Early Voting Toplines Update 11-01

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday November 02, 2018 · 2:04 PM PDT

2018/11/02 · 14:04

Today is the last day of early voting in Texas. About one third of registered voters have already voted. Were you one?

As early voting winds down, here is an update on the big numbers related to early voting in states that are hosting competitive statewide races next week. Following is from SOS sites through November 1st.

The data at this level generally gives a sense of two metrics: voter enthusiasm and, with a closer look in certain states, partisan breakdown. I’ve added links after certain states to experts who know a lot more about those locales than I do and offer more detailed breakdowns of the data.

Nevada

Today, November 2nd, is the last day of early voting in Nevada. The state has both in-person early voting and absentee/mail-in and provides a partisan breakdown across both methods in most counties.

TOTAL VOTE	% Total Cast	IN-PERSON		% Cast	Absent/ MAIL-IN		% Cast
226,310	41.3%	Dem	202,417	42.0%	Dem	23,893	36.5%
211,113	38.6%	Rep	181,466	38.0%	Rep	29,647	45.3%
110,219	20.1%	Other	98,353	20.0%	Other	11,866	18.1%
547,642	100.0%	Total	482,236		Total	65,406

Overall about 35.1% of “active voters” in Nevada have cast ballots. The percentage breakdowns in votes cast between R and D have stayed fairly steady. Clark County (Las Vegas) is by far the largest county and source of votes in the state (about 67% of the early vote so far). The early vote there breaks down as follows:

TOTAL VOTE	% Total Cast	IN-PERSON		% Cast	Absent/ MAIL-IN		% Cast
165,476	44.8%	Dem	150,748	45.1%	Dem	14,728	42.4%
127,919	34.7%	Rep	113,962	34.1%	Rep	13,957	40.1%
75,495	20.5%	Other	69,398	20.8%	Other	6,097	17.5%
368,890	100.0%	Total	334,108		Total	34,782

Link to the venerable Jon Ralston and his early voting blog for much more.

Florida

Florida’s early voting period runs through tomorrow, November 3rd. The totals so far:

TOTAL VOTE	IN-PERSON	VOTE CAST	% TOTAL CAST	MAIL-IN	RETURNED	% TOTAL RETURNED	OUTSTANDING
1,630,927	Dem	785,162	41.2%	Dem	845,765	39.1%	554,059
1,689,457	Rep	777,765	40.8%	Rep	911,692	42.1%	438,996
722,397	NPA*	328,170	17.2%	NPA	394,227	18.2%	319,002
26,815	Other	14,581	0.8%	Other	12,234	0.6%	9,264
4,069,596		1,905,678			2,163,918		1,321,321

^{* NPA=No Party Affiliation}

Democrats maintain a small edge in the in-person vote. Republicans lead overall because of their stronger mail-in ballot performance; there is still a gap of about 115,000 outstanding Democratic mail-in ballots compared to outstanding Republican ballots. The NPA share maintains at about 18% of the total early vote.

For a lot more in-depth Florida analysis there is Poli Sci Professor Daniel Smith @electionsmith and Dem Political Advisor Steve Schale and his blog.

Arizona

Arizona’s early voting period also ends today, November 2nd. The SOS’s “dashboard” draws from different data sets to present their early voting information. The site aggregates everything into a daily updated total of “Early Ballot Returns.”

EARLY BALLOT RETURNS
Dem	495,013	33.9%
Rep	611,022	41.8%
Unaffiliated & Minor	355,660	24.3%
Total	1,461,695
DEMOGRAPHICS
Female	51.2%
Median Age	62
Mean Age	58.7

Republicans maintain a lead in the Arizona Early Vote at about the same percentage breakdown as previously. One new development is that the Green candidate for Senate, Angela Green (convenient), has dropped out and endorsed Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. There are 6,511 registered Greens in Arizona (although in 2016 the Green Party Senate candidate received 138,000 votes or 5.5 percent from voters of various parties); 1,946 early ballots have been received from Green Party voters thus far. If Angela Green has received a vote on any early ballot it will probably still be tallied. Not sure if any remedies are available under Arizona law for a voter who wishes to change their vote (such as by way of a new, provisional ballot) but it is unlikely.

@Garret_Archer aka the AZ Data Guru goes deeper into the SOS site data, such as analyzing precinct level maps and congressional districts.

Iowa

Like Arizona Iowa allows in-person absentee voting. And like Arizona both in-person and mail-in ballots received are counted together.

EARLY BALLOT	REQUESTED	SENT	RECEIVED	% RECEIVED
Dem	230,001	229,760	195,469	43.7%
Rep	185,373	185,228	160,277	35.8%
No Party	111,994	111,880	89,440	20.0%
Libertarian & Other	2,968	2,964	2,268	0.5%
Total	530,336	529,832	447,454

Democrats continue to lead in the early ballot in Iowa by just under 8% because the No Party share has ticked up by .7% to 20%.

