Early Voting thread.

[bilaps]

FL morning update has Dems at only 3k advantage for VBM+IP. And that's with some counties still not starting their EV IP as it's optional by law.

[wbrocks67]

Georgia

Day 10 AIP (+ABM) Voting: 132,444 voters cast ballots Wednesday, for a grand total of 1,255,773 votes.

Slight uptick in non-white vote compared to yesterday across all groups, but not enough to offset overall increase in white EV share. Females continue to see their share of the vote increase day-by-day.

Breakdown of Wednesday's voters:

Code:

81745 	White	61.72%
34339 	Black	25.92%
2201         Asian	1.66%
2017 	Latino	1.52%
12142 	Other	9.18%

73811	Female	55.73%
58326 	Male	        44.04%	
307          Other         0.23%

Total votes thus far:

Code:

717959	White	57.17%
386606	Black	30.79%
19369	Asian	1.54%
19025       Latino	1.52%
112814	Other	8.98%

687321	Female	54.73%
566168	Male	        45.09%	
2283	        Other	0.18%

GA tracking as of right now right about in the middle of 2020 and 2021. At this rate in 2020, black share was 29.6%. In 2021, 31.6%. So right in the middle.

[Senator Cris]

https://twitter.com/umichvoter/status/1585578843502514176?s=20

[Hollywood]

Dems up 13k after new batch of mail votes from Clark. Now, it's a 10% advantage which is what they need. Just the numbers are low, and if Rs turnout on Election day is big...

In Washoe, Dems have 1300 lead. But, percentages are starting to turn little there in favor of Republicans. Dems won last day with mail and ev combined by around 100 votes.

I don't think it's a good sign if VBM totals are way below 2020 numbers, and I would expect them to have larger margins.  As we saw with VA, Republicans will likely pick up an enormous portion of Trump's 2020 vote, as well as some anti-Trump, Biden voters. I expect the numbers to turn more in favor for Republicans like we're seeing in FL, TX, and NC. 

[It’s so Joever]

Dems up 13k after new batch of mail votes from Clark. Now, it's a 10% advantage which is what they need. Just the numbers are low, and if Rs turnout on Election day is big...

In Washoe, Dems have 1300 lead. But, percentages are starting to turn little there in favor of Republicans. Dems won last day with mail and ev combined by around 100 votes.

I don't think it's a good sign if VBM totals are way below 2020 numbers, and I would expect them to have larger margins.  As we saw with VA, Republicans will likely pick up an enormous portion of Trump's 2020 vote, as well as some anti-Trump, Biden voters. I expect the numbers to turn more in favor for Republicans like we're seeing in FL, TX, and NC. 

While you are a bit of a partisan hack sometimes, this is objectively correct and the trends in early voting are obvious. Realistically the main hope for Democrats is either that the current numbers are not reflective of what the final Early vote composition will be (with the exception of GA ig) which may be true but I don’t see why it would favor Dems from here on out, or that miraculously Dems are voting more on Election Day. The argument against this is that primary turnout nor VA Gov shows such results. However, the counter-counter argument is that those represent the voting patterns of high propensity D voters, but not lower propensity D voters. The counter-counter-counter argument is that the counter counter argument is copium and contingent on some set of voters we don’t even know will show up.

[2016]

Republicans take the lead in Florida
https://twitter.com/FreshTakeFla/status/1585667018774265859

And the notion by one of the Moderators here on Talk Elections that Hurricane IAN would be a problem for the Red Counties in Southwest Florida has also being DEBUNKED
https://tqv.vrswebapps.com/?state=FL&county=CLL&election=&showPrecinctSplits=0
Collier County is performing as expected.

[wbrocks67]

Dems up 13k after new batch of mail votes from Clark. Now, it's a 10% advantage which is what they need. Just the numbers are low, and if Rs turnout on Election day is big...

In Washoe, Dems have 1300 lead. But, percentages are starting to turn little there in favor of Republicans. Dems won last day with mail and ev combined by around 100 votes.

I don't think it's a good sign if VBM totals are way below 2020 numbers, and I would expect them to have larger margins.  As we saw with VA, Republicans will likely pick up an enormous portion of Trump's 2020 vote, as well as some anti-Trump, Biden voters. I expect the numbers to turn more in favor for Republicans like we're seeing in FL, TX, and NC. 

They're "way behind" because voters got sent ballots later than they did in 2020.

[soundchaser]

Ralston update, with models. Summary: hard to tell exactly what's going on with how much of the rurals are out and mail-in ballots late to arrive in Clark, but things look solid for Democrats as of today. We'll see if that holds.

