2020 Absentee/Early Voting megathread 2

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, Final Friday Update:, 214,549 votes were cast on Friday.

This includes 163,820 in-person votes and 50,729 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 1,625,250 in-person & 919,703 by mail, for a grand total of 2,544,953 (61.10% of 2016 total vote).

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, Noon Update:, 67,370 votes have been cast as of noon on Saturday.

This includes 55,966 in-person votes and 11,404 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 1,682,604 in-person & 929,709 by mail, for a grand total of 2,612,313 (62.71% of 2016 total vote).

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, Final Saturday Update:, 156,598 votes were cast on Saturday.

This includes 126,689 in-person votes and 29,909 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 1,754,798 in-person & 946,753 by mail, for a grand total of 2,701,551 (64.86% of 2016 total vote).

[Adam Griffin]

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, 5 PM Sunday:, 48,786 votes have been cast on Sunday.

This includes 35,665 in-person votes and 13,121 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 1,792,534 in-person & 957,803 by mail, for a grand total of 2,750,337 (66.02% of 2016 total vote).

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, Sunday Final:, 52,784 votes were cast on Sunday.

This includes 37,545 in-person votes and 15,239 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 1,794,794 in-person & 959,541 by mail, for a grand total of 2,754,335 (66.12% of 2016 total vote).

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, Monday 5 PM Update:, 192,070 votes have been cast on Monday. It's very likely that with the final update, this will be the highest-turnout day thus far.

This includes 149,053 in-person votes and 43,017 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 1,945,817 in-person & 1,000,588 by mail, for a grand total of 2,946,405 (70.74% of 2016 total vote).

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, Monday Final:, 220,483 votes were cast on Monday. This was the highest-turnout day thus far.

This includes 169,680 in-person votes and 50,803 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 1,966,823 in-person & 1,007,995 by mail, for a grand total of 2,974,818 (71.42% of 2016 total vote).

[Adam Griffin]

Could be bad reporting from the Texas Elections site, which I've been noticing quite a bit when doing my daily updates.

3 days ago, when I was tracking Texas turnout, they had Medina & Scurry counties at 72% and 91% turnout respectively. Turns out that either the state or the counties were double-counting voters.

When they fixed the problem that day, DeWitt saw their turnout double and vault to the highest turnout in the state. Panola wasn't even in the top 10 at that point. It seems their turnout also doubled since I made the list

I'm wondering if it's a classic De[CapitalLetter]/Mc/San/St error: in spreadsheets and datasets, sometimes the "Mc" counties get placed before "Ma" (and sometimes after); ditto for instances like DeKalb vs Davidson; San Antonio vs Sabine; Saint/St Louis vs Sacajawea.

If so, then it'd be likely that multiple counties beginning with the same letter would be off as well (though the remaining numbers might be close/realistic enough that an error wouldn't be obvious).

[Adam Griffin]

https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1320946707660722176

[Adam Griffin]

I am very sceptical with regards to what one can deduce from early voting, but what is the overall picture here? From what I can gather, the numbers don't look as encouraging for Biden as one would like, especially given that republicans are expected to outnumber democrats significantly on election day turnout. What gives?

National share of EV in 2016 was 33%. Unless you expect turnout to be at or above 200 million, the EV is already more impactful right now than it was in 2016 after all EV was cast. Even if you assume 160 million turnout, we're already above 40%.

It really just comes down to whether or not you believe Democrats have cannibalized their vote enough in EV that it'll give the GOP insane enough margins on Election Day to render this all irrelevant.

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, Tuesday 5 PM Update:, 184,989 votes have been cast on Tuesday.

This includes 141,982 in-person votes and 43,007 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 2,111,512 in-person & 1,048,295 by mail, for a grand total of 3,159,807 (75.86% of 2016 total vote).

[Adam Griffin]

Top 10 States, % of 2016 Turnout
TX: 86.9
HI: 86.8
GA: 75.9*
MT: 75.4
NM: 74.4
NC: 71.5
AZ: 68.3
VT: 67.4
FL: 67.1
WA: 67.0

*As of 5 PM ET today; not all states have been updated

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, Tuesday Final:, 220,824 votes were cast on Tuesday. This was the highest-turnout day thus far.

This includes 167,262 in-person votes and 53,562 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 2,137,428 in-person & 1,058,214 by mail, for a grand total of 3,195,642 (76.72% of 2016 total vote).