Georgia

Georgia is another state where early voting ends today, November 2nd. The SOS site does not disaggregate the data by party. It does provide the top 5 counties in terms of turnout, which is updated on an ongoing basis.

TOTAL CAST	1,829,886		TOP 5 TURNOUT COUNTIES	TOTAL VOTE	% TOTAL
In-Person			Fulton	212,621	11.6%
Voted	1,655,018	90.4%	DeKalb	142,965	7.8%
Mail-In			Gwinnett	135,455	7.4%
Returned	174,868	9.6%	Cobb	113,427	6.2%
Outstanding	93,174		Henry	54,920	3.0%

Just for curiosity’s sake I took a three day average of the in-person early vote pre-Oprah and then the vote total today, post-Oprah. During the first three days this week, October 29-31, the average daily in-person vote was just over 148,000. On November 1 the one-day total was almost 158,000. Correlation does not imply causation, but still.

Georgian Ryan Anderson has put together Georgia Votes with breakdowns along age, race, gender, comparative trend line. Very nice.

Texas

Texas also ends its early voting period today, November 2nd. The Texas SOS tracks the results for the 30 largest counties in the state (which represents 12.3 million or about 78% of registered voters) and are not broken down by party.

TOTAL CAST	4,337,435		5 LARGEST COUNTIES	TOTAL VOTE	% TOTAL REGISTERED	5 HIGHEST % COUNTIES	TOTAL VOTE	% TOTAL REGISTERED
In-Person			Harris (Houston)	755,877	32.3%	Comal (New Braunfels)	44,323	43.9%
Cast	3,980,578	91.8%	Dallas (Dallas)	468,715	35.1%	Collin (Plano)	254,362	43.86%
By-Mail			Tarrant (Ft. Worth)	413,372	36.8%	Williamson (Round Rock)	145,475	43.82%
Returned	356,857	8.7%	Bexar (San Antonio)	370,277	33.7%	Travis (Austin)	326,927	42.1%
			Travis* (Austin)	326,927	42.1%	Denton (Denton)	203,580	40.9%

^{* Apparently Travis County reports results one day behind the other counties.}

I have included not only the five largest counties in terms of registered voters but also, for comparison, the top five counties in terms of percentage of registered voters who have voted.

The Texas Tribune has an Early Voting Page that graphs the data county-by-county with comparative benchmarks for 2016,2014, and 2012 elections (h/t txdoubledd). In addition, txjackalope provided a r eport from a Republican research outfit that breaks down the data in much more detail.

Tennessee

Tennessee early voting ended on November 1st. The SOS site prepares a comparison of early vote through the comparable voting period in the previous two elections, the 2016 Presidential election and the 2014 Midterms.

	2018 VOTERS		TOTAL	DIFFERENCE	% CHANGE	COUNTIES AHEAD OF PACE
Through	1,378,840	2016	1,675,679	-296,839	-17.7%	0
11/01	1,378,840	2014	629,485	+749,355	+119.0%	95

Tennessee’s early vote ran behind where it was in 2016. Given the partisan breakdown is not given, perhaps this is a good sign that there are fewer early voters now compared to an election where Trump won by 26 points. Compared to the previous midterm election the vote is more than double what it was in 2014, which definitely reflects greater enthusiasm but again without the partisan breakdown it is hard to know who is showing more early vote enthusiasm or if it is even.

Another feature of the comparison prepared by the SOS is a breakdown of the early vote turnout by region.

Region	Voters	Turnout %
Statewide	1,378,840	34.1%
West Tennessee	304,711	32.7%
Middle Tennessee	583,232	36.8%
East Tennessee	490,897	32.2%

Montana

Montana has in-person absentee voting whereby you can apply, receive, fill-out, and drop off an absentee ballot at a county election office. It will be opened and counted on election day with the rest of the mail-in ballots (as opposed to being immediately scanned, banked, and ready for an immediate vote dump as soon as the polls close on election day). Montana provides a daily updated spreadsheet of the ballots that have been requested and received broken down by county. That’s it.

	NUMBER SENT	NUMBER RECEIVED	% RECEIVED
	423,242	278,999	65.9%

Indiana

Indiana has in-person absentee voting as well as mail-in absentee allowed according to statutory criteria. Indiana’s Secretary of State does not seem to aggregate county level absentee ballot return data. It appears to be available through some county election boards but that’s too much for me to try to compile.

For these and other states not mentioned above a nationwide tracker is provided by Michael McDonald at the United States Election Project.

