2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

[Gass3268]

I'm still in awe with how the voting behaviors of Democrats and Republicans essentially flipped in Florida and Nevada.  

[Gass3268]

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

PA finally crosses a million.  Still a lot of votes out from Philly suburbs. 

We also hit 25% of 2016 votes nationwide, with nothing from New York.

[Gass3268]

If these really are Biden's internals, overconfidence in AZ is, well, overconfident.

Those are his internals?  Honestly, those look like the most realistic set of numbers I've seen come from any one source.  Looks really in line with the education level and other demographic trends going on.

The last thing they would do is show internals that have a massive lead. Their goal is to cause people to still go out and do the work. If these were their real numbers, I imagine they would show an even closer race.

[Gass3268]

If these really are Biden's internals, overconfidence in AZ is, well, overconfident.

Those are his internals?  Honestly, those look like the most realistic set of numbers I've seen come from any one source.  Looks really in line with the education level and other demographic trends going on.

The last they they would do is show internals that have a massive lead. Their goal is to cause people to still go out and do the work.

Do we know where these numbers came from then?  They look extremely realistic.  Honestly, I would not at all be surprised if those were the final numbers, if not a little closer to 50/50 for all of them, on election night.

There was a grassroots webinar recently and these were shared with the people on the webinar.

[Gass3268]

So... Let me get this straight. Democrat's statewide advantage grew between yesterday and today despite there not being any votes reported yet from Miami-Dade, and now Florida is red?

Yeah I'm not seeing the problem? Florida was always going to be close, today's numbers so far look like they're pretty much breaking even.

Did people not expect Republicans to show up? Democrats are probably going to add about 10K votes from yesterday. That's not awful. Throw the old rule book out window. Things are going to be different this year.

Steve Schale predicted this would happen just today and he was right.

https://twitter.com/MarcACaputo/status/1318662951088345090?s=20

[Gass3268]

Hillary had a 250,000 lead before the election, and that was before VBM was politicized. Just saying.
The numbers simply don’t favor us.

This is patently false dude. She had a 60k lead in the total early vote and Dems actually lost the VBM in 2016.

Her final lead before Election Day was about 250,000 votes.

As GP pointed out, I mixed up Party Registration with final outcome.

This is because NPA's lean hard to the left. Puerto Rican Americans and younger voters tend to register at greater rates as NPAs.

[Gass3268]

Ralston reported that Reps beat Dems 2-1 in Washoe today.

yeah:

https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1318765844831244289

Maybe it was a mistake telling Dems to vote by mail instead?

Every single registered Nevadan was mailed a ballot, why is is it a bad idea to just have people return their ballots? They can mail them back or they can drop them off at a dropbox/polling station. It's fundamentally easier to vote that way. Plus voter collection is legal in Nevada and you know damn well the Culinary Union is gonna be all up in that.

[Gass3268]

Ralston knows how to rile up folks. He knows the VBM will likely cut that down if not reverse it, but he's drumming it up. He did that yesterday too.

Ralston has been emphasizing in-person early voting every day, even though numerically more ballots keep coming in the mail or drop-boxes at the same time. I'm not sure if he's just so unsure because the dynamics are so different or he just wants clicks.

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/freep/status/1318588806711382017?s=20

https://twitter.com/freep/status/1318564700150530049?s=20

[Gass3268]

Not sure how we've construed Democrats expanding their VBM lead in Florida into "Trump will win Florida"...

There seems to be a mindset that In-Person Early Vote is worth more than a Mailed Vote.

[Gass3268]

Wisconsin passed 1 million voters yesterday, with at least 75,000 choosing to vote absentee in person. I’ll edit this post later with more details.

[Gass3268]

Big Democratic leads in the early vote is starting to show itself in polling:

https://twitter.com/BenjySarlin/status/1318930985489149952?s=20

[Gass3268]

So...let me get this straight.
It is apparently a good thing for Democrats that there is extremely high in-person voter turnout in Texas....but in nearly every other state we have data, Republicans outnumber Democrats with the in-person vote?

Texas has extremely strict mail voting rules, so the vast majority of folks have to do in-person. That’s no the same for Florida, Nevada, or other states. You are comparing apples to oranges.

