The absentee/early vote thread

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Doesn't relate to early vote/absentee but
LOL David Plouffe overconfident as ever

https://twitter.com/davidplouffe/status/792789574367842304

"Clinton path to 300+ rock solid. Structure of race not affected by Comey's reckless irresponsibility. Vote and volunteer, don't fret or wet"

Maybe he should remedy some bed-wetters in Atlas

I suppose it's good not to see him trying to pretend only about a firmish firewall, but otherwise he's as useless a metric for what's actually happening as a heavy partisan for anyone is.

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Interesting finding in Ohio:

While early turnout is down in Franklin, Hamilton, Cuyahoga, and Montgomery counties, turnout is up in the actual cities of Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Dayton. Cincinnati and Columbus have cleared their 2012 totals, even though there's one week less of early voting this year.

Hopefully a sign that the ground game in the cities is running as smoothly as ever. (this is hardly a guarantee of that, however).

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Sorry to be a buzzkill, the the actual polls show us Texas is closer right now than PA, WI and MN. That's just the facts.

You know the old adage about wrestling with pigs. Save your breath, thinking, and keyboard.

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Per electionsmith

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Sig bet. Hrc wins fl by 5 or more

I think she'll take FL, but you're out of your mind if you think it'll be by 5. Neither the polls nor even a generous reading of the early vote sees that coming.

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FWIW, Cohn and Schale are both impressed with the Hispanic turnout at this point in FL:

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https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/793176820254408704

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Didn't Obama win Iowa by a fairly significant margin (like 5% or so)?  Why is there paranoia about matching his exact early vote in 2012?  

No idea. That Democrats are doing well so far in early voting is reason enough to at least not panic over Iowa. She doesn't need to win by 5.81% like Obama in 2012. If she wins it by 0.5%, it's still a win, and the only ones who might suffer in that scenario are a limited set of downballot IA Democrats that get starved of some marginal coattails.

Right!

I see a lot of comparisons in this thread to 2012.  But people seem to be forgetting that Obama won in 2012 by a fairly comfortable margin across the vast majority of battleground states.  So the fact that Hillary is even close to on par with those numbers indicates that she's better positioned than Trump in this election.

I think the concern comes from the polling so far as well, which has been far more favorable to Trump than they ever were for Romney in the state.

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Didn't Obama win Iowa by a fairly significant margin (like 5% or so)?  Why is there paranoia about matching his exact early vote in 2012?  

No idea. That Democrats are doing well so far in early voting is reason enough to at least not panic over Iowa. She doesn't need to win by 5.81% like Obama in 2012. If she wins it by 0.5%, it's still a win, and the only ones who might suffer in that scenario are a limited set of downballot IA Democrats that get starved of some marginal coattails.

Right!

I see a lot of comparisons in this thread to 2012.  But people seem to be forgetting that Obama won in 2012 by a fairly comfortable margin across the vast majority of battleground states.  So the fact that Hillary is even close to on par with those numbers indicates that she's better positioned than Trump in this election.

I think the concern comes from the polling so far as well, which has been far more favorable to Trump than they ever were for Romney in the state.

OK I can understand that.  But I think we should put Iowa in perspective.  That was probably one of the most likely Obama states to flip to Republicans this year.  She still has a strong firewall.  And she's even competing in some Romney states.  I don't really get the panic in this thread over a few states that aren't even necessary for her to win (like Iowa, North Carolina, etc.).  Now if someone made a credible argument that she was losing New Mexico or Michigan... then I'd probably be worried.

Oh I agree with you in general. Never during all of this has a firewall state shown any weakness. People want their big kill, and they may get it, but the firewall is, and has been, fine.

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Yeah, NE-02 is a vastly underrated D pickup opportunity. It tends to just slip under most people's radar, but it might be more likely to flip than NC at this point.

It's very worth mentioning, by the way, that if she carries NE-02, ME-02, and NV, she doesn't need WI.

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Yeah, NE-02 is a vastly underrated D pickup opportunity. It tends to just slip under most people's radar, but it might be more likely to flip than NC at this point.

It's very worth mentioning, by the way, that if she carries NE-02, ME-02, and NV, she doesn't need WI.

If Clinton holds NH

Yes, but I guess I'm not really considering that a swing state right now.

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If Dems are still easily outpacing Reps in CO against the very R-friendly 2014 #s, CO is in the bag.

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This is a good question, but I think for a lot of states, huge swings in demos, ideologies, and actual voting laws makes that quite difficult. Only one I feel good talking about is NV. Ralston has been the beatman there for ages and feels very confident given that he's seeing the same numbers as in '12. CO, for the reasons I just mentioned above, also looks pretty darn good for Clinton. For the others, the water is really pretty murky, all told.

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R's did close the gap in CO a bit today, though. (but all ballots may not be in yet)

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We've crossed 24 million votes cast!

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Thanks for posting that, I must have forgotten to in the midst of the last few hours. Their good days can keep looking that way, as far as I'm concerned. Very interested to see what Clark looks like; we've got to be knocking on that Clark 50k firewall after today.

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Thanks for posting that, I must have forgotten to in the midst of the last few hours. Their good days can keep looking that way, as far as I'm concerned. Very interested to see what Clark looks like; we've got to be knocking on that Clark 50k firewall after today.

Any updates on the full returns from CO?

Not yet, though Michael said he was going on the air for a bit this evening, so he may get final info late. Problem with CO is that he gets his state info from AP, which makes it way harder to find any useful numbers and crunch them yourself (if I understand correctly; I'm still really new to sniffing this stuff out).