Early Voting Toplines Update 10-31

johnlarca

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday November 01, 2018 · 3:39 PM PDT

2018/11/01 · 15:39

2018-11-01T183438Z_1_LYNXNPEEA03SH_RTROPTP_2_USA-ELECTION-GEORGIA-OPRAH.jpg — You think Oprah will boost numbers for the last two days of early voting in Georgia?

Been out of pocket for the last few days but as early voting winds down here is an update on the big numbers related to early voting in states that are hosting competitive statewide races next week. Following is from SOS sites through October 31.

Nevada

Nevada has both in-person early voting and mail-in absentee and provides a partisan breakdown across both methods in most counties.

TOTAL VOTE	% Total Cast	IN-PERSON		% Cast	Absent/ MAIL-IN		% Cast
226,310	41.3%	Dem	202,417	42.0%	Dem	23,893	36.5%
211,113	38.6%	Rep	181,466	38.0%	Rep	29,647	45.3%
110,219	20.1%	Other	98,353	20.0%	Other	11,866	18.1%
547,642	100.0%	Total	482,236		Total	65,406

The percentage breakdowns between R and D have remained steady over the last week. However, the R mail-in percentage has ticked down 1.4% almost wholly because the “Other” mail-ins have gone up. Question is who are the “Others” breaking for?

Link to the venerable Jon Ralston and his early voting blog for much more.

Florida

Florida has had mandatory in-person voting in all counties since October 27th; prior to this date early voting was optional, although offered in more populous counties. Correspondingly the in-person vote totals have increased apace.

TOTAL VOTE	IN-PERSON	VOTE CAST	% TOTAL CAST	MAIL-IN	RETURNED	% TOTAL RETURNED	OUTSTANDING
1,495,192	Dem	691,614	41.3%	Dem	803,578	39.1%	595,213
1,557,418	Rep	688,442	41.1%	Rep	868,976	42.3%	480,031
654,386	NPA*	282,813	16.9%	NPA	371,573	18.1%	341,051
24,189	Other	12,695	0.7%	Other	11,494	0.5%	9,967
3,731,185		1,675,564			2,055,621		1,426,262

^{* NPA=No Party Affiliation}

The Republican early vote lead has narrowed over the past week. In fact, Democrats have taken the edge in the in-person vote. By contrast, the number of Democratic mail-in ballots that are still outstanding has actually grown to 115,000 compared to outstanding Republican ballots (although Democrats requested about 50,000 more ballots than Republicans). Although Republicans still lead in the number of mail-in returns, their percentage share has been reduced thanks to an uptick in No Party Affiliation (NPA) ballots. Like in Nevada (and many other places) with the R and D percentages so close, where will the NPAs fall?

For a lot more in-depth Florida analysis there is Poli Sci Professor Daniel Smith @electionsmith and Dem Political Advisor Steve Schale and his blog.

Arizona

Arizona SOS’s “dashboard” draws from different data sets to present their early voting information. The site aggregates everything into a daily updated total of “Early Ballot Returns.”

EARLY BALLOT RETURNS
Dem	454,126	33.7%
Rep	570,727	42.3%
Unaffiliated & Minor	323,459	24.0%
Total	1,348,312
DEMOGRAPHICS
Female	51.0%
Median Age	62
Mean Age	59.4

Republicans maintained a lead in the Arizona Early Vote over the past week, although similarly to the previous states, their share dropped, in this case 1.6%, split between the Democratic and Unaffiliated shares. The female early vote also continued to creep up to 51.0%. Using the Advanced tab on the SOS site the numerical advantage of Republican women has been reduced to around 18,600 versus Democratic women in the early vote. The striking change is that the median age of the Arizona early voter has gone from 56 to 62 in the space of a week.

@Garret_Archer aka the AZ Data Guru goes deeper into the SOS site data, such as analyzing precinct level maps and congressional districts.

Iowa

Like Arizona Iowa allows in-person absentee voting. And like Arizona both in-person and mail-in ballots received are counted together.

EARLY BALLOT	REQUESTED	SENT	RECEIVED	% RECEIVED
Dem	220,294	220,051	172,415	44.1%
Rep	178,057	177,903	140,703	36.0%
No Party	106,218	106,099	75,490	19.3%
Libertarian & Other	2,816	2,810	1,913	0.5%
Total	507,385	506,863	390,521

No real change; Democrats continue to lead in the early ballot in Iowa by just over 8%.

Georgia

Georgia offers early in-person voting in various locales, along with mail-in absentee balloting. The SOS site does not disaggregate the data by party. It does provide the top 5 counties in terms of turnout, which is updated on an ongoing basis.

