The absentee/early vote thread

[Brittain33]

Are these North Carolina Dixiecrats... however many there are still left... really more likely to come out early for Trump against Clinton than they were for Romney against Obama? It's possible, but it's hard for me to imagine considering how Alabama voted against Obama. Remember, we are talking about an increase against a 2012 baseline, not a 1980 or 1992 baseline.

[Brittain33]

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

https://twitter.com/gercohen/status/781890886120706048

Living in Wake County I can say there is no Democratic absentee ballot GOTV (yet). This is all self-motivated.

WOW. I've assumed the Dem advantage so far is because Obama didn't seriously contest the state in 2012 whereas the Clinton campaign is organizing voters...

[Brittain33]

Looks like Iowa Republicans may be maxing out the number of voters actually willing to show up for Trump vs. a normal Republican candidate.

[Brittain33]

All of the above is true, but if there is a haircut across the board for Trump it's going to take out Georgia.

[Brittain33]

The absence of a functioning campaign to drive absentee voting would mean that a good chunk of that 50% drop-off simply transitions to in-person voting, rather than dropping out of the election.

[Brittain33]

If there is any state in which early indicator is very telling, it's Iowa. Democrats do most of the work through ballot requests and if they can't get an edge here, they'll likely lose here.

RCP average of +3.7 may be very accurate.

True. With Branstad, Grassley, and Ernst lining up the R machine solidly behind Trump, this is one state where we'll see what 2016 might have looked like if the R candidate had an actual get-out-the-vote effort of his own.

[Brittain33]

Looks like Democrats are getting more new or infrequent voters to the polls (though the margin is not significant).

https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/787994523771215872
Ohio: 85% of likely D EVs voted in '12, as compared to 86.6% of likely R early voters.

https://twitter.com/tbonier/status/787847461142495232
Florida: 81.8% Ds voted in '12 vs 83.2% R's.

Could this just reflect that Democrats have had an edge in registering over the last four years, in particular with people passing age 18?

[Brittain33]

It's unclear how much of this is population growth. You have Trump-loving Sumter County (The Villages) and the Puerto Rican Diaspora in Osceola County with higher turnout, but they're both also growing quickly in population.

Also, you can see where Matthew hit.

[Brittain33]

It's unclear how much of this is population growth. You have Trump-loving Sumter County (The Villages) and the Puerto Rican Diaspora in Osceola County with higher turnout, but they're both also growing quickly in population.

Also, you can see where Matthew hit.

Some polls are showing Trump trailing Rubio by 10-12%. I don't know how it works in USA, but can someone cast "Republican ballot"  with Clinton+Rubio?

Yes, splitting tickets is legal and used to be very common

The ballot is defined by party registration. Some small number of those Democratic ballots are "Trump-Rubio" and I'm sure some of the Republican ballots from Miami-Dade are Clinton-Rubio!

[Brittain33]

Politico:  early voting shows upsurge of women

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http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/early-voting-women-battleground-states-230176#ixzz4NmH8mlfp

Such nasty women.

[Brittain33]

Austria has multiple parties and there was zero historical precedent for predicting a Green - Far Right runoff.

In the U.S., we have at least two recent elections with early voting with the same parties that can provide a basis for comparison.

[Brittain33]

One question, how is the early vote in Florida now compared to the same time in 2012?

Every time I've seen this come up, the answer is that laws changed or data isn't available so people don't know.

[Brittain33]

So % Dem lead in NV is down. I'm sorry, but I'm disappointed.

Well, considering that this was a state where the educated/no-college-degree divide was going to smack Democrats, we should be grateful that increased turnout among other dimensions is enabling us to recreate the 2012 win.

[Brittain33]

Michael McDonald ‏@ElectProject  15s16 seconds ago
"Of the 20,269 people who voted today in Georgia, 48% are Black (11% are unknown, due to a slightly stale voter file) #soulstopolls"

Hallelujah!

Thank you JESUS!!!

10,000 votes doesn't sound like a lot against the state total...

[Brittain33]

The EV numbers in TX are still through the roof, and in fact haven't slowed at all:



https://twitter.com/eramshaw/status/793098394080190464

As a Democrat, it's hard to feel good about the Collin County numbers. Even if we're counting "college educated" as a good thing, if Collin County numbers were low that would be an unequivocal positive sign for Dems.

[Brittain33]

So NC went R in 2012 and the AA vote is down right now by 18% yet you all are saying NC looks great for HRC right now? Obama lost in 2012 by 1-2% and the AA vote was 18% higher at this time last year no matter the reason for the lower turnout, yet NC again looks so good for her? Please explain.

College-educated white voters swinging wildly to Dems.

[Brittain33]

Ohhh the "polls" are, you mean the polls for example showing CLinton a week ago up 15% in a 4 way national race which is basically mathematically impossible? Or do you mean ALL of the polls showing Clinton up 20-35% in the Michigan Primary all the way up until the night before the primary, when she lost by 1-2 % to Sanders in the State. OVER a 20% swing of "all of the polls were showing". Those polls are what you guys are going off of, okay than.

Well, if you don't find polls to be of any value or meaning, you won't find much to talk about on this forum for the next eight days.

[Brittain33]

Yes, TEXAS the state that is literally the home of the 2nd amendment

No, it isn't.

From Wikipedia:

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[Brittain33]

Cohn is breaking down the Upshot's model and its current stance:

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Yup, that's the major problem with Upshot. Either they'll be brilliant on Election Day or will have been proven wrong for 2 weeks of data.

[Brittain33]

Well, the current EV results confirm what we already know:

NV and CO seem to be safe D, FL and NC seem to be lean R.

I still don't see how you can conclude that from NC given who the unaffiliated voters are, much less the public polling showing her ahead in every poll and the internal poll leaks as well.

[Brittain33]

Quote from Washington Post story about Florida early voting:

Josh Wilson ‏@JoshWilsonOrl  8m8 minutes ago
Josh Wilson Retweeted Washington Post
"More than 400,000 of the registered Democrats who have voted early have either not voted in the past three elections or voted just once."

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/793481246693203968

Translated into English, means they voted in 2012 but not either of the mid-terms.

[Brittain33]

What am I missing about that Georgia number? Because that shift is well insane.

Hard to say, since I think the states with asterisks are derived from TargetSmart modeling since those states don't release party info about early voters.

It must be. VA doesn't even have registration by party.

[Brittain33]

I'm not buying this lower black turnout theory.  Black voters are probably less enthusiastic about Hillary than they were for Obama 4 years ago, so they aren't turning out day 1 to vote for her.  But at the end of the day they are a reliable voting bloc and they will eventually turn out for her. 

It feels non-controversial for me. Black turnout ticked up noticeably in 2008 and 2012 to be higher than white turnout; why shouldn't it drift down closer to 2004 levels? No one was surprised that Dem turnout in Florida was down after Lieberman wasn't on the ballot. It's about the infrequent voters on the margins who need this particular affinity to feel like voting relevant.