It’s Saturday, 11/5. It the final weekend of EV in FL (check your county). I haven’t seen a new Steven Schale memo yet (think he’s tied up), but there have been a lot of informative tweets. So here is the state of things in FL:
Yesterday appears to have been the best day of EV for the Dems in FL. So, good in fact, that the normally taciturn Robby Mook had a lot to say about the state of FL in general. This diary by Florida George sums it up: www.dailykos.com/…
Here are some highlights from Mook:
The Clinton camp believes that they are winning Florida by 170,000 ballots.
We were down 15k in FL at this point in 2012. Think on that one for a moment.
Mook also revealed that the campaign’s EV strategy all along is to go after unlikely voters. They believe they are hitting those targets. Every time an unlikely voter votes for Dems, it increases the election day margin because we’re not cannibalizing our e-day vote to get a fleeting ballot count advantage.
We are also building a new coalition, led by Latino voters (turnout way up), Asian American voters (about 5% of the electorate and turnout way up), Suburban women and millennials. I think he’s missing a few pieces that will power HRC to a stronger than expected win, but more on that later.
We have also cast more D ballots than R ballots. As I said yesterday, that doesn’t matter that much, but it’s a nice talking point. The key is that we’re getting a higher realization rate on our ballots than the GOP is on theirs (much lower # of Dixiecrats posing as registered Dems, and net positive cross-over).
Mook’s observations are backed by Steven Schale. Here are a few choice tweets:
So what do these tweets and Mook’s observations all mean?
- We’re closing in on our 2012 total vote in key counties like Miami Dade and Orange (Orlando). That’s off the charts good.
- The latinos who are voting are unlikely voters. 82.5% of those voting on Thursday were unlikely voters. Each one that is added to the pool pushes our chances of winning the election day vote higher. You can look at Nate Cohn’s model of NC and see the same thing happening. As of last night, HRC had moved from a tie among projected e-day voters to HRC +2.0 (she has a running 9 point lead among EV in NC). Makes it impossible for Trump to catch up if those trends hold.
- Asian American and other non-white voters make up about 5.5% of the electorate. Their turnout has been huge and they are voting for HRC.
- Jewish voters are supporting HRC by about a 10 point higher margin than they did Obama. That matters a lot in Palm Beach County and So. FL. Romney got 41% of the vote in PBC in 2012. Trump isn’t likely to match that this year.
- I don’t have much data from Jacksonville, but we did win the EV yesterday and it appears that it will be a contested, close race there. There isn’t a path for Trump w/out a blowout win in Duval County. President Obama’s visit spiked turnout in Jacksonville.
- GOP turnout in their SW FL counties remains strong. However, Dem turnout there is also strong. Red county Dems are the unsung heroes of this election. They’re turning out in big numbers in FL and OH and other states. So when you see that a red county has a big turnout, Dem turnout is part of that spike.
My own observations:
- I think the 170k vote lead is actually a conservative estimate. There are a few other pieces to the coalition that Mook did not mention:
- Crossover votes from registered Latino Republicans and registered GOPers who are suburban white college educated women
- Obama 2008 surge voters who skipped 2012 but are back for 2016 and are with her.
- White women over the age of 60. When I look at the EV in places like GA and MI and see that we are winning, it strongly suggests that older white women in HRC’s demographic are voting for her. I don’t think that trend is isolated to a few states. We should definitely see it in a state like FL.
- My standing prediction is that HRC will win FL by a margin of 300,000 to 500,000 votes. The fact that we are getting so many unlikely voters to participate means that our regular voters should be able to outvote the GOP on election day. We still have a lot of unreturned ballots to deal with, but our e-day voters will show up and we will win this state. The Clinton campaign will know that it has won the state on Sunday night. Keep voting. Keep canvassing. Get this done.