Analyzing the record-setting early voting data: Good for Democrats?
Analyzing the record-setting early voting data: Good for Democrats?
Breaking down the numbers, we see some trends
Welcome to the big Sunday edition of Progressives Everywhere!
Election Day is just nine days away. Amy Coney Barrett will clinch her stolen seat on the Supreme Court tomorrow. The White House’s official position on COVID-19 is “good luck, suckers!” And in all likelihood, you’re at max capacity nervous, gnawing at your fingernails and doom-scrolling while looking for evidence that Trump and the GOP will lose (and preferably get crushed) next week.
Well, I can’t offer any guarantees, but with a stunning 60 million Americans having already cast their ballots and most major voting rights cases at least seemingly decided, there is plenty of data to analyze and inferences to draw. So let’s get to it!
But first, thank you to GoFundMe donors: Gary, Mehroo, Deborah, and Teresa!
Diving Into Early Voting Data (and Other Factors)
Before we break it down state-by-state, let’s look at where the polls stand.
The Good News: Joe Biden’s lead over Donald Trump in national polling has been remarkably consistent over the last few months, and his 9.2% advantage over the incumbent (via 538) is three points better than the edge enjoyed by Hillary Clinton at this point in 2016. Infrequent voters make up 25% of the early votes cast, which is also good news.
The Worrisome News: That being said, Biden’s leads in critical swing states are much closer to what Clinton had at this point four years ago.
The Wildcard: Pollsters have spent four years dissecting what they got wrong in 2016 and tweaking their polling formulas and practices accordingly. The goal, obviously, is to be more accurate than they were in 2016 (though they weren’t all that bad!) and capturing, in essence, the Trump voters they overlooked last time. As a result, just because Biden’s leads look similar to what Clinton had doesn’t mean that he’ll suffer the same fate as she did.
Just one more caveat for the stats below: Just because a registered Democrat sent in a ballot, it doesn’t mean they voted for a Democrat. Ditto for Republicans. There is likely to be crossover this year! So we can only infer so much from even partisan voter numbers.
OK, let’s do it!
Pennsylvania
Early and mail voting stats: As of Saturday, Democrats held a massive lead in the record early mail vote totals in Pennsylvania, though a large number of independent voters creates something of an unknown. Here are the hard numbers:
Democratic voters: 1,031,663 mail ballots returned out of 1,866,292 requested.
Republican voters: 295,430 mail ballots returned out of 740,776 requested.
Independent voters: 125,002 mail ballots returned out of 313,446 requested.
Pennsylvania offers an unusually significant amount of demographic information, giving us an even better look at turnout. Voters aged 18-34 have returned 15.4% of the mail-in ballots filed, though that number should rise, as their return rate is at around 36%. Meanwhile, seniors (65+) have sent 44.7% of ballots returned, with a return rate of 61%.
The higher senior return rate is actually good news for Democrats —he had a 22-point advantage with seniors in the state as of last Wednesday.
Court Cases: Two big cases were recently decided in Democrats’ favor, but there is still cause for concern.
Early last week, the Supreme Court declined to take up Republicans’ challenge of Pennsylvania’s decision to accept absentee ballots up to three days after Election Day, leaving the state Supreme Court’s decision intact.
Unbowed, Republicans have again petitioned SCOTUS to take up the case, hoping that Amy Coney Barrett will decline to recuse herself and make a splash by immediately providing the deciding vote that green-lights voter suppression and ends the charade that is federalism.
On Friday, the PA State Supreme Court also ruled that election boards were not permitted to throw out absentee ballots over mismatching signatures. This one looks less likely to be appealed.
Other notes: The massive vote-by-mail totals are impressive, but also reveal another weak spot in our democracy: Poor people, who are more likely to not speak English and to live in urban areas with spotty Wifi and unstable housing, have not been participating in early voting at anywhere near the same level. Hopefully, they’re able to turn out on Election Day — and then Democrats actually do something to help them.
Also worth noting that if Democrats win big in Pennsylvania, it’ll be in large part thanks to grassroots activists in parts of the state that went for Trump in 2016.
Michigan
Early and mail voting stats: As of Friday, nearly two million — 1,985,687 to be precise — mail ballots had already been submitted and accepted in Michigan.
