2020 Absentee/Early Voting megathread 2

[Donerail]

And if you keep getting ~500,000 votes every day of early voting (as we did today), you won't have any votes left for ED, whatever their partisan composition

[Donerail]

Obama's hurricane Sandy response in NJ probably helped him in FL as well because they are so used to hurricanes and he looked like a good leader working with Christie.

Honestly we mostly just thought it was kinda funny that everyone up there was freaking out over a Cat 1.

[Donerail]

for any FL Posters or people in the loop...

1.) What's the likelyhood of either Trump or Biden winning a big (more than 5% chunk) of the opposition parties vote?

2.) Do we know from polling how NPAs will vote?

1. CBS/YouGov yesterday had 8% of Republicans for Biden, 4% of Democrats for Trump. Note that there may be some enthusiasm effects here — among voters who already voted, 12% of Republicans went for Biden and just 1% of Democrats for Trump.
2. Same poll had an even split among independents but 56/40 for Biden among those who already voted. If you trust Hawkfish, they have NPAs breaking for Biden; I would expect he wins NPAs by a minimum of a few percentage points, just based on who's likely to register NPA (they skew younger + more Latino).

[Donerail]

Regarding Florida early voting it says:

"Early voting is required in any election that contains a state or federal office race. The early voting period must start at least on the 10th day before the election and end on the 3rd day before the election. In addition, supervisors of elections have the option to offer more early voting on the 15th, 14th, 13th, 12th, 11th, or 2nd day before an election."

https://dos.myflorida.com/elections/for-voters/voting/early-voting/

So there's what?  5 days of in person early voting left at most?  So it's highly unlikely the GOP catches up on pre-election day votes (not that this is the correct metric to follow but writing this for the bedwetters).  Even if Republicans gain each of those 5 days, Democratic ballots will come in the other 2 days so Dems should have a lead on those days if everything stays the same.

There's five days (including today) left in Republican counties and six days left in Democratic counties — blacks vote on the Sunday before the election, which is why the state makes that day optional.

[Donerail]

Please remember that Miami-Dade always looks very bad for Democrats. We get the same freakout over turnout every cycle, and it's always for the same reasons: Cubans have an efficient machine that mobilizes people during the early vote, blacks (especially Haitians) do not vote until election day or the Sunday before. Things are fine.

[Donerail]

Andrew Hanen forbids his clerks from socializing with legal aid attorneys. We know how he's gonna rule.

[Donerail]

This is a bizarre lawsuit. Why would the TX Supreme Court uphold throwing out 100K votes from a method that they ruled to allow? All this is going to do is drive up Democratic turnout and anger Indies who just want all votes counted.

This is a lawsuit in federal court, so the goal here would be to get it up to the US Supreme Court.

[Donerail]

RE: Florida, I will make a small concession to the doomers here and say that Republican turnout in the early vote hasn't petered off in quite the way I expected it to last weekend/this week. The observations others have made about NPA turnout and crossover support are true, but +116,000 is not a point in the partisan registration divide where I'd like to be heading into Election Day, given what we know about NPA splits and the number of Republicans we know will be voting on E-Day.

We have a weekend of early voting still to go, including the traditional voting Sunday for blacks. If Democrats can match their 2016 Sunday performance, when they banked ~87,000 votes statewide, I'd be feeling very confident in Biden's performance; if Democrats head into Election Day with an advantage of around 200,000, that's as close to a lock as you're gonna get. A moderately good weekend would see Democrats add maybe 30,000 — they'd still be favored to win at that point, but it might feel a little closer than would be comfortable. Obviously if Republicans hold even things will be very bad, and if they win early voting this weekend the doomers will be proven correct. Still, lot of hours to go.

[Donerail]

There are a lot of voters left in Florida — not anything close to what it's been in the past, but certainly enough to wipe out a 90,000 vote advantage

[Donerail]

There are a lot of voters left in Florida — not anything close to what it's been in the past, but certainly enough to wipe out a 90,000 vote advantage

But this underestimates any NPA effect.  

We have no idea how much NPAs will break to Biden — they definitely will, but by what margin? If the GOP e-day advantage is 200,000 votes and NPAs only go to Biden by three points, you still have a gap of 140,000 to make up with early/VBMs; if Biden wins NPAs by 15, which I think is the highest I've seen in any poll, it's basically over.

[Donerail]

There are a lot of voters left in Florida — not anything close to what it's been in the past, but certainly enough to wipe out a 90,000 vote advantage

I mean, of course there is a ton of voters left, but that doesn't mean they are going to come out. We're already nearly at 100% of 2016 turnout. We're not going to have a magical like 3 million more come out of the woodwork on Tuesday. Turnout will be up from 2016, but it's clear a high majority of voters have already voted.

I am talking specifically about voters whose history indicates they are going to vote on Tuesday. You are not going to have 3 million more — nobody here has made a claim anywhere in that ballpark — but a few hundred thousand more Republicans.

[Donerail]

Those Florida numbers don't look too awful do they? Especially if there's still some more to trickle in tomorrow?

They look okay. Wouldn't call it great (at least until we see the Dade numbers in about five hours), certainly wouldn't call it bad. If you make some pretty conservative assumptions about how NPAs will break, it sets you up for a win — a tight win, but a win nonetheless.

[Donerail]

I was skimming the vote totals from Florida and it seems like a good majority of NPA early votes are from Democratic leaning counties, definitely over 50%.  

That's also where a majority of Floridians live, is the problem. Half the state's population lives in the 9 largest Dem-leaning counties.