2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

[GP270watch]

Florida Dems poised to surpass entire 2016 VBM totals today

Entire Dem Vote By Mail 2016-   1,049,809
Dem Vote 10/15 (19 days left)-  1,043,514

Surpassed!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17YKazYaUMZ33vmd4YHDKcVdlTkP5DmnHQQlAttwOzL0/edit#gid=1837208868

 We'll really get a good sense of the race in Florida next week when early voting starts.

[GP270watch]

Florida Dems poised to surpass entire 2016 VBM totals today

Entire Dem Vote By Mail 2016-   1,049,809
Dem Vote 10/15 (19 days left)-  1,043,514

Surpassed!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17YKazYaUMZ33vmd4YHDKcVdlTkP5DmnHQQlAttwOzL0/edit#gid=1837208868

 We'll really get a good sense of the race in Florida next week when early voting starts.

What was the republican total mail in ballots in 2016?  

https://dos.myflorida.com/media/697363/early-voting-and-vote-by-mail-report-2016-gen.pdf

Republican - Vote by Mail: 1,108,053

[GP270watch]

https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1316805288792453120

Any Nevada experts that can weigh in?

https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-3

 Ralston is the expert in Nevada. Read his blog and he always makes a very solid prediction at the end of early voting.

[GP270watch]

Biggest day so far for ballots processed in Broward County. Over 25,000 so far and they appear to be still counting. Previous high was 17,781. Big number is very likely due to ballots left over from yesterday when they only processed 4,093.

https://tqv.vrswebapps.com/?state=FL&county=bro

Monday was a postal holiday as well.

[GP270watch]

Just cast my vote! Went with a couple of conservative leaning friends who voted Biden at the top and straight republican downballot. Could be a common theme but just anecdotal of course

 I wondered about this. If some people who are Republicans are done with Trump but want to check Biden and so vote to keep Congress as Republican as possible vs. Republicans who are sick of the whole Trump era and will vote Democrat.

 I am still not convinced there is some huge number of Republicans defecting from Trump but we'll see.

[GP270watch]

All of the images on tv and voting statistics seem to suggest that minority voters are much more engaged than 2016.  Who would have thought that 4 years of racist vitriol being spewed out of the President's mouth would inspire higher minority turnout.

 The Latino and Black communities have also suffered from the health and economic impacts of Covid disproportionately.

[GP270watch]

(Tweet snip)

Plus, Travis County is at 40% of total 2016 turnout!!!

186,280/468,720 = 39.74%
https://countyclerk.traviscountytx.gov/images/pdfs/election_results/2020.11.03/G20_Daily_Totals_Oct16.pdf

Denton & Williamson Counties reached 50% of total 2016 turnout today. On the fourth day of early voting in 2018, they were at 28% & 37%.

The suburbs are coming in hot!

Regardless of what the final outcome is there, it is going to be important to witness what is happening in Texas this year.

 I was totally impressed with Beto's loss in 2018, I think people slept on what he did even if he fell short.

[GP270watch]

Dave Trotter's Florida Election Tracker is becoming pay-only. Anybody going to sing to continue the updates?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17YKazYaUMZ33vmd4YHDKcVdlTkP5DmnHQQlAttwOzL0/edit#gid=1837208868

[GP270watch]

It's just a few hours into the first day of in-person early voting in Florida, but anyone know why the Dem vote in Duval so strong thus far? Most other large counties appear not to vary too much based on how you'd expect the counties to vote overall.

source

 Duval has a large African-American population(31%). I would watch for counties that have large African-American population on this first day of voting and the weekend. That's when we tend to have huge numbers in early voting as Democrats.

[GP270watch]

https://twitter.com/abc7/status/1318176906932588544?s=21

 This needs maximum prison time for whoever set this fire. Make an example of them, don't care what their politcal affiliation or motive was.

[GP270watch]

Florida In-Person EV as of 7:10 PM

Rep 133,405
Dem 129,824
NPA/Others 47,631

Total 310,860

50/67 counties reporting

https://tinyurl.com/y2wulups

dems have closed the margin quite a bit in the last two 1.5-2 hours

 In years prior Democrats always do better after 5pm because they vote after work vs. a lot of retired Republican seniors who can vote in the day. The Democrats also do better Friday, Saturday, and especially Sunday. This year has flipped everything on its head though.

[GP270watch]

 That twitter headline was abysmal. 41% of Ohio to 41% of the less than 1,000 respondents in our poll.

[GP270watch]

So combining VBM and early in-person did the Republicans make up ground in Florida today?

 We don't know because Miami-Dade is on its own reporting schedule. We'll know by the official daily reports tomorrow. Republicans are doing very well in early in-person voting which is concerning because the rejection rate of these votes is much lower than VBM. Democrats are dropping off tons of vote by mail ballots at dropboxes at early voting sites. The weekend will tell us more if we don't see a big bump in Democrat in person and the usual "Souls to the Polls" bump that will be very concerning. There are a lot of very reliable Republican voters left to vote about as much as the Democrats current "lead" by party ID.



 

[GP270watch]

https://www.miamidade.gov/elections/library/reports/general-election-early-voting-stats102020.pdf

Today's Miami-Dade numbers no partisan breakdown, voter locations look similar in tally.

[GP270watch]

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.

 You are conflating your information. In 2016 Hillary(Democrats) was up by 96,450 by party ID, that's all we could know prior to Election Day. After Election Day when the vote was tabulated we could go back and see she actually entered Election Day with a real lead of nearly 250,000 votes and Trump ended up swinging that to win by 112,911.