TOTAL CAST	1,662,311		TOP 5 TURNOUT COUNTIES	TOTAL VOTE	% TOTAL
In-Person			Fulton	195,855	11.8%
Voted	1,497,179	90.1%	DeKalb	126,665	7.6%
Mail-In			Gwinnett	122,850	7.4%
Returned	165,132	9.9%	Cobb	96,559	5.8%
Outstanding	100,439		Henry	50,487	3.0%

In-person voting has continued to swamp the mail-in vote. It will be interesting what the totals are for the next two days before early voting closes tomorrow, given the presence of Oprah in the state.

Georgian Ryan Anderson has put together Georgia Votes with breakdowns along age, race, gender, comparative trend line. Very nice.

Texas

Texas is rather restrictive when it comes to who may vote by mail so the bulk of early voting in the Lone Star State must be done in-person. The results are tracked for the 30 largest counties in the state (which represents 12.3 million or about 78% of registered voters) and are not broken down by party.

TOTAL CAST	3,973,968		5 LARGEST COUNTIES	TOTAL VOTE	% TOTAL REGISTERED	5 HIGHEST % COUNTIES	TOTAL VOTE	% TOTAL REGISTERED
In-Person			Harris (Houston)	687,878	29.4%	Comal (New Braunfels)	41,345	41.0%
Cast	3,628,689	91.3%	Dallas (Dallas)	429,147	32.1%	Williamson (Round Rock)	134,570	40.5%
By-Mail			Tarrant (Ft. Worth)	376,641	33.6%	Collin (Plano)	234,992	40.5%
Returned	345,279	8.7%	Bexar (San Antonio)	337,767	30.8%	Travis (Austin)	296,596	38.2%
			Travis (Austin)	296,596	38.2%	Denton (Denton)	186,144	37.2%

I have included not only the five largest counties in terms of registered voters but also, for comparison, the top five counties in terms of percentage of registered voters who have voted. Travis County, home of Austin, makes both lists as the populous counties start to close the gap with some lighter populated counties that so far had higher percentage turnout.

The Texas Tribune has an Early Voting Page that graphs the data county-by-county with comparative benchmarks for 2016,2014, and 2012 elections (h/t txdoubledd).

Tennessee

Tennessee also has a list of specific statutory criteria to determine who may vote by mail-in ballot. Tennessee also combines the in-person vote totals with the mail-in ballots returned and does not break down the early vote by party. The SOS site prepares a comparison of early vote through the comparable voting period in the previous two elections, the 2016 Presidential election and the 2014 Midterms.

	2018 VOTERS		TOTAL	DIFFERENCE	% CHANGE	COUNTIES AHEAD OF PACE
Through	1,255,089	2016	1,523,559	-268,470	-17.6%	0
10/31	1,255,089	2014	527,197	+727,892	+138.0%	95

Tennessee’s early vote is still running behind where it was in 2016 (an election where Trump carried the state by 26 points). It is still running 138% ahead of where it was at this point in the 2014 Midterms, but that rate is slowing down as the early vote starts to level off.

Another feature of the comparison prepared by the SOS is a breakdown of the early vote turnout by region.

Region	Voters	Turnout %
Statewide	1,255,089	31.0%
West Tennessee	274,283	29.4%
Middle Tennessee	530,817	33.5%
East Tennessee	449,989	29.5%

Montana

	NUMBER SENT	NUMBER RECEIVED	% RECEIVED
	420,984	262,425	62.3%

Indiana

For these and other states not mentioned above a nationwide tracker is provided by Michael McDonald at the United States Election Project.

Early Voting Toplines Update 10-25

johnlarca

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday October 26, 2018 · 4:09 PM PDT

2018/10/26 · 16:09

vote_early_Cropped_1539617989473.jpg_100456050_ver1.0_640_480.jpg — Vote early and get a sticker! (Is it strange that one of the things I love most about voting is getting that sticker?)

Here is an update on the big numbers related to early voting in states that are hosting competitive statewide races this November. Following is from SOS sites through October 25. I’ve added links after certain states to experts who know a lot more about those locales than I do and offer more detailed breakdowns of the data.

People have been commenting along the lines of “Yeah, but what does all of this mean?” For that I would go to the experts for more interpretation in the races that interest you. Given the variability of the data that the various state Secretaries of State post online some insights may be easier than others. For example, Arizona provides an “Early Ballot-Advanced” tab that provides all kinds of pivot tables that can take apart a figure like 50.0% of ballots returned are from female voters, to show party, age, congressional district, etc. One can also look at county-level data for communities with which you are familiar to see at what rate ballots are coming in if, for instance, you know these areas are highly blue or red. The point is this data can only show so much but at this level does give a sense of two metrics: voter enthusiasm and with, a closer look in certain states, partisan breakdown.

