The absentee/early vote thread

[Ozymandias]

http://www.wnd.com/2016/09/republicans-lead-early-voting-in-florida-by-120000/

Republicans lead early voting in Florida by 120,000 votes (of 2 Million votes)
Republicans 43% | Democrats  37% | Indpendent 17.5% | Other Party 2.5%

It seems now Florida - Likely TRUMP

Dude, you need to stop being so careless with your posts-- these aren't actual votes, just ballot requests.

Did you really think 2 million people in Florida had already voted?

Also, as I understand it, Republicans typically outpace Democrats in absentee voting-- especially early on-- so I doubt these numbers are much different from 2012 when Obama won Florida.

[Ozymandias]

For the record, the actual early Florida vote (obtained from https://countyballotfiles.elections.myflorida.com/FVRSCountyBallotReports/AbsenteeEarlyVotingReports/PublicStats via http://www.electproject.org/early_2016) is ...

Democrats 26
Republicans 15
Not Affiliated 5

...for a grand total of 46 actual votes.

It seems now Florida - Likely CLINTON! WOO HOO!!

[Ozymandias]

Here's a good summary on the limited early voting (and ballot request) data that's come in so far across the country:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-p-mcdonald/2016-early-voting-underwa_b_12184290.html

[Ozymandias]

Anyone know how the Florida numbers compare to 2012 or is it new this year?

Hard to compare because of this change:

"In 2012, Florida adopted semi-permanent absentee ballot status where mail ballot voters can request to vote-by-mail in the next election when they mail in their ballot, and we saw an increase of mail balloting in 2014."

From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-p-mcdonald/2016-early-voting-underwa_b_12184290.html

[Ozymandias]

Sean Spicer just said on CNN that democrats "are running 50 000 early votes under threshold for what they need to have at this moment to win" and how it shows Hilary is bad candidate.

How exactly did he come up with this figure?

Don't have an idea, posted because I thought someone might know something.

Oh, sorry I forgot to type in Iowa. Not intentional.

I don't think Iowa can be compared yet, because...

"Iowa started their mail balloting slightly later than 2012 due to slower printing of ballots."

From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-p-mcdonald/2016-early-voting-underwa_b_12184290.html

There's some more detailed Iowa analysis later in the article-- basically, both Democratic and Republican ballot requests are down from past years, presumably because of the ballot printing delay.

[Ozymandias]

This is just Wake County in NC (includes Raleigh/Durham/Cary):

Gerry Cohen ‏@gercohen  3h3 hours ago
Wake Co NC voted absentees 47 days pre-elex:

2016 1,739
D 42.4%
R 30.1
U 27.2

2012 185
D 32.4%
R 38.4
U 29.2

up 940%, 18% swing to D

There's a bit more detail in Cohen's FB post: https://www.facebook.com/gercohen/posts/10103848424398478

[Ozymandias]

Michael McDonald ‏@ElectProject  1m1 minute ago
Real improvement for Dems in Maine CD-2 compared to past updates, might expect polling improvement there

Referencing chart available here:

https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/784418320812343299

[Ozymandias]

https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/784470654091419648

According to Nate Cohn/Upshot, at this point in mail voting, Romney was up 24. Trump is only up 1 among those who have returned mail ballots.

That's not quite right-- he said that his model predicts that TRUMP would have been up +24 if the same exact people who voted early by mail by this point in 2012 also were the only ones who voted early by mail so far this year.

So presumably Romney would have been up even more...

[Ozymandias]

Michael McDonald ‏@ElectProject  3m3 minutes ago
My roundup of early voting for the week ending 10/8:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-p-mcdonald/early-voting-a-month-to-g_b_12424562.html

[Ozymandias]

VIRGINIA: "The Fairfax County's elections office has seen 6,000 votes cast by absentee voters as of Friday, 2,000 more votes compared to the same time four years ago, according to spokeswoman Lisa Connors."

http://patch.com/virginia/annandale/absentee-voting-underway-fairfax-county-6-000-have-voted-friday


Michael McDonald ‏@ElectProject  5m5 minutes ago
Michael McDonald Retweeted Michael McDonald
Seeing this in @ArlingtonVotes, too. No party reg in VA, but this looks similar to NC pattern of high Dem interest

[Ozymandias]

https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/786258607616561152
This doesn't seem good for Clinton.

