The absentee/early vote thread

[BoAtlantis]

Even when isolated to where sites weren't reduced, Blacks are 91% of where they were, whites 128%.

91% isn't too bad. Obama would naturally do better among black voters.

Also, as I said above, 128% whites don't mean too much to me. Using the theory that educated whites are the most likely to vote, it could also mean that educated whites are NeverTrump-ers voting out in droves.

[BoAtlantis]

http://www.insight-us.org/blog/north-carolinas-early-voting-2016-dashboard/

Overall story is that the GOP is picking up fast.

The Black vote is now 77% vs the comparable period (75% last update). Whites are now 108% (was 102%).

lol that's one (wrong) way to interpret the numbers.

What's a good way to interpret it? 10/26, Dr. Bitzer says
http://www.oldnorthstatepolitics.com/2016/10/nearing-million-absentee-ballots-in.html

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Kind of odd that after underperforming mail ballots, GOP is doing relatively better with early voting (Bitzer's numbers are for combined mail/early vote). Maybe the excited Trump supporters are voting early, but they'll peter off. Still, I don't see how one can spin the week's past numbers as a good sign for Clinton.

We also have to take into account that Independent #'s are greater this year. And a big share of that comes from young people voting for Hillary.

I'm going by my rough memory but Hillary is doing somewhat better under Independent in NC compared to Obama. D minus R margin would be a pretty conservative estimate.

[BoAtlantis]

Steve Schale

Bellwethers:

Hillsborough County -- the only county in Florida to vote for Obama twice and Bush twice, saw over 18,000 in person votes for the second straight day, and Democrats increase their early vote lead to more than 4,000 votes, and their total early/VBM lead to over 10,000 votes.  Democratic share of total early/VBM votes is about 7.3%.  

I-4 Corridor:  Democrats won every county that is on I-4, except Seminole County (we can't expect to win a county so Republican that you have to go back to Truman to find a Democrat who carried it every day).  Overall for the day, Democrats won 45-35.

Here are a few counties:

Broward: (60D-21R), +11,987 for day 2.
Dade: (48D-29R) +6,600 for day 2.
Orange: (50D-29R) +3,665 for day 2

Also, here is one more for you: among first day of early voting Democratic and NPA Hispanics, 44% were either first time voters, or only voting in their second ever general election.  In other words, these voters are expanding the electorate.

Overall, after day one (again I will update these later), of the roughly 1.6 million ballots cast, 79% of Republican votes came from the most likely of voters, compared to 73% of Democratic votes.  In other words, a larger share of the Democratic turnout has been from new voters, and infrequent voters."

Very important, bolded.

Those of us that watch football, LOL at below.

"Well right now, Republicans are doing about as well in Duval as the Jaguars."

[BoAtlantis]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/10/26/1587009/-Early-voting-in-Columbus-OH-on-record-pace

In-person early voting in Franklin County (Columbus) Ohio is coming in far above 2012 totals.
In-person early voting in Franklin County Ohio, 2016 vs. 2012

EARLY VOTING DAY #   2012 DATE   2012 EARLY VOTES   2016 DATE   2016 EARLY VOTES

1   10/2   1,515   10/12   2,483
2   10/3   1,152   10/13   2,076
3   10/4   1,102   10/14   2,471
4   10/5   1,417   10/17   2,284
5   10/9   4,237   10/18   2,032
6   10/10   1,186  10/19   2,189
7   10/11   967   10/20   2,125
8   10/12   1,318   10/21   2,804
9   10/15   1,233   10/24   3,406
10   10/16   1,135   10/25   3,059
11   10/17   1,254   10/26   -
12   10/18   1,237   10/27   -
13   10/19   1,888   10/28   -
14   10/22   2,307   10/29   -
15   10/23   2,264   10/30   -
16   10/24   2,607   10/31   -
17   10/25   2,772   11/01   -
18   10/26   3,784   11/02   -
19   10/29   4,443   11/03   -
20   10/30   3,656   11/04   -
21   10/31   4,118   11/05   -
22   11/01   4,964   11/06   -
23   11/02   5,578   11/07   -
24   11/03   4,832      
25   11/04   3,707      
26   11/05   4,383   
   
"In summary, for the first 10 early voting days in 2012 there were 15,262 votes cast in-person, vs. 24,929 this time, a 63% increase. While there are three fewer early voting days in 2016 compared to 2012, the voting rate is on track to blow through the 2012 total.