Nevada

Nevada has both in-person early voting and mail-in absentee and provides a partisan breakdown across both methods in most counties.

TOTAL VOTE	IN-PERSON			MAIL-IN
93,793	Dem	96,911	42.3%	Dem	15,326	36.3%
90,399	Rep	89,110	38.9%	Rep	19,647	46.6%
42,057	Other	42,999	18.8%	Other	7,210	17.1%
271,203*	Total	229,020		Total	42,183

^{* There are 10 additional mail-in votes not broken down by party and not included in this total}

The percentage breakdowns between R and D have not really changed, although the D Mail-In percentage did tick up 1.0% and correspondingly the R percentage dropped about 1.0%.

Link to the venerable Jon Ralston and his early voting blog for much more.

Florida

Florida has optional in-person voting in certain counties until October 27th when it is required to be offered statewide.

TOTAL VOTE	IN-PERSON	VOTE CAST	% TOTAL CAST	MAIL-IN	RETURNED	% TOTAL RETURNED	OUTSTANDING
808,288	Dem	232,687	41.6%	Dem	575,601	39.0%	788,071
869,745	Rep	233,729	41.7%	Rep	636,016	43.0%	672,722
347,488	NPA*	89,193	15.9%	NPA	258,295	17.5%	428,248
12,284	Other	4,306	0.8%	Other	7,978	0.5%	12,325
2,037,805		559,915			1,477,890		1,901,393

^{* NPA=No Party Affiliation}

Republicans still lead in the Florida Early Vote. The party percentages remained pretty steady. October 27th is the beginning of the required period for in-person early voting to be offered in all Florida counties so the in-person numbers might start to pick up. The striking number is how many Democratic absentee ballots that were requested are still outstanding, over 110,000 more than outstanding Republican ballots. That’s a GOTV target for Florida: Democratic absentee voters.

For a lot more in-depth Florida analysis there is Poli Sci Professor Daniel Smith @electionsmith and Dem Political Advisor Steve Schale and his blog.

Arizona

Arizona SOS’s “dashboard” draws from difference data sets to present their early voting information. The site aggregates everything into a daily updated total of “Early Ballot Returns.”

EARLY BALLOT RETURNS
Dem	281,392	32.9%
Rep	375,319	43.9%
Unaffiliated & Minor	197,337	23.1%
Total	761,395
DEMOGRAPHICS
Female	50.0%
Median Age	56
Mean Age	56.5

Like in Florida, Republicans still lead in the Arizona Early Vote and like in the Sunshine State the party percentages remained pretty steady. The female early vote has gone from 49.7% to 50.0%. Using the Advanced tab mentioned at the top of the post currently there are about 21,000 more Republican women than Democratic women in the early vote (which makes sense given the median voter age of 56 and the Republican lead overall). But what we don’t know is if these are more the disaffected, college-educated ,suburban type Republicans or that mystifying group known as “Women for Trump.”

@Garret_Archer aka the AZ Data Guru goes deeper into the SOS site data, such as analyzing precinct level maps and congressional districts.

Iowa

Like Arizona Iowa allows in-person absentee voting. And like Arizona both in-person and mail-in ballots received are counted together.

EARLY BALLOT	REQUESTED	SENT	RECEIVED	% RECEIVED
Dem	195,313	194,815	127,924	44.5%
Rep	162,173	161,843	105,785	36.8%
No Party	92,634	92,358	52,268	18.2%
Libertarian & Other	2,472	2,463	1,345	0.5%
Total	452,592	451,479	287,322

Democrats are leading in the early ballot in Iowa by almost 8%, a difference they are maintaining as early voting continues.

Georgia

Georgia offers early in-person voting in various locales, along with mail-in absentee balloting (although if Brian Kemp gets his way not all the ballots may actually be counted). The SOS site does not disaggregate the data by party. It does provide the top 5 counties in terms of turnout, which is updated on an ongoing basis.

TOTAL CAST	944,412		TOP 5 TURNOUT COUNTIES	TOTAL VOTE	% TOTAL
In-Person			Fulton	122,034	12.9%
Voted	819,484	86.8%	Gwinnett	69,187	7.3%
Absent/Mail-In			DeKalb	62,221	6.6%
Returned	124,928	13.2%	Cobb	38,170	4.0%
Outstanding	122,164		Henry	26,890	2.8%

Georgian Ryan Anderson has put together Georgia Votes with breakdowns along age, race, gender, comparative trend line. Very nice.

