Been out of pocket for the last few days but as early voting winds down here is an update on the big numbers related to early voting in states that are hosting competitive statewide races next week. Following is from SOS sites through October 31.
The data at this level generally gives a sense of two metrics: voter enthusiasm and, with a closer look in certain states, partisan breakdown. I’ve added links after certain states to experts who know a lot more about those locales than I do and offer more detailed breakdowns of the data.
Nevada
Nevada has both in-person early voting and mail-in absentee and provides a partisan breakdown across both methods in most counties.
TOTAL VOTE |
IN-PERSON |
|
|
MAIL-IN |
|
|
207,458 |
Dem |
183,999 |
42.0% |
Dem |
23,459 |
36.7% |
195,206 |
Rep |
166,317 |
38.0% |
Rep |
28,889 |
45.2% |
99,314 |
Other |
87,786 |
20.0% |
Other |
11,528 |
18.0% |
501,978
|
Total |
438,102 |
|
Total |
63,876 |
|
The percentage breakdowns between R and D have remained steady over the last week. However, the R mail-in percentage has ticked down 1.4% almost wholly because the “Other” mail-ins have gone up. Question is who are the “Others” breaking for?
Link to the venerable Jon Ralston and his early voting blog for much more.
Florida
Florida has had mandatory in-person voting in all counties since October 27th; prior to this date early voting was optional, although offered in more populous counties. Correspondingly the in-person vote totals have increased apace.
TOTAL VOTE |
IN-PERSON |
VOTE CAST
|
% TOTAL CAST
|
MAIL-IN
|
RETURNED |
% TOTAL RETURNED |
OUTSTANDING |
1,495,192 |
Dem |
691,614 |
41.3% |
Dem |
803,578 |
39.1% |
595,213 |
1,557,418 |
Rep |
688,442 |
41.1% |
Rep |
868,976 |
42.3% |
480,031 |
654,386 |
NPA* |
282,813 |
16.9% |
NPA |
371,573 |
18.1% |
341,051 |
24,189 |
Other |
12,695 |
0.7% |
Other |
11,494 |
0.5% |
9,967 |
3,731,185 |
|
1,675,564 |
|
|
2,055,621 |
|
1,426,262 |
* NPA=No Party Affiliation
The Republican early vote lead has narrowed over the past week. In fact, Democrats have taken the edge in the in-person vote. By contrast, the number of Democratic mail-in ballots that are still outstanding has actually grown to 115,000 compared to outstanding Republican ballots (although Democrats requested about 50,000 more ballots than Republicans). Although Republicans still lead in the number of mail-in returns, their percentage share has been reduced thanks to an uptick in No Party Affiliation (NPA) ballots. Like in Nevada (and many other places) with the R and D percentages so close, where will the NPAs fall?
For a lot more in-depth Florida analysis there is Poli Sci Professor Daniel Smith @electionsmith and Dem Political Advisor Steve Schale and his blog.
Arizona
Arizona SOS’s “dashboard” draws from different data sets to present their early voting information. The site aggregates everything into a daily updated total of “Early Ballot Returns.”
|
EARLY BALLOT RETURNS
|
|
|
|
Dem |
454,126 |
33.7% |
|
Rep |
570,727 |
42.3% |
|
Unaffiliated & Minor |
323,459 |
24.0% |
|
Total |
1,348,312 |
|
|
DEMOGRAPHICS
|
|
|
|
Female |
51.0% |
|
|
Median Age |
62 |
|
|
Mean Age |
59.4 |
|
Republicans maintained a lead in the Arizona Early Vote over the past week, although similarly to the previous states, their share dropped, in this case 1.6%, split between the Democratic and Unaffiliated shares. The female early vote also continued to creep up to 51.0%. Using the Advanced tab on the SOS site the numerical advantage of Republican women has been reduced to around 18,600 versus Democratic women in the early vote. The striking change is that the median age of the Arizona early voter has gone from 56 to 62 in the space of a week.
@Garret_Archer aka the AZ Data Guru goes deeper into the SOS site data, such as analyzing precinct level maps and congressional districts.
Iowa
Like Arizona Iowa allows in-person absentee voting. And like Arizona both in-person and mail-in ballots received are counted together.
|
EARLY BALLOT |
REQUESTED |
SENT |
RECEIVED |
% RECEIVED |
|
Dem |
220,294 |
220,051 |
172,415 |
44.1% |
|
Rep |
178,057 |
177,903 |
140,703 |
36.0% |
|
No Party |
106,218 |
106,099 |
75,490 |
19.3% |
|
Libertarian & Other |
2,816 |
2,810 |
1,913 |
0.5% |
|
Total |
507,385 |
506,863 |
390,521 |
|
No real change; Democrats continue to lead in the early ballot in Iowa by just over 8%.
