2020 Absentee/Early Voting megathread 2

[wbrocks67]

Oh my god. The Florida discussion in here is a flaming hot mess and is getting so ridiculous.

Bottom line is, we have no idea who is turning out to vote and who is going to come out on Election Day. People keep saying the Election Day vote will be huge GOP, but it's completely possible they are also cannibalizing their election day voters right now with in-person early vote. We just don't know.

Also, NPAs are going to likely favor Biden, and no one seems to be taking that into account.

[wbrocks67]

Anyway... early voted today in Norristown, PA (Montco). PA has fake early voting where you have to request a mail in ballot in person, and then fill it out and return it right there. Waited in line for about 90 mins b/c they only bring in like 5-10 people at a time, but it was clear people were energized to vote and were willing to wait as long as it took. This is also a huge Dem area too.

[wbrocks67]

Does anyone have more insight into the GA early vote? It's MASSIVE at this point, but kinda shocked that the black share is only 28.5%. In total in 2018, it was 30%. Kinda surprised to see it lower right now? Interested to see where Souls to the Polls effect the races in places like this.

[wbrocks67]

Wouldn’t look too deep into the campaign stops.  Trump was in Nevada this week and is going to New Hampshire tomorrow.  Neither are going his way.

Huh? Why would you compare Trumps stops and Biden stops? One campaign knows what they're doing and one doesn't, so why even bother comparing?

[wbrocks67]

Not encouraging
https://mobile.twitter.com/DaNumbersGuy/status/1320166639523057665
https://mobile.twitter.com/DaNumbersGuy/status/1320168019159646209

LOL, so a 20K lead for Reps for the day? So Dems lead goes from like 380 to 360? If Reps gained 20K every day for the next week, they still wouldn't be leading.

It's truly amazing to me that FL has nearly 6 million votes cast already, and Dems are leading by 7% (43-36%) with UAs leaning Biden. How is that bad for Biden at all?!

[wbrocks67]

What's the situation in PA like?

Nothing today (I don't think they update on the weekends), but Dems are dominating the vote so far. It's literally like 71% Dem/20% Rep.

Dems have a 55% return rate now, while Reps only 40%. I don't know if Reps are just choosing to forego the ballots they requested and vote in person or they're just not motivated, but if this continues, it's gonna take a lot for Reps to come back on Election Day.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1320219458254884864

So does this mean that the rest of them have been accepted and that there are very few rejections in PA?  I remember hearing people saying that as many as 200k PA ballots could get rejected due to the naked ballot issue.

I believe that the court ruling a few days ago rendered that moot.

Also, the bed wetting about the naked ballot issue caused a huge stir and basically everyone in PA knows about it now. There has been constant commercials and ads about it on how to return your ballot properly.

[wbrocks67]

NC 10/24, day 9 early in-person vote:

Dem 43238 (34.8%)
Rep 46265 (37.2%)
Una 34887 (28.0%)
Total 124390

compared to day 9 in 2016

Dem 57744 (40.7%)
Rep 46591 (32.8%)
Una 37589 (26.5%)
Total 141924

Current Total (in-person only)

Dem 888368 (38.3%)
Rep 778980 (33.6%)
Una 651202 (28.1%)

Current Total (cumulative absentee)

Dem 1255960 (40.7%)
Rep 929324 (30.1%)
Una 901697 (29.2%)

Cumulative Total at same time 2016

Dem 710897 (44.1%)
Rep 499922 (31.0%)
Una 400644 (24.9%)
Total 1611463

GOP wins early in-person vote for 5th consecutive day but by smaller margin than previous days, only chip into the overall Dem raw ballot lead by 1k votes after considering mail-in vote.

If Saturday was this meh for the GOP, I think Dems may actually end up winning the day today with Souls to the Polls

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/umichvoter99/status/1320387433792503808?s=21

Oof the In person gap is slowing down already. Republicans can’t keep up.

I would imagine the Reps lead today should be less than it has been with Souls to the Polls occurring too. Even so, Dems are up +364K on Reps right now in FL, so they are gonna need to do better than +6K on Dems in a day with only a week to go

[wbrocks67]

BTW - anyone know what's going on in Pennsylvania?  They seem to be lagging big time with reporting.  The real numbers have to be much much higher than what's currently being posted.