Texas

TOTAL CAST	1,997,077		5 LARGEST COUNTIES	TOTAL VOTE	% TOTAL REGISTERED	5 HIGHEST % COUNTIES	TOTAL VOTE	% TOTAL REGISTERED
In-Person			Harris (Houston)	309,115	13.2%	Williamson (Round Rock)	75,734	22.8%
Cast	1,733,857	86.8%	Dallas (Dallas)	225,491	16.9%	Comal (New Braunfels)	22,765	22.6%
By-Mail			Tarrant (Ft. Worth)	179,640	16.0%	Hays (San Marcos)	27,968	20.8%
Returned	263,220	13.2%	Bexar (San Antonio)	156,250	14.2%	Collin (Plano)	119,338	20.6%
			Travis (Austin)	148,642	19.2%	Lubbock (Lubbock)	36,068	20.5%

I have included not only the five largest counties in terms of registered voters but also, for comparison, the top five counties in terms of percentage of registered voters who have voted. Bottom line is the populous counties are closing the gap with smaller ones in terms of the percentage of registered voters who have voted early.

The Texas Tribune has an Early Voting Page that graphs the data county-by-county with comparative benchmarks for 2016,2014, and 2012 elections (h/t txdoubledd).

Tennessee

	2018 VOTERS		TOTAL	DIFFERENCE	% CHANGE	COUNTIES AHEAD OF PACE
Through	809,912	2016	975,290	-165,378	-17.0%	0
Day 8	809,912	2014	268,434	+541,478	+201.7%	95

Tennessee’s early vote is running behind where it was in 2016 (an election where Trump carried the state by 26 points) but is still running 200% ahead of where it was at this point in the 2014 Midterms.

Montana

	NUMBER SENT	NUMBER RECEIVED	% RECEIVED
	412,196	176,024	42.7%

Indiana

For these and other states not mentioned above a nationwide tracker is provided by Michael McDonald at the United States Election Project.

Early Voting Toplines Update 10-24

johnlarca

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday October 25, 2018 · 4:39 PM PDT

2018/10/25 · 16:39

Wait, wait, turn right! Turn right! (Unless you just voted; then good for you!)

Here is an update on early voting in states that are hosting competitive statewide races this November. Following is from SOS sites through October 24. I’ve added links after certain states to experts who know a lot more about those locales than I do and offer more detailed breakdowns of the data.

Nevada

Nevada has both in-person early voting and mail-in absentee and provides a partisan breakdown across both methods in most counties.

TOTAL VOTE	IN-PERSON			MAIL-IN
93,793	Dem	82,639	42.5%	Dem	11,154	35.3%
90,399	Rep	75,373	38.7%	Rep	15,026	47.5%
42,057	Other	36,618	18.8%	Other	5,439	17.2%
226,249*	Total	194,630		Total	31,619

^{* There are 12 additional votes not broken down by party and not included in this total}

Link to the venerable Jon Ralston and his early voting blog for much more.

Florida

Florida has optional in-person voting in certain counties until October 27th when it is required to be offered statewide. Nevertheless the more populous counties are offering the option and reporting in-person numbers.

TOTAL VOTE	IN-PERSON	VOTE CAST	% TOTAL CAST	MAIL-IN	RETURNED	% TOTAL RETURNED	OUTSTANDING
695,198	Dem	168,650	42.1%	Dem	526,548	39.0%	829,420
748,325	Rep	165,695	41.4%	Rep	582,630	43.1%	716,513
298,153	NPA*	63,146	15.8%	NPA	235,007	17.4%	445,389
10,342	Other	3,094	0.8%	Other	7,248	0.5%	12,825
1,752,018		400,585			1,351,433		2,004,147

^{* NPA=No Party Affiliation}

For a lot more in-depth Florida analysis there is Poli Sci Professor Daniel Smith @electionsmith and Dem Political Advisor Steve Schale and his blog.

Arizona

The Secretary of State has an interesting “dashboard” that draws from different data sets to present their early voting information and some voter demographic characteristics. The site aggregates everything into a daily updated total of “Early Ballot Returns.”

EARLY BALLOT RETURNS			DEMOGRAPHICS
Dem	249,377	32.8%	Female	49.7%
Rep	336,550	44.2%	Median Age	56
Unaffiliated & Minor	175,468	23.0%	Mean Age	56.5
Total	761,395

@Garret_Archer aka the AZ Data Guru goes deeper into the SOS site data, such as analyzing precinct level maps and congressional districts.

Iowa

Like Arizona Iowa allows in-person absentee voting. And like Arizona both in-person and mail-in ballots received are counted together.

