Here are the latest updated Early Voting Turnout numbers by Party Registration and PEVL thru 04_19_18
We might see one more update, if they actually provide the numbers on Monday to reflect the last day of "Early Voting" from Friday.
There is a chance we might see some updated info Tuesday before the election to reflect ballots received through the Mail on Monday, which in theory might be a bit larger than we have seen over the past week, since some people tend to wait until the weekend before election day to put their ballots in the mail...
Obviously we should expect that those samples will likely skew a bit younger, more Registered Dems and Independents etc....
Several things to note here....
1.) Democrats and Republicans have both done a good job thus far of turning out their "base voters" with 38% of Registered Dems having already voted and 39% of Registered Republicans having already voted.
2.) If we look at the "Pre-Approved" early voters, basically those that have jumped through the hoops to qualify for a mail in ballot, we see 50.1% Turnout to Date among Registered Dems and 51.5% among Registered Republicans.
These are actually pretty good numbers for both parties, indicating a higher level of Democratic enthusiasm than usual among Early Voters, and Republicans probably pretty happy that they have a decent chunk of votes in the bank, and considering the Pub voter Registration edge here, they can withstand some defections to Democrats and win in a straight up DEM/REP gunfight.
3.) Independent Voters--- This is obviously the area where I would be a bit concerned at if I were a Democrat.... At this point only 25% of Registered Indies have voted, and only 39% of those eligible to Vote-by-Mail.
Considering that the Dem candidate will likely need to win 60% of Registered Indies to have a chance of flipping this district, and even more if there is not significant Pub defection to the Dem, you obviously want to see that % of Indy Votes a bit higher to drop the Pub EV % down to a more manageable 46% Early Vote Range.
Now, let's look at the same data from another angle to see to what extent early voting patterns by party REG have shifted since we saw our first Early Vote dump to the latest numbers....
So how to read and interpret all of this?
1.) It appears the first huge wave of early ballots (Heavily concentrated in Senior Citizen communities such as Sun City, Sun City West, and various smaller precincts/communities with planned Senior Citizen communities such as Pebble Creek, etc...) tended to be a bit more Democratic than we might have expected.
2.) As more Middle-Aged / Middle-Class Anglo precincts started to fill out, with continued later numbers from Senior communities maintaining high turnout levels, we started to see the Registered Pub % of the EV increase, the Dem % drop, and the Indie % hold relatively constant.
3.) We are finally starting to see some shifts in the last batch of Early Voters (WED and THUR) with a high representation of DEM and IND voters...
Question is will this pattern hold for the last few dumps of EVs with higher daily turnout numbers from Friday and Monday/Tuesday (Last minute FRI/SAT Mail Ballots?
).
Let's flip the data another way and look at the relative vote share by AZ Legislative Districts located within CD-08 including the latest Turnout numbers...
First thing to look at is relative Vote Share by AZ Legislative Districts:
1.) Thus far we see LD-22, the largest part of CD-08 and arguably the most consistently Republican LD, well above it's RV vote Share, as well as the '14 GE and '16 GE vote share.
Unless a Dem candidate is winning the district by a comfortable margin, it is virtually unfathomable that LD-22 would flip, meaning that in a hypothetical 50-50 election scene, we would expect that it would be a subtraction game with heavily Pub numbers from LD-22 being subtracted by a minor Dem win in LD-21, double digit Dem win in LD-20, a tie, flip, or narrow loss in LD-01, LD-13, LD-15, and what there is of a Democratic presence within CD-08 LD precincts winning big in LD-04, LD-29, and LD-30....
2.) We see LD-21 (Sun City, "South Peoria", El Mirage, and SW Surprise) holding relatively steady in terms of RV/EV and historical GE vote Share in both GE and Off-Year elections....
3.) LD-15 which has roughly 6% of the vote is lagging a bit behind, while LD-13 (8-9%) is exceeding it's RV and traditional GE vote share.
4.) We see what passes for Democratic leaning LD's (LD-4, LD-29, and LD-30) lagging behind....
Although these places have a higher % of same day voters than much of the district, competitive elections are won and lost on the margins, and these are parts of CD-08 that have some of the highest % of Younger Voters, Latinos, and voters that frequently don't tend to vote as often in "Off-Cycle" elections, meaning we can't expect to see the "Anti Sheriff Joe" numbers that we saw here in 2016....
Now....
Let's look at the EV to Date by Party REG:1.) If we look at the DEM vs REP EV Turnout numbers to date by Party REG and LD, we see some interesting results....
A.) If we look at LD-01 and LD-15, we see current EV numbers from REG Dems outperforming REG Pubs compared to overall RV numbers...
This is especially interesting in that both of these LD's ( Combined 12-13% of CD-08 Votes) are relatively Anglo Upper-Income College Educated places, with a relatively lower Senior Population....
IF Dems are going to make this district competitive, these are exactly the types of places that could make this district a bit swingier, considering that unlike many similar such communities elsewhere in the US, there wasn't really a huge swing towards HRC in '16 compared to Obama '12 numbers.
We did see major swings in both these LDs against "Sheriff Joe" compared to '16 PRES results....
2.)
LD-20...
Mixed bag here for Dems... although these overall EV numbers don't look especially bad, the main thing that is killing the Dems is the relative lack of Indies showing up to the polls to date...
Hard to see a double-digit Dem win in LD-20 unless late EV and same day numbers shift significantly...
Still, this is an LD where we have been seeing the LD vote share increase over time, and where there appears to be a much higher number of cross-over voters than in many other parts of CD-08.
3.)
LD-21This is really where the relatively low turnout of Indies is killing the overall Dem numbers....
Sure, it's not implausible at all to see an EV turnout of (30 D- 46 R- 23 I) flip, but I would much rather have an RV (28 D- 39 R- 33 I) final turnout numbers here....
Still, many of the EVs are from Sun City the most 'Pub part of the District, and we're not really seeing yet the larger Turnout numbers in the most Democratic Precincts within the District....
4.) LD-22:This is interesting in that the current EV numbers by REG are (25 D- 50 R- 25 I) vs RV (22 D- 47 R- 31 I)
This basically accounts for a Party RV/EV gap of something like (+3.1% D) and (+ 3.5 % R) , AND the highest % of IND EV voters of any LD in AZ (24.8%)....
Although I haven't yet done a medium dive into LD-22, as I have in some of the other LD's of CD-08, this is obviously a place where Dems want to minimize their margin losses, and both the Dem-Rep-Ind numbers could help perform that task,
especially if Indies break heavily Dem on Tuesday...
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