[Gass3268]

[tweet]

Ughhhh.

For the 100th time: these lines are an abomination !

I wonder when the US will have a system in place like other civilized Western countries that allow people to go in, vote and leave within 5 minutes ?

2050 ?

2100 ?

This was also before the polling place even opened.

[Gass3268]

Does anyone know why PA is so slow to report?  The philly burbs in particular.

He is an article about that (voters can't see that their ballot has arrived). Montgomery County is mentioned as an example. Seems to be because the counties are not capable to process them fast enough. It gives us a nice preview on what a mess the actual counting of these ballots is going to be.

https://whyy.org/articles/voters-should-not-worry-about-ballot-status-updates-says-pa-secretary-of-state/

This is the same issue that Pima County, Arizona (Tucson) is experiencing.

[Gass3268]

It's true that today is the first day that Republicans topped Democrats for a given day. The "who won the day" record now stands at:

Democrats 20
Republicans 1

Democrats have had 13 better days so far this month than Republicans had today.

I came up with a spreadsheet using data from the one that is been shared in this thread that better shows daily vote totals.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NXP9l3Kkfywdn5vp1mAdt6gkbCYVEbHqU2ErOzmxce0/edit?usp=sharing

[Gass3268]

Using the sunshine precedent, Dems need a 292K lead in NC.

Sunshine precedent?

[Gass3268]

Also, while Democrats have 460k lead over the GOP in FL, it's probably higher when you factor in the 800k NPAs that have voted so far.

This.

Also... obviously Republicans will catch up. The registration numbers between Democrats and Republicans in the state are very close. It's not like Dems were going to continuously go up every day and then every Republican in the state was just going to only vote on election day.

It's not like Republicans weren't going to vote, especially in a state like Florida were there is a history of Republicans voting early, either by mail or in person.

[Gass3268]

Using the sunshine precedent, Dems need a 292K lead in NC.

Sunshine precedent?

Sunshine precedent = Dems need a 600k lead in FL to win.

I'm assuming they need 292k lead in NC based on the population difference or something.

Gotcha

[Gass3268]

AZ seems like an under-looked at state too - Dems are still blowing Reps out of the water there.

Pima County also has a massive ballot processing backlog.

[Gass3268]

The Milwaukee Suburbs have woken up and are clearly taking advantage of in-person absentee voting. Milwaukee County has cast the most in-person votes in the first two days, but Waukesha County has bested Dane County the past two days in in person absentee and total absentee. Waukesha County will probably jump to #2 in terms of % of 2016 voted returned in a day or two. Dane County is still adding more votes via mail/dropbox absentees than any county but Milwaukee County and is at almost 55% of 2016 vote. Dane's return rate has been pretty consistently going up at 2-3% every day.

Ozaukee County and Washington County are also seeing double digit % increases due to the start of in-person absentee. Other Republican counties are coming in strong too including Calumet County, Sheboygan County, Walworth County, and Manitowoc County all have double digit % increases.

It's not all lost for Democrats, lots of their secondary counties (especially those with state universities) are seeing significant increases. This includes La Crosse County, Kenosha County, Rock County, Portage County, and Eau Claire County. This college factor is also evident in Grant and Pierce  counties. Who's not voting yet? Basically the Central and Western rural counties. The bottom five counties from worst to best are Clark, Buffalo, Trempealeau, Pepin, and Rusk.

I don't think anyone should really freak out about these results. Wisconsin is one of the best voter turnout states in the country, only behind the VBM states and Minnesota. Republicans and Republican areas were going to turnout.

[Gass3268]

In the most recent Navigator Poll it does say that only 19% of Biden voters will vote on election day, compared to 46% for Trump on election day.

That said 34% of 18-44 year olds are saying they will be voting on election day. That is the highest % of any age group. Also 27% of Black voters say they will be voting early, but in person. Are there still plans for Souls to the Polls this Sunday and next?

Source

[Gass3268]

We've now passed the 1/3 of 2016 turnout threshold nationwide.

[Gass3268]

More people have voted early this year already than voted early in 2016.

[Gass3268]

There is a ward in Madison that is almost at 120% of 2016 turnout.

https://twitter.com/jjoyce/status/1319427425311272961?s=20