As a political junkie and long time Arizona resident, I have been closely following the mail ballot returns that stated arriving at county elections offices last week. What I saw worried me. Garrett Archer (twitter @Garrett_Archer), an analyst at the AZ Secretary of State’s office, reports out ballot counts, partisan breakdowns, and some demographic info on twitter during the weekdays. Initially a flood of ballots came in the first few days that skewed older, male, and republican. This allowed republicans to jump out to a double digit lead in returned ballots over democrats.
For starters, here is AZ’s potential electorate:
Republicans make up 34.6% of registered voters, Democrats are 31%, and Independents are at 33%. Mail ballots typically make up 75% of Arizona’s total vote.
Here were the numbers the first day the SOS reported out on returned ballots.
Like I said, older, male, and very republican.
Gradually, women and democrats began to chip away at those numbers but republicans still had a big lead. The latest numbers:
With 50% of the estimated ballots in, women are now slightly more than half of early voters and the republican edge has dropped four points to +10. Also, Independents are nowhere near their percentage of the electorate. So even though currently, Nate Silver’s team at fivethirtyeight.com gives Sinema a 50.1 to 47.8 aggregate polling lead over Martha “Let’s do the f***ing thing!” McSally, and a 5 in 8 chance of winning, I was still worried.
Then this morning a new NBC News/Marist poll was released (Thank you DannyB) that gave Sinema a 50-44 lead overMcSally with likely voters.
In the head-to-head contest, Sinema holds the advantage with Latinos (69 percent to 22 percent), Independents (58 percent to 32 percent) and women (54 percent to 41 percent).
McSally, meanwhile, leads among whites (51 percent to 45 percent) and men (48 percent to 47 percent).
From the cross tab report:
Residents: n=910 MOE +/-4.1%
Registered Voters: n=793 MOE +/-4.4%
Likely Voters: n=506 MOE +/-5.4%
Since the poll was in the field October 23-27, the end of last week, it was during a time when a substantial amount of people already voted. Here is what Marist found:
Forty-four percent of these voters say they have already cast their ballots, and Sinema receives support from 51 percent of them to McSally’s 47 percent.
(My calculation is that 44% of likely voters is n=223 that were surveyed)
So in an electorate (those that have returned ballots) where republicans have a double digit advantage over democrats, Sinema is leading with those who have already voted. Marist cautions that the results are within the margin of error, and yes I know it is one poll, and that only 223 voters were polled, but I am anxiously awaiting the inevitable release of other polls that give the results of those who have already voted.
The best news from Mr. Archer today is that the electorate will become more democratic in the coming week until Election Day.
Yes we still need to vote. But I’m feeling more optimistic.