2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

[Gass3268]

[Gass3268]

Worrying numbers for Democrats in North Carolina detailed in this thread.

https://twitter.com/markjstephenson/status/1311301149295874051

Democrats lead in requests and returned, but of the ballots returned by Republicans, 7% are first-time voters. Just 5% of the ballots returned by Democrats are the same.

WWC surge?

It's hard to make anything of early voting

At this point it would mean 7500 new Democratic voters and 3400 new Republican voters (to the state).  That's about all it means

Exactly, if the raw numbers were closer it could mean something. We are talking about a new voter difference of 0.7%. It feels like Stephenson is trying to make chicken salad out of chicken sh**t.

[Gass3268]

[Gass3268]

Glass, could you explain those maps that you posted?

Today we got the October 1 registration numbers. I compared the total registered voters today compared to the first we got after the elections in 2016 and 2018. It's pretty clear there was a cleaning/review/purge of the lists after 2016. My guess is that most of the blue counties in the first map will be red by November 1 given the current registration rates. It might take the City of Milwaukee until election day registration, but I think they will get over the 2016 number too. Dane County added over 10,000 new voters in October.

[Gass3268]

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

437,000 returned.

Holy sh**t. Dane is already at nearly a 50% return rate.

Yep, and at over 50% request rate. Milwaukee is catching up too.

On a side note, many in the media I think underestimate how well Wisconsin's system can cope with a large number of absentee ballots. In the 2018 general elections, over 565,000 absentee ballots were cast, that's 21% of all ballots. I don't think we'll get into much problems with counting delays if most ballot are returned before election day

Yeah, Wisconsin has robust early voting since at least 2008 and those votes are treated like absentee ballots.

[Gass3268]

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

437,000 returned.

Holy sh**t. Dane is already at nearly a 50% return rate.

Over 1/4th of all 2016 voters have voted in Dane County.

Yep, and at over 50% request rate. Milwaukee is catching up too.

[Gass3268]

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.

After being towards the bottom of the list, Milwaukee County is now 20/72 in terms of % of 2016 vote returned. Shockingly (not!) the mail is taking longer there. I would not be shocked if they jumped Dane County in terms of raw votes within the next week.

[Gass3268]

Dems have roughly a 120,000 vote lead in Florida as of now.

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

Do independents generally lean a certain way in FL?

Typically more Democratic as they are younger are more likely to be non-Cuban Hispanic.

[Gass3268]

No updates from Wisconsin this weekend, which is odd considering they typically have a Saturday update and in recent weeks and Sunday update as well. Should get a new one tomorrow morning.

[Gass3268]

49,716 new votes returned in Wisconsin since last Friday. About 46% of the ballots came from Dane and Milwaukee. Dane County is still leading the pack with the highest number of raw votes, highest % of registered voters, and highest % of 2016 voters. They will probably pass 100,000 votes with tomorrow's update and could pass Douglas County for the highest % of applications returned. Milwaukee is doing a much better job now returning votes. They are now in the top 15 of counties with % of 2016 votes returned and had the highest raw number of returns over the weekend. Let me know if there is anything else you'd like me to look into.

[Gass3268]

49,716 new votes returned in Wisconsin since last Friday. About 46% of the ballots came from Dane and Milwaukee. Dane County is still leading the pack with the highest number of raw votes, highest % of registered voters, and highest % of 2016 voters. They will probably pass 100,000 votes with tomorrow's update and could pass Douglas County for the highest % of applications returned. Milwaukee is doing a much better job now returning votes. They are now in the top 15 of counties with % of 2016 votes returned and had the highest raw number of returns over the weekend. Let me know if there is anything else you'd like me to look into.

The places in NE WI that are requesting/returning at higher rates, are they from the cities (e.g., Green Bay, Menasha, etc.) or are the counties more or less balanced in how they're returning?

In 2018 and in the SC race, in counties like Eau Claire, the city was the one that overwhelmingly driving turnout, rather than the rurals, and that disparity was the warning sign for Republicans.

Unfortunately the only data we have is at the county level, I wish we could get the same level of data here as we get for registered voters.

