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.
As hard as it might be to believe, we have arrived at the final weekend of the 2016 election.
Professor Michael McDonald, one of the go-to sources over the past several cycles on the issue of early voting, estimates that nearly 37 million Americans have already “gone to the polls,” either through the mailing of ballots, or appearing at an in-person early voting center. In other words, we are heading close to already having 30 percent of the electorate locked in before we head to the weekend.
Today, rather than take a deep dive into one state or the other, we will take a “fly by” approach to a number of states, so that readers can get a lay of the land on a larger scale. In some states, it is now likely that the majority of state votes have been cast, or will be cast before the weekend closes out. This includes several battlegrounds: Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and North Carolina. Let’s take a look at how this all shakes out for the Democrats, with just four days to go until Election Day.
arizona
Arizona has become an unlikely battleground state in this presidential election, with polls showing the race competitive and Hillary Clinton even making a stop in the state with six days to go. There are signs in the early voting to suggest that Democratic optimism may well be warranted, even if outright victory in the Grand Canyon State is still a bit of a statistical long shot.
One cause for optimism is that Democrats might be relying on a much larger base of Latino voters in the state. Two different analyses of the state show a huge bump in Latino vote share in the early vote.
One (mild) cause for pessimism is that Republicans are actually returning ballots at a slightly better clip than Democrats. Republicans have a 4 percent edge in voter registration in the state, but have thus far returned 40 percent of the ballots cast thus far, as opposed to 34 percent of the ballots coming from the Democrats. However, the turnout in 2012, according to exit polls, was GOP +9 (cautionary note—this is self-identified party status, and NOT voter registration. Especially when considering independents, this is not an insignificant difference).
In-person early voting ends in the state today, and it seems very likely that today’s turnout will push the state past its 2012 early vote turnout—there would only need to be 10,000 votes cast in the state today to pull that off.
COLORADO
As they have since the initial huge surge of Democratic ballots, Republicans on Thursday continued to steadily chip away at the Democratic edge. On Thursday, Democrats returned 46,000 ballots while the Republicans returned 53,000 ballots. Unaffiliated voters added another 46,000 ballots, as well, bringing the total number of returned ballots to 1.55 million votes cast.
Democrats have a net lead of 6600 votes, or 0.4 percent, over the GOP. Right now, both Democrats and Republicans are performing above their registration numbers, while the unaffiliated voters are running below their registration numbers (which is pretty common nationwide, though the unaffiliated share has been growing).
In 2012, Republicans turned in their ballots at a rate about two percentage points ahead of the Democrats, so the current performance is an improvement over 2012. While the Republicans are likely to catch the Democrats, they seem highly unlikely to get to that same edge this year. And, don’t forget: Obama carried the state by over five points in 2012.
FLORIDA
Democrats had a very good day in Florida on Thursday, leading among both returned votes-by-mail and in-person early voting. They almost completely erased what had been a narrow Republican edge in early voting, with the Republicans now staked to a nominal “lead” of 1,800 votes out of nearly 5.3 million cast.
Three factors make it highly likely that the Democrats will pull ahead over the weekend: 1) Democratic performance typically improves over the weekend; 2) the final round of “Souls to the Polls” events centered around black churches in the state is scheduled for Sunday; and 3) the Democrats have a distinct edge in the number of mail-in ballots that were issued but not yet returned.
In 2012, on Election morning, Democrats had a combined edge of 187,000 votes. But this year might not be the mild swoon it appears, for a fascinating reason outlined by indispensable Florida Democratic analyst Steve Schale:
One other thing about that GOP advantage. Between 2012 and 2016, a significant number of white Democrats switched parties. A large number of them came from places where the odds of them voting for any Democrat in recent history was very low, and certainly not one for President. For those not from here, you have to remember that large parts of the state are still very “southern” and as such, has retained some of that Southern Democrat identity, even though many of those voters have long stopped voting for Dems for President. The Obama second term and the rise of Trump – plus the fact that Republicans are winning more local offices, gave them the nudge to shed the label and “re-categorize themselves” into the party where they really belong.
So I asked some data people a question: is there a chance that part of the GOP lead is built with people who four years ago, were Democrat early voters – even if they were Dems in name only. The answer is yes. Almost 50,000 2016 Republican early voters were Democratic early voters in 2012. In other words, if none of those voters had switched, Dems would have a 80-90K vote lead over the GOP today – even though that lead would have been meaningless.