[wbrocks67]

Return rate is really interesting, right now - there's not really a cohesive "good for Ds, good for Rs" - it's kind of all over the place, depending on the state. Some red states are showing Ds more energized, some blue states are showing Rs more energized to return ballots. Caveat that this all is based on counting speeds, too, but interesting nonetheless:

States that have DEMS with better return rates:
Nebraska: D 49.6% - R 40.9%
Pennsylvania: D 56.5% - R 52.0%
New Mexico: D 43.3% - R 40.5%
Arizona: D 23.9% - R 21.4%
New Jersey: D 44.3% - R 42.9%
Kansas: D 18.1% - R 17.1%
North Carolina: D 33.1% - R 32.0%

States that are about EVEN with return rates:
Colorado: R 11.4% - D 11.3%
Oregon: R 7.2% - D 7.0%

States that have REPS with better return rates:
California: R 10.0% - D 8.9%
Maine: R 58.3% - D 56.2%
Maryland: R 39.9% - D 36.3%
Connecticut: R 38.6% - D 33.1%
Florida: R 41.9% - D 36.3%
Iowa: R 48.6% - D 39.7%

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

New Minnesota update. A big surge and up to 282,277 votes cast, which is 8.6% of 2020's total and 10.9% of 2018's.

Here's an approximation (for various reasons based on different data sources in annoying formatting it would take way too long to get exact numbers including third party votes so this is adjusting all counties to have the statewide percentage, should be accurate within 1%) of the total of 2020 vote cast in each county with Biden counties in bold (btw there were a few tabulation errors in my previous post so disregard it):

Red Lake County 28.93% Marshall County 28.19% Cook County 27.64% Grant County 25.52% Lake of the Woods County 23.13% Mahnomen County 21.81% Aitkin County 21.43% Norman County 20.73% Big Stone County 20.14% Cass County 20.14% Koochiching County 19.78% Traverse County 19.14% Watonwan County 18.43% Stevens County 16.45% Murray County 16.29% Lac qui Parle County 15.74% Itasca County 15.18% Pope County 14.43% Pipestone County 14.02% Polk County 13.49% Swift County 13.03% Nobles County 12.75% Kittson County 12.10% Blue Earth County 12.03% Nicollet County 11.68% Yellow Medicine County 11.59% Le Sueur County 11.58% Wilkin County 11.31% Roseau County 11.11% Chippewa County 10.84% Brown County 10.51% Lyon County 10.46% Hubbard County 10.13% Washington County 10.11% Hennepin County 10.04% Morrison County 9.86% Rock County 9.83% Meeker County 9.75% Sibley County 9.47% Wabasha County 9.23% Ramsey County 9.02% Carlton County 8.85% Crow Wing County 8.63% Mower County 8.63% -------STATEWIDE------- Freeborn County 8.57% Douglas County 8.56% Fillmore County 8.44% Dakota County 8.27% Lake County 8.12% Carver County 8.08% Stearns County 8.02% Pennington County 7.63% Martin County 7.58% Rice County 7.29% Becker County 7.07% Beltrami County 6.87% Olmsted County 6.85% St. Louis County 6.79% Anoka County 6.74% Goodhue County 6.58% Kandiyohi County 6.46% Faribault County 6.42% Clay County 6.32% Pine County 6.08% Clearwater County 5.87% Jackson County 5.82% Otter Tail County 5.77% Scott County 5.65% Wright County 5.64% Steele County 5.61% Benton County 5.31% Mille Lacs County 5.21% Isanti County 4.82% Chisago County 4.71% Sherburne County 4.57% McLeod County 4.50% Redwood County 4.28% Wadena County 4.25% Todd County 4.17% Winona County 4.10% Kanabec County 3.74% Cottonwood County 3.70% Renville County 3.47% Waseca County 3.44% Houston County 3.34% Dodge County 2.93% Lincoln County 2.84%

Total is 52.02% in Biden counties and 47.98% in Trump counties. However for the reason mentioned earlier that many rural areas are VBM only there's a bit more inflated number in Trump counties than you'd expect in most states.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I also ran a probably meaningless but no worse than TargetSmart type data extrapolation of each county's 2020 results toward their share of the current amount, and the 2020 exit polls to get each respective share, and got this total estimate for the ballots cast by Party ID:

Democratic 37%
Republican 32%
Independent 31%

Which translates to in terms of votes:

Democrats 103,639
Republicans 90,969
Independents 87,669

So that means D+12,670 in terms of raw vote lead.

[wbrocks67]

I also ran a probably meaningless but no worse than TargetSmart type data extrapolation of each county's 2020 results toward their share of the current amount, and the 2020 exit polls to get each respective share, and got this total estimate for the ballots cast by Party ID:

Democratic 37%
Republican 32%
Independent 31%

Which translates to in terms of votes:

Democrats 103,639
Republicans 90,969
Independents 87,669

So that means D+12,670 in terms of raw vote lead.

Does the early vote typically favor either party in MN?

