Among Florida voters who already cast their ballots, 58% voted for Joe Biden while just 39% picked Donald Trump.
That’s according to the latest survey from St. Pete Polls, commissioned for Florida Politics.
Pollsters found the race much tighter in Florida with all likely voters in the mix, including those yet to vote. But Biden still holds onto a statewide lead of 49% to Trump’s 47%. Another 2% remain undecided.
The poll has a 2% margin of error.
According to the Early Voting statistics site “US Elections Project” maintained by University of Florida professor Michael McDonald here is the known partisan makeup of those who already voted in Florida (remember, this just shows party registration, not how someone voted. Registered Republicans could and will vote for Democrats, likewise registered Democrats might vote for Republicans).
4.77 Million Floridians have already voted. Out of those who have already voted 44.2% were Democrats, 35.3% Republicans and 19.3% were “No Party Affiliation”. The current partisan advantage is 8.9%. If Biden actually has a 19% early voting advantage right now that means one of two things, or both:
1. There is a sizable crossover vote from Republicans to Democrats (at least to Biden) that a mere partisan registration breakout can’t capture.
2. The “No Party Affiliation” group of voters is going strongly for Biden.
Both of these occurrences happening simultaneously could be true as well.
Back to the poll writeup from Floridapolitics.com:
But with 60% of likely voters saying they have already voted, Biden’s advantage in the Sunshine State seems further baked in each day.
“Anticipated turnout was calculated by using the demographics for the 2016 and 2018 general elections, also taking into account the voter demographic changes that have happened in the last two years,” writes pollster Matt Florell in a memo.
“This model ended up favoring Republicans by about 1% more than our statewide polls for the last several months. We also used education level quotas for the sample of respondents.”
About 48% of voters in the polling sample voted for Trump in 2016, while less than 44% supported Democrat Hillary Clinton; more than 4% of the sample declined to say who they supported four years ago.
That makes it all the more significant Biden holds a lead both among the already committed and those who still plan to vote before Nov. 3.
The interesting part here is that the poll that shows Biden with a 19% lead among early voters and a 2% lead overall uses a strongly “former Trump voter” Republican sample, with 48% of this sample having voted for Trump in 2016 and 44% having voted for Clinton in 2016 (Trump actually won Florida by just 1.2% in 2016, 49% for Trump, 47.8% for Clinton.)
The key sentence from this poll writeup is this:
That makes it all the more significant Biden holds a lead both among the already committed and those who still plan to vote before Nov. 3.
Biden holds a 19% lead among early voters who have already cast their votes, AND he leads among those who haven’t voted yet early but are planning to still vote before Nov. 3, with over a Million mail-in-ballots yet to be returned from registered Democrats and 650K from “No Party Affiliation” voters. That means that Biden will likely widen his advantage before Nov. 3 even further. Trump has to hope to make this massive early voting deficit up with Nov. 3 votes on that day alone.
An analysis by Florida Politics shows as of Thursday night there’s almost 435,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats who voted in the last four elections but have yet to cast their ballots this year. There’s every reason to believe they will help Trump close the gap.
But a 19-percentage-point lead among those most anxious to cast their ballots makes for a solid Biden advantage. That’s in a state where the Barack Obama-Biden ticket won statewide in 2008 by 3 points and in 2012 by less than 1 point. Trump beat Clinton in Florida in 2016 by just over 1 point.
Here are the crosstabs of this poll: Crosstabs
My analysis:
What I see happening here is that apparently a lot of registered Republicans in the suburbs and among the senior (65+) demographic have decided to cross over to vote for Biden. As of today registered Democrats have an 8.9% advantage over registered Republicans when it comes to early vote statistics, yet Biden leads by 19% among those early voters, according to this poll. I imagine a portion of that are “No Affiliated Party” voters deciding to go with Biden over Trump, but that can’t account for the entirety of the difference. We must be seeing a good amount of Republican Party voters crossing over to vote with us.
This appears to be happening across the nation:
The poll findings also appear consistent with early voting data in Florida, as noted in POLITICO, which noted Democrats have turned out more registered voters in several early voting states. That analysis found Democrats have also done a better job energizing newly registered and low-frequency voters.
The POLITICO article gives a good look at what is happening:
‘Warning flare’: New swing-state data shows massive Democratic early-vote lead
In a worrisome sign for Republicans, Democrats are also turning out more low-frequency and newly registered voters than the GOP.
Democrats have opened up a yawning gap in early voting over Republicans in six of the most crucial battleground states — but that only begins to tell the story of their advantage heading into Election Day.