What’s more: Schale also noted that the unaffiliated voters in Florida (called NPA—No Party Affiliation) are actually more ethnically diverse than the electorate at-large, a phenomenon he owes to the fact that many young Hispanic voters tend to register as independents. All told, while nothing is certain, Democrats have reason for tempered optimism in a critical state where over 50 percent of the vote has been cast.
GEORGIA
On Thursday, Georgia blew past their record for early voting, set in 2008. Over 2.18 million Georgians had already voted heading into the last day of in-person early voting on Friday. As with Florida, that is likely to be a slight majority of the overall vote.
Diving into the numbers (as culled by Prof. McDonald) yields mixed clues: among early voters, women have made up a larger percentage (56 percent) of the vote than they made up in the state in 2008, according to exit polls taken at the time. On the other hand, the African American share of the early vote, vital to the Democrats having any hope of seizing the upset here, was down to 28 percent (it was closer to 30 percent in both 2008 and 2012).
iowa
Befitting the state that has long held the distinction of being the most likely state in the Obama 2008/2012 coalition to go red this year, bipartisan analysis of early voting suggests that the final outcome could go either way.
Much has been made, both here and elsewhere, of the fact that Democrats are lagging behind their 2012 early vote performance in the Hawkeye State. This much, certainly, is true. In the early vote in 2012, Democrats “won” the turnout game by just under 10 percent. In 2016, thus far, their cushion in the early vote is only about two-thirds of what it was in 2016. The net edge in ballots returned in 2016 stands at around 42,000. One note that is slightly positive: as in Florida, Iowa Democrats have several thousand more ballots that have been requested (but are waiting to be returned) than Republicans. Also, as in Colorado, it is useful to remember that comparisons to 2012 must also include an important caveat—Obama won Iowa in 2012, and by a fair margin (six points).
michigan
We don’t have a lot of hard data on Michigan, but TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier did a dive into the absentee vote (no early vote in the state). With just shy of a million mail-in votes cast, Bonier sees a very white, very old electorate. This is not a surprise—this is what mail-in votes have historically looked like there, and Democrats needn’t fret, given that absentee votes will only make up, in all probability, about 20-25 percent of the final vote. One thing Bonier noted that might give Democrats some hope—the female absentee vote was surprisingly high, with 57 percent of the ballots returned thus far coming from female voters.
NEBRASKA
We have barely spoken of Nebraska at all, given that the state is likely to go for Donald Trump by double digits, as Nebraska has done since shortly after the earth’s crust began to cool (just kidding, but it has been a generation or three).
But, as savvy election junkies already know, Nebraska divides its electoral votes by congressional district, and the 2nd district (centered in Omaha) is a legitimate target for the Clinton team.
And this might be why:
For perspective, at this point in 2012, Democrats and Republicans were nearly even in Douglas County, home to Omaha and the population center for the 2nd district. Democrats had a nominal 260 vote edge. Today, that margin is 7204 votes. The Democrats only lost the 2nd district by around 19,000 votes in 2012. So this surge in early voting alone could eliminate nearly half of that gap.
NEVADA
As it has been throughout, Nevada has been a story of Clark County versus the rest of the state (with Reno’s Washoe County being more or less a bystander, as it is nearly split right down the middle).
On Thursday, Clark County won.
Democrats took a net edge of 5,800 votes out of Las Vegas on Thursday, more than offsetting small deficits in Washoe (-350) and elsewhere. The statewide Democratic edge in ballots cast is now in the neighborhood of 37,000 votes. That is a heck of a firewall (only marginally smaller than the one that drove Obama to a six-point win in 2012), and it is likely to only grow larger today on the final day of in-person early voting.
nORTH CAROLINA
With in-person early voting closing up shop tomorrow, North Carolina has cast over 2.6 million ballots. The partisan breakdown and racial breakdowns still represent a modest decline for Democratic-leaning voters from 2012. The partisan divide sits at a ten-point Democratic edge (it was 16 points in 2012). African American voters continue to make up 22 percent of the early electorate, as opposed to 27 percent in 2012. But, as Prof. Michael Bitzer noted, African American voters made up 27 percent of the electorate on Thursday, implying that the numbers are shifting.