The state doesn’t track (or at least offer) the same kind of party affiliation statistics as PA, but as of last Wednesday, the numbers were huge in counties that went big for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Voters 18-34 make up just 12.5% of returned mail ballots, though as in PA, they’ve also got the lowest return rate, at just 46.5%. Voters 65 and up account for about 48% of the ballots returned, with 949,564 already sent in. An astounding 80% of seniors have already returned their absentee ballots. As of October 18th, Biden had a 15% lead with the oldest demographic.
Court Cases: An appeals court overturned Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s extended deadline for mail-in ballots, a decision that won’t be changed by the GOP-controlled state Supreme Court. As a result, Michiganders have to get their ballots in by 8pm on November 3rd.
If Democrats can flip a state Supreme Court seat in November, these sorts of limitations on voters may not happen next time around.
Other notes: More good news for Biden: He’s thus far dominating with first-time voters in Michigan.
North Carolina
Early and mail voting stats: Democrats jumped out to a commanding early lead thanks to North Carolina’s decision to mail out ballots at the beginning of September, but Republicans have been catching up with early in-person voting.
That said, Democrats do still have the lead, as is customary at this point in the state. A total of three million voters (42% of the electorate!) have already cast ballots, surpassing the 2016 total. Democrats make up 1.25 million of them, Republicans account for 929,502, and independents represent a solid 901,767.
Here’s the mail-in voting breakdown:
Democrats: 367,592 mail ballots returned of 661,269 requested.
Republicans: 150,344 mail ballots returned of 281,945 requested.
Independents: 250,495 mail ballots returend of 482,051 requested.
North Carolina also offers racial breakdowns of both mail-in and early in-person voting. Black voters showed up at the polls less in 2016 after Republicans cut early voting opportunities and suppressed the vote in other ways like gerrymandering and strict voter ID. Right now, Black voters make up just over 20% of early votes. That’s an increase over last time, and hopefully, it’ll climb even higher.
Court Cases: The Board of Elections gave voters a whopping nine days to get their ballots in, which does not sit well with a state party that loves to suppress to vote. So once again, Republicans are appealing to the Supreme Court and hoping Amy Coney Barrett will put the nail in the coffin of an extended ballot delivery deadlines.
They’ve got a decent chance of winning this one, as it was a federal appeals court that upheld the new deadline, not the state Supreme Court. If it does get overturned, voters will instead have until November 6th.
Thanks to an agreement reached last week, voters who have some kind of issue with their absentee ballot will get a chance to verify their vote, which is huge — advocates say it could save up to 10,000 ballots from being tossed.
Alas, Democrats couldn’t fully strike the witnesses signature requirement, but at least got it down from two required witnesses on a ballot from the original (and outrageous) two.
Other notes: One analysis has Biden beating Trump 60-40 with newly registered voters
Texas
Early and mail voting stats: A whopping 7.2 million voters have cast ballots already in Texas, a number made all the more impressive by the fact that the state refuses to allow no-excuse absentee ballots and poured on some extra suppression at the last-minute by limiting drop boxes to just one per county.
The huge turnout means that over 42% of registered voters in the state have already voted. And while Texas doesn’t provide a partisan breakdown, the numbers are highest in the state’s biggest counties, with 57.3% of ballots having been cast by people who live within their borders.
In Harris County (Houston) alone, over 1 million voters have already registered their choices, while nearly 600,000 votes have been cast in Dallas County. Both numbers represent giant spikes in turnout over early voting in 2016, with Harris up 40% over the last election and well beyond its prior early vote record. This is also good news for a lot of our legislative candidates, who tend to be in those two counties.
Court Cases: Republicans mostly ran the table in their efforts to suppress the vote in Texas. Drop boxes were limited, absentee ballots were restricted, and unlike in North Carolina, boards of elections can now legally toss out ballots that happen to have a slight signature mismatch without even giving voters the heads up.
One silver lining is that even the fully Republican state Supreme Court couldn’t find an excuse to toss out Harris County’s curbside voting, which makes it easier for people afraid of getting COVID-19 to cast their ballots.
Other notes: If Democrats don’t flip Texas, it won’t be because voters didn’t try to make it happen. Instead, Republicans are clinging on to power using every cheap trick and legal maneuver they can muster.
Arizona
Early and mail voting stats: Arizona largely votes by mail at this point, with an electorate that is just about evenly split between Democrats, Republicans, and independents. The state doesn’t offer a breakdown of partisan early voting (or at least not one I could find), but as of Friday, 1.25 million voters had sent in ballots.
