Early Voting thread.

[Minnesota Mike]

Let early voting begin. Military/overseas ballots have to be sent by this weekend. North Carolina has a few thousand ballots back already. Minnesota starts in person and absentee voting tomorrow. I'm sure other states have/will shortly start also. So time see if we can devine anything from the EV entrails. I know it's mostly meaningless but gives us something besides polls to over analyse.

[Minnesota Mike]

North Carolina 9-22.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Press/2022%20General/NC%20Absentee%20Stats%20for%202022%20General/2022-09-22%20Daily%20Absentee%20Stats%20Report%20-%202022%20General.pdf

Dem- 2,506
Rep- 665
Other 1,428

Dems normally dominate the early absentee vote in NC so about what we should expect.

[Minnesota Mike]

Good news for those who like election results in as timely of manner as possible, a judge in Maryland has ruled counties can begin processing received absentee ballots before election day. State law, which was waived in 2020 but used in 2022 primaries, said absentees could not begin to be processed until 2 days after the election.

https://twitter.com/Brad7News/status/1573394082126516224

[Minnesota Mike]

Virginia's early vote tracker is up! 11,000 votes have been accepted so far, with results by CD and county.

https://www.vpap.org/elections/early-voting/2022-november-general-election/

Is there anything on the ballot besides House races?

[Minnesota Mike]

Just curious from where do they post these daily updates?

https://dl.ncsbe.gov/?prefix=Press/2022%20General/NC%20Absentee%20Stats%20for%202022%20General/

[Minnesota Mike]

Prof. McDonald has website keeping track of the early vote up and running.

https://rpubs.com/ElectProject/early_vote_2022

Votes are starting to come in from Pennsylvania but numbers so far are low, 1269 total, it's not worth breaking it down yet.

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/ChadLivengood/status/1575216643793629184

Now WI and PA need to get their act together.

[Minnesota Mike]

Democrat    10,668   49.6
Republican    5,697   26.5
None/Minor 5,151   23.9
TOTAL    21,516   100.0

What state?

[Minnesota Mike]

I do think it's interesting that GOP has a slightly higher return rate right now than Dems. However, if it's anything like PA, it may be more of a microcosm of more GOP-leaning areas doing better and getting these ballots scanned (i.e. in PA, places like Philly and Montco are barely scanning any yet)

I read somewhere that Philly was planning on mailing ballots later than most of the state. IIRC there was a week long window to mail ballots and Philly planned to mail their ballots the last day of the window due to a last minute change to a down ballot race that caused a delay in sending it to the printer.

[Minnesota Mike]

Doing a little googling Philadelphia is not scheduled to mail out domestic ballots until next week.

https://www.axios.com/local/philadelphia/2022/09/26/philadelphia-mail-in-voting-deadline

It's probably going to be at least another week before you see significant returns from Philly.

[Minnesota Mike]

Interesting article about early voting in MN, it is running way behind 2020 but slightly ahead of 2018. Of course mid term turnout is not going to match presidential turnout but the drop-off from 2020 has been huge. In 2020 336,017 votes had been cast in the first two weeks, this year 49,575. In 2018 42,552 votes were cast in the first two weeks. My guess is we are falling back to pre COVID voting habits and more people will vote in person on election day but we will have to wait and see.

https://www.minnpost.com/elections/2022/10/the-state-of-2022-early-voting-in-minnesota-its-not-2020-anymore/

[Minnesota Mike]

Literally the only state that early voting tells us anything about is Nevada. Until Ralston starts doing his analyses, don’t freak out.

What does NV tell us?

It’s very easy to extrapolate the winner of statewide elections there before Election Day because of their high propensity of early voting.

Or at least it used to be. With all voters now mailed a ballot past patterns may not hold.

[Minnesota Mike]

Besides VA-02 & VA-07 there is nothing competitive to vote for in VA. I wouldn't read to much into turnout elsewhere.