Also, much has been made (and justifiably so!) as the machinations executed by the Republican-dominated state legislature in order to inhibit early voting in Democratic strongholds (this example involving students at Duke University is instructive). So, the big question in North Carolina is whether Republicans managed to successfully suppress the votes of their opponents, or whether they merely substituted early Democratic votes for Election Day Democratic votes.
ohio
Ohio, along with Iowa, have been the states of the 2016 cycle where alarm bells have been going off with the greatest frequency for Democrats. There is some tangible evidence to warrant that. With just four days to go for in-person early voting, the turnout of in-person early vote in the Democratic stronghold of Cuyahoga County is still at 57 percent of the final count of 2012 in-person early votes. The Democrats could still catch up to their 2012 levels, but it is going to take a whale of a late surge for the blue team. One stat that is telling of the demographic shift that is making Ohio look more likely to flirt with a red shift: there are 220,000 fewer registered voters in Cuyahoga County in 2016 than there were in 2012.
There are positive signs: Democratic early voting has actually surged in some historically Republican suburban counties, perhaps a sign that college-educated “collar counties” around the big cities might be leery of Donald Trump. And, as the aforementioned Tom Bonier observed, Democratic-heavy Franklin County (Columbus) has rebounded to close to its 2012 share of early voters after a very sluggish start.
OREGON
Oregon is not a state we have focused on very much, because it is not considered a swing state by most. However, the state has been competitive as recently as 2000, and there is a critical gubernatorial election in the state. Plus, the all-mail voting state now has more than half of its expected electorate banked, so now would be a good time to get a brief lay of the land. The news, on the surface, is good for Democrats. Democrats have banked a lead in ballots returned of 127,000 votes over the GOP. This is almost perfectly in line with voter registration in the state, which favors the Democrats by 10.6 percent (the returned ballot margin thus far is 12.0 percent).
texas
At this late stage of the early voting game, a pretty significant milestone was passed yesterday as the state cast its 4 millionth vote for 2016. The bad news for the Democrats: the three major counties that have returned ballots at the highest rates relative to voter registration are all on Republican turf. Leading the pack is Collin County northeast of Dallas, a 65-33 Romney county where more than half of the registered voters in the county have already cast their ballots. Just behind were Williamson (suburban Austin—59-38 Romney) and Fort Bend County (suburban Houston—53-46 Romney).
The good news for the Democrats lies in a proportional approach to looking at the numbers. In short, the GOP counties listed above have historically ALWAYS done well in the early vote, and thus their surging numbers here are actually better than 2012, but by more modest margins than some deep blue counties.
Consider the difference between Collin County and the bluest large county in the state: Travis County (Austin). Collin has had over 50 percent of its registered voters vote early, whereas Travis was back at 46 percent. But Travis County’s 2016 early vote turnout is 174 percent that of four years ago, whereas Collin (while also growing) lies at 146 percent of the 2012 turnout.
A note of caution, however: much like the caveat in favor of the Democrats in places like Colorado, Iowa, and Nevada, it is worth noting that Texas Republicans don’t need to match any Democratic participatory surge, because they had a large cushion to work with. While there are plenty of signs to suggest Texas is considerably closer than it was four years ago, one must remember that the GOP presidential candidate carried the state by sixteen points.
ELSEWHERE
Smart observers will note a lot of states not in this roundup. Key states like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Why is that? Well, simply put, these are states (along with Michigan, which was included above because we had the benefit of Bonier’s analysis) are states where early voting (either by-mail or in-person) represents such a small share of the electorate that any analysis would be insufficient. Virginians might have cast nearly 400,000 votes thus far, but that is likely to be around 10 percent of the final turnout there. In 2012, Pennsylvania’s vote-by-mail wound up being accounting for a small fraction of the total vote.
This, in short, explains why the Clinton campaign has devoted so much time to campaign stops in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire during the final weekend. By Sunday, estimates are that at least two-thirds of the vote will be cast in places like Florida and Nevada. Campaign stops there will largely be in front of adoring crowds, most of whom have already voted. And, in that, there is a lesson: just because a huge swath of Americans have already voted does not mean that GOTV on Election Day is not still a huge deciding factor in who will win and who will lose.