[Gass3268]

49,716 new votes returned in Wisconsin since last Friday. About 46% of the ballots came from Dane and Milwaukee. Dane County is still leading the pack with the highest number of raw votes, highest % of registered voters, and highest % of 2016 voters. They will probably pass 100,000 votes with tomorrow's update and could pass Douglas County for the highest % of applications returned. Milwaukee is doing a much better job now returning votes. They are now in the top 15 of counties with % of 2016 votes returned and had the highest raw number of returns over the weekend. Let me know if there is anything else you'd like me to look into.

The places in NE WI that are requesting/returning at higher rates, are they from the cities (e.g., Green Bay, Menasha, etc.) or are the counties more or less balanced in how they're returning?

In 2018 and in the SC race, in counties like Eau Claire, the city was the one that overwhelmingly driving turnout, rather than the rurals, and that disparity was the warning sign for Republicans.

Unfortunately the only data we have is at the county level, I wish we could get the same level of data here as we get for registered voters.

Ugh, that's unfortunate. Thanks for being on top of this .

I think the example from Eau Claire that you are referring to came from the City of Eau Claire releasing the number themselves and then folks were able to subtract that from the county numbers.

[Gass3268]

The Reid/Culinary Machine has awaken in Nevada:

Since the SOS posted those numbers for September, the Democratic lead has expanded from 153,241 to 154,819 (as I write this because Clark updates every hour). So they are up almost 1,600 this month already. There’s something happening here, and what it is is very clear.

...

In Washoe, where the Dems had taken the lead before the pandemic, the GOP is maintaining a 1,000 vote lead as of Oct. 1. For perspective, the GOP led by 4,000 in Washoe when Donald Trump lost the county by a percentage point in 2016, the first sign that Dems would run well there statewide and a phenomenon confirmed by Gov. Steve Sisolak and Sen. Jacky Rosen winning there in 2018.

Source

[Gass3268]

49,716 new votes returned in Wisconsin since last Friday. About 46% of the ballots came from Dane and Milwaukee. Dane County is still leading the pack with the highest number of raw votes, highest % of registered voters, and highest % of 2016 voters. They will probably pass 100,000 votes with tomorrow's update and could pass Douglas County for the highest % of applications returned. Milwaukee is doing a much better job now returning votes. They are now in the top 15 of counties with % of 2016 votes returned and had the highest raw number of returns over the weekend. Let me know if there is anything else you'd like me to look into.

The places in NE WI that are requesting/returning at higher rates, are they from the cities (e.g., Green Bay, Menasha, etc.) or are the counties more or less balanced in how they're returning?

In 2018 and in the SC race, in counties like Eau Claire, the city was the one that overwhelmingly driving turnout, rather than the rurals, and that disparity was the warning sign for Republicans.

Unfortunately the only data we have is at the county level, I wish we could get the same level of data here as we get for registered voters.

Ugh, that's unfortunate. Thanks for being on top of this .

I think the example from Eau Claire that you are referring to came from the City of Eau Claire releasing the number themselves and then folks were able to subtract that from the county numbers.

Hope someone from the City of Eau Claire is reading this conversation so that they do the same this year.

The Wisconsin Election Commission added municipal data! They will update it every Monday. I'm looking into it right now. Here are some figures:

https://twitter.com/jdjmke/status/1313273227435749378?s=20

https://twitter.com/jdjmke/status/1313273934285099008?s=20

[Gass3268]

This is interesting.

https://twitter.com/RealAPolitics/status/1313272337073143809?s=20

I disagree with Real American Politics thesis in his tweet as Biden is winning more Republicans than Trump wins Democrats and Biden is winning Independents anywhere between 12-22 points. Yet the modeled request/return ballots look a lot like the polling ID.

[Gass3268]

This is interesting.

https://twitter.com/RealAPolitics/status/1313272337073143809?s=20

I disagree with Real American Politics thesis in his tweet as Biden is winning more Republicans than Trump wins Democrats and Biden is winning Independents anywhere between 12-22 points.

Yeah, no. RAP is such a hack.

I mainly tweeted it to show the modeled ballots returned. I think the numbers look fine for Democrats.

[Gass3268]

This is interesting.

https://twitter.com/RealAPolitics/status/1313272337073143809?s=20

I disagree with Real American Politics thesis in his tweet as Biden is winning more Republicans than Trump wins Democrats and Biden is winning Independents anywhere between 12-22 points. Yet the modeled request/return ballots look a lot like the polling ID.