Statewide, OH absentee ballot requests are down 2.6% from 2012.

In Democratic strongholds:
Cuyahoga -16.1%
Franklin -16.3%
Hamilton -3.1%

As one of the tweet commenters noted, this could be due to lack of interest from Republican moderates who are concentrated in Dem strongholds...

[Ozymandias]

"Late Night Numbers from Florida: Older Whites Dominating Early Vote-by-Mail, but Democrats Holding their Own"

https://electionsmith.wordpress.com/2016/10/14/late-night-numbers-from-florida-older-whites-dominating-early-vote-by-mail-but-democrats-holding-their-own/

"Of the roughly 206k voters 61 and over who have cast VBM thus far, 87% are white. What is surprising, however, is of these 179k older white voters who’ve cast VBM thus far,  less than half (47%) are Republicans."

[Ozymandias]

Michael McDonald ‏@ElectProject  53s54 seconds ago
In Georgia today 91,951 people voted. 31% were African-American, pushing the overall African-American early vote percentage from 19% to 27%

[Ozymandias]

Didn't some counties in NC make early voting harder this year?

Wasn't that one of the reasons for all the lawsuits?

[Ozymandias]

Mr. Nevada, Jon Ralston, is doing a live blog on the first day of in-person early voting in Nevada.

Ralston states:

"Republicans have about a 9 percent lead statewide in mail ballots returned, about the same as 2012. The Democrats here don’t put much effort into absentees, which made up 7 percent of the total ballots in 2012, and focus much more on driving early voting turnout."

Which I found surprising because according to http://www.electproject.org/early_2016, of the ~1M total votes cast in NV in 2012, about ~700K were "Advance" (= Absentee by mail + Early in person), which means the vast majority of Advance votes are Early in person.

So I looked it up at http://www.nvsos.gov/silverstate2012gen/vote-turnout/, and sure enough:

Active Registered Voters   1,258,409           
Election Day Turnout   311,613 (24.76%)           
Early Turnout   619,381 (49.21%)           
Absentee Turnout   85,670 (6.80%)           
Total Turnout   1,016,664 (80.77%)

I think Ralston misstated the numbers slightly, because the percentages are expressed as a function of total RV, not actual turnout, but the basic conclusion is the same: Early votes will dwarf Absentee votes in Nevada...

[Ozymandias]

Isn't California transitioning into an all-mail system too?

As far as I know, no. Everyone I know here votes by mail but there's still a sizeable amount of voters that go to the polls on election day.

California just passed the new law (which applies to future elections)-- which automatically sends every registered voter a mail ballot and also creates "voting centers" (where you can vote early or drop off mail ballots) that would replace polling places-- a few weeks ago:

http://www.sos.ca.gov/administration/news-releases-and-advisories/2016-news-releases-and-advisories/governor-brown-signs-landmark-election-reform-bill/

Some counties can choose to implement the new system in 2018, and the rest have that option in 2020.

[Ozymandias]

Michael McDonald ‏@ElectProject  3m3 minutes ago
My weekly roundup of early voting activity for the past week. Enjoy!

"Early Voting: The Election Is Being Held Today"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-p-mcdonald/early-voting-the-election_b_12614284.html

[Ozymandias]

Day 2 tallies up at...

"The Nevada Early Voting Blog"

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

"Bottom line: After two days, the raw vote lead in urban Nevada for the Democrats is close to 21,000... It's a very blue wave so far, and Republicans have to be worried..."