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/sfalmy/status/1580337075475259392

[Minnesota Mike]

https://mobile.twitter.com/WinWithJMC/status/1580889276468064257

How is this special midterm looking?

Those Florida numbers should be worrying for Dems

Until in person early voting starts we really do not know anything. Before 2020 Republicans usually did better with absentees in Florida and Dems did better with in person early voting. Until in person voting starts it's hard to guess how much things have snapped back to old patterns.

[Minnesota Mike]

Here’s a concept: we don’t make any inferences or assumptions based on VBM or early voting numbers. Both sides can point out to things that look good for them so there’s no point in drawing conclusions.

You're no fun . I have been told on this board to ignore early voting, ignore polls, ignore fundraising, ignore debates etc. What exactly should we be looking at?

For the record I think you can learn something from early voting numbers if you have a little common sense about it. It's tougher this cycle with baselines scrambled by COVID/Trump in 2020 but if you know a little history and the sample is large enough you can spot some trends. For example last year a lot of people were predicting the NM-01 special would be relatively close but if you paid attention to the early vote (historically 75%+ of the total vote) you could see it would be a Democratic blowout. Or you could look at Nevada in 2014 when Dem turnout absolutely collapsed in early voting you knew it was going to be disaster for the D's. Where people run into trouble in analyzing the EV is when they try to draw too precise of conclusions from it (see FL 2016, 2018, 2020). Instead of saying it looks close and turnout looks good people where trying to forecast an exact percentage lead for one party or the other.

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/stphnfwlr/status/1582066404362457088

[Minnesota Mike]

That's quite a turnout extrapolation from one partial day of early voting, although I do think a turnout between 2018 and 2020 is entirely reasonable.  On a related note, the AJC has launched a Georgia early voting tracker: https://www.ajc.com/politics/early-voting/.  Be sure to scroll all the way down the page for demographic breakdowns.

ETA: And also (as my co-Georgian Adam Griffin reminded me) https://georgiavotes.com/

Yeah the extrapolation is premature, I was posting the tweet more for just the numbers. Thanks for the link.

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/GabrielSterling/status/1582176445404971008

That's a huge first day for a midterm. Who does high turnout help more?

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/mrbrownsir/status/1582197311740182528

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1582514483154415616

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1582554491697524736

[Minnesota Mike]

Georgia is looking grim.
https://twitter.com/winwithjmc/status/1583180701217984512?s=21&t=aqKKZz5SipC...

The same exact drop happened in 2018 and 2020 if I read the comments and the graphs posted correctly. In no sense is this “grim.”

What did this end up at? I feel like I keep seeing numbers with no reference of comparison.

According to Michael McDonald's 2020 early vote tracker the Georgia total Non-Hispanic Black early vote (absentee + in person) was 27.7% in the general and 30.9% in the senate runoffs.

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

Unless the downward daily trend continues for awhile I don't see what the cause for concern for Democrats is.

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/WinWithJMC/status/1583406389522595840

Couvillon has it stuck in his head that if Dems are not voting at close to 2020 absentee rates that's bad for Democrats. That's just not going to happen. Some voters will continue to vote absentee after 2020 but most will revert to their pre COVID voting pattern.

BTW first day turnout of in person early voting matched 2018 almost exactly. Absentee voting has about tripled 2018 absentee voting but does not make up a large portion of the vote. Overall early voting is running slightly ahead of 2018 in North Carolina.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/Press/2022%20General/NC%20Absentee%20Stats%20for%202022%20General/2022-10-21%20Daily%20Absentee%20Stats%20Report%20-%202022%20General.pdf

[Minnesota Mike]

Interesting chart of early voting history in Georgia. 2020's absentee ballot numbers really look like an aberration. Interesting that while in person and total early voting is going gangbusters absentee voting is at it's lowest level since 2014.

https://twitter.com/charlesminshew/status/1583604078814572544