It’s the last Friday before election day. I like the trends and where we are headed. I think HRC has a clear lead in the state but it is not a done deal. Trump has a window to come back. We’ve got more work to do to finish this off.
There are about 1 million vote by mail ballots out there, with still over 80k more unreturned Dem ballots vs. unreturned GOP ballots.
GET YOUR BALLOTS IN FLORIDA DEMS!!! IF YOU DON’T PUT YOUR BALLOT IN THE MAIL BY TODAY, TAKE IT TO AN EV CENTER OR ELECTION DAY POLLING PLACE AND HAND IT IN PERSON TO AN ELECTION OFFICIAL AND GET CONFIRMATION THAT IT HAS BEEN RECORDED!!!!!
The latest Steve Schale memo is here: steveschale.com/… and Hillary remains on track, though not completely out of the woods, to earn a solid victory in FL. For those who don’t know, Schale ran Obama’s operation in FL.
Schale predicts that by Sunday evening, 67% — 70% of the likely electorate in FL will have voted. That should make for a smooth running election day. It also means that the Clinton campaign will know on Sunday night whether they have ‘locked it up’ in FL, or whether it will go down to the wire.
So here are some key stats:
- Registered Dems closed the gap with Registered R’s in terms of actual ballots cast (diff of about 1800). Now, as Schale has figured out, this stat doesn’t mean that much because Dixiecrats switched parties in the last 4 years to the GOP. In other words, when we would run up 50k margins in the EV in 2008/2012, a lot of those Dems were actually voting for McCain/Romney so our numbers were inflated. This year, the GOP’s #s are inflated because it’s simply their standard early vote. Our rate of return per ballot cast is much higher because more actual registered Dems are actually voting for the Democratic candidate.
- In addition, based on Tom Bonier’s TargetSmart poll of FL, we know that HRC is getting a positive crossover of GOP voters (registered Latino Republicans and registered Republicans who are suburban white females). These are ticket splitters who are also voting for Rubio. In essence, Democrats are likely outvoting the GOP at the Presidential level just on the 2 party comparison alone.
- Moreover, the NPA vote (registered unaffiliated/indie voters) is a larger portion of the voting electorate (currently 20.55%); they skew minority and young, and they are #votingforher.
- In short, we have a clear lead in the EV. The EV is approaching 60% of the electorate. It will grow to 65%-70% depending on the size of the E-day turnout. Imagine you are watching a real-time vote count and one candidate is leading by a margin of more than 5% with 65% in. In most cases, the race would be called for the leader. That’s what I think will happen here. It’s hard to catch up in the last 35% in a large state when the margin is that high.
- The FL electorate is now 68.6% white (so f**k you Bloomberg, your polls suck!). The NPA vote is 65% white (meaning as more unaffiliateds vote, the less white the FL electorate becomes).
- Latino voters: In short, many unlikely Latino voters are voting as Dems and unaffiliated voters. 170,000 more Latinos have voted early this year as compared to 2012. Many are not Cuban (Puerto Rican and Mexican). Official Latino share of the elector is 14.2%, but is likely higher because it is a self-reported demo. 26% of Dem Latinos and 32% of Latino NPAs who have already voted in this election are ‘unlikely voters’. Schale estimates that HRC has a 117k voter advantage among low propensity voters (that’s larger than Obama’s margin of victory in 2012).
- The AA share of the electorate is now 12% and growing. 13% is the target (let’s go Jacksonville AA Dems! The President showed up. Time to listen to the man!)
- Dems continue to rock it in Hillsborough County. Dems won by 6% but 21% of the vote was also NPA, meaning our margin is likely much larger. In next door Pinellas County, where the party reg leans GOP, but Dems do better b/c there are actual moderates there, the GOP has about a 1500 voter lead, but Dems won the day yesterday.
- Orlando & I-4 — Dems continue to blow it up in Orlando and in Osceola County. GOP is not turning out enough votes in the surrounding counties to outmatch the growing Dem advantage in Central FL. Latino NPA voters are also making a real impact as each of the Central FL counties had an NPA share of 24.5% or better in yesterday’s voting.
- South Florida — Dems are making major gains in Broward and Miami Dade Counties. The margins there will be huge. 74% of all voters in Dade were Dem or NPA. 79% in Broward. Although Palm Beach County has improved a lot in the last few days, our turnout there is lagging 2012, so that’s an area of focus for the last 4 days + election day.
- Duval County — Dems continue to keep the EV margin to under 2500 votes in a county where the GOP has to dominate to win. They’re not going to do it this year. The rest of No. FL’s turnout remains below par, which is generally good for Team Blue, though I note that the Dem dots in No. Fl are doing well. AA turnout in Jacksonville has been low, which is why the President was there. No one can get people to vote better than him. I trust his big rally in Jacksonville, complete with the UNF Osprey ‘swoop’, will do the trick.
- While GOP turnout in places like The Villages and Ft Meyers is exceeding the 2012 EV, it’s likely that he is cannibalizing his election day vote. The Democrats will have more voters to bring in these last days of EV and on election day. That alone should prevent Trump from making any big comeback on election day (assuming our regular voters vote).
In short, I think my prediction of a win for HRC of 300k to 500k votes remains on track based on the available data. We need to get Palm Beach County turnout up, our strong areas in Jacksonville up, get more ballot holders to vote, and make sure our regular election day voters show up en masse. We have a lead and Trump has to play catch up. Our ground game is working, so I am confident. If we hit those other benchmarks, it’s quite possible that our margin would exceed 500k.
I leave you with this nugget from Robby Mook (via the NYT), who always holds his cards close to the vest.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, told donors on a conference call Thursday that the campaign expected to win Florida and North Carolina in large part because of Hispanic turnout. In Nevada, a third diverse battleground state, Mr. Mook said he no longer saw a path for Mr. Trump to win there.
Keep voting, return those ballots, and win. Our goal should be to decisively win FL by Sunday night.