Early & Absentee Voting Megathread - Build the Freiwal

[BundouYMB]

While everyone was freaking out about the "Dems in disarray" in Nevada because they're not leading by enough, Democrats gained a couple hundred votes thanks to absentees in Clark. Statewide lead is 3.4K. We'll see if they get to 15K statewide, but the way Independents have been voting this year, I'm not sure they'll need to.

Maybe I'm the idiot and am missing something incredibly obvious here, but as you said, I don't see why Dems need a ridiculously gaudy vote margin otherwise the Unbeatable Titan is inevitable. They ended up needing it in 2016, but that was because independents broke heavily for Trump. The idea that they'd need it again seems to be predicated upon the assumption that they will also break heavily for Heller, which...is certainly not a safe one.

Voters in general broke late towards Trump. Democrats needed a much smaller early vote edge in 2010 when Reid won reelection than they needed in 2016. That suggests election day voters broke VERY hard for Trump, and he still lost by 4... someone I don't think that will happen for Heller. I don't see a single good reason why Democrats would need a larger early vote margin than they did in 2010.

[BundouYMB]

TargetSmart is hot garbage. They do some of the worst polling I've ever seen, and regularly miss races by 10-20 points. Their modeling has been equally useless in past elections, so I wouldn't give them the time of day.

[BundouYMB]

TargetSmart is hot garbage. They do some of the worst polling I've ever seen, and regularly miss races by 10-20 points. Their modeling has been equally useless in past elections, so I wouldn't give them the time of day.

Simply put, none of this is true.

Simply put, all of that is true. Lets take a look at how they did in 2016, shall we?

TargetSmart estimated on November 1 that Clinton was winning the FL early vote 55-38 and the final results would be Clinton +8: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/1/1589871/-HUGE-breaking-news-tomorrow-for-FLA-28-of-GOP-early-voters-surveyed-voted-Clinton

This was the result of their polling, which found Clinton was winning 28% of registered Republicans in Florida (wow! Clintonslide incoming!)

TargetSmart estimated on November 6 that Clinton was +7 in Ohio's early vote (she wasn't) and that the final results would be Trump +3 (the final results were Trump +9): https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/6/1592428/-TargetSmart-Ohio-Numbers

Their CEO mocked the #ComeyEffect because TargetSmart thought Clinton was SURGING in the Ohio early vote after the Comey letter dropped: https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/793065727397879809

Their models also showed Clinton was heading for victory in FL, MI, NC, NV, and PA (1 out of 5.. at least they got SOMETHING right!): https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/data-points/why-early-get-out-vote-efforts-favor-clinton-ballot-requests-n653361

[BundouYMB]

R+7 or so in Arizona is fine for Sinema, Hobbs, and Hoffman. The recent poll where all three of their races were within two points of each other in margin was one that had an R+10 electorate

Reminder: 2016 was R+6.4 in the early vote. If the electorate is like that again, which it looks like it will be, does anyone doubt Sinema will win? They shouldn't.

[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.

[BundouYMB]

Colorado Update vs this point in time in 2014 (in parenthesis)

Democrats 423,791 (446,448)
Republicans  424,010 (558,966)
Independent  364,716 (359,496)

TOTAL  1,227,135 (1,379,562)

Rethugs had a 114,000 vote lead at this point in time in 2014, compared to a mere 301 vote lead now. Overall turnout is rather disappointing though.

I have no idea why you have a blue avatar when you clearly despise the Republican Party. But at any rate, I wonder what these results foretell for tomorrow.

Because blue looks cooler than red. Everyone always went for the blue raspberry Otter Pop over the cherry one.

I see. I'm still interested in hearing any perspectives on how the elections in Colorado will go tomorrow.

Not an expert, but I would say it will go as such.
Early vote will be a practical tie.
Election Day vote will go big league to the Ds.
Coffman loses, while CO-3 is close, but in the end stays with the Rs.
Polis is elected governor.

This is so ignorant.

1). Colorado is entirely vote-by-mail. The vast majority of the ballots are in. What "election day"?

2). This is the first time in modern history that Democrats have returned more ballots than Republicans. Democrats dominate among CO indies, and will absolutely destroy Republicans based on the ballots that have been returned so far. There is absolutely 0 chance that the votes returned so far will be "practically a tie."

[BundouYMB]

Target Smart is VoteCastr 2.0. Only thing I trust from them is data from states with party registration.

"Modeled Dem" and "Modeled Rep" is explicitly NOT supposed to predict which candidate will win in any particular race.

True, and it is thus impossible to judge whether they're any good at modeling that. Very convenient for them. However, as I pointed out in some other thread TargetSmart has in fact done polls before and has also done models to predict the winners of elections. When they did that (publicly, anyways) they were quite bad.

Therefore, I'm not inclined to trust their modeling of this either.