2020 Absentee/Early Voting thread

[Brittain33]

I seem to remember several posts in October during the 2016 version of this thread saying that Florida was in the bag for Clinton.

That's true.  It was definitely an MSNBC talking point too.  I think that election was a lot more unpredictable though.  This one is pretty stable.  If Biden can get his people out he should win because the polls aren't fluctuating much.  High turnout will be a good sign.  Trump probably needs a low turnout election so his 40% base makes up a bigger share of the electorate. But we need to be cautious.

I remember seeing the early vote in Florida and North Carolina and believing the election was in the bag for Clinton. *sigh*

[Brittain33]

Early vote starts tomorrow in Virginia, first time there is no need for an excuse.

Democracy flourishing after years of suppression is a beautiful sight.

[Brittain33]

38 votes cast thus far in Georgia.

White 21
Black 13
Other 3

Male 21
Female 14

Voted in 2016: 21
Didn't Vote: 16


For ballot requests, here are the altered racial figures (that attempt to account for & redistribute the large "other" contingency) for those who voted in '16 and those who did not.

Race	2016 Voters	Non-16 Voters	Total VBM
White	62%	51%	59%
Black	32%	37%	33%
Lat/Asn	6%	12%	8%

Just for fun, the MoE for a sample size of 38 out of a population of 4 million is 16%.

[Brittain33]

When can we start extrapolating anything from this? 

In 2016, extrapolating from NC and FL's early vote is literally what led some of us to believe Clinton had the election in the bag. We know that with a pandemic, we have nothing at all to compare it too. There is simply nothing to be done with this information.

[Brittain33]

I'm sorry but I have to think such insane early voting has to help Democrats if it stays like this.  Even though the Falls Church voters would almost certainly vote on Election Day, you never know, a few might have something come up, etc.  This banks their votes now.  Plus the party doesn't have to worry about them and invest resources last minute on voters who have already turned out.  If a similar thing happens in Philly and its burbs I think that's a good sign.

My thought on this is that I think it would be incredibly surprising if there weren't high Democratic turnout after the last three years of elections, and I think even predictions expecting a Trump win have to price that in, assuming high Republican turnout and moderates staying home or voting Republican unexpectedly. "We don't know what will happen" but it's just not conceivable that Democrats, at least white Democrats, don't turn out in huge number.

[Brittain33]

are there any good signs for republicans in early voting so far? i don't know how to read this i know reps won't be winning this vote but curious for any trends anyone has noticed. i know in the south a big thing to watch is the white % and see how that is compared to the black %.

There were good numbers out of Waukesha county.
Other than that, the fact we “know” that avoiding mail-in ballots this year is a touchstone of conservative identity provided a plausible excuse for underperformance instead of lack of enthusiasm.

[Brittain33]

I really son't see how so many people can claim that early turnout doesn't matter when Dems are banking such huge margins.  If early voting didn't matter then Republicans wouldn't be trying so hard to suppress it.

Also, up to 4.25 million votes now:

https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html

Oh it matters, it just isn’t a guarantee of any particular outcome.

[Brittain33]

How do we know the villages has seen such a shift?

It's evident on the ground. I sh*t you not, there was literally a golf cart parade held in support of him. That's not something Hillary or Obama ever got (but Trump did).

This is just a Biden version of boaters for Trump. The Villages has well over 100K people, even a small percent of that would be many thousands of votes. Assuming this golf cart parade wasn't attended by tens of thousands of people, it doesn't tell us anything.

It's not quantitative evidence, but the fact that in a community where Democrats have always felt completely outnumbered and afraid to be public, you're pulling together enough to feel bold enough to go public and have multiple events (recently a ballot drop-off) is as meaningful as people noticing in late 2016, wow, there are a lot of Trump signs in rural Pennsylvania and northern Maine.

[Brittain33]

I think that calendar may be showing last possible dates - in Massachusetts cities have the option to send ballots out sooner. I know people in Brookline who already received ballots and sent them back. I have a notice that mine has been mailed out but I haven't received it yet.

[Brittain33]

https://twitter.com/BreakingChesky/status/1315985159951462401

Siri, show me the Streisand Effect

[Brittain33]

I'm in line for early voting in McKinney and it's an hour long wait. This is insane.

you can vote by mail, vote on election day or wait a few days... LOL

I mean, I understand the concept of your answer, but two things can happen at once. You could wait till another day to vote, sure, or vote a different way... but at the same time, there's no reason why there isn't more sites in MANY states right now to vote. One drop box in a whole county is insane. Just like in GA, there should've been more remote sites to early vote at.

It's a fundamental Republican philosophy to make it harder for people to vote.  This is why Election Day still isn't a national holiday...it's the ONLY reason they're railing against mail-in ballots...it's why there are hours long lines to vote...it's why they purge voter rolls...it's why they decrease polling sites and limit the ways in which we can cast our ballots.