[GP270watch]

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.

 You are conflating your information. In 2016 Hillary(Democrats) was up by 96,450 by party ID, that's all we could know prior to Election Day. After Election Day when the vote was tabulated we could go back and see she actually entered Election Day with a real lead of nearly 250,000 votes and Trump ended up swinging that to win by 112,911.

Where are you getting the data for the early vote?

How Hillary Clinton lost Florida (Hint: It happened on Election Day)
 
 This is once the vote was counted, they were able to see the real vote breakdown of what Clinton got before Election Day. The 96k lead that Democrats had by Party ID (combo of mail-in, early voting) was actually a real vote lead of around 250,000.

 The final report showing the party ID for early voting and vote by mail:

https://dos.myflorida.com/media/697363/early-voting-and-vote-by-mail-report-2016-gen.pdf

 

[GP270watch]

Even if Trump wins, I now really want the Early v Election day difference to be 600K in Florida.

At this point, it's basically all that matters.

We'll always remember the 600k who valiantly tried to end the disastrous Donald Trump presidency in the great battle state of Florida.

[GP270watch]

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.

 That's not it exactly. There is going to be a wave of Republican votes coming and people should just prepare for that and it is also undeniable that an in-person vote is "worth" more because they are not subject to signature verification, missing "secrecy" envelope, undelivered ballot, no signature at all, etc. Democrats have always preferred in person for their early voting method. The pandemic and USPS chicanery flipped that. Nobody knows if it will actually make a difference but given the closeness of Florida elections it's not optimal. On the flipside turnout by VBM might be worth it if it turns out low propensity voters. Nobody really knows.
  

[GP270watch]

FL: First batch of mail votes for the day are in!

Dem: 1,454,864 (+531,735)
Rep: 923,129
NPA/Other: 634,160

Total: 3,012,153

Getting closer to 600k!

Must subtract the Democrats deficit in early in person voting.

[GP270watch]

[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 ?

 It's clear one party doesn't want people to vote because they think Democracy is against their corporate, religious, and crony capitalism agenda.

[GP270watch]

Thought experiment: if 2016 had had the same proportion/timing of early vote as 2020, would Clinton have won?

 She would have certainly won Florida. I am not familiar with other states to say definitively but I can guess Wisconsin and Michigan would have been in her column as well.

[GP270watch]

Daily Schedule for Absentee/EV Thread (all times in Eastern):
Noon - 9 PM: Gloat about Texas
9 PM - 12 AM: Freak out over Florida
12 AM - 1 AM: Freak out over Nevada

 I liked this post because it's funny but I haven't worried about Nevada all election cycle.

[GP270watch]

Why are we talking about triaging Florida? Is being up by 460,000 ballots that bad?

If we're talking about triaging any state that isn't Texas, Democrats have already lost the election.

 The lead in Florida is good so far but it's going to go down because more Republican very reliable voters are yet to turn out. Turnout for Democrats in Miami-Dade looks very soft so far which could be very bad.

 One undeniably positive thing the Democrats have done so far is have huge turnout in GOP counties. This was part of the formula for winning, stopping the bleeding in the GOP counties. Without knowing how NPA are going to break Florida looks close, like it always is.

[GP270watch]

what I am looking at instead of the lead in Florida now, is the turnout percentage among Democrats.  The closer to 100% we can get it the better for Biden.  If Democrats turn out the GOP can't win the state even if they also turn out.  

Right now 38.5% of registered democrats have turned out.  If they keep steadily increasing this number, hopefully Biden can micro-target the stragglers.  

GOP's all in on Election Day strategy seems dumb.  They basically have to work their butts off on Election Day.

 It's not dumb because of the turnout of white Republicans in the state is far and away the best, it was 82.6% in 2016.

 Exclusive first cut at 2016 Turnout rates in Florida…by Party and Race/Ethnicity


 If the GOP turns out and we don't and NPA is not a blowout for Biden, Trump will win.

 There seems to be anecdotal evidence that Hispanic Republicans are coming back to Trump where in 2016 he was weaker with them. So we need the Democratic base to turn out in Miami-Dade. We need to keep it as close as possible in the GOP super counties so they don't run up the score.

[GP270watch]

Democratic turnout in Florida now at 39.2% of registered Democrats.  Considering there's 12 days to go I think that's a pretty good number.

What was the turn out % of democrats in 2016?

 74.4% of the state’s 4.908m Democrats turned out to vote. (estimated 3,651,552)
 81.2% of the state’s 4.577m registered Republicans cast ballots. (estimated 3,716,524)
 63.3% of the state’s 3.132m No Party Affiliates (NPAs) voted (estimated 1,976,859)
 70.2% of the 347k Third Party registrants turned out. (estimated 242,900)

In Florida 2016 Clinton received 4,504,975 votes vs. Trump - 4,617,886

https://electionsmith.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/exclusive-first-cut-at-2016-turnout-rates-in-florida-by-party-and-raceethnicity/

 If we apply 2016 Turnout to current 2020 registered voters by party this would give Republicans a bigger advantage because their turnout was higher('16) and they also closed registration gap significantly('20).

 5,303,254 Democrat x 2016 turnout = 3,945,620
 5,169,012 Republican x 2016           = 4,197,237
 3,753,286 NPA x 2016                     = 2,375,830