Georgia
Georgia offers early in-person voting in various locales, along with mail-in absentee balloting. The SOS site does not disaggregate the data by party. It does provide the top 5 counties in terms of turnout, which is updated on an ongoing basis.
TOTAL CAST |
1,662,311 |
|
TOP 5 TURNOUT COUNTIES |
TOTAL VOTE |
% TOTAL |
In-Person |
|
|
Fulton |
195,855 |
11.8% |
Voted |
1,497,179 |
90.1% |
DeKalb |
126,665 |
7.6% |
Mail-In |
|
|
Gwinnett |
122,850 |
7.4% |
Returned |
165,132 |
9.9% |
Cobb |
96,559 |
5.8% |
Outstanding |
100,439 |
|
Henry |
50,487 |
3.0% |
In-person voting has continued to swamp the mail-in vote. It will be interesting what the totals are for the next two days before early voting closes tomorrow, given the presence of Oprah in the state.
Georgian Ryan Anderson has put together Georgia Votes with breakdowns along age, race, gender, comparative trend line. Very nice.
Texas
Texas is rather restrictive when it comes to who may vote by mail so the bulk of early voting in the Lone Star State must be done in-person. The results are tracked for the 30 largest counties in the state (which represents 12.3 million or about 78% of registered voters) and are not broken down by party.
TOTAL CAST
|
3,973,968
|
|
5 LARGEST COUNTIES
|
TOTAL VOTE
|
% TOTAL REGISTERED
|
5 HIGHEST % COUNTIES |
TOTAL VOTE |
% TOTAL REGISTERED |
In-Person |
|
|
Harris (Houston) |
687,878 |
29.4% |
Comal (New Braunfels) |
41,345 |
41.0% |
Cast |
3,628,689 |
91.3% |
Dallas (Dallas) |
429,147 |
32.1% |
Williamson (Round Rock) |
134,570 |
40.5% |
By-Mail |
|
|
Tarrant (Ft. Worth) |
376,641 |
33.6% |
Collin (Plano) |
234,992 |
40.5% |
Returned |
345,279 |
8.7% |
Bexar (San Antonio) |
337,767 |
30.8% |
Travis (Austin) |
296,596 |
38.2% |
|
|
|
Travis (Austin) |
296,596 |
38.2% |
Denton (Denton) |
186,144 |
37.2% |
I have included not only the five largest counties in terms of registered voters but also, for comparison, the top five counties in terms of percentage of registered voters who have voted. Travis County, home of Austin, makes both lists as the populous counties start to close the gap with some lighter populated counties that so far had higher percentage turnout.
The Texas Tribune has an Early Voting Page that graphs the data county-by-county with comparative benchmarks for 2016,2014, and 2012 elections (h/t txdoubledd).
Tennessee
Tennessee also has a list of specific statutory criteria to determine who may vote by mail-in ballot. Tennessee also combines the in-person vote totals with the mail-in ballots returned and does not break down the early vote by party. The SOS site prepares a comparison of early vote through the comparable voting period in the previous two elections, the 2016 Presidential election and the 2014 Midterms.
|
2018 VOTERS |
|
TOTAL |
DIFFERENCE |
% CHANGE |
COUNTIES AHEAD OF PACE |
Through |
1,255,089 |
2016 |
1,523,559 |
-268,470 |
-17.6% |
0 |
10/31 |
2014 |
527,197 |
+727,892 |
+138.0% |
95 |
Tennessee’s early vote is still running behind where it was in 2016 (an election where Trump carried the state by 26 points). It is still running 138% ahead of where it was at this point in the 2014 Midterms, but that rate is slowing down as the early vote starts to level off.
Another feature of the comparison prepared by the SOS is a breakdown of the early vote turnout by region.
|
Region |
Voters |
Turnout % |
|
Statewide |
1,255,089 |
31.0% |
|
West Tennessee |
274,283 |
29.4% |
|
Middle Tennessee |
530,817 |
33.5% |
|
East Tennessee |
449,989 |
29.5% |
Montana
Montana has in-person absentee voting whereby you can apply, receive, fill-out, and drop off an absentee ballot at a county election office. It will be opened and counted on election day with the rest of the mail-in ballots (as opposed to being immediately scanned, banked, and ready for an immediate vote dump as soon as the polls close on election day). Montana provides a daily updated spreadsheet of the ballots that have been requested and received broken down by county. That’s it.
|
NUMBER SENT |
NUMBER RECEIVED |
% RECEIVED |
|
420,984 |
262,425 |
62.3% |
Indiana
Indiana has in-person absentee voting as well as mail-in absentee allowed according to statutory criteria. Indiana’s Secretary of State does not seem to aggregate county level absentee ballot return data. It appears to be available through some county election boards but that’s too much for me to try to compile.
For these and other states not mentioned above a nationwide tracker is provided by Michael McDonald at the United States Election Project.