Maricopa County, the state’s largest, has already broken its record for early votes cast with nearly 900,000 (again, as of Friday). Democrats hold a slight lead in the county, with 379,000 ballots in from registered Team Blue voters and 329,000 from Republican voters. Independents have sent in 225,000 ballots. Altogether, 45% of all registered voters in the county have already voted.
Court Cases: Earlier this month, a federal appeals court overturned a decision that would have given voters five days after Election Day to cure any problems with their mail-in ballots. Now they have to do it by 7pm on Election Day or see their vote tossed.
Another federal judge rejected requests by members of the Navajo Nation to extend the deadline for their mail-in ballots to make it to election boards. With shoddy mail service (like, even shoddier than normal) and long ways to travel to submit ballots, Navajo voters often get disenfranchised.
Other notes: While it’s usually the top of the ticket that helps down-ballot races, in the case of Arizona, it could well be that Senate candidate Mark Kelly lifts Biden (along with lots of legislative candidates). With the big numbers in Maricopa, it’s looking more likely that Democrats could flip the state legislature.
Georgia
Early and mail voting stats: Voters in Georgia have already blown past their 2016 early turnout totals, with 2.7 million ballots cast this year vs 2.2 million in 2016.
I don’t have any party breakdowns, but we do have demographics to parse. Black voters did not turn out for Hillary Clinton the way they did for Barack Obama, which possibly cost Democrats in 2016 given the fact that they lost by just five points. This year, Black voters make up nearly 29% of early voters (both in-person and by mail), which is quite impressive considering the fact that the snakes in charge of Georgia elections have done everything they can to disenfranchise them, from mass voter purges to 10+ hour voting lines.
Women, who have helped push the state left over the last few years, make up 55.6% of early voters. Biden is doing far better than Hillary did with white women with college degrees — Hillary won just 34% of them while Biden is polling at 45%, according to a recent CBS poll.
Also, want to see something supremely stupid and a true encapsulation of why we’re in this hell right now?
Court Cases: Another egregious decision by a federal appeals court (we need to fix these, too!) announced just this afternoon put a hold on a lower court order requiring Georgia polling places to have at least one hard paper copy of the voter roll book.
Some of the longest voting lines have been caused by the malfunctioning of Georgia’s new junk electronic voting system, on which Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger splashed $100 million of taxpayers’ money. The idea behind the paper book is that it would give poll workers another option to find voters’ names while other workers took a hammer to the electronic poll book, but apparently that was too logical for these judges.
Florida
Early and mail voting stats: Democrats have a huge advantage in vote-by-mail, with 1,749,317 ballots returned to the GOP’s 1,153,255. That lead will likely continue to grow, as they have over 200,000 more ballots outstanding that Republicans. Thus far, 768,578 independent voters have also cast their ballots.
On the other hand, Republicans are opening up a widening lead in in-person early votes: 928,237 to 698,073. Just over 354,000 independents have voted in-person, as well.
All told, over five million of the 14.4 million registered voters in Florida have now cast ballots.
Court Cases: I’ve got four words for you — Jim Crow Poll Tax.
Other notes: Speaking of racism in Florida elections, Black voters in Miami-Dade County are two times as likely to have their ballots thrown out as white voters.
What I’m Reading Right Now
This is an interesting, Coen Brothers-esque story (by an old boss of mine) about Team Trump’s Hunter Biden whiff and a supposed revival mainstream media gatekeepers. Personally, I think big outlets have recovered power because the right’s narratives are now bonkers. A story about Clinton corruption isn’t crazy. QAnon and Trump’s ramblings are batshit.
Plus, a full third of the country just straight-up tunes out the mainstream media in favor of the alt-right cuckoos and their Facebook feeds. Still, nice to see the discipline on not pursuing the Hunter nonsense.
While we’ve largely focused on flipping swing states, I’ve also kept an eye out on the battles happening in blue states between progressives and corporate Democrats (thus supporting Mondaire Jones, Alex Morse, Marie Newman, Jessica Cisneros, etc.). The last big one of 2020 is taking place up in Seattle between a Chamber of Commerce president and an environmental activist.
Voter suppression is one of Texas’s longest traditions.
This thread and video (click through) from one of our criminal justice reform candidates, Arizona’s Julie Gunnigle, makes me very excited that we’re backing her:
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