PA doesn't report on the weekend, it seems. So today's update should be pretty big with Fri/Sat/Sun numbers.

[wbrocks67]

Have the early vote totals influenced anyone's opinions on any states?

For me I think I'm more optimistic about North Carolina and Georgia.  Especially North Carolina.  We keep hearing about the urban and suburban areas experiencing epic growth there and the rural areas in population decline.  The raw numbers out of some of the democratic counties seem to be bearing that out.  If the urban and suburban areas trend left this election as they are suspected to this could be a double whammy against Republicans: higher margins + a lot more raw vote out of those counties.

Not at all, other than revealing that Texas voters know that they live in a tossup state. The GOP is going to get their vote out closer to and on E-Day, countering what Dems build up now. It'll come down to who did better during their favorable timeslots, which is only knowable after the votes are tabulated. Anything else is just tea leaves/astrology.

Of course, this is the thread with a schedule about when to gloat and worry, so I am probably not the norm.

I'm not so sure. I don't doubt that they'll get their usual turnout and easily match 2016, but if the GOP were really competent about getting their vote out, they'd be doing it now. As Ralston said a while back, a vote that's already cast is worth more than a person's intention to vote in the future. Given how crazy and uncertain these times are, waiting for the last minute absolutely will harm their turnout, even if only in a statistically negligible way or by preventing them from getting the maximum amount of votes possible.

Yeah, this. People can't keep saying "GOP will turn out in huge numbers on Election Day" still. We don't know if that's the case, and it remains to be seen. Plus, they could easily be cannibalizing their vote in many places with early in person. We just don't know. But people assuming that these huge amounts of GOP are going to come out on ED seems premature.

[wbrocks67]

So I understand campaigns always do this and are never going to admit things are going well b/c they don't want anyone to get complacent, but this video just comes off so f**king disingenuous lmao. we have access to the data too, and you're really going to tell me the "Early vote #s in PA" look bad when Dems are at 55% return rate vs. Reps 40% and they have a 70-20 lead in returned ballots? Really? Things can change and Reps can come out in droves, but specifically in places like PA, I'm not seeing any issues at least *so far* in the EV vote.

https://twitter.com/PadmaLakshmi/status/1320514152503402498

[wbrocks67]

NC 10/25, day 10 early in-person vote:

Dem 22810 (38.2%)
Rep 21377 (33.6%)
Una 20530 (28.2%)
Total 64717

compared to day 9 in 2016

Dem 21048 (48.8%)
Rep 10711 (24.8%)
Una 11405 (26.4%)
Total 43164

Current Total (in-person only)

Dem 911178 (38.2%)
Rep 800357 (33.6%)
Una 671732 (28.2%)
Total 2383267

Current Total (cumulative absentee)

Dem 1281302 (40.6%)
Rep 952136 (30.2%)
Una 924243 (29.3%)
Total 3157681

Cumulative Total at same time 2016

Dem 731945 (44.2%)
Rep 510633 (30.9%)
Una 412049 (24.9%)
Total 1654627

Dems manage to bolster their large lead slightly by narrowly winning early in-person vote yesterday, ending the streak of consecutive days where GOP was doing better. Early vote total is currently 35k short of 2016's final early vote total (mail + in-person) and will likely pass it sometime today.

Wait, how did Dems overall % lead go down when they won the day in both in person and mail?

[wbrocks67]

Florida Turnout Tracker

Lighter day on Sunday, the journey continues...

Dem 48.2% (+2.2)
Rep  42.6% (+2.4)
NPA  31.7% (+1.9)




County Tracker-  Palm Beach becomes first large county to surpass Dem Early Vote Turnout.
14 other Mid-size to small counties (out of 68) have already done this.

Put it this way: Democrats are only 5.7% away from their 2016 early vote turnout in FL. Reps are 13.1% away.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/umichvoter99/status/1320725306743922688?s=21 back to the slaughter

Once again, Dems have a +355K lead with one week left. Reps are going to be needing a lot more than a +6K lead to move that needle.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/umichvoter99/status/1320725306743922688?s=21 back to the slaughter

Once again, Dems have a +355K lead with one week left. Reps are going to be needing a lot more than a +6K lead to move that needle.

it’s 6k at 10am.  It’s gonna be 30k-40k by EOD

That's still not good enough.

