAINEiac4434]

Democrats blew Republicans out of the water in early voting here in Maine:

https://www.pressherald.com/2018/10/24/interactive-chart-early-voting-turnout-for-maines-2018-election/

While we had a lead in 2014, it was much closer. Hopefully this isn’t Dems cannibalizing their ED vote.

All in all, though, I think this is a promising sign for Golden and especially Mills.

[Gass3268]

Democrats took the lead today in Pinellas County, Florida.

https://twitter.com/steveschale/status/1058867536383692800

[Virginiá]

Does anyone have statewide election results for Pinellas County (non-presidential)?

[ON Progressive]

Does anyone have statewide election results for Pinellas County (non-presidential)?

Strangely, it went Sink +5 in 2010 and Crist +11 in 2014. I don't know what makes Rick Scott do so badly in the Tampa area, but he always does really badly there.

[#TheShadowyAbyss]

Currently, 4.5 million votes have been cast so far (since last update at 4 pm) here in Florida, the GOP has ~58K vote lead so far.

[Bidenworth2020]

Currently, 4.5 million votes have been cast so far (since last update at 4 pm) here in Florida, the GOP has ~58K vote lead so far.

good or bad for dems?

[Knives]

As an Australian looking in I am horrified that people are waiting literally hours to vote. Bloody insane. I've never waited more than 15 minutes in Australia whether it's early voting on election day voting.

[NOVA Green]

OR- NOV 18 GE UPDATE- NUMBERS as of SoS office posted 11/02/18 8:23 AM PST

Overall another decent day of ballots received, which is not unusual at this point in the race...

Another 94.2k ballots received, which isn't bad considering the early posing timestamp on the report.

DEM raw vote margins or PUB votes increased + 7k from 11/1 for a total binary DEM lead of +105.5k DFriday AM up from +98.5k D on Thursday.



   

Registered DEMs currently represent 44.3% of the total vote cast vs. 32.3% PUB and 23.4% NAV/3rd Party Voters.

DEMs currently lead 11.9% over PUBS as a % of total ballots cast.

I expect DEM % margins to continue sliding down for two main reasons:

1.) IND voters tend to vote later in the voting cycle than DEMs and REPs, so this will naturally lead to a greater decrease in DEM vote share (Since it is significantly higher than PUBs in OR).

2.) DEMs thus far have turned out in higher numbers than PUBS as a % of RV/EV (Which we'll get to in more detail shortly).

This isn't necessarily positive news for PUBs however, since a decrease in DEM % margins does not equal yet to a decrease in DEM raw vote margins.

It is particularly challenging for Buehler, since at this point to win statewide the math would likely have to involve a 15-20% defection of DEMs > REP, complete consolidation of the PUB base, and sweeping IND voters by huge margins....

TURNOUT UPDATE BY PARTY- 11/02 AM UPDATE





Ok--- So here we see that DEMs currently have a significant Turnout Advantage compared to Registered Republicans.

40% of DEMs have already had their ballots received by County Election Clerks vs 32.4% of PUBs and 22.9% of NAV / 3rd Party RVs.

Not only that, but the DEM vs PUB Turnout gap has continued to grow every day since 10/30 when it was only a +5.6% DEM vs PUB Turnout (TO) gap to a + 7.3% D TO Gap as of 11/2 AM.

This is in stark contrast to a DEM RV lead of only + 3.8% D as of 10/28.

So What's going on here?

Let's look at the Turnout Gap by County to see what opportunities might exist for Republicans to make overall gains....



Ok--- now, some folks might be confused and look at this map and say "What NoVA GREEN, that doesn't make tons of sense, just previously you showed that currently REG DEMs lead REG PUBs by +7.3% DEM, but this map doesn't reflect anything of that nature....

Key is look at where the DEMs lead in the Turnout GAP....

Collectively the three main counties of Metro Portland (PDX): Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas, typically account for roughly 45% of the total state vote share in most elections...

1.) Multnomah: + 0.9% D vs R vote gap is huge in terms of overall DEM votes in OR
2.) Washington: + 0.6% D vs R Vote gap
3.) Clackamas: + 1.3% D vs R Vote gap

These are the very places where Buehler would need to perform well.

Now, let's move further downstate:

1.) Marion County: + 1.1% R vs D Vote gap

Key question here is what extent is this because of Rurals and smaller town parts of Marion, and highly DEM propensity voters in Salem are waiting until the last minute? (Entirely plausible, but remains to be seen if this is a place where in a non-PRES election year, we might well expect to see lower levels of younger/Latino turnout).

2.) Lane County: +3.2% D vs R Voter Gap

3.) Jackson County: +4.0% D vs R Voter Gap

4.) Deschutes County: +2.2% D vs R Voter Gap

So basically, the largest population centers in the State are currently experiencing a massive DEM vs PUB vote gap....

Now if we move down to relatively large (But more "Medium Sized Counties"), LINN and DOUGLAS we see PUBs with a +2.2 % R / +2.3% R vote gap...

