The massive early vote is all over the news. But is really going on? It’s one or both of these:
- A true Democratic groundswell, OR
- Democrats voting early, while Republicans are waiting for election day
My Theory: Democrats are showing up because nothing will stop them from voting to save our republic, not just from Trump, but from the ongoing destruction of any semblance of democratic (small d) institutions and competence in our government. It’s urgent!
Republicans are not showing up, not just because they prefer election day itself (although some surely do and there’s evidence of that), but because some fraction of them really dread having to make a choice to vote for the most personally vile President in our country’s history.
When people dread something, what do they do? They put it off. Eventually there’s no need to do the dread task because it’s too late. I for one have dread-tasked many things in my life until moot (not talking about voting this year, that’s done!). I’m an expert at dread-tasking and so are you. We all know how this works. Who among us has not dread-tasked an item into oblivion?
And, most importantly, many of our dear Republican friends are expert dread-taskers as well.
This year, it’s going to work in our favor. Some percent of normally reliable Republican voters will put off voting for long enough until it’s moot, while some (very notable and visible) percent of potential Democrats become actual Democrats. That’s the ball game.
Some early vote evidence
Yes, we all expected that the early vote would run Democratic, but here are some interesting numbers.
The Election Project is the ultimate repository for early vote data. electproject.github.io/…
Four swing states that report early vote totals by partisan affiliation are notable: FL, NC, PA, and IA (yes Iowa!).
Vote by Party Margins end of October 26, 2020
The bottom line of the figure is the Democratic (by registration) margin out of all early votes cast. They’re all Democratic margins, which is good, but does that mean anything? The questions are:
- Do registered Democrats represent the Democratic vote?
- How will indies split?
- Will Republicans just make it all up on Election Day?
Although of course we can’t know the result of the actual votes case, we do have some information that may help.
Let’s start with this CBS poll of North Carolina. www.cbsnews.com/...
The poll has Biden up 49-47%, which is a fine thing, but the most important number may be Biden’s margin in the poll among those who have already voted, at staggering 61% to 36% or +25% Biden.
Source: CBS News poll referenced above
Compare that to the 10.4% margin of Democrats by registration in NC above, and that shows clear evidence that Biden is outperforming party registration in NC, either by retaining more Democrats than Trump is retaining Republicans, or by having Indies break his way. In fact, it looks like he’s outperforming by a lot.
Which brings us to the next question, of how many votes remain. That directly affects whether Trump can catch up.
In North Carolina, assuming a turnout 12.5% higher than 2016 (that’s 538’s median estimate), there will be about 5.3 million votes cast this year. A total of 3.17 votes have already been cast — a staggering 59% of the vote is in. Done. Banked.
Out of those 2.2 million or so votes that remain, assuming that Biden has merely equally registered partisan alignment, Republicans will need to win all remaining votes by a margin of 15.2%. Not just election day votes — all remaining votes including more early votes. If Biden is outperforming registered partisan alignment as the CBS poll indicates, the margin is even steeper.
Early votes are not just stacking up margin, they’re eating into the number of all remaining votes.
Florida has similar early evidence. The vote so far shows a 5.9% Democratic advantage by registration, but a recent St Pete poll showed Joe Biden winning by a staggering 19% out of those who had already voted. Again a dramatic outperformance compared to registration. stpetepolls.org/...
Thanks to commenters Explorer8939, Dr Johnny Bananas, and Nomismat Confero for info abut this poll and about FL voting patterns.
My prediction:
NC: Looks good, as above
PA: Margins are good but a much lower percent of the vote is in (only 24.7% of estimated 2020 vote based on 2016 + 12.5%). Trump needs to win remaining votes by 16.1% to catch up.
IA: This could be sleeper! With 42.6% of expected total 2020 vote in, Trump would need to win remaining votes by 13.7% to catch up.
FL: Hmm. Florida man strikes again? The 5.9% D margin is pretty thin. It will likely come down to NPA voters — if Biden is overperforming the party registration numbers as shown in the St. Pete poll, it may be enough.
Combinations:
Biden wins by retaining all 2016 Clinton states for 232 EV (looking good but keep an eye on Nevada by following the excellent Ralston Reports from the Nevada Independent: thenevadaindependent.com/...), and:
FL (29) plus plus any one of (AZ, WI, MI, NC, GA, PA, OH)
PA (20) plus any two of (AZ, WI, MI, NC, GA, OH)
NC (15) plus any two of (WI, MI, GA, OH); (WI + AZ doesn’t quite do it, would also require IA or ME-2 plus NE-2 to get to 270)
Plus other funky combinations that could throw IA (6) into the mix.
In every state, take nothing for granted! There are no safe states, red or blue. And — your vote will count toward creating a staggering popular vote landslide, which will matter, both when the legal haggling is ongoing and when the Biden/Harris Administration takes office.
Vote!
