Early Voting thread.

[UncleSam]

This is exactly why it's hard to make a comparison in any state that didn't have a ton of mail-in voting prior to 2020. The way people vote is going to be all over the place this year compared to 2020.

https://twitter.com/beardedcrank/status/1581335824737918976

That actually looks like a worrying sign for Rs

?

Mail ballots, the most Democrat-friendly form of voting, have dropped by 90% compared to 2020. How is that ever bad for Rs.

Note that I am not saying that it’s a death knell for Ds either - certainly they can still turn those voters out to EV or vote on ED, but Dems tend to do best when they can bank as many mail votes as possible well in advance.

[UncleSam]

Georgia is looking grim.
https://twitter.com/winwithjmc/status/1583180701217984512?s=21&t=aqKKZz5SipC...

The same exact drop happened in 2018 and 2020 if I read the comments and the graphs posted correctly. In no sense is this “grim.”

What did this end up at? I feel like I keep seeing numbers with no reference of comparison.

[UncleSam]

Another 155K counted in GA.

GA 2020
Total EV (Mail + in person): 4.01M (56.5% white - 27.7% black) —> +28.8 white

GA 2021
Total EV (mail + in-person): 3.15M (55.5% white - 30.9% black) —> +24.6 white

GA 2022
Total EV (mail + in person): 729K (55.9% white - 32.7% black) —> +23.2 white

Runoff 2021:

12/15: 483K (53.9% white, 33.4% black) ---> +20.5 white
12/16: 715K (54.5% white, 33.1% black) ---> +21.4 white
12/17: 914K (55.0% white, 32.5% black) —> +22.5 white
12/18: 1.12M (55.4% white, 32.0% black) —> +23.4 white
12/19: 1.34M (55.6% white, 31.6% black) —> +24.0 white
12/21: 1.47M (54.4% white, 32.4% black) —> +22.0 white
12/22: 1.68M (54.8% white, 31.9% black) —> +22.9 white
12/23: 1.88M (55.0% white, 31.6% black) —> +23.4 white
12/24: 2.06M (55.5% white, 31.5% black) —> +24.0 white
12/25: 2.07M (55.5% white, 31.6% black) —> +23.9 white

So it seems like this one is right on track to be extremely close, being slightly more unfavorable to Ds than the runoff in 2021 but slightly more favorable than 2020.

We will see where things close at, but one would think Rs need to get to at least white +26-27 or so to feel ok about their chances. Even then, if they need to win outright they may need more like white +29, which seems impossible.

In other words, very good news for Dems so far. Extrapolating 2020 trends would imply we will end up at around white +26.7 or so, which should be good enough for Warnock to force a runoff, which is likely all he needs.

[UncleSam]

Republicans won first day of early vote in Clark by 1,1k. 5,1 to 4,0k.

But that's only in-person. Encouraging sign for Republicans though.

In Washoe that 600 lead for Dems in encouraging for them.

Still early.

Yeah, given the huge dropoff in in-person in Washoe as well from 2018, I imagine not only did the wind have something to do with overall drop-off, but the every-voter-gets-a-mail-ballot stuff is going to scramble things until we get more data.

If Clark continues to be this bad it’s a 2014 redux here. 

Help me understand why people keep trying to extrapolate from Day 1 when people repeatedly point out there was a dust storm yesterday and Nevada is for the first time mailing a ballot to everyone. I’m not sure why this keeps happening.

The comparisons to 2020 seem more apt, but the dust storm still needs to be considered regardless.

Either way let’s see where the numbers go in the next week or so. The first day is often a bit wacky.

[UncleSam]

Day 12 AIP (+ABM) Voting: 150,815 voters cast ballots Friday, for a grand total of 1,533,675 votes.

Friday's batch was less white and less black than Thursday's, with the other 3 groupings gaining ground. Slightly less female than Thursday as well. Total vote drops below 30% black for the first time this cycle.

Breakdown of Friday's voters:

Code:

91263 	White	60.51%
39208 	Black	26.00%
2884         Asian	1.91%
2807 	Latino	1.86%
14653 	Other	9.72%

84217	Female	55.84%
66169 	Male	        43.87%	
429          Other         0.29%

Total votes thus far:

Code:

886555	White	57.81%
459450	Black	29.96%
24514	Asian	1.60%
23892       Latino	1.56%
139264	Other	9.07%

843330	Female	54.99%
687395	Male	        44.82%	
2950	        Other	0.19%

Any chance somebody has the corresponding numbers for Day 12 in 2020? I know someone posted the numbers for the runoff at some point but those aren't quite as comparable (though still appreciated as a point of reference!).

[UncleSam]

Early voting blog updated by Ralston in NV: https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-2022

Dems lead by ~9k with ~300k ballots returned thus far, not counting independents. Roughly a 3% edge right now.

It seems to me like these numbers are a bit lower than in prior years, but Ralston said he will dig into it later so he will probably have a better retrospective look tonight at some point.

