The Official Absentee & Early Voting Reports Thread

[J. J.]

Adrian Gray: Virginia: Base precincts (60%+) for GOP turning at 124% of current 2008 levels. DEM precincts are at 98%. In other words, GOP doing well.

VIRGINIA EARLY VOTE: Up 18.8% in the 86 localities McCain won in '08, but up ONLY 4.4% in the 48 Obama won

If this increase carries over to final vote totals (which you can't do, but whatever) Romney edges Obama by 4,000 votes in Virginia. Which is better than losing, but shows what a hole he's digging out of. 

D's were more likely to vote early in 2008, so this might have been what Obama won by in a few states. 

[J. J.]

Democrats netted another 5000 votes in Clark County today, bringing their lead in the county to 23,000. Nevada continues to slip away.

Clark Co. shows a closing of 2.1 points from 2008 total, so far.  Obama will win early voting across the US, but by greatly reduced numbers.

You keep repeating that like it's significant. It's not. Romney needs to close by three or four times that to even have a chance. He's only going to get about a 30,000 vote margin in rural Nevada to offset Obama's margin in Clark County (Washoe is likely to be a wash). Obama's already at a 25,000 margin in Clark after just four days.

What isn't significant is the raw vote numbers.  If Obama got 5,000 this cycle and 10,000 votes last cycle, that very poor performance, and it ma effect the result.  This happens to have been the area where Obama was the strongest in 2008.  If he weakens in his strongest segment of the vote, then he becomes weaker overall. 

[J. J.]

But it's not true that better than 2008 = Romney wins that state.  Unless we are talking about NC or IN, Romney needs to do dramatically better than 2008 to flip states.  2004 is a good standard of comparison where available.  How did 2004 early voting look in NV, VA, etc?  I know we have that data for IA and it looks reasonably good for Romney, but what about the other states?

We don't know what the rest of his numbers will look like, or even the state final early voting party split.

The state where we have the best data, and can do same point in time comparisons, is NC.  Comparing how Obama is doing now, compared to his end point numbers, indicates that his support has slumped slightly.  Comparing it to the same point in time indicates Obama is getting creamed. 

Perhaps, at this point in time in 2008, Obama was was up 70/30 in NV.  Perhaps he was down 40/60.  We don't have the data to show which.  The only thing that we can say is, in a few counties, Obama is not running as well as he ended up in 2008.

[J. J.]

Washoe County, NV: 

Dem    44.2%
Rep    40.2%
None/Oth    15.6%

R's again outpolled D's for the day, by a slightly higher margin. 

Total = 9,255
Dems =  3,782 
Reps =  3,954

I would not necessarily call it a trend.  D's might come out on the weekends.  It might have been front loaded for the Democrats just as well. 

[J. J.]

I have no idea what you're trying to say.

Then perhaps you should be panicking. 

[J. J.]

anyone have the Ohio link or numbers?

There was one, but I don't know if it is still up and I can't find it.

This article, from 5 days ago, indicates that it is running better in OH:  http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/18/republicans-point-to-early-vote-gains-in-ohio/

[J. J.]

anyone have the Ohio link or numbers?

There was one, but I don't know if it is still up and I can't find it.

This article, from 5 days ago, indicates that it is running better in OH:  http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/18/republicans-point-to-early-vote-gains-in-ohio/

Thanks.

36 D, 29 R  through last  Wednesday!!??

How are these polls getting a 30 point Dem margin on early voting?

The good ones are not.    Registration is not "firm" in OH, so the statistics are not as firm as the should be. 

[J. J.]

Once again, for the seventeenth time, Ohio does not have party registration, those party figures are meaningless, anyone who is treating them seriously (including that CNN reporter) is laughably uninformed about this sort of stuff.

In all fairness, Marist was well off in its numbers on this in IA. 

OH is probably closer than 2008, but I wouldn't guess how much. 

[J. J.]

Washoe, NV, daily raw :

Total = 8,331
Dems =  3,310 
Reps = 3,541

The R's are creeping up, but as noted, it might be that the D's vote more heavily on weekends.

http://www.co.washoe.nv.us/voters/11SPECEVTO.html

[J. J.]

It looks the R's got well beyond the D's in Clark yesterday.  D% dropped 0.4 points.  8,000 vote gain for R's?

It still could be the weekday voting thing.  If not the D's are in danger of getting less than half the vote in Clark County, NV.

[J. J.]

ME is bucking the trend:


ME:
2008
Dem
   41.1%
Rep
   27.7%
No/Oth
   31.2%

10/22/12:
Dem    44.3%
Rep    28.1%
Green    2.4%
None    25.3%

Looking at the absentee applications, D's are going to be increasing that lead. 

[J. J.]

NC:

Dem    50.7%
Rep    30.5%
None/Oth    18.8%

Gap is down 0.7 points from yesterday, which should be disturbing because this should be the D's top week. 

From the same day comparison, D's are running 8.3 points behind where they were in 2008. 

[J. J.]

About 1/3 of the 2008 early vote is already in in NC and the Democrats hold a 51-31 advantage right now, compared to a 51-30 advantage in 2008. Not bad.

Terrible, actually.  At this point in time, it was something like R 27 D 56.3. 

Black voters were at this point 29.3% of the electorate. 