Wisconsin doesn't use party registration, so I have no idea how he calculated those numbers.

This is his polling map for 2020:

JUNK IT

It's from NBC News via Target Smart (Tom Bonier).

[Gass3268]

How accurate is Target Smart modeling usually?

I mean, WI doesn't use party ID so idk how they got those numbers.

Yeah I'm not sure, Wisconsin doesn't even report gender, race or age data.

[Gass3268]

49,716 new votes returned in Wisconsin since last Friday. About 46% of the ballots came from Dane and Milwaukee. Dane County is still leading the pack with the highest number of raw votes, highest % of registered voters, and highest % of 2016 voters. They will probably pass 100,000 votes with tomorrow's update and could pass Douglas County for the highest % of applications returned. Milwaukee is doing a much better job now returning votes. They are now in the top 15 of counties with % of 2016 votes returned and had the highest raw number of returns over the weekend. Let me know if there is anything else you'd like me to look into.

The places in NE WI that are requesting/returning at higher rates, are they from the cities (e.g., Green Bay, Menasha, etc.) or are the counties more or less balanced in how they're returning?

In 2018 and in the SC race, in counties like Eau Claire, the city was the one that overwhelmingly driving turnout, rather than the rurals, and that disparity was the warning sign for Republicans.

Unfortunately the only data we have is at the county level, I wish we could get the same level of data here as we get for registered voters.

Ugh, that's unfortunate. Thanks for being on top of this .

I think the example from Eau Claire that you are referring to came from the City of Eau Claire releasing the number themselves and then folks were able to subtract that from the county numbers.

Hope someone from the City of Eau Claire is reading this conversation so that they do the same this year.

The Wisconsin Election Commission added municipal data! They will update it every Monday. I'm looking into it right now. Here are some figures:

https://twitter.com/jdjmke/status/1313273227435749378?s=20
https://twitter.com/jdjmke/status/1313273934285099008?s=20

Yeah, that looks disastrous for Trump.

howso?  Milwaukee looks a little light compared to the others. 

It's only 1.72 points below the county %, which was better than I thought it would be. They are still trying to recover from getting their ballots later than other places.

[Gass3268]

This is interesting.

https://twitter.com/RealAPolitics/status/1313272337073143809?s=20

I disagree with Real American Politics thesis in his tweet as Biden is winning more Republicans than Trump wins Democrats and Biden is winning Independents anywhere between 12-22 points. Yet the modeled request/return ballots look a lot like the polling ID.

There is no way these numbers are right just based on the geography of returned ballots.

It's also about 110,000 votes behind the most recent data.

[Gass3268]

I wonder if there will be any counties out there that report 100% returns before Election Day and effectively don't need to do anything on Election Day but count ballots.

 I doubt any sizable county will ever have this happen. Too many old people are set in their ways and will only vote on election day, you have people who are undecided, and procrastinators who will always wait until the last possible moment.

Plus a number of voters of color, rightly, fear their vote won't be counted if they vote by mail. Look what's going on right now in Greensboro, North Carolina.

[Gass3268]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/michigan-results
The models are worrisome.

I have no idea what they are basing that off of, but even those numbers aren't bad given Biden is winning Independents by 12-20 points.

[Gass3268]

If I had to guess, the early vote modeling people are freaking about in Michigan and Wisconsin is crudely putting overall voter registration stats on the requested/returned ballots, most likely by age cohort or race. This would be very misleading. We know that Democratic voters are way more inclined to use absentee ballots than Republicans this year and vice versa. Older voters are still dominating in requests and returns, and their overall registration stats may be Republican-leaning, but we know for sure that those older voters are disproportionately Democratic because they've chosen to take absentee ballots.

I would agree with this, but I'm not sure where they'd even get age, race, or gender data in Wisconsin. Unless they are pulling directly from parties vote builder platforms.

[Gass3268]

https://twitter.com/AnnaBrichacek/status/1313449733256613889?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw...

Sucks that a county of 1.3 million only has 1 early voting location.

[Gass3268]

Milwaukee County returned 2,609 more ballots than Dane County in today's update. Milwaukee County catching up is good news.