The early vote is in and there is some good news and bad news.
Trying to read these tea leaves is of course tricky at best. The best we can do is try to compare this early vote to the early vote back in Nov.
Thanks to Michael McDonald at electproject.org for compiling these graphs.
Here’s the early vote from Nov.
Comparing the graphs at the top with this one from Nov. several things stick out. First, the early vote from Nov. was larger, but for a special election, the early vote as of Friday was monstrous.
If we try to extract some rough Demographic information from these graphs we find some bad news for Ossoff. We generally expect Democratic voters to be younger, women, and people of color.
1) It looks like AA early turnout is down to about 12% of the white turnout compared to about 16% last Nov.
2) The youth vote also seems to be down from Nov.
3) Women as a proportion of the total vote also appears to be down.
Here’s what has me rather confused. If we look at the turnout by party, we see that last Nov. Democrats turned out at about 55% of the rate of Republicans. If we look at the special election numbers, we see that Democrats have turned out at about 63% of the rate of Republicans.
This seems to be very conflicting data. How can the main demographic groups for Democrats be turning out at a lower rate than Nov., and yet the party affiliation numbers show that Democrats are turning out at a much higher rate than Nov.?
The answer probably lies in the large number of unaffiliated voters. While Dem turnout in the special is roughly 83% of Nov. and Repub is 88% of Nov., unaffiliated is 71% of Nov. So can we get an idea of how these unaffiliated voters are leaning?
Well, there’s this from Politico:
Ossoff has a 15-point lead among self-described early voters in the Opinion Savvy poll, a 13-point lead in a poll from The Trafalgar Group, a 14-point lead in a SurveyUSA poll conducted for WXIA-TV in Atlanta and a 9-point lead in a WSB-TV/Landmark Communications poll. Then there is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll, the only live-caller poll, where Ossoff led by 31 points among early voters.
Take another look at that top graph, almost 50% more Republicans voted early than Democrats, and yet according to the above polls, Ossoff has a 10+ point lead among early voters?! The only way that’s possible is if the unaffiliateds are massively breaking for Ossoff.
So Ossoff goes into election day with a lead, but we’ve seen this slip through our fingers before. Is Ossoff ready to get his supporters out on election day?
While television advertising still dominated most candidates’ campaign budgets, Ossoff is pouring millions into an unprecedented ground game to turn out new voters and those who haven’t voted in nonpresidential elections previously.
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Turnout among young voters always slumps outside presidential races, but it’s critical for Ossoff. In the Opinion Savvy poll, Ossoff has an astounding, 62-point lead over Handel among voters younger than 30 years of age, 81 percent to 19 percent.
And then there are these rather cryptic tweets from Nate Cohn.
Nate is doing a comparison of the early vote with the round 1 vote. I’m not at all sure that a comparison with the first round when there were a ton of Republicans running is going to tell us much, but he went through the effort and take it for what you think it’s worth.
If those polls above are anywhere near accurate, Ossoff should take an early lead and start slipping through the night. It’s all up to him getting the remainder of his voters out on election day.
Is this just another house race? Does it really make a difference?
Think of the psychological impact of this race on the Republicans in congress. If Trump fires Mueller, the only way to stop him will be if some Republicans in congress finally abandon him. And the one thing that will turn Republicans is if their jobs are in danger, and the best way to show them that they are, is if Ossoff wins on Tue. If Ossoff loses, the Republicans will feel safe and follow Trump lock step down the authoritarian road.
If you’re in the area and can help, GOTV! GOTV! GOTV!
RESIST!