EARLY BALLOT	REQUESTED	SENT	RECEIVED	% RECEIVED
Dem	186,934	186,472	115,835	44.9%
Rep	156,536	156,270	94,571	36.7%
No Party	88,062	87,837	46,032	17.9%
Libertarian & Other	2,347	2,340	1,176	0.5%
Total	433,879	432,919	257,614

Georgia

TOTAL CAST	845,092		TOP 5 TURNOUT COUNTIES	TOTAL VOTE	% TOTAL
In-Person			Fulton	110,553	13.1%
Voted	729,823	86.4%	Gwinnett	60,282	7.1%
Absent/Mail-In			DeKalb	55,946	6.6%
Returned	115,269	13.6%	Cobb	32,767	3.9%
Outstanding	126,951		Henry	23,669	2.8%

Georgian Ryan Anderson has put together Georgia Votes with breakdowns along age, race, gender, comparative trend line. Very nice.

Texas

TOTAL CAST	1,585,342		5 LARGEST COUNTIES	TOTAL VOTE	% TOTAL REGISTERED
In-Person			Harris	245,951	10.5%
Cast	1,344,741	84.8%	Dallas	179,875	13.5%
By-Mail			Tarrant	142,494	9.6%
Returned	240,061	15.2%	Bexar	118,709	7.6%
			Travis	97,324	14.8%

The Texas Tribune has an Early Voting Page that graphs the data county-by-county with comparative benchmarks for 2016,2014, and 2012 elections (h/t txdoubledd).

Tennessee

Tennessee also has a list of specific statutory criteria to determine who may vote by mail-in ballot. Tennessee also combines the in-person vote totals with the mail-in ballots returned and does not break down the early vote by party. The SOS site prepares a comparison of early vote from the previous 2 comparable elections, the 2016 Presidential election and the 2014 Midterms, although apparently does not update it daily.

	2018 VOTERS		TOTAL	DIFFERENCE	% CHANGE	COUNTIES AHEAD OF PACE
Through	720,583	~~2016~~	~~609,021~~	~~-93,064~~	~~-15.3%~~	3
10/24	720,583	~~2014~~	~~137,687~~	~~+378,270~~	~~+274.7%~~	95

Montana

	NUMBER SENT	NUMBER RECEIVED	% RECEIVED
	410,113	157,145	38.3%

Indiana

For these and other states not mentioned above a nationwide tracker is provided by Michael McDonald at the United States Election Project.

Early Voting Turnout Round Up

johnlarca

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday October 24, 2018 · 2:16 PM PDT

2018/10/24 · 14:16

22-early-voting.w700.h700.jpg — Early voting has ramped up and is underway in almost 3 dozen states

Early voting is underway in the states that are hosting competitive statewide races this November and where casting a ballot before election day is permitted. The early vote turnout is therefore starting to get media attention, with many of the stories talking about how Republicans seem to have an edge. Because I don’t have access to data from TargetSmart or analyses from the “NBC News Data Analytics Lab” I decided to calm myself and find out what I could from the Secretaries of State that supervise those elections. What I found is that these states vary in the type of data they provide (big surprise), which then requires in some cases assumptions and modelling to know what the partisan, gender, and age breakdowns of these voters are likely to be (thus the lab techs at NBC and TargetSmart being deployed to look at individual voter registrations and rolls and previous election voter make-up).

Following is what I was able to glean, through October 23. Please correct me if I’m wrong about something because I don’t know most of these states as well as a lot of you. I’ll try to keep a stripped down version updated, maybe in a spreadsheet version, until Election Day.

Nevada

Nevada has both in-person early voting and mail-in absentee and provides a partisan breakdown across both methods in most counties.

Total Vote	In-Person			ABSENT/MAIL-IN
73,390	Dem	66,525	43.2%	Dem	6,865	34.0%
69,137	Rep	59,248	38.4%	Rep	9,889	49.1%
31,784	Other	28,388	18.4%	Other	3,396	16.9%
176,272*	Total	154,161		Total	20,150

^{* There are 1,961 additional mail-in votes not broken down by party designation}

Democrats are ahead in the in-person vote, which is consistent with past practice. Republicans are ahead in the (much smaller) number of absentee ballots that have been mailed in, which is also consistent with voting patterns between the parties.

Florida

TOTAL VOTE	In-Person	Vote Cast	% Total Cast	Absent/ Mail-in	Returned	% Total RETURNED	OUTSTANDING
570,732	Dem	108,366	42.9%	Dem	462,366	38.7%	881,866
623,582	Rep	102,899	40.8%	Rep	520,683	43.5%	765,801
245,641	No Party Affiliation	39,155	15.5%	No Party Affiliation	206,486	17.3%	465,406
8,296	Other	1,928	0.8%	Other	6,368	0.5%	13,365
1,448,251	Total	252,348		Total	1,195,903		2,126,438

The proportion of the Nevada and Florida in-person vs. mail-in ballots is almost exactly reversed. Democrats clearly lag in the mail-in ballots being returned in Florida (although more Democrats requested mail-in ballots overall). However, all counties have started reporting mail-in returns; by contrast we are only two days into the optional one-week in-person voting period that is limited to certain counties. Although this lack of access may ultimately have its intended suppressive effect on the in-person early vote, it may be a bit of an overstatement to say that Republicans are more enthused in the early vote in Florida before more in-person numbers start coming in, especially when “early voting” in the media is usually portrayed as people lining up somewhere to cast a ballot.