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/umichvoter99/status/1320744138380398595?s=21 50k day OTW

It'd be great if there was mail-in updates as well to give these context.

[wbrocks67]

Massive PA update:

Dems 1,193,887 (69.7%)
Reps 355,317 (20.8%)
Other 162,813 (9.5%)

Democrats have returned 63% of their ballots. Reps only 47%. Dems lead on Friday was +730K. It is now +839K.

1.712 million have now voted. 28% of 2016's total already. Imagine if Pennsylvania had *real* early voting and not just our funky "in person mail in ballot voting"

[wbrocks67]

I think it's interesting how this year really made CA Dems, to take one example, realize they need to get their ballots in on time. I feel like we always talk about them waiting until the last minute (and FL Dems too) and CA Dems turnout rate is nearly 10% higher than Reps (35% vs 26%)

[wbrocks67]

NC 10/25, day 10 early in-person vote:

Dem 22810 (35.2%)
Rep 21377 (33.0%)
Una 20530 (31.7%)
Total 64717

compared to day 9 in 2016

Dem 21048 (48.8%)
Rep 10711 (24.8%)
Una 11405 (26.4%)
Total 43164

Current Total (in-person only)

Dem 911178 (38.2%)
Rep 800357 (33.6%)
Una 671732 (28.2%)
Total 2383267

Current Total (cumulative absentee)

Dem 1281302 (40.6%)
Rep 952136 (30.2%)
Una 924243 (29.3%)
Total 3157681

Cumulative Total at same time 2016

Dem 731945 (44.2%)
Rep 510633 (30.9%)
Una 412049 (24.9%)
Total 1654627

Dems manage to bolster their large lead slightly by narrowly winning early in-person vote yesterday, ending the streak of consecutive days where GOP was doing better. Early vote total is currently 35k short of 2016's final early vote total (mail + in-person) and will likely pass it sometime today.

The return rate for NC mail-in ballots is just 54% right now, significantly lower than Florida (where it's past 2/3) let alone other states where it's reaching 80%. Any idea why that is? And how much of a concern is that? Should we expect it to pick up soon, and where do you think it will end up on Election Day?

NC is counting ballots received up to 3 days after election day (so long as they're postmarked 11/3) so there's a bit more leeway there than somewhere like PA. Still worrying though.

PA is also counting ballots up to 3 days after election day. I thought North Carolina was like Nov 12th?

[wbrocks67]

Does anyone know what the Republican lead was in Maricopa County in 2018 by election day? Obviously it wasn't enough.

This was from the morning prior to Election Day

https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer/status/1059524470979739648?s=20
GOP      413,398   42.3%
Dem     319,709   32.7%
NPP      236,538   24.2%

Wow. If Dems are still leading Maricopa by Election Day, those Biden +5-7 AZ polls may be correct.

[wbrocks67]

CA hits 7 million, Dems increase their lead, and now have a nearly 10% return advantage. Dems at 38.2% return rate, Reps only 28.6%

[wbrocks67]

https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1321132790541418503

[wbrocks67]

There's no reason to believe that Election Day will be even more R though, when many of those Rs could easily be voting now in Early Voting, especially with turnout going over 2016's EV.

Not to mention, NPAs broke Trumps way in 2016, but if they break Biden's way this year, which it appears they are based on most polls, that changes everything.

[wbrocks67]

Iowa early voting stats updated.
Dems are ahead by 136484 votes
Total 783310 people have voted early, which is 50% of 2016 turnout.

IA-1 D leads R by 104,228-57,695  , D+ 46533
IA-2 D leads R by 105,290-58,198 , D+ 47092
IA-3 D leads R by 107,207-61,558, D+ 45649
IA-4 R leads D by  72,132-69292, R+2840
 
IA state
D 386,017
R 249,583


In Iowa 930317 people have requested absentee ballots.
445,632 Dems have requested absentee ballots.
297,057 Reps have requested absentee ballots.

https://sos.iowa.gov/elections/pdf/2020/general/AbsenteeCongressional2020.pdf

Wow, big turnout. Ds at 87% return rate, Rs at 84%. Dems really keeping the lead here until the end.