Early & Absentee Voting Megathread - Build the Freiwal

[Virginiá]

Sorry Virginia but getting killed in the senate isn’t a wave. If the dems win the house by double digits but lose ND, IN, MO, AZ, and Nevada that isn’t a wave that’s the confirmation we are so polarized that we practically have two Americas. Ever president up till now that was in a similar position as Trump lost seats in both chambers. Also your example doesn’t work because I’d agree that if the Dems pick up just won seat and lost ND then that’s a wave. I’m talking about losing a bunch of senate seats.

Losing a seat in a deeply Republican state isn't really that reflective of the rest of the country, especially when you yourself acknowledge polarization. In that sense, it's perfectly possible for the country as a whole to experience a wave but some states to not be affected much because they have such a large lean in one direction that there aren't enough votes there to overcome it. This is particularly noteworthy given that there is a fairly solid correlation of what geographic regions are experiencing a backlash and which aren't. If Democrats control most of the seats up in any particular election, and a number of them are from these deeply Republican-leaning states, that presents a situation where it's possible to lose one or more of them but also sweep other races in other parts of the country in what is undoubtedly a wave.

What if we had an alternate universe where Democrats controlled every single seat in this class of Senate seats due to a Watergate-level wave 6 years prior? That would mean a bunch of seats in staunchly Republican states that rarely ever vote for the other party. Do you really think it's realistic to not lose a handful of them? In this scenario, a wave could still result in upwards of ~6 - 10 seats being lost just due to how hugely unfavorable some of the states are and that in most scenarios Democrats never would have held them to begin with.

I'm not even talking about 2018 anymore. I'm just saying your general interpretation of a wave doesn't fit with the way we conduct elections. The Senate is a fundamentally different animal due to the staggered seats and the larger geographic coverage of each seat. But I will say that if someone from the future told me that we didn't win NZ and AZ but also lost a bunch of other Senate seats, I'd question whether we won the House at all.

[Gass3268]

Would love to see how this compares to 2014:

https://twitter.com/KansasSOS/status/1055222806282227712

[Seattle]

The WA big 5 as of 10/23 (except for Snohomish, which reports in the morning the previous day's totals):
                  Ballots:   Turnout:
King:           52,776   4.09%
Pierce:         27,133   5.52%
Snohomish:  17,140   3.68% (9/22)
Spokane:     32,297   10.09% (wowza!)
Clark:          17,898   6.36%

King:             123,689   9.59%
Pierce:             43,015   8.75%
Clark:              28,081   9.96%

Where are you getting the results? sos.wa.gov is, uh, not user friendly (or maybe I’m a moron)

From individual county auditors.
I'll have a multi-county update later tonight (+Thurston, Kitsap, Yakima, and Whatcom)

You might want to check out this page I just found: https://wei.sos.wa.gov/agency/osos/en/press_and_research/PreviousElections/2018/General-Election/Data/Pages/default.aspx

Very cool! Not convenient for the casual user, but maybe I'll play around with it later to add to my return tracking.

Looks like there have been 303,283 votes cast as of 10/23, if I imported into Excel right.

[bilaps]

Turnout in Clark is 17k at 3pm, so a little less than previous days, will probably be around 20k at the end of the day.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Sorry Virginia but getting killed in the senate isn’t a wave. If the dems win the house by double digits but lose ND, IN, MO, AZ, and Nevada that isn’t a wave that’s the confirmation we are so polarized that we practically have two Americas. Ever president up till now that was in a similar position as Trump lost seats in both chambers. Also your example doesn’t work because I’d agree that if the Dems pick up just won seat and lost ND then that’s a wave. I’m talking about losing a bunch of senate seats.

Losing a seat in a deeply Republican state isn't really that reflective of the rest of the country, especially when you yourself acknowledge polarization. In that sense, it's perfectly possible for the country as a whole to experience a wave but some states to not be affected much because they have such a large lean in one direction that there aren't enough votes there to overcome it. This is particularly noteworthy given that there is a fairly solid correlation of what geographic regions are experiencing a backlash and which aren't. If Democrats control most of the seats up in any particular election, and a number of them are from these deeply Republican-leaning states, that presents a situation where it's possible to lose one or more of them but also sweep other races in other parts of the country in what is undoubtedly a wave.

What if we had an alternate universe where Democrats controlled every single seat in this class of Senate seats due to a Watergate-level wave 6 years prior? That would mean a bunch of seats in staunchly Republican states that rarely ever vote for the other party. Do you really think it's realistic to not lose a handful of them? In this scenario, a wave could still result in upwards of ~6 - 10 seats being lost just due to how hugely unfavorable some of the states are and that in most scenarios Democrats never would have held them to begin with.