[J. J.]

NC:

Dem    50.7%
Rep    30.5%
None/Oth    18.8%

Gap is down 0.7 points from yesterday, which should be disturbing because this should be the D's top week. 

From the same day comparison, D's are running 8.3 points behind where they were in 2008. 

And it went more old and more white. too.

It's running, at the same point in time about 1.1 point more black.  Turnout has not declined among black people. 

It is running older, substantially.  18-44 is running about 12 points lower, currently. 

[J. J.]

Including absentees, Democrats now have a 30,500 raw vote margin in Clark County. Republicans are coming nowhere close to closing the gap.

The D's had an 83,800 vote gap the last time, at the end.  I have no question that Obama will carry Clark Co., but it might be a greatly reduced rate. 

I'd really be waiting until the weekend for solid trends.

And, the gap has been decreasing slightly. 

[J. J.]

No it hasn't? It was 25,000 end of the day Tuesday, and 30,500 end of the day Wednesday. How is that a decreasing gap?

The R's had more voters out than the D's on that day. 

[J. J.]

No it hasn't? It was 25,000 end of the day Tuesday, and 30,500 end of the day Wednesday. How is that a decreasing gap?

The R's had more voters out than the D's on that day. 

No... or else the Democratic lead wouldn't have increased by 5,000...

Lief, you can have 5000 D's show up and 8000 R's show up.  The percentage of R's increased. 

[J. J.]

No it hasn't? It was 25,000 end of the day Tuesday, and 30,500 end of the day Wednesday. How is that a decreasing gap?

The R's had more voters out than the D's on that day. 

No... or else the Democratic lead wouldn't have increased by 5,000...

Lief, you can have 5000 D's show up and 8000 R's show up.  The percentage of R's increased. 

You can't have 5000 Ds show up and 8000 Rs show up and have the Democratic margin increase though. It's simple math.

We didn't have that.  The percentage of D voters decreased in Clark. 

[J. J.]

No it hasn't? It was 25,000 end of the day Tuesday, and 30,500 end of the day Wednesday. How is that a decreasing gap?

The R's had more voters out than the D's on that day. 

No... or else the Democratic lead wouldn't have increased by 5,000...

Lief, you can have 5000 D's show up and 8000 R's show up.  The percentage of R's increased. 

You can't have 5000 Ds show up and 8000 Rs show up and have the Democratic margin increase though. It's simple math.

We didn't have that.  The percentage of D voters decreased in Clark. 

We did have that. There were 25,000 more Democratic ballots than Republican ballots at the end of Tuesday. Then there was a total of 30,500 more Democratic ballots than Republican ballots at the end of Wednesday. The Democratic margin therefore increased by 5,500 votes. How is this so difficult to understand??!??!?!?!

Where do you get these figures? 

[J. J.]

Jon Ralston's twitter account (link):

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And then eight hours later:

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The D's had the lead and added 6000.  That doesn't tell us anything about how many votes the R's got that day.  I've been looking at the percentages and the share of D votes, the percentage the had, dropped slightly. 

Here are numbers reported today:

D 76,665
R 47,958
NP  26669

http://nvsos.gov/index.aspx?page=1195

You can check back later.  )

[J. J.]

It tells us that Rs got 6000 votes fewer than the Ds did that day. Which is more important than the assertion that they lost by slightly less than they did before.

No it doesn't.  It is entirely possible for the D's to have gotten 6,000 votes in Clark Co. yesterday and still.  The R's got about 8,000 votes.

I worked out the percentage, and the percentage of D votes dropped. 

[J. J.]

Okay, I think I found results for yesterday for Clark County. (The data from the Clark County government site is in .exe format which I can't open on my Mac, so I had to hunt around the internet and finally found a right-wing blog that looked semi-legit.)

Democrats: 14,934
Republicans: 9,725
Other: 5,900

So, as should be obvious, more Democrats than Republicans voted in Clark County yesterday.

It wasn't matching the percentages I had yesterday at all.  It showed a slight increase in the R numbers. 

[J. J.]

NO IT'S NOT

IT'S NOT POSSIBLE FOR THE TOTAL DEMOCRATIC MARGIN TO HAVE GONE UP YESTERDAY IF MORE REPUBLICANS THAN DEMOCRATS VOTED YESTERDAY

THAT IS NOT HOW MATH WORKS

The total margin went down, from what I remember.  There were more R's voting than D's.  Look, we can check the numbers tomorrow, because I actually posted them.  

[J. J.]

Daily margin in Clark County

Oct 20- D+8,800
Oct 21- D+4,495
Oct 22- D+4,796
Oct 23- D+5,399
Oct 24- D+5,209


Total- D+28,699

(does not include absentees)

Thank you.  I had an increase. 

[J. J.]

According to a Colorado Peak Politics source with access to ballot return numbers, the figures are as follows:

Total:

R: 187,824 (39.7%)

D: 171,971 (36.3%)

U: 108,421 (22.9%)

http://coloradopeakpolitics.com/2012/10/25/oct-25-ballot-returns-republicans-grow-lead-winning-absentee-and-early-voting/

D's led in the final in 2008 by 1.8%:

Dem
   37.7%
Rep
   35.9%
No/Oth
   26.4%