Early Voting Bombshell Results [View all]

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Watching Andrea Mitchell on Friday I was irritated by her rather smug response when a number of analysts predicted that there would be record shattering numbers out over the weekend. One of the symptoms of diabetes 2 folks is that we get irritated. One of the symptoms of watching Andrea Mitchell is that you will get irritated.

She asked, "but isn't it the case as in the past when Democrats get enthused they vote early but all they are doing is voting early and cannibalizing the election day votes"?

One of the analysts responded, "that has been a pattern in the past but we are seeing two things; Democratic early voting is up 600% over 2016, which was a high number but, even more significantly, states that track party affiliation of early voting are showing 15% to 20% of the Democratic votes to date are from people who did not vote in 2016".

Ms. Mitchell looked at the camera in a look that could only be described as "gob smacked".

Here are two articles that are confirming the basic facts:

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/18/924182086/early-voting-analysis-historic-turnout-drives-long-lines-administrative-errors

https://www.axios.com/early-voting-2020-election-biden-trump-23599e0c-c8c9-4e4d-b4fb-e6a221478a13.html


Here are some of the consensus projections.

So far 25 million votes have been cast versus 3 million at the same time in 2016.

They are projecting that 53% of the votes are Democratic, 36% Republican and 11% non affiliated. If we use the 2:1 ratio that poles are showing that independent voters are supporting Biden then the voting would be about 60% Biden 40% Trump.

But here is the most stunning fact: Between 15 and 20 percent of the Democratic vote are voters that did not vote in 2016. Only 7% of the Republican votes are voters that did not vote in 2016, and it should be safe to assume that some of those voters are Lincoln Project Republicans who didn't like Trump then, didn't like Trump now but like Biden more than Clinton. I know a few of those Republicans who passed in 2016 but have already voted for Biden.

Assuming that all of the new Democratic voters are voting for Biden and generously assuming that all of the new Republican voters are voting for Trump, then we can extrapolate the following:

Additional Democratic voters that did not vote in 2016 but have already voted:

2 million new Democratic Votes

Additional Republican voters that did not vote in 2016 but have already voted:

600,000

Assuming that the independents are split 50/50 (and they most likely are not) the current vote appears to be

Biden 15 million
Trump 10 million

This is a fantastic start.

Some other key take aways:

Notably, African American voters make up a larger share of early voters than in 2016. More than six times as many African American voters have voted early this year than had at the same point in the last presidential election, according to TargetSmart.

Polling data have indicated for months that Democrats have intended to vote earlier at much higher rates than Republicans, who were reacting to President Trump's near-constant false claims that voting by mail would lead to widespread fraud.

But lines have been the exception across the country overall, not the rule. And there's also optimism that precincts that have struggled with lines will start to see them ease as early voting continues.

Gwinnett County, Ga., for instance, was reporting lengthy waits this past week at a number of precincts, but by Friday afternoon, the county's online wait tracker showed no wait longer than 90 minutes.

“In North Carolina, nearly 1 in 5 ballots cast so far come from those who didn’t vote in 2016," said Greg Speed, president of America Votes.
24.9 million ballots have already been cast. In key states like Florida, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Iowa, more than a quarter of the total number of ballots that were cast in 2016 have already been received.

59% of first-time voters who already cast ballots in Pennsylvania are registered Democrats, compared to the just 15% who are registered Republicans. Democratic first-time voters were just barely outvoting Republicans (40% to 38%) at this point in 2016.
In Florida, registered Democrats' lead over registered Republicans among first-time voters has grown by nearly 10 percentage points compared to 2016.

"I can't help but look at this data with the lens of Trump telling Republicans so consistently that vote-by-mail is a scam," Josh Mendelsohn, CEO of Michael Bloomberg's data firm Hawkfish, told Axios. "That distrust — it bears out in this data."

Bottom line is that Trump's bluster has motivated Democratic voters like no one else could, Dems that voted and those that sat home in 2016 are jamming the early voting process.