In 2012 there were a total of 69,112 in-person early votes cast in the county. The total this time could exceed 100,000, which would be a 45% increase, not  stretch given that the increase so far exceeds 60%."


Ohio is really confusing right now because there are some mixes of positive and negative news.

[BoAtlantis]

Few more positives for Hillary in OH

https://twitter.com/tbonier

"Sleeping giant awakens? Huge surge in early vote in Cuyahoga/Franklin Counties yesterday, now accounting for 20% of early votes cast in OH."

"38% of ballots cast in Ohio yesterday came from Franklin and Cuyahoga County. Time to lose the media narrative on Trump doing well in OH."

[BoAtlantis]

https://twitter.com/steveschale/status/791341639201648645?lang=de

"Interesting tidbit:  The NPA's in FL who have voted are disproportionally unlikely voters (about 40%) & a bitmore Hispanic than electorate."

[BoAtlantis]

Steve Schale

278,701 Floridians voted early, and Democrats won the day by about 4,000.  Total in person was about 15,000 less than Tuesday.

166,962 Floridians returned a VBM ballots, and GOP on them by about 10,000.

So out of about 2.5 million votes, the GOP has a 10,000 vote lead, which plays out to about 0.47%

I get asked often how this compares to 2012.  It really doesn’t in an apple to apples form. Early voting in 2012 started on this coming Saturday, so we were only looking at VBM in 2012 on this day. The GOP had a pretty significant lead, and we did not overtake them in total votes until Sunday.

In 2008, the early voting calendar was similar to this one, though the GOP went in with a much larger VBM lead.  If memory serves me right, it was the weekend when Democrats overtook the GOP.

Hillsborough -

is the only county that voted for Bush twice and Obama twice. It has also correctly picked 19 of the last 20 Presidents.

Yesterday, Democrats carried the day by about 5 points, thanks to a 10-point advantage in VBM ballots.  Democrats maintain a 7-point (44-37) edge in total ballots cast, which is in line with our registration edge.

I-4

Orange:  46-32 D for the day.  49-31 D overall
Osceola: 48-28 D for the day.  49-29 D overall
Volusia:   42-36 R for the day. 42-38 R overall

Palm Beach continues to look good (though I’d like higher turnout):  48-30 for day, 51-30 overall (+28K).  (Obama won by 17 points)

Broward:  57-23 D for the day, and 58-24 D overall (+66K)

Dade:  45-31 D for the day, and 45-33 D overall (+33K)

Duval, even though GOP had a good day in VBM returns, Democrats once again won the in person early vote.  This is a county that Obama was able to significantly reduce the huge Bush margins of 2000 and 2004 (61K votes in 2004!)

Duval:  44-43 R for the day, 44-41 R overall (+1,000)

[BoAtlantis]

http://www.ktnv.com/news/ralston/the-nevada-early-voting-blog

"The latest statewide numbers, missing a few rural counties, show a 26,500 lead for the Dems in raw votes. That's 45 percent to 36 percent, the same percentage lead and 3,500 raw votes more than they had at this point in 2012 and about 3 points above the actual registration difference."

[BoAtlantis]

http://www.ktnv.com/news/ralston/the-nevada-early-voting-blog

"The latest statewide numbers, missing a few rural counties, show a 26,500 lead for the Dems in raw votes. That's 45 percent to 36 percent, the same percentage lead and 3,500 raw votes more than they had at this point in 2012 and about 3 points above the actual registration difference."