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Yeah, the swing in the white vote would have to be heavy for those to look very good. OTOH, that doesn't mesh well with the recent polling the state. Hard to say what that means right now. Like NC especially, a very muddy mess right now, and it may not actually clear much before Election Day.

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I don't know what you guys don't get about the fact that Democrats vote later than Republicans. The numbers in North Carolina and Florida do not look bad (quite the opposite) and Clinton isn't reliant on record African American turnout because she is doing better among both white and Latino voters in both states.

On the whole, I agree with you. The point that asmith's chart brings up is that, with the same amount of time to Election Day, the demos are worse looking (more whites, less blacks, not enough Latinx to make up the difference). There may be built in logical fallacies for comparing by "x days out", but if there aren't, they are a bit weak. That said, party numbers and polls have been good, so maybe white vote is going the way we want.

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I can't see how anyone spins this, very ugly #'s in FL.

https://twitter.com/electionsmith/status/793278422415872000

At this point 4 years ago Florida, had two weekends of early vote and STTP. This year it's been only one so far.

Aha, there's the fallacy I was looking for. So we just need to keep an eye on the numbers day to day, then, see if the numbers get restored by ED. Thanks!

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I don't know what you guys don't get about the fact that Democrats vote later than Republicans. The numbers in North Carolina and Florida do not look bad (quite the opposite) and Clinton isn't reliant on record African American turnout because she is doing better among both white and Latino voters in both states.

On the whole, I agree with you. The point that asmith's chart brings up is that, with the same amount of time to Election Day, the demos are worse looking (more whites, less blacks, not enough Latinx to make up the difference). There may be built in logical fallacies for comparing by "x days out", but if there aren't, they are a bit weak. That said, party numbers and polls have been good, so maybe white vote is going the way we want.

There are no working class white Democrats in Florida and North Carolina for Clinton to lose, so she is going to be gaining considerably with white college educated voters, especially women, in the suburbs of both states with little to no downside. Also, turnout is extremely high in the Latino portions of Southern Florida, leading me to believe that the unthinkable will happen again and Miami-Dade County will further swing towards Democrats.

All may very well be right. Thanks for the insight! As easy as it is to be impatient this close to ED, just gotta wait and see, day to day.

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This has been the best thread on this subforum all election. I'm having a ton of fun sifting through all the numbers with y'all without (too much of) the craziness from elsewhere. Let's go out with a bang, eh? Don't get to do this again for a while.

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If you are going to place your hopes on all the polls having been off for the MI Democratic primary over 6 months ago, but ignore that Trump lost hard among late deciding voters in damn near every state outside NH and IN (maybe NV?), you are going to have a tough night next Tuesday.

And in fact, if Trump bit it hard with late deciders in a GOP primary, why would he do better with late-deciders among the general electorate?

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Didn't Obama win Iowa by a fairly significant margin (like 5% or so)?  Why is there paranoia about matching his exact early vote in 2012?  

No idea. That Democrats are doing well so far in early voting is reason enough to at least not panic over Iowa. She doesn't need to win by 5.81% like Obama in 2012. If she wins it by 0.5%, it's still a win, and the only ones who might suffer in that scenario are a limited set of downballot IA Democrats that get starved of some marginal coattails.

Right!

I see a lot of comparisons in this thread to 2012.  But people seem to be forgetting that Obama won in 2012 by a fairly comfortable margin across the vast majority of battleground states.  So the fact that Hillary is even close to on par with those numbers indicates that she's better positioned than Trump in this election.

I think the concern comes from the polling so far as well, which has been far more favorable to Trump than they ever were for Romney in the state.

Can I mention that while the overall Democratic EV numerical lead in IA is lagging behind 2012, isn't theirpercentage lead nearly on par with 2012?

I actually didn't know that. Thanks! But if total votes are up, and numerical lead is down, how is % lead on par? Maybe I'm misunderstanding. At any rate, if it ends up close in early vote, the point is taken that Obama's +5 cushion is comfy feeling.

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Didn't Obama win Iowa by a fairly significant margin (like 5% or so)?  Why is there paranoia about matching his exact early vote in 2012?  

No idea. That Democrats are doing well so far in early voting is reason enough to at least not panic over Iowa. She doesn't need to win by 5.81% like Obama in 2012. If she wins it by 0.5%, it's still a win, and the only ones who might suffer in that scenario are a limited set of downballot IA Democrats that get starved of some marginal coattails.

Right!

I see a lot of comparisons in this thread to 2012.  But people seem to be forgetting that Obama won in 2012 by a fairly comfortable margin across the vast majority of battleground states.  So the fact that Hillary is even close to on par with those numbers indicates that she's better positioned than Trump in this election.

I think the concern comes from the polling so far as well, which has been far more favorable to Trump than they ever were for Romney in the state.

Can I mention that while the overall Democratic EV numerical lead in IA is lagging behind 2012, isn't theirpercentage lead nearly on par with 2012?

I actually didn't know that. Thanks! But if total votes are up, and numerical lead is down, how is % lead on par? Maybe I'm misunderstanding. At any rate, if it ends up close in early vote, the point is taken that Obama's +5 cushion is comfy feeling.

Look at the graphs. The raw EV numbers in IA are lagging 2012. Democrats are still behind %-wise from this point in 2012, but only nominally.

Wow, so I just hard mis-read/mis-remembered the current turnout in IA. Makes sense now, thanks! Starting to feel a little more confident about IA, despite the muddy polling.

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re lower black turnout... perhaps the republican strategy of voter suppression finally is working... didn't they close a bunch of early voting places in states like North Carolina, etc.?

They did, but AA numbers really are down across the board, so it's more than that. Mix of that stuff, Obama off ticket, general disillusionment perhaps, some unknown unknowns, etc.