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

I just early voted in IL and voted to retain cuz as judge, it's huge turnout alot of these R polls are fake news, I know zds are gonna win

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I also ran a probably meaningless but no worse than TargetSmart type data extrapolation of each county's 2020 results toward their share of the current amount, and the 2020 exit polls to get each respective share, and got this total estimate for the ballots cast by Party ID:

Democratic 37%
Republican 32%
Independent 31%

Which translates to in terms of votes:

Democrats 103,639
Republicans 90,969
Independents 87,669

So that means D+12,670 in terms of raw vote lead.

Does the early vote typically favor either party in MN?

Tough to say because early voting is so new to Minnesota. We didn't have no excuse absentee voting at all until 2016 and technically we don't even have in person early voting even now. What happens is that in some municipalities and the county courthouse everywhere you can walk in, request an "absentee ballot" and then fill it out on site and "drop it off" just as you can an absentee ballot mailed to you. It's still treated the same as a mailed ballot including being in the same envelopes.

2020 was the first time we had widespread early voting in Minnesota with 66.9% of total votes cast early but that was obviously a special case. In the primary this year it was only 20.4%. At this rate we may not even hit that for the general.

I'd say in 2020 the early votes were very D leaning for obvious reasons but traditionally probably slightly R leaning for the reason of rural mail voting only precincts mentioned before.

[GeorgiaModerate]

From a Georgia Public Broadcasting political reporter who's also a data geek:

https://twitter.com/stphnfwlr/status/1585709488119635968

[Minnesota Mike]

I also ran a probably meaningless but no worse than TargetSmart type data extrapolation of each county's 2020 results toward their share of the current amount, and the 2020 exit polls to get each respective share, and got this total estimate for the ballots cast by Party ID:

Democratic 37%
Republican 32%
Independent 31%

Which translates to in terms of votes:

Democrats 103,639
Republicans 90,969
Independents 87,669

So that means D+12,670 in terms of raw vote lead.

Does the early vote typically favor either party in MN?

Impossible to say for sure since early votes are not calculated separately in MN and there is no registration by party but going by polls those who "have already voted" favor Democrats heavily.

[wbrocks67]

From a Georgia Public Broadcasting political reporter who's also a data geek:

https://twitter.com/stphnfwlr/status/1585709488119635968

Can someone summarize what this ultimately means, pls lol

[EJ24]

From a Georgia Public Broadcasting political reporter who's also a data geek:

https://twitter.com/stphnfwlr/status/1585709488119635968

Can someone summarize what this ultimately means, pls lol

It essentially means nothing. People try to extrapolate results from this kind of data and you just can't.

[It’s so Joever]

So I know everyone loves to hate on TargetSmart, but they do provide some important info. Assuming they are not just completely up actual turnout numbers, you can get an accurate account of votes per CD and that is not exactly something you can "fake" like a model. So I took the number of current early votes in each district as a percentage of total 2020 early vote. Now I know someone is already about to say "but the early vote is now far more R-leaning than before" but primaries do not indicate that, and there is no way people were much more scared of Covid-19 in July 2022 than now.

One last thing, do not compare CD's in different states, I should not have to explain why. Look at intra-state differences lol.

These are the results:

Updated:

[Unelectable Bystander]

There are two things right now that could use some further explanation:

A) What’s causing the difference between the modeled early vote and the peripheral numbers? Target smart has the modeled vote overall similar to 2020, except every Republican demographic is up by at least 2-3%. Whites, rural voters, men, married voters, older voters, and even registered republicans are all significantly increasing their share of the early vote. In Georgia for example, the top 10 turnout counties are all rural, yet the modeled vote is very democrat friendly. The map above is a good graphic showing this. What gives?

I’d like to say that the models are bad, but if that’s the case then it was probably equally bad in 2020. There has to be a different explanation. Are democrats with republican-leaning demographics disproportionately voting, and vice versa?

B) there’s a lot of discussion on RV vs LV. If there is a democratic turnout boost from Dobbs, would we be seeing it now or will they show up on Election Day? Was there precedence for an Election Day surge in the specials where Dems performed well?

Has anybody seen anything on these topics? If not, would there be interest in researching them? Recommend if so.

[2016]

The Florida Vote Breakdown of all 67 Counties:

[Devout Centrist]

What does the early vote tell us about this year’s midterm election? We slaughtered a 2-year old Iberian valley goat and hired a professional Haruspex to find out.

[soundchaser]

Another Ralston update. Dems appear to be doing well in the competitive NV house races so far.

[Minnesota Mike]

Another Ralston update. Dems appear to be doing well in the competitive NV house races so far.

I always thought the Senate seat would be harder to hold in NV than the House seats. All 3 seats are significantly to the left of the state as a whole.

[Terry the Fat Shark]

Turnout continues to run below 2018 levels in Texas