[Ozymandias]

Using numbers from http://www.electproject.org/early_2016, here's total "ADVANCE" (Mail-in + Early) vote as a fraction of 2012 TOTAL vote (with some bolded battleground states):

State   2012 Total Vote  2016 Advance Vote  % of 2012 Total
TN   2,458,577   697,542   28.37%
AZ   2,298,802   616,883   26.83%
MT   483,932   104,162   21.52%
IA   1,574,738   311,007   19.75%
FL   8,474,134   1,614,883   19.06%
GA   3,897,839   699,824   17.95%
NV   1,014,918   174,119   17.16%
NC   4,493,301   653,487   14.54%
ME   711,053   85,141   11.97%
CO   2,569,516   286,639   11.16%
ND   321,072   35,599   11.09%
NM   783,758   84,432   10.77%
NE   790,662   79,742   10.09%
ID   652,274   64,402   9.87%
WI   3,063,064   289,253   9.44%
OH   5,580,715   509,829   9.14%
IN   2,623,541   238,749   9.10%
CA   13,015,298   1,174,119   9.02%
WA   3,125,516   257,048   8.22%
MI   4,722,988   386,199   8.18%
UT   1,017,401   74,143   7.29%
TX   7,991,197   575,941   7.21%
AR   1,069,468   70,180   6.56%
VA   3,847,243   204,324   5.31%
MN   2,925,920   150,973   5.16%
SC   1,964,118   100,966   5.14%
OR   1,775,995   76,755   4.32%
KS   1,158,833   49,304   4.25%
NJ   3,638,499   141,282   3.88%
IL   5,241,179   167,872   3.20%
DE   413,890   11,516   2.78%
DC   292,992   5,659   1.93%
RI   444,668   7,293   1.64%
AK   297,625   4,733   1.59%
KY   1,796,832   19,820   1.10%
MS   1,285,584   13,167   1.02%
WV   670,438   5,811   0.87%
AL   2,070,327   2,399   0.12%
CT   1,558,132   0   0.00%
HI   434,539   0   0.00%
LA   1,994,065   0   0.00%
MD   2,697,018   0   0.00%
MA   3,161,215   0   0.00%
MO   2,757,323   0   0.00%
NH   708,399   0   0.00%
NY   7,071,734   0   0.00%
OK   1,334,872   0   0.00%
PA   5,742,040   0   0.00%
SD   363,815   0   0.00%
VT   297,247   0   0.00%
WY   247,026   0   0.00%
USA   128,925,332   10,045,197   7.79%

[Ozymandias]

Well, FWIW the TN Republican party issued a statement last week telling voters to "vote their conscience." Governor Haslam is also #NeverTrump.

I really don't think it matters though. TN would probably be one of the last states (along with Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia) to vote for Clinton. The EV surge probably is due to a change in rules or something.

Actually, back in 2012 about 60% of the total vote in TN was cast early, so I don't think 28% at this point is that unexpected.

[Ozymandias]

Nate Cohn ‏@Nate_Cohn  2m2 minutes ago Washington, DC
Clinton leads 59-36 in the North Carolina early vote with more than 800k votes cast. We'll be tracking it daily

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/north-carolina-early-vote-tracker.html

[Ozymandias]

Nate Cohn ‏@Nate_Cohn  2m2 minutes ago Washington, DC
Clinton leads 59-36 in the North Carolina early vote with more than 800k votes cast. We'll be tracking it daily

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/north-carolina-early-vote-tracker.html

"supporters of Gary Johnson simply aren’t turning out in early voting, according to our polling data. So far, he has just 3 percent of the vote among people who voted early, according to our polling and our modeled data."

[Ozymandias]

That's surprising about Nevada . from all I'd been reading I thought Democrats were absolutely romping in the early vote. I'd assumed compared to previous years , but apparently incorrectly .

They are romping-- they just also romped in 2012, when Obama won Nevada by 7 pts despite many polls suggesting otherwise.

[Ozymandias]

Steve Schale ‏@steveschale  48s48 seconds ago
Today's "low propensity" FL voter update.   GOP has turned out more "certain" voters, which is expected, due to historic VBM advantage 1/2

Steve Schale ‏@steveschale  31s31 seconds ago
But HRC continues to turn out larger share and number of new and low propensity voters. 27% of Dems, 22% of Rs, roughly 40K more voters 2/2

[Ozymandias]

Then you should show some facts instead of mumbling

Nate Cohn ‏@Nate_Cohn  2h2 hours ago Manhattan, NY
"Clinton has an 18 point lead in NC early voting with more than 1 million votes cast, according to our estimates"

This isn't like other years when you could just use Rep and Dem registration ID to safely infer voting leads-- a significant number of registered Republicans in both NC and Florida will be voting for Clinton, as indicated by the Upshot's model extrapolating from their polling.