I know that it is prime time for “Meaningless Polling Place Anecdotes” and in a few hours it will be Live-blogging time, but I just saw this statistic, but did not see it mentioned in any dkos posts about it yet (But feel free to link to them in the comments if I am wrong!)
Surge in absentee voting reported ahead of Tuesday's Wisconsin partisan primary
Absentee voting ahead of Tuesday's election is outpacing early voting counts from other partisan primaries in recent years, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said Monday.
A total of 98,568 absentee ballots had been cast statewide and reported to the commission as of Monday morning, spokesman Reid Magney said.
Early votes in just two counties — Dane with 16,796 and Milwaukee with 16,109 — account for more than one-third, or 33.38 percent of the preliminary tally. Waukesha County reported 10,163 absentee ballots.
The statewide number is nearly 13.5 percent larger than the final tally of 86,862 absentee ballots cast in the 2016 partisan primary, according to the commission. A total of 65,525 absentee ballots were cast for the general election primary in 2014, and 84,830 in 2012.
As the link notes, absentee voting has been growing more popular in recent years, so it is hard to definitively prove that it says anything about this year’s specifics, such as an indication about a Blue wave. It may be that overall turnout is not especially higher, only that more are opting for absentee since it is available to them. Also keep in mind, we can’t say for which party the majority of absentee votes are being cast.
Still, for a mid-term election, and a primary at that, I think it does indicate broadly that voters are highly motivated this year. Kos and others have emphasized in the past the importance of voting early, so regardless of the specifics, the fact that so many absentee votes have already been cast should only be seen as a positive.
And as many here have pointed out on numerous occasions, when we turn out to vote — we win.