I'm not even talking about 2018 anymore. I'm just saying your general interpretation of a wave doesn't fit with the way we conduct elections. The Senate is a fundamentally different animal due to the staggered seats and the larger geographic coverage of each seat. But I will say that if someone from the future told me that we didn't win NZ and AZ but also lost a bunch of other Senate seats, I'd question whether we won the House at all.

But here's my problem we aren't facing that much of a bad map. Nevada should be a give me in this environment and McCaskill and Donnelly won in arguable a less dem friendly year in 2012 and on top of that Manchin is cruising to a reelection. Also what would be the point of winning the house if the GOP expands the senate to the point that Trump can pretty much do whatever he wants?

[RI]

The WA big 5 as of 10/23 (except for Snohomish, which reports in the morning the previous day's totals):
                  Ballots:   Turnout:
King:           52,776   4.09%
Pierce:         27,133   5.52%
Snohomish:  17,140   3.68% (9/22)
Spokane:     32,297   10.09% (wowza!)
Clark:          17,898   6.36%

King:             123,689   9.59%
Pierce:             43,015   8.75%
Clark:              28,081   9.96%

Where are you getting the results? sos.wa.gov is, uh, not user friendly (or maybe I’m a moron)

From individual county auditors.
I'll have a multi-county update later tonight (+Thurston, Kitsap, Yakima, and Whatcom)

You might want to check out this page I just found: https://wei.sos.wa.gov/agency/osos/en/press_and_research/PreviousElections/2018/General-Election/Data/Pages/default.aspx

Very cool! Not convenient for the casual user, but maybe I'll play around with it later to add to my return tracking.

Looks like there have been 303,283 votes cast as of 10/23, if I imported into Excel right.

It looks like the files are not cumulative, so you have to export both the 10/22 file and the 10/23 file.

[Xing]

Turnout in Clark is 17k at 3pm, so a little less than previous days, will probably be around 20k at the end of the day.

Could end up a bit higher, since it was roughly the same yesterday at 3 PM. I'd guess around 22-23K

[KingSweden]

Turnout in Clark is 17k at 3pm, so a little less than previous days, will probably be around 20k at the end of the day.

Could end up a bit higher, since it was roughly the same yesterday at 3 PM. I'd guess around 22-23K

How late are polls open? 7 or so?

[Ebsy]

Turnout in Clark is 17k at 3pm, so a little less than previous days, will probably be around 20k at the end of the day.

Could end up a bit higher, since it was roughly the same yesterday at 3 PM. I'd guess around 22-23K

How late are polls open? 7 or so?

Yes.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Apparently lots of people don't know they can vote early... Someone from Florida that i chat with (millenial woman) who went for Trump (but i think she would vote for dems now) and lives in FL-15 said that they won't give her an absentee ballot and that she most likely wouldn't vote... but apparently she can early vote and will now post me a picture with: "i vote" sticker haha. She also said that she lived in FL-15 when i asked her in what district she lived because i wanted to know if the house race in the district she lived would be close, and it's a toss-up / tilt R race. Her parents are also swing voters, she's said.

[Ebsy]

Here is an interesting breakdown of Georgia's early vote thus far: http://georgiavotes.com/



Considering the number share of new voters among the younger age cohorts as well as Asians, Latinos and Others, it does not seem like vote cannibalization from the Democrats is likely.

[bilaps]

Turnout in Clark is 17k at 3pm, so a little less than previous days, will probably be around 20k at the end of the day.

Could end up a bit higher, since it was roughly the same yesterday at 3 PM. I'd guess around 22-23K

It was 19k yesterday at 3pm

[KingSweden]

Here is an interesting breakdown of Georgia's early vote thus far: http://georgiavotes.com/



Considering the number share of new voters among the younger age cohorts as well as Asians, Latinos and Others, it does not seem like vote cannibalization from the Democrats is likely.

I like how clean and straightforward this data is presented

[Xing]

Turnout in Clark is 17k at 3pm, so a little less than previous days, will probably be around 20k at the end of the day.

Could end up a bit higher, since it was roughly the same yesterday at 3 PM. I'd guess around 22-23K

It was 19k yesterday at 3pm

That was Monday, yesterday it was 17K.