Am I the only one who is a bit disappointed that it's only on par with 2012? If Latinos are really turning out in record numbers, the margin should be wider than that, no?

Intuitively, yes.

But look at the polling average.

HuffPo final polls average in 2012

Obama 50.1
Romney 46.5

HuffPo polls average as of 10/26/16

Clinton 44.5
Trump 42.1

So the fact that polls in NV are a little tighter in 2016 but Hillary is keeping her pace should tell you she is overachieving so far, if anything.

[BoAtlantis]

https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/791454902748938240

"Dear GOP pundits bragging about Trump "strength" in IA AV:
- Obama won AV by 20% in IA in '12
- Current D AV share is only .8% behind '12"

@tommillard Not necessarily, but there is no sign of an intensity gap in the AV. So we can assess the polls (which are mixed). I'd bet HRC+3"


Wow, Tom Bonier thinks Hillary will win, let alone possibly by +3 in IA?

I'd say +3 is too optimistic for IA but he has the model so....

[BoAtlantis]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/early-voting-more-good-signs-for-clinton-in-key-states/2016/10/27/e1fd6334-9c18-11e6-b552-b1f85e484086_story.html

"In Utah, overall ballots are up from 2012, driven by faster gains among voters ages 22 to 49, according to Catalist, a Democratic analytical firm. Republicans barely led in total ballots cast compared to independents, 38.6 percent to 38.5 percent. That could mean that Evan McMullin, a third-party candidate, is drawing support from Republicans unhappy with Trump. Democrats still trail at 19.4 percent, but they’re in an improved position from 2012, when Republicans held a 58 percent to 13 percent lead."


Muffin is holding his ground.

[BoAtlantis]

Steve Schale

Here are the totals:

Vote By Mail: 127,298 votes, GOP won (42-37-21), or just under 6K votes
In Person Early Vote: 263,964 votes, Dems won (40-39-21) or just over 3K votes*

This brings us into total votes 2,864,666 with leading GOP up just over 14K votes. (+0.5%)

One other big picture number: There are almost 60,000 more Democrats in Florida with a vote by mail ballot that they have not returned.  In total, about 57.3% of Republican VBM ballot requests have been returned, compared to 52.6% of Democrats.

SIDE NOTE FROM STEVE TO DEMOCRATS:  RETURN YOUR DARN BALLOTS!

Hillsborough

We won both the early vote and the vote by mail tabulations, and now carry a 12,500 vote lead (+6.8%). And keep in mind, Hillsborough has correctly picked 19 of the last 20 Presidents.

I-4
In total for the day, 108,000 votes were cast in the I-4 counties, with D’s winning 41-38-21.
The I-4 counties have contributed nearly 800,000 ballots, or about 28% of all ballots cast in Florida, with Democrats holding a 42.4-37.5% (+38,000) lead.

Broward:  Democrats now lead by 69,900 votes, or 58-23% lead.

[BoAtlantis]

Status on OR

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/10/28/1587774/-One-more-state-where-Democratic-turnout-is-looking-good

In 2008 Barack Obama won 13 counties
In 2012, he only won 10 counties in the state, and four of the top seven in population.

"Registered Democrats currently have turned in more ballots than Republicans in 17 of Oregon’s 36 counties. Including all seven of the most populous counties. Currently Democratic turnout is at 14.8% and Republican turnout is 12.2%. This is not normal. Usually, unless it is a very good election for us, Republican turnout is at east as high as Democratic turnout."

So far 49.7% of voters are Democrats to 29.7% Republicans. In registered voters, Democrats lead 38.9% to 28.2%, so that 2.6% edge in turnout so far leads to us significantly outperforming registration.

[BoAtlantis]

On this note, wouldn't we expect that if Trump was activating massive numbers of low propensity white voters that the Midwest would be exactly where turnout would be surging, since it has the most of them?

you are technically correct, even while....are there really states which are better for republicans if the turnout is high?

