Lots of good stuff already posted here so just to summarize a few items presented:
1.) OR is a heavily Non-Hispanic White state and white voters didn't swing that much nationally between '20 and '24 at the PREZ level.
2.) All VBM mitigated against the types of huge voter drop-offs among DEM voters we saw in many other parts of the country (IL,NY, NJ, etc...).
3.) Regarding TO not decreasing as much in Multnomah County as elsewhere,
not sure that is actually the case, although granted we should no more by this coming Wednesday.
4.) Not really buying the concept that tons of Republicans are "self-relocating" to Idaho, Montana, Utah, etc in significant enough numbers to explain the shift...
5.) COVID related trauma and lagging indicators certainly probably tied in a bit here, considering that what was already a massive housing affordability crisis was accentuated by a flow of people living on the streets and in their car / caravan camps.
I have never seen anything like that in Oregon before, but it does seem that in 2024 that there was a much less visible homeless population, quite possibly tied to the Kotek Administrations.
The images from the sustained militant street demos in PDX, along with right-wing militia type folks showing up at demos, storming the capital, and various city halls and council meetings seem to have pretty much evaporated.
6.) OR / WA have traditionally been very inelastic at the Presidential level in recent cycles and Trump is clearly defined in voters minds, and not in a favorable manner.
It's one thing to vote PUB for GOV and down-ballot Statewide offices, since as some have noted we have a history of relatively moderate candidates they select in their primaries for those offices who typically run 2x ahead of PUB PREZ candidates.
7.) Religion likely not that big a factor since as has been mentioned, OR is widely considered to be one of the least religious states in the US by most metrics.
So... what to make of all of this?A.) We still don't have the final numbers for Oregon Turnout, but a lot will depend upon what the final numbers are on 11/26/24 shortly after 17:00 Pacific Time, when the county updates should be processed a little bit later once they hit the OR State server update.
I have been deliberately deferring on making many observations on OR results thus far since we still have potentially quite a few ballots not yet added into the official totals.
OR has until 11/26 for the final stage for voters to cure their ballots.
The question in my mind are these ballots already showing up in the OR-SOS webpage as "counted" or are these ballots potentially in addition to those ballots?
B.) In 2024 thus far according to the OR-SOS webpage:
TV: 2,246,947 (-) 166,943 TV vs '20
RV: 3,067,934 (+) 123,346 RV vs '20 (73.1% TO) (-8.9% vs '20)
In 2020 OR-GE-TO was:
TVs: 2,413,890
RVs: 2,944,588 (82.0% TO)
So how many ballots are still really out and where?
I am extremely skeptical that there are an additional ~167k ballots out there to hit the 2020 TV numbers, despite the fact we have 123k more voters than in '20 because of AVR vs the DMV.
Let us look at a few counties where there might be quite a few potential Total Votes remaining:
1.)
Multnomah County is currently in '24 only at
416.3k TVs vs 576.7k RVs (72.2% TO)
(-)53.5k TVs vs (+) 5.3k RVs
In '20 once all the votes were counted:
469.8 TVs vs 571.4k RVs (82.2% TO)
Really wrapping my brain around the concept, that there are an additional ~50k ballots remaining in Multnomah.
I get that the whole RCV thing might be slowing down counting a bit, even although PDX is not the only vote bank in the county, but still suspect that we might have only something like 30k ballots outstanding which will likely break 2:1 DEM.
2.)
Washington County heavily educated, large Latino and Asian-American 'Burb of PDX:
2024 (Thus Far)
300.5k TVs (-) 23.7k
400.8k RVs (+) 18.5k (75.0% TO) (-9.8%)
2020:324.2k TVs
382.3k RVs (84.8% TO)
So again I have serious questions if TV's here will hit 2020 numbers, let alone TO coming anywhere to close to '20.
Still, I would imagine outstanding ballots from WashCo should break something like 60-40 D at minimum.
Needless to say w/o looking at precinct results not yet available, still looking pretty good numbers for DEMs considering the large Latino and Asian-American POPs of the county.
3.)
Clackamas County a mixture of roughly 2/3 Suburban / Exurban and roughly 1/3 heavily PUB Rurals and small towns.
2024 (Thus Far)
242.4k TVs (-) 19.1k
319.8k RVs (+) 11.7k (75.8% TO) (-9.8%)
2020:261.5k TVs
308.1k RVs (84.8% TO)
Okay grok there were some issues with their single uber fast vote counting machine which broke down prior to votes getting counted in OR (Just scanning the VBMs by barcode and signature matches, etc...)
Still are there really anything like 20k votes remaining to be counted in Clackamas County?
Now even although I just basically talked about 50% of the entire OR vote share, there are still some ballots downstate right, or are there?
4.) Now let's move down to what I call "The Bible Belt" or Oregon. By this I mean the states of the Mid-Valley (Yamhill, Polk, Marion, Linn), which traditionally tend to support Evangelical Republicans for both PREZ and State races.
Marion County:
Although I did call it out as a flip county early on from Biden '20 >Trump '24, and also provided some initial assessments of heavily Latino parts of the County, where my conclusion was that instead of Latinos flipping heavily towards Trump, looked a lot more like voters stayed home and didn't vote.
I suspect we likely have similar patterns in places like
Polk and
Yamhill counties, with the former having a mixture of a large college town, combined with a heavily Latino Population down the road, and Yamhill having a bunch of Exurban PDXers + McMinville with heavily PUB rurals.
5.) Oregon Coast heavily Seniors appears to have swing DEM between '20 and '24, although obviously we don't have precinct results yet from
Lane and
Douglas counties to see what is going on in places like
Florence and
Reedsport.
6.) Southern Oregon--- difficult to tell what exactly is going on there when it comes to California retirees moving into places like
Josephine and
Jackson counties.
Without precinct numbers difficult to see how many folks from
Ashland (Generally considered one if not the most DEM City in Oregon over the past couple decades), just stood out the election because of things like Gaza, etc....
7.)
Deschutes County continues their shift to the Left, both with POP growth and people working remotely with $$$ etc...
Still reality is that right now PUB strongholds like:
Douglas County 69% in '24 vs 79% in '20.
Linn County 72% in '24 vs 79% in '20.
So although I strongly suspect that most of the remaining ballots out in Oregon will skew DEM, it also is looking increasingly clear that there was also a significant drop-off in TO in heavily Trump vote banks in Oregon, as well as among heavily traditional DEM base voters.
I would prefer to do a deeper dive once we get the final certified results, or at minimum the final update once the Provisional Ballots are counted, before doing the "jump to conclusion mat" thang.