[Adam Griffin]

When you take all this into account, you can see the optimistic case for Trump.  There's much lower turnout so far this year among 18-29 and 30-39 voters, and much higher turnout among 65+.  New voters skew more male.

That said, the main good signal for Trump is weaker youth turnout, and one of Biden's biggest advantages over Clinton is decimating the age gap.  Seniors actually favor Biden this year.  And that may be reflected in the polls of people who have already voted.

1) You're comparing partial EV data for one election to total vote for another
2) Young voters in GA disproportionately vote on Election Day
3) There has never been a prominent statewide election in GA where EV was younger than ED
4) >500k seniors automatically received mail ballots this year because they voted in the primary - something that was never done before

[Adam Griffin]

https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1321219558674436098?s=20

Someone better at math than me explain the implications of this

Biden leads in GA by 6-7 (48.6-42.1) in the early vote according to those figures.

Throw in those who haven't voted as 40% of the final electorate (~5.1m votes) and Trump leads by 0.7 points.

[Adam Griffin]

So Georgia's EV momentum might get clipped at the tail end.

Tropical Storm Zeta is forecast to pass through the state on Thursday morning. It appears it'll be mostly confined to the northern third of the state, but this is being forecast a more serious issue than the seemingly half-dozen tropical storm rain fronts we've had this year.

Winds of 30-40 mph (with higher gusts) and heavy rain across most of far North GA is being projected. The metro will get rain and some wind, but currently not as much in either respect. Nevertheless, if there are any outdoor lines, heavy winds or other issues, early voting may dry up in a lot of the state tomorrow. Fortunately it appears to be fast moving and may be more or less gone by tomorrow afternoon.

[Adam Griffin]

Like I said before too, it's not an apples to apples comparison either. If the mail is delayed, or one day is a bigger count than the rest, that will easily make things look better or worse. If today was a slow mail day and not as many ballots processed, then obviously it's going to look bad next to the live daily updates from early in person where votes are being processed *that day* compared to god knows whenever the mail decides to move for the mail in ballots.

Yeah, for letter mail in general, Tuesday is likely to be the lowest volume day of the week. Common sense basically says that most local mail takes 2 days to be delivered. Mailed items on Friday and Saturday get backlogged due to no delivery on Sunday, so Monday becomes the biggest delivery day. For Tuesday delivery, there's very little in the system because Saturday and Sunday would be the days most of those items were mailed.

* I know election mail has been basically given marketing mail priority historically, but USPS has prioritized delivery to put it on par with standard letter-based mail this year

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, Wednesday 5 PM Update:, 194,271 votes have been cast thus far on Tuesday. This could be the highest turnout day thus far (wait for the 8 PM update).

This includes 150,271 in-person votes and 44,000 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 2,290,515 in-person & 1,099,398 by mail, for a grand total of 3,389,913 (81.38% of 2016 total vote).

[Adam Griffin]

TN is acting up: not a lot of discussion about how substantial the EV has been there, but this is right now at a Chattanooga early voting site. The line is 700 feet outside the building.

[Adam Griffin]

Sorry for the quality (feeling lazy right now):

[Adam Griffin]

Sorry for the quality (feeling lazy right now):

You missed Vermont (71.1) and Massachusets (58.4).

He literally updated it as I was making the map:

https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1321568456634966017

[Adam Griffin]

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, Wednesday Final Update:, 227,877 votes have been cast thus far on Wednesday. This was the highest turnout day thus far.

This includes 172,940 in-person votes and 54,937 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 2,313,941 in-person & 1,109,578 by mail, for a grand total of 3,423,519 (82.19% of 2016 total vote).

[Adam Griffin]

Georgia, Wednesday Final Update:, 227,877 votes have been cast thus far on Wednesday. This was the highest turnout day thus far.

This includes 172,940 in-person votes and 54,937 mail ballots.

Total ballots cast in GA are now 2,313,941 in-person & 1,109,578 by mail, for a grand total of 3,423,519 (82.19% of 2016 total vote).

Wow! We really need to be freaking out about Georgia on here at least as much as Texas. This is happening!

Georgia is going to come very close to reaching 100% of '16 total turnout via EV alone - if not exceeding it. The only variable that could depress this will be tonight's tropical storm that may affect tomorrow's EV in the northern portions of the state.

If Wednesday's raw figures hold as an average over the next two days, Georgia will end in-person EV at 93.1% of '16 turnout (not including any of the 600k+ mail ballots that have yet to be returned; if half of those are returned, we'll be right at 100% by Election Day).