Then again most of the Trumpers don't approve of ANY early voting. I keep seeing how voting should only be allowed one day and if you can't make it that's your own problem. So I'm sure a lot of them won't vote until election day.

Funny enough the biggest Trump supporter I know isn't going to vote. Hoping there's a lot of them that are like that.

The biggest Trump supporter I know has said the same thing, although I'm not sure I believe him.

What are these people's reasons?

Don't know the actual reason but he has said he thinks voting is stupid, so probably why he supports Trump. Served in the military (only on base, got a medal for running into the back of a truck during the one mortar attack on the base) and has cycled through jobs because he either quits or gets fired from complaining nonstop/being lazy/calling in "sick" too many times. Complains about Democrats and people who don't work though, so general low class white trash.

What people misunderstand is that working class or non-working class isn't that strong of a predictor. Here in NY at least, income doesn't predict whether one is a Democrat or not. It correlates much more with religion.

At my work, all the white Catholics are for Trump and all the atheist or infrequent churchgoers are for Hillary or Johnson. I'm the only protestant Christian that supports Hillary but me being non-white probably is a factor.

[BoAtlantis]

What's interesting to me is how blacks are under-performing this year, possibly even above and beyond their limited access to voting locations.

Unaffiliated #'s are way outperforming.

Democrats aren't doing terribly so far because many liberal youngsters have registered as unaffiliated this year but Democrats definitely need to way outperform their 2012 #'s. They have serious grounds to make up.

[BoAtlantis]

Jon Ralston

"Dems won Clark by 3,600 votes on Friday - raw vote lead 40K. Same as '12 but percentage  lower because more voters. Detailed post coming."

[BoAtlantis]

What still gets me is that Clinton leads in the polling crosstabs of people who have already voted by a much larger amount than party ID would indicate. This didn't happen in either of Obama's wins where the early vote subsamples largely mirrored party ID and demographic voting rates

Tom Bonier of TargetSmart essentially said some people lie about having voted early.

It's far better to rely on the modeling.

[BoAtlantis]

Breakdown of early voting in each state

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/29/where-early-voting-hints-at-good-news-for-hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump/

[BoAtlantis]

Breakdown of early voting in each state

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/29/where-early-voting-hints-at-good-news-for-hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump/

This article has a lot of nice summary graphs-- thanks for the link

My pleasure

NC Status as of 10/28

                         Clinton          Trump         Clinton       Trump
Already voted     686,000         462,000    56.7%     38.2%
Yet to vote        1,491,000   1,440,000    46.4%   44.8%
Total estimates   2,177,000   1,903,000   49.2%   43.0%

[BoAtlantis]

Voted for Clinton in GA today!

Which county? Long line?

[BoAtlantis]

Badger drops in and absolutely lays it down. Nice.

I've always wondered where Trump supporters would put their money if they had to bet their life savings on it.

My guess is that they would also probably bet Hillary like the rational people. But since talk is cheap, they are being intellectually dishonest with themselves.

[BoAtlantis]

Any news about Florida?

Was mentioned earlier but here you go.

http://steveschale.com/

Day five of in person early voting looked like this:

Vote By Mail:    128,058 (+1K from yesterday) votes, GOP won (43-36-21), or just under 10K votes

In Person Early Vote: 265,310 votes (up about 1,500 from yesterday), Dems won (40-39-21) or just under 1K votes

393,368 votes were counted, and GOP won the day by about 9,000.

This brings us into total votes 3,258,034 with leading GOP up about 0.6%.

One other big picture number: There are now almost 70,000 more Democrats in Florida with a vote by mail ballot that they have not returned.  Data does show that Democrats have been returning theirs as quick, if not quicker than Republicans, but had a higher number of post-October 1 requests. Because Democrats actually have 5,000 more overall requests, the GOP VBM numbers should level out.  Even at current lower Dem return rates, the GOP advantage should reduce by about 20,000 by election day, given the Dems larger number of outstanding ballots.