They know that they're quickly losing demographics and they're grasping at whatever threads they can.

Eventually the only way they'll be able to stay in power is by outright cheating.

It should be quite difficult for people to vote, and suffrage in general needs to be scaled back a lot. Many people who vote should not be allowed to.

Great idea. Perhaps we could start by excluding anyone whose grandparents didn’t have the right to vote? Then perhaps we could have a number of literacy tests and give the clerk some leeway in who he gave the test to.

[Brittain33]

MONTGOMERY COUNTY (Houston suburbs)
2012:   15,021       5.7%
2016:   20,432       6.6%
2018:   20,158       6.0%
2020:   20,874       5.7%

LOL, one of the counties showing no bump is one of the Republican bastions of the state. They'd better hope the voters show up on Election Day now that the rest of Texas is becoming a functioning democracy for the first time.

[Brittain33]

Pardon my ignorance but are election procedures at the discretion of states according to the constitution, or more specifically, what prevents Congress from enacting legislation to standardize federal election procedures across the US to avoid all these peculiarities?

Nothing legally prevents the federal government from doing so (the Constitution clearly gives Congress the ability to determine the manner of the federal elections). But Congress has historically not done so and has expressed no interest in doing so.

Seems like a no brainer for me and I can't see why Dem controlled congress in the past didn't do so considering they have more to gain from higher turnouts and accessibility to voting

They'll probably pass something early in 2021, only to have the Supreme Court throw it out on a 6-3 vote in 2023 or 2024.

[Brittain33]

What do we make of the consistency in Republican returned ballots in Iowa... IA-4 is 10% higher, IA-2 is 10% lower, but they're all pretty much the same? I would expect IA-4 to be much higher.

[Brittain33]

IA- 1 162 k Registered Rep
IA-2 168 k Registered Rep
IA-3 194 k Registered Rep
IA-4 216 k Registered Rep

Thank you.

[Brittain33]

Almost all of those counties are at 1/3 of 2016 turnout including the border counties and the wealthy suburbs. Of course many have grown hugely since then. Montgomery is the outlier. Galveston is an outlier in the other direction as another GOP county, though, so we can’t conclude anything.

[Brittain33]

Just a reminder, pirate Russell Crowe was elected 139,188 to 119,992.  It wasn't some big landslide victory.  FiveThirtyEight is projecting him to win by over 20 points based purely on fundamentals and there's been zero polling.  If Harris County is really blowing up, it's entirely possible he could go down.

He has so much money. It would be crazy if he raised such incredible amounts and still lost in a Lean R district.

[Brittain33]

How is Biden triaging Texas?

The twitter account that monitors spending noted that Biden canceled some planned spending there a few days ago.

[Brittain33]

I wonder if the Collin and Denton higher turnout is because they have a disproportionately white-collar, educated workforce who are working from home and can thus get away for early voting during the day more easily during COVID than in past years. This would be neutral about party.

[Brittain33]

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...

If someone cheers for an article that says the opposite of what they think it says, yes you can bet our pedantic asses will shut that down.

[Brittain33]

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.

i can say the same thing about the texas turnout as well... nobody knows what the hell is going to happen

She 👏 was 👏 the 👏 one 👏 drawing 👏 conclusions 👏

[Brittain33]

https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/

In TX, the age looks more favorable for Democrats at least compared to 2016.
(2016) in parenthesis

18 = 9.3% (1.8%)
30-39 = 12.3% (0.6%)
40-49 = 14.9% (0.5%)
50-64 = 30.0% (3.6%)
65+ = 33.5% (93.5%)

I mean their modeling is funky. 94% of early voters in 2016 were 65+ year old? That can't be right.

Nonetheless, I still think TX age is far more favorable to Democrats, at least compared to 2016. That said, TargetSmart really needs to fix their modeling.

Texas requires an excuse for absentee ballot but waives that for over-65s. That's the only possible way I can see those numbers working and if they were for absentee only.

[Brittain33]

Bear in mind that Beto won native-born Texans by 3, while Ted carried transplants by 15. Some of the people moving into Texas from out of state are young liberals, but a lot of them are looking for a place with lower taxes. It could be a wash, and I'm not going to try to extrapolate too much.

That stat is more of a proxy for age than for who's moving to Texas. Young people are much more likely to be born in Texas than Boomers, and we know how that worked in 2018.

[Brittain33]

WAIT WHAT?  Dem Florida lead now 800K?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17YKazYaUMZ33vmd4YHDKcVdlTkP5DmnHQQlAttwOzL0/edit#gid=0

tell me this is off?

Look at returned, not requested

[Brittain33]

Just a reminder, Steve Schale, analyzing the early vote, predicted Democrats would win the big races in Florida in 2014, 2016, and 2018. So be careful with his analysis.

What I remember from 2016 was his posting angstily about Democrats holding onto their absentee ballots and not sending them in.