The absentee/early vote thread

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I'm not particularly worried about the decline of African American turnout in NC.  Siena and PPP both show Clinton with a 25 point lead with people who've already voted, a 10 point improvement over what polls found in 2012 for early voters.

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The common speculation so far has been that Trump is both a Democratic turnout machine and a Republican suppressor. These results, so far, appear to be in line with such observations.

In conjunction with a superb ground game by the Democrats and a dumpster fire ground game by the Republicans.  Its a perfect storm.

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Also, keep in mind that we have two polls that show Clinton winning early voters in NC by 10 points more than she did in 2012.

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my biggest fear atm would be that the party-registration data is going to be useless at the end, cause there has been more crossover-potential than ever.

especially true in OH.

True, but polling generally shows that Democrats are much more unified this year than Republicans so generally I'd think that Democrats should outperform the registration gap this year. 

There are a few areas like some parts Northern Florida and Western NC and VA, that could skew these numbers if Trump is turning out people in those areas to a large degree.

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Is that better or worse than previous early voting in Oregon?

100% of voting in Oregon is early voting, right?

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Democrats win by 45 votes in Washoe County in the in-person early vote today (4,051-4,006)

Kind of underwhelming.

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NC early vote update:


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‏@mitchellvii

So in NC Primary turnout between 2008 and 2016, we see Democrats losing 29% and Republicans more than doubling! Obama won NC by < 1%.


Bill Mitchell Verified account
‏@mitchellvii

Republican Primary turnout in NC up from 2008 by over 100%!!!



Bill Mitchell Verified account
‏@mitchellvii

Democrat Primary turnout in NC down from 2008 by 29%.


NC looking really good for R's right now which is one of the several must win states for Trump!

That's talking about turnout in the primaries, not the early vote, so its not really relevant to the thread.

There's no correlation between primary turnout and presidential election performance.  Each year, the primary with the higher turnout ends up being the more competitive one.

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michael states it himself:

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Likely Sanders supporters.

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The fact that Democrats are overperforming Party ID in polls of early voters is even more impressive when you consider that a number of registered Democrats in NC and FL are Dixiecrats.

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the dixiecrats in FL should be dead by now...don't know why but this state has had a BIG realignment regarding party registration since 2012.

Oh wow, in that case all of these comparisons to Florida early voting in 2008 aren't very accurate.  If Democrats are beating their early voting totals in 2008 despite Dixiecrats switching over to Republicans... that's a very good sign.

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Guys, remember that Hurricane Matthew hit parts of North Carolina hard, so don't worry about AA turnout too much. Have faith that it will pick back up.

Its also down in FL, GA, VA.   This isn't (solely) hurricane related, or solely voter suppression.  It seems like black turnout is returning to 'normal' without Obama on the ballot.

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About turnout - do not forget that the number of people living in US has increased by 10 million since 2012

Florida looking good for Trump. In 2012 Democrats beat Republicans by 3 points in early voting while this year R are actually edging D so far. Romney reduced the margin by 2 points on election day.

Similar with North Carolina. Democrats won EV 2:1 in 2012 while this year their advantage is 3-4 points less. A bigger turnout may sound good and "reduce" the deficit but they are reports that black turnout has dropped a few points.

A.) You can't compare Florida to 2012 since early voting laws have changed since then.  2008 had a similar voting period to 2016, and that compares favorably for the Democrats, if I remember correctly.

B.) Both Florida and North Carolina have had a rush of Dixiecrats (straight ticket Republicans who are still registered as Democrats), who've finally gotten around to changing their party registration.  So even though Democrats are doing slightly worse, this could be entirely illusory.