Essentially GOP is holding Democrats off in the raw total votes and expanding the lead but that's because Democrats have many more outstanding absentee mail requests.

Higher % of GOP votes are also from already likely voters, whereas higher % of Democrats votes are from low propensity voters.

[BoAtlantis]

Tom Bonier

"By this morning, over 1 million people will have voted in Ohio. Democrats have an 11% lead in modeled partisan vote share."

"15% of the OH vote thus far has come from people who did not vote in '12. That universe is +4% Dem. GOP is turning out likely voters."

[BoAtlantis]

Sorry for the long post but this is CNN's update with my truncated highlights.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/29/politics/early-voter-data/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_politics

Arizona

Registered Republicans took the lead in Arizona this week......But their advantage today is about half the size it was at this point in 2012. Republicans are currently ahead of Democrats by 34,000 votes, or 3.6% of the vote. At this point in 2012, Republicans were ahead by more than 62,000 votes, which translated to a 9.7% lead.

More than 915,000 people have already voted in Arizona, an increase from this time in 2012. About two-thirds of all votes in the Grand Canyon State were cast early in the last presidential election.

Colorado

Registered Democrats continue to lead Republicans in terms of turnout -- an edge they've maintained since ballots started being returned. They're up about 27,000 votes, which is a significant turnaround from this time in 2012, when Republicans were leading by about 19,000 votes.

In fact, 38% of all ballots returned have come from voters over 65, even though that age group was only 16% of the Colorado electorate in 2012.

Georgia

Georgia has crossed the 1 million mark in terms of ballots cast. More than 1,061,000 people have already hit the polls in the Peach State -- a spike of about 37% from this time in 2012.

Turnout among white voters rose by about 3%, while turnout among black voters is down by about 4.5%.

Florida

Republicans continue to lead Democrats in Florida early voting by a very slim margin. Registered Republicans are ahead by about 13,545 votes, a smaller lead than they had one week ago.
This is still a decent showing for the GOP -- it's preferable to be ahead than behind -- but they are still behind their pace from 2008, the last year that comparable data is available. At this point in 2008, registered Republicans had a 44,000-vote advantage, which meant they were ahead by about 2.8%.

Iowa

Democrats are winning the turnout battle, and are currently ahead of Republicans by about 39,000 votes. But that's a significant drop from their position at this point in 2012, when they led by 56,000. Democrats enjoyed a similar lead of about 50,000 votes at this point in 2008 as well.
Furthermore, the Democratic lead has been shrinking. They were up by 16% one week ago, but they're ahead by 10% today.

Nevada

The Democratic edge stands at about 26,000 votes. That's a good sign for Democrats up and down the ballot -- in addition to the presidential race, there are competitive Senate and House seats up for grabs. Earlier this week, Democrats were doing better than 2012. But according to the latest data, they are now slightly behind that pace: They're up by 8.8% today, but were ahead by 9.3% at this time in 2012.

North Carolina

The Democratic advantage in North Carolina's early voting continues, but may be slowing down. They're up by more than 186,000 votes, which gives them a 15% lead over registered Republicans. This is the smallest lead (as a percent of the vote) Democrats have seen since early voting began October 20.

Turnout among African American voters in has apparently dropped. So far, black voters are about 23% of the early voting electorate. That number was 29% at this point four years ago.

Ohio

Registered Republicans are up by about 39,000 votes, an improvement from their position in 2008.

About one-third of Ohioans voted early in 2012. That number is on track to be lower this year, a likely result of the Republican-led legislature scaling back the number of early voting days. That change was enacted in 2013 and is in effect for the first time in a presidential election this year.

[BoAtlantis]

Voted for Clinton in GA today!

Which county? Long line?

Gwinnett County

40 minute line...read a magazine in nice weather during that time!

Congrats! Lucky early voters....