2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

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Not necessarily an early voting piece of news, but I got the call today that I’ve been chosen as a poll commissioner for November 3rd. Figured I’d brag a tiny bit.

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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17YKazYaUMZ33vmd4YHDKcVdlTkP5DmnHQQlAttwOzL0/edit#gid=1837208868

Dem lead 375k in Florida now.

Hard to see them *not* hitting 600k at this point.

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Does anyone know what the split was in Washoe on the first day of 2016? Those numbers look pretty promising to me.

EDIT: I found Ralston’s early voting blog from that year. Either it was R +500 or D +1,000 in absentees in Washoe on the equivalent day. (There was an error at the SOS’s office, but I’m not sure which is the correct number.)

So either way, a 4,000 vote lead already is eyebrow-raising.

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Honestly, there were good reason for the founders to make it land owning tax paying citizens. That was to prevent traitors and anti-Americans from getting control of the government. Well, look what is happening.  Of course, you think it is fine that cities are burning from people with little to no respect for the law and culture of our country. This is why I endorsed his post but also feel that people that do love this country should have an easy time with voting.

This is all I will say about it as this is off topic.

Strong contender for the worst post of the year.

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Early voting starts today in Louisiana. Not much really contested here (at least in my parish), but I’ll see if the Secretary of State posts any numbers. It took me about an hour and a half just now — earlier reports of lines up two two and a half hours at my location.

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Pure speculation here, but I wonder if we're seeing a sort of psychological phenomenon in Texas and Georgia where suddenly low-propensity voters who thought their vote wouldn't matter in either state are going to turn out in huge numbers because things look much closer this election. I'm not sure how you'd go about proving that, admittedly.

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Those Florida numbers are still gobsmacking. Even when Obama won in 2012 Democrats only had a 3% lead at the end of early voting. I’m not saying it’s in the bag for Biden (obviously this election’s voting patterns are going to be different), but it does seem like a lot to overcome on Election Day.

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As Ralston says in that post (if you actually read it), he expected the GOP to do better in Clark, possibly even winning the day. They didn’t. He also says that the mail-in ballots continue to look good for Democrats, canceling out the GOP in the rurals.

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if republicans write anything positive about turnout the dems have to shut us down but they can  go into pages about texas lol what babies...

I mean, would I be happy if the GOP weren’t turning out at all this election? Of course. But that blog post is  not as simple as Jessica is (I suspect willfully) misrepresenting it to be.

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Ralston’s updates look pretty good for Democrats so far — they’re leading 2 to 1 in Washoe right now and almost 3 to 1 in Clark. In 2016 with about 10 percent of the vote in, they had a 2,200 ballot lead in Washoe; this year it’s almost 12,000. Still very early, but I don’t see how this is a sign Trump’s on any kind of path to flip Nevada.

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Ralston’s updates look pretty good for Democrats so far — they’re leading 2 to 1 in Washoe right now and almost 3 to 1 in Clark. In 2016 with about 10 percent of the vote in, they had a 2,200 ballot lead in Washoe; this year it’s almost 12,000. Still very early, but I don’t see how this is a sign Trump’s on any kind of path to flip Nevada.

Ralston noted earlier in his blog that the majority of the current vote comes from mail, which is overwhelmingly Democratic. In-person early voting in Washoe was narrowly GOP, and I think the vote will tighten over the next few days. Though no matter what, I think the Democrats have built up enough of a freiwal in Clark to keep the state for Biden.

Yes, he does keep stressing that “this election is an apple and the others are oranges,” and I agree that it’ll probably tighten up. But we’ll see how things look next Saturday in Clark, which I think is traditionally the Dems’ strongest day of early voting. (Second Saturday of EV, right?)

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Except, as has been pointed out many times before, early voting is incredibly predictive in Nevada. You can essentially call the state (as Ralston has done in previous elections) before Election Day.

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You're right.  Something happened to that site.  It used to pop up on returned, the wrong page loaded this time.  Nevermind, false alarm.

Nearly gave me heart palpitations. Still, returned is at 475k, so I expect that mythical 600k total lead isn't far off.

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Biden is doomed in Florida
https://twitter.com/athein1/status/1318195760177975296?s=19

Don't Republicans usually win the early voting period in Florida, even on the first day? If that's the case, and we're still waiting for Miami numbers, this doesn't seem good for Trump.

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Yeah, I don't see this as a bad day for Florida Democrats at all, given what's still out. They're going to win the day and add to their lead even with the mail-in ballot delay.

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So does this mean we won't get a D + 600K in Florida by Election Day after all??

If Republicans only manage to pull even or lose in-person early voting like they did today and Democrats continue to crush it in mail-in voting, it seems almost certain they'll get 600k.

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So does this mean we won't get a D + 600K in Florida by Election Day after all??

If Republicans only manage to pull even or lose in-person early voting like they did today and Democrats continue to crush it in mail-in voting, it seems almost certain they'll get 600k.

You assuming that Dems will lead the Miami early vote today?

Yes, as do a lot of folks. (See the latest tweet posted above.)

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https://twitter.com/Andy_Eads/status/1318364228982628352

Denton County, TX up to 62.2% of 2016 turnout.

Could we see 100% of 2016 in Denton before the early voting period is over?

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So a net gain of >6K votes for Democrats in Nevada despite Republicans winning the early vote (though not by much).

I can tell that Ralston doesn't feel as comfortable with what he's seeing the year because it's so different than it is normally.

Yes, I understand why he’s not confident in saying this looks pretty good for Democrats, even though ostensibly it’s great. I guess we’ll see if he gets more sure of the numbers by the end of the week once we have more of a pattern.

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Target “Smart”? Doesn’t feel like it. (It’s been pointed out numerous times already in this thread that their modeling is way off at best.)

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If this pattern holds in Nevada, I could see Ralston calling it by the beginning of next week. There’s simply no way the GOP comes back if they continue to get slaughtered in VBM.

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https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1318997603695034369

Clark firewall already at 61.5k, per Ralston.

In his blog post Ralston mentions it was 45k at the end of 2016 early voting.

Statewide. In Clark it was 70k.

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Nevada is looking bad for T

Jon Ralston
@RalstonReports
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The early blog is updated!

Models show Trump is almost surely down by double digits in Nevada with almost a quarter of the vote in. Even if he is winning indies by 10, he's losing by 10.

Bear in mind this is if the vote were to stop today. Ralston emphasizes in that blog post that things are still uncertain because we don't know if the VBM pattern will hold. (Although I agree that he seems cautiously optimistic.)