Welcome to the Daily Kos Elections early voting roundup, which appears every weekday until Election Day. Click here to find out if and when early voting is available in your state.
If you are a child of the 1980s, as I am, you are undoubtedly familiar with a children’s book series called Choose Your Own Adventure. They allowed the young reader to alter the course of the stories through a series of choices made along the course of the narrative (I was personally most fond of 1983’s Race Forever, but your mileage may vary).
As we finish off this last week of October and head into the final week of early voting in the states that provide it, we see a similar “choose your own adventure” as it relates to interpreting the early voting numbers. And the reason is simple: It’s hard to find a consistent narrative that can explain what we’re seeing.
Before we look at all the scenarios—the good news: None of the data seems to suggest that the Democrats are on pace to lose the election (at least, on the presidential side of the equation). Even some of the states where Democrats underperformed early have seemed to have leveled out somewhat.
But this pool of data is filled with the potential for “yabbuts” (which my computer wanted to auto-correct to “rabbits”). What is a “yabbut”? It is a source of information that, when dug into a little bit, is open to multiple interpretations. So, with that in mind, let’s look at several key states, and look at how the data could be interpreted as great, bad, or “meh” for Democratic prospects.
FLORIDA
Florida is about to conclude its first week of early voting, and what began as an early positive surge for the Democrats has, admittedly, leveled off. The Republicans still hold an edge in overall ballots cast over the Democrats, and the margin has actually crept upward over the past two days. This is because a modest lead for the Democrats among in-person early voters is being offset by a larger lead among Republicans in the return of vote-by-mail ballots.
Positives for the Republicans
1. The in-person early vote numbers have not been as solid for Democrats thus far as past cycles. In 2012, for example, when all was said and done, the Democrats led the GOP in early vote turnout by a 46-36 margin. Thus far this year, the margin is considerably narrower (42-39).
2. As political science professor Daniel Smith noted via Twitter Thursday, the electorate that has turned out thus far contains a higher share of the white vote than cast votes in Florida in 2012. Now, this can partly be explained by the fact that the majority of votes cast thus far are vote-by-mail, which skews white. But even the in-person early balloting has been a little bit whiter than the statistics we have about the voter registration rolls would suggest.
Positives for the Democrats
1. Democratic in-person early vote performance might be lagging because the party’s performance with mail-in balloting is considerably better thus far than it was in 2012. Though Republican margins here have stretched out a bit over the last week, the GOP edge in mail-in ballots (usually a big boost for them) sits almost exactly at a 3 percent edge over the Democrats. In 2012, it was over 5 percent when all was said and done. What’s more, there are actually more Democratic than Republican ballots that have been issued but not yet returned. If one were to add the ballots already returned and the ballots issued (but awaiting return) together, Democrats would actually lead in the mail-in ballot category by about 5,000 votes. Of course, these numbers are fluid as more ballots get requested, but this would be a huge shift from previous cycles.
2. Last cycle, early voting opened on a weekend. In 2016, it opened on a Monday. Historically, weekends are where the GOTV operations in African American and Hispanic communities really take off. For example, we have not yet seen the impact of the famous “souls to the polls” voting outreach that is geared toward driving out the vote in African American communities through predominantly black churches, because there has not been a weekend of in-person early voting in Florida yet. Monday will be a very interesting day to see how the early vote totals look, both in terms of ethnicity and partisan affiliation.
TEXAS
Texas is also nearing the end of week one of its in-person early voting phase. The story there has been record turnout at the polls. Case in point: Houston’s Harris County, which shattered their one-day early voting record on Monday’s opening day, only to see that record broken again every single day since. All in all, combined in-person and vote-by-mail early voting is up 51 percent over the 2012 election cycle.
Positives for the Republicans
1. This is still a red state, and among the counties over-performing the most in early voting are those that have historically been deep red. These include Plano’s Collin County (which nearly doubled its previous records in the first couple days of in-person early voting) and Williamson County (just northeast of Austin), a suburban county that, at last check, was voting at a clip that was 89 percent above its 2012 pace and was 59-38 Romney in 2012.
Positives for the Democrats
1. For every red county voting at paces that are shattering records, it is easy to find a Democratic county doing the same thing. Indeed, according to the folks at Texas Election Source, the two counties with the fastest rates of growth among early votes are two very blue counties: Austin’s Travis County (60-36 Obama in 2012) and El Paso County (65-33 Obama in 2012). Those two counties have seen their early vote totals perform at 117 percent and 93 percent above 2012 levels, respectively.
2. That number in El Paso County is particularly heartening, because with an 82 percent Hispanic population, it buttresses the argument that Latino voters are turning out, terrified at the prospect of a President Trump. And El Paso is not alone. After two days of early voting, Brownsville’s Cameron County was also 56 percent above their previous best in 2012. And according to an analysis by the El Paso Times, a quarter of those who participated in day one of early voting there did not vote in 2012, which hints that the Trump factor loomed large in the spike over voters in the Rio Grande Valley.
NEVADA
Over the past two days of in-person early voting, what had been a solid Democratic edge in Nevada has receded slightly. An initial 13-point lead for the blue team in turnout (47-34) has softened to a 44-36 edge. Two things worth noting, though: 1) The raw-vote lead for the Democrats in overall ballots cast has still grown every single day—it is only that the GOP is doing marginally better than in previous days. 2) While not as substantial an edge, the Democratic early vote lead in the Silver State is still running slightly ahead of their natural edge in registration (after a late registration surge by Democrats, they enjoy a six-point registration edge over the GOP).
Positives for the Republicans
1. They are doing very well in the “cow counties,” the affection name for the rural parts of the state. The GOP has already surpassed the opening-week edge they had outside of the Reno/Las Vegas metro areas in turnout, with Friday and the weekend still to go. In fact, as turnout has slightly ebbed in Clark and Washoe Counties (Las Vegas and Reno), it has actually ticked up daily in Lyon County, a county south of Reno that went 63-34 Romney in 2012. This will be solidly Trump territory on Election Day, and it seems to be turning out.
2. The GOP seems to have righted the ship in Washoe County. After doing no better than tying in the early vote in this swing county for the first several days, the GOP beat the Democrats in turnout in the county on Thursday by a little over 4 percent. Washoe has become a bit of a bellwether: When Obama won Nevada by 12 in 2008, he also (surprisingly) won Washoe by 12 points. Similarly, when Obama won the state by 6 in 2012, he won Washoe by 4. If the GOP can make big cuts into the lead the Democrats established here earlier in the week, it will pay dividends statewide.
Positives for the Democrats
1. Clark … Clark … Clark. While the Democrats ran a little bit behind registration in Las Vegas on Thursday, they still have a substantial 36,000 raw vote lead in ballots returned in the county that will likely cast two-thirds of the state’s votes. Also, as Jon Ralston noted Friday, in Clark County, the large number of independent voters tend not to sway matters all that much. Obama’s raw vote lead in the county either was right around the registration edge in voting, or exceeded it.
2. If there is one place where Democrats looked considerably better in 2016 than 2012, it’s been that bellwether of Washoe County. In 2012, the GOP (which has a narrow edge in registration there) actually enjoyed a lead after week one of early voting. This time, after the early cushion built up by the Democrats, it would take a miracle for the GOP to so much as break even at the end of week one. And the math is simple: If the GOP cannot come close to carrying this county, there are almost certainly not going to be enough votes in Nevada’s rural counties to offset what will be an outsized Democratic lead in Clark County.