[DataGuy]

"Early voting heaviest so far in large Texas counties won by Donald Trump," from the Corpus Christi Caller Times:

https://www.caller.com/story/news/local/texas/state-bureau/2018/10/24/early-voting-heaviest-so-far-texas-counties-won-donald-trump/1752924002/

I'm definitely an early vote skeptic, but I will be keeping an eye on these numbers throughout the week to see if they hold up.

[Donald Trump’s Toupée]

Do the results come in on Election Day like with Presidential Elections, or do we have to wait until Wednesday?

[bilaps]

Turnout in Clark is 17k at 3pm, so a little less than previous days, will probably be around 20k at the end of the day.

Could end up a bit higher, since it was roughly the same yesterday at 3 PM. I'd guess around 22-23K

It was 19k yesterday at 3pm

That was Monday, yesterday it was 17K.

Yeah, my bad.

[Seattle]

The WA big 5 as of 10/23 (except for Snohomish, which reports in the morning the previous day's totals):
                  Ballots:   Turnout:
King:           52,776   4.09%
Pierce:         27,133   5.52%
Snohomish:  17,140   3.68% (9/22)
Spokane:     32,297   10.09% (wowza!)
Clark:          17,898   6.36%

King:             123,689   9.59%
Pierce:             43,015   8.75%
Clark:              28,081   9.96%

Where are you getting the results? sos.wa.gov is, uh, not user friendly (or maybe I’m a moron)

From individual county auditors.
I'll have a multi-county update later tonight (+Thurston, Kitsap, Yakima, and Whatcom)

You might want to check out this page I just found: https://wei.sos.wa.gov/agency/osos/en/press_and_research/PreviousElections/2018/General-Election/Data/Pages/default.aspx

Very cool! Not convenient for the casual user, but maybe I'll play around with it later to add to my return tracking.

Looks like there have been 303,283 votes cast as of 10/23, if I imported into Excel right.

It looks like the files are not cumulative, so you have to export both the 10/22 file and the 10/23 file.

I'm a but confused. This data shows 98,991 ballots from King "received", "returned", or "rejected" alone on 10/23, even though King County's records show that only 52,776 ballots (in total) were recorded returned by 6 PM on 10/23...

Similarly the data shows 97,441 votes cast on 10/22 for all of WA, which doesn't jibe with the increase in voter turnout that day.

And now I just found this: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/research/ballot-return-statistics.aspx which, lol, shows 233,350 ballots cast as of 4PM 10/23...

[Gass3268]

Dems won Washoe for the 5th straight day. Only by 85 votes, but I don't remember them consistently winning this county the last couple cycles.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Dems won Washoe for the 5th straight day. Only by 85 votes, but I don't remember them consistently winning this county the last couple cycles.

This has been the biggest bright spot for Rosen so far

[Gass3268]

Dems won Washoe for the 5th straight day. Only by 85 votes, but I don't remember them consistently winning this county the last couple cycles.

This has been the biggest bright spot for Rosen so far

They seem to be making good constant additions to their lead in Clark each day, but this weekend (like always) will be key.

[Xing]

Dems won Washoe for the 5th straight day. Only by 85 votes, but I don't remember them consistently winning this county the last couple cycles.

This has been the biggest bright spot for Rosen so far

The only problem is that with absentees, it was a wash (Republicans gained a whopping 4 votes, actually.) Looking at the 2016 results, Douglas is the biggest concern, and Democrats should hope that the margin either narrows, or that turnout goes down (or that Rosen is doing better among Independents than Clinton did.) I'll be eager to see what Clark looks like today, but a similar win as yesterday (10% or so) should allow Democrats to narrowly win the day.

[UncleSam]

Dems clearly aren't matching 2016 in terms of the early vote + absentee differential, but it'll come down to independents. Plenty of reason to thinks indys will break more favorably for Dems this year than two years ago - which is why early voting reports don't really tell you all that much, even in Nevada.

[Panda Express]

Colorado Update

Comparing now vs 2014


October 24 (2014 in parenthesis)

Democrats  55,450 (64,777)
Republicans  57,695 (91,060)
Independent 44,300 (46,404)

Democrats are barely running behind Rethuglican returned ballots while at this point in time in 2014, Republicans were decisively ahead. We'll have a better idea though once we get more ballots.

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

Colorado Update

Comparing now vs 2014


October 24 (2014 in parenthesis)

Democrats  55,450 (64,777)
Republicans  57,695 (91,060)
Independent 44,300 (46,404)

Democrats are barely running behind Rethuglican returned ballots while at this point in time in 2014, Republicans were decisively ahead. We'll have a better idea though once we get more ballots.

Looks good! Although we already know Polis is going to win. The real question is the 3rd Congressional District.