These are both heavily Republican Counties, with significant rural components as % of County Vote Share, and even the respective largest Cities are Republican in most Statewide elections ( Albany & Roseburg), although do vote for Democrats for US-SEN and US-REP generally speaking....

Coastal Oregon is interesting, since not only is DEM Turnout higher in traditionally DEM counties, but also in Counties that have tended in recent years to support PUBs in many elections (Tillamook, Coos, Curry, etc...).

What I suspect is going on there is that because of the high % of Seniors along the Oregon Coast, that Health Care might well be a major issue, and impacting the overall "Republican brand", even among a chunk of their own voters....

DEM TO leads in Wallowa County are likely similarly explained.

Union County DEM TO lead might well be explained by a significant College student presence in La Grande, combined with a relatively high % of Public Sector employees overall.

NOW TIME TO LOOK AT POTENTIAL cannibalization of DEM Votes, by measuring shifts in DEM vs REP TO Margins from 10/31- 11/2....



This map suddenly starts to look potentially much more favorable towards PUBs, since it shows the trends over the past few days where a huge chunk of votes were cast...

Republicans have been making up the Turnout Gap dramatically at the County level in most parts of Oregon over the past week...

Problem is the trendline is moving the opposite direction in MultCo and WashCo, and the Northern Coastal Areas of Oregon.

Still, although the PUBs might well be able to close the Turnout Gap in many parts of Oregon, it is extremely doubtful that will be sufficient for Statewide races (OR-GOV, PUB sponsored ballot initiatives on Taxes, Abortion, and Immigration).

Additionally, there are key OR State Senate Districts that could well flip in Metro PDX, and potentially one in Southern Oregon that could give the DEMs a Super-Majority in the OR- State Senate....

Although Greg Walden is heavily favored for the US-HOUSE in OR-CD-02, all it takes are massive swings in Jackson and Deschutes, combined with keeping PUB margins low elsewhere, and flipping a high enough % of PUB leaning Indies to make it a Mid Single Digit race.

Since it's the Weekend before Election Day, and don't have to work today, had a few hours to spare running through numbers in greater detail, so here's one last map, which is the current breakdown of Votes Cast by Party as a % of the Total Vote (DEM-REP-IND in numbering conventions apply).

TOTAL TO % RV / % REG DEM- REG PUB- REG OTHER



So, if nothing else, something to throw in your Vape and ponder on... unfortunately I haven't located a method to break EV numbers down to the precinct based level yet, which is really where we might be able to talk in greater detail about State House and Senate level elections....

NoVA GREEN

[#TheShadowyAbyss]

Currently, 4.5 million votes have been cast so far (since last update at 4 pm) here in Florida, the GOP has ~58K vote lead so far.

good or bad for dems?

2016 had 6.4 million votes cast early and Democrats had a lead of ~80k, in the end it all depends on how NPA's break.

[Bidenworth2020]

Currently, 4.5 million votes have been cast so far (since last update at 4 pm) here in Florida, the GOP has ~58K vote lead so far.

good or bad for dems?

2016 had 6.4 million votes cast early and Democrats had a lead of ~80k, in the end it all depends on how NPA's break.

how about 2014?

[musicblind]

Currently, 4.5 million votes have been cast so far (since last update at 4 pm) here in Florida, the GOP has ~58K vote lead so far.

good or bad for dems?

2016 had 6.4 million votes cast early and Democrats had a lead of ~80k, in the end it all depends on how NPA's break.

I take that means Florida is likely lost, then?

[BundouYMB]

Currently, 4.5 million votes have been cast so far (since last update at 4 pm) here in Florida, the GOP has ~58K vote lead so far.

good or bad for dems?

2016 had 6.4 million votes cast early and Democrats had a lead of ~80k, in the end it all depends on how NPA's break.

I take that means Florida is likely lost, then?

If you don't read the comment you're replying to, forget the fact that Trump only won Florida by 1 after an election day landslide, pretend it's not a Democratic wave year, and ignore the 20+ polls showing Nelson and Gillum winning then I'd say you're absolutely correct. Democrats are doooooomed.

[Brittain33]

Currently, 4.5 million votes have been cast so far (since last update at 4 pm) here in Florida, the GOP has ~58K vote lead so far.

good or bad for dems?

2016 had 6.4 million votes cast early and Democrats had a lead of ~80k, in the end it all depends on how NPA's break.

I take that means Florida is likely lost, then?

No, because a) assume NPAs won’t go big for Rs like they did in 2016 and b) Republicans showed up in large numbers on ED in 2016 and we don’t know what’s going to happen this year.

[wbrocks67]

Currently, 4.5 million votes have been cast so far (since last update at 4 pm) here in Florida, the GOP has ~58K vote lead so far.

good or bad for dems?

2016 had 6.4 million votes cast early and Democrats had a lead of ~80k, in the end it all depends on how NPA's break.

I take that means Florida is likely lost, then?

no... its just what they said... it depends on how NPAs break