Arizona

The Secretary of State has an interesting “dashboard” that draws from different data sets to present their early voting information and some voter demographic characteristics. Although Arizona offers early in-person voting at certain county offices along with mail-in voting, the site aggregates everything into a daily updated total of “Early Ballot Returns.”

EARLy Ballot Returns			Demographics
Dem	164,738	32.4%	Female	48.9%
Rep	227,653	44.8%	Median Age	57
Unaffiliated & Minor	116,258	22.8%	Mean Age	56.7
Total	508,649

Republicans are indeed running ahead here. Something to keep an eye on, however, is the Unaffiliated & Minor number (the vast majority of which is Unaffiliated), which makes up a good chunk of the mix and, with hope, is breaking way more D than R this year.

Iowa

Like Arizona Iowa allows in-person absentee voting. And like Arizona both in-person and mail-in ballots received are counted together.

Early Ballot	Requested	Sent	Received	% Received
Dem	177,100	176,477	102,882	45.9%
Rep	149,917	149,640	80,932	36.1%
No Party	82,748	82,527	39,171	17.5%
Libertarian & Other	2,208	2,201	1,019	0.5%
Total	411,973	410,845	224,004

An additional feature that Iowa’s site shares with Arizona is that the early vote count is broken down by congressional district. Very helpful.

Georgia

Despite Brian Kemp’s and the Republican’s best efforts at cheating people out of their ability to vote, Georgia still offers early in-person voting in various locales, along with mail-in absentee balloting (a means of voting that traditionally favors Republicans but that also has Kemp worrying over Democratic strength). Of course, the state still needs to make it difficult because—although they separate in-person and mail-in ballot totals—they do not disaggregate the data by party. They do provide the top 5 counties in terms of turnout, which is updated on an ongoing basis

Total Cast	741,090		top 5 Turnout counties	Total vote	% total
In-Person			Fulton	98,950	13.4%
Voted	633,362	85.5%	Gwinnett	50,270	6.8%
Absent/Mail-In			DeKalb	50,107	6.8%
Returned	107,728	14.5%	Cobb	29,395	3.9%
Outstanding	129,401		Henry	20,518	2.8%

The likes of TargetSmart and the NBC Lab have to do a deeper dive and make some inferences about the make-up of the early electorate in instances like these. Are their assumptions accurate given Georgia Democrats unprecedented early GOTV?

Texas

Texas started strong out of the gate with early voting on Monday. Texas is rather restrictive when it comes to who may vote by mail so the bulk of early voting in the Lone Star State must be done in-person. Like Georgia and the next two states the results are not broken down by party, so party-line enthusiasm must be inferred.

Total cast	1,187,007		5 largest Counties	Total vote	% Total registered
In-Person			Harris	181,916	7.8%
Cast	955,694	80.5%	Dallas	136,982	10.3%
By-Mail			Tarrant	107,360	9.6%
Returned	231,313	19.5%	Bexar	83,179	7.6%
			Travis	83,162	10.7%

By Day 2 the early in-person vote has already begun to swamp the vote-by-mail numbers, which is to be expected. I’ve also included the top 5 largest counties in terms of registered voters and their relative performance in terms of early vote returns as a percentage of their overall registration numbers. Travis County is Austin and even though they are dealing with epic flooding and an ongoing water boil order they are leading among top 5 Texas cities in terms of percentage of registered voters getting to the polls early. That’s voter energy!

Tennessee

Although not as restrictive as Texas, Tennessee also has a list of specific statutory criteria to determine who may vote by mail-in ballot. Tennessee also combines the in-person vote totals with the mail-in ballots returned and does not break down the early vote by party. What they do provide, cumulatively and broken down by county, is a comparison of early vote from the previous 2 comparable elections, the 2016 Presidential election and the 2014 Midterms.

	2018 voters		total	difference	% change	counties ahead of pace
	515,957	2016	609,021	-93,064	-15.3%	3
	515,957	2014	137,687	+378,270	+274.7%	95

Clearly enthusiasm for early voting is way up compared to the last midterm election in 2014, but lags compared to the 2016 Presidential election. Not sure how to interpret that. I wonder how many Trump voters composed the early vote in Tennessee that helped drive him to a 26 point win in 2016? (I bet the people at TargetSmart could tell me).

Montana

	number sent	number received	% received
	407,993	134,586	33.0%

Indiana

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