In a more worrisome sign for Republicans, Democrats are also turning out more low-frequency and newly registered voters than the GOP, according to internal data shared with POLITICO by Hawkfish, a new Democratic research firm, which was reviewed by Republicans and independent experts.
Republican takeaway: The Republican Party of Florida has 470,000 more high-propensity voters than Democrats who have yet to vote. The Democratic Party also traditionally has more sporadic and newly registered voters as a share of their electorate, so the numbers aren’t out of whack.
Tim Baker (R), Data Targeting: “The absentee and early voting numbers for Democrats are seemingly a reflection of their most reliable voters shifting voting methods and ultimately a cannibalization of voting method and not necessarily a turnout indicator at this stage. We are encouraged by the increase in Republican voter registration and the enthusiasm we are seeing across the state."
Democratic takeaway: No party has ever jumped to a lead like Democrats have in pre-Election Day voting. Factoring in independents, who are largely composed of No Party Affiliation, Biden appears to be winning the swing voters of the swing state.
Kevin Cate (D), CATECOMM: “The Republican spin on turnout and the enthusiasm gap sounds a lot like the Democratic spin in cycles where Democrats lost the top of the ticket. If you cut through it, Democratic turnout is unprecedentedly quick, large, and new — and so is No Party Affiliation turnout.”
Republican leaders are spinning the numbers we are seeing as nothing but Democrats just “cannibalizing” their own voters to come out early instead of casting their votes when they would normally do it, on election day. But that is belied by the fact that Democrats are turning out more low propensity voters and newly registered voters than Republicans, that Democrats are returning their requested mail-in-ballots at a higher rate than Republicans despite having requested almost a Million more ballots (according to the Early Voting Statistics site), and that according to the poll findings shown here Biden has built such a massive advantage in early voting, way beyond what a simple comparison of Party Registration data for early voting would suggest, that it can only mean a lot of early crossover voting from Republicans to Democrats in the state.
With 11 days left until the election, time appears to be Trump’s enemy more than Biden’s.
“The concerning thing for Republicans is that once a Democrat vote is cast, or once a vote is cast in general, it can't be taken back,” said Chris Wilson, a top Republican data analyst who independently reviewed the Hawkfish numbers for POLITICO. “That to me is the bigger issue here: Our window to message and convert any of these voters away from voting Democrat is shorter than the number of days left in the campaign.”
Wilson compared the situation to an analysis for a battleground congressional district he has consulted for in which the Republican leads by a point, but Democrats have poured it on so heavily in early voting that his candidate needs to win Election Day by huge proportions.
“Great news. We lead [in the polls]. But if you look at the early vote, we have to win 2-to-1 on Election Day,” Wilson said. “And that's probably just about every contested race in America.”
As of right now things are looking very promising for Florida, and in the other analyzed battleground states. The early vote advantage Biden has already built and is continuing to build until early voting ends on October 31st for early-in-person votes, and Nov. 3 for returned mail-in-ballots, is going to be hard for Trump to overcome on Nov. 3 turnout alone. By that time close to 70% of the expected overall turnout will have already voted.
Another shining bright spot:
With one more week of early voting to go YOUNG VOTERS are showing up early to vote to the tune of 5 x in Florida, 8 x in North Carolina, and 20 x in Michigan, compared with their early vote turnout in 2016. That is great to see. We need all hands on deck.
Another important thing: This weekend and next are going to be big for Souls to the Polls. These are the two weekends traditionally African-American turnout is largest during early voting. Democrats expect record turnout and a big boost for early voting Democratic turnout.
Tyler Perry backing ‘Souls to the Polls’ events in 25 Florida counties
‘Souls to the Polls’ in St. Pete Saturday
Souls to the Polls, #walkthevote plan ‘massive’ weekend events throughout Central Florida
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article244799962.html
Of course, nothing is done, nothing is final, as of yet. GOTV is the key. Things are looking good right now, we are bringing the energy, we are turning out voters, it looks like we could be winning this.
BUT, we need to keep going, hit the gas pedal all the way down to the floor. No let up. With all of the banked votes in for Democrats and with what is in the pipeline (mailed but not yet processed mail-in-ballots) and yet expected Democratic in-person voting before Nov. 3 we CAN turn our attention now to bringing out the vote that seldom or never shows up for the election. People who don’t vote because they are “just not into politics” or they think both parties are the same, or they don’t understand what difference it would make FOR THEM to have a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate and House. If you know someone like that, and if they are registered to vote, go talk to them. Give them the info they need to make an educated decision. They might not be aware of anything you can tell them.
We can do this, turnout is the key, and we have to work hard these last 10 days to GET OUT EVERY LAST POSSIBLE VOTE.