I’d think Rs have an advantage on ED though so Dems probably need a fair bit more of an edge before then, especially if Indys are going for Rs by any appreciably margin.

[UncleSam]

Georgia

Day 13 AIP (+ABM) Voting: 100,644 voters cast ballots Saturday, for a grand total of 1,634,319 votes.

Breakdown of Saturday's voters:

Code:

54099 	White	53.75%
30613 	Black	30.42%
2807         Asian	2.79%
2541 	Latino	2.52%
10584 	Other	10.52%

56571	Female	56.21%
43746 	Male	        43.47%	
327          Other         0.32%

Total votes thus far:

Code:

940654	White	57.56%
490063	Black	29.99%
27321	Asian	1.67%
26433       Latino	1.62%
149848	Other	9.16%

899901	Female	55.06%
731141	Male	        44.74%	
3277	        Other	0.20%

I'm going to start posting my projections of what I believe the two-way EV looks like. Unfortunately, I do not have statewide voter file access this year, which otherwise would give me greater certainty in how the vote breaks down, but I have decent confidence that these figures are within the proverbial ballpark.

Estimated Georgia EV Composition:
57.81% D (944,800)
42.19% R (689,519)
Net Margin: D+255279

Any idea what the EV composition was (D vs. R) in 2020 / 2018?

[UncleSam]

I'm not an expert or anything but Reading all the informations we're heading to a republican wave

When we're doing better in Pennsylvania and Georgia than we were in 2020...?

Georgia is pretty debatable, and PA has relatively limited early voting / Rs vote on ED there historically. I don’t think these two states are great counterexamples.

With that being said I also don’t think the EV overall points to a gigantic wave. It doesn’t preclude one, but we aren’t seeing D turnout collapse either. If Rs win big it will be because of Is breaking their way and their own turnout on ED being through the roof, not because of the EV or because Ds failed to show up.

[UncleSam]

https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1587464538831478786?s=20&t=0A7_u4j...

This looks not great, folks.

Finally, after years of being led on it looks like things are gonna go well in NV.

Lots of time left before the election, I for sure wouldn’t count NV as gone for Ds.

With that being said yes the EV looks a bit better for Rs than it has historically at this point. If the EV continues to trend well for Rs then that would be a very ominous sign for Dems.

[UncleSam]

Was trending up all last week and then hit a wall once the weekend came-

https://twitter.com/umichvoter/status/1587464245150732297

Ralston confirmed there was no backlog.

No backlog from Clark, doesn't mean there's no backlog from USPS. Washoe was having no issues, and their votes only slightly dipped on Sunday.

How long are you going to do this? When will you admit you were wrong?

I feel like ‘dw guys the votes are in the mail’ has solid Atlas meme potential.

[UncleSam]

https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1588205676643262465

Ralston is pretty sensitive to minute changes. The tone of his blog has completely changed in the last 3-4 days, despite things only really moving a point or two towards the GOP.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be the GOP in Nevada right now, and if ED ends up being strongly pro-R (as it has been in most cycles, 2018 notwithstanding) then Rs should pretty much sweep the competitive races. If it’s fairly even, things will be close and it will come down to Indy voters and Washoe.

Bear in mind that Rosen won by about 50k votes in 2018, so while Dems are gonna fall 10-15k short (if not 20+) of their EV result in 2018, there’s still room for them to fall off as long as they do ok with Is and the ED vote. Historical precedent would suggest those are unlikely saviors in a D presidential midterm, however, so I’d rate NV as Lean R at this point for both senate and governor.

[UncleSam]

Obviously Republicans weren’t going lead in the early vote unless you expected them to win by 15+ points, so I’m not sure what’s causing the confusion right now. I’m also not sure who exactly expected CCM to be "doomed going into election day" based on the early vote — even I expect Laxalt to win by absolutely crushing it on election day and not by leading in the early vote. People here realize that you can count the number of states in which Trump won the early vote in 2020 on one hand, right?

The bottom line is that there is no way of knowing what the actual Democratic raw vote advantage (Cortez Masto over Laxalt, Sisolak over Lombardo, etc.) in early vote is given that no one in this thread has an answer to the following questions:

1) How are independents breaking?
2) How many defections are there on the Democratic side?

Cortez Masto and Sisolak leading by 40k over Republicans in the early vote doesn’t mean much if they’re losing independents by 20k — this still means they’re finished on election day.

This is mostly right, but you're missing one thing - Dems aren't ahead by 40k over Rs in the early vote. They're ahead by ~9k at most - Ralston said that Dems had a ~500 vote advantage by EOD Friday (when the EV centers closed). This means that the mail counted over the weekend and Monday represents the entire Democratic early voting advantage.

I think Dems will probably need at least one or two more big days like today to pull up to where they have been in recent cycles. Definitely possible with Monday's drop potentially being two days' worth of mail coming in, so we will see. Plus there is always the potential for a lot of late mail ballots to arrive between election night and Friday.