I am becoming increasingly confident that our Biden-Harris team will carry Florida, as long as our side takes nothing for granted and keeps at it.
This is a bit involved, so please bear with me.
Trump may have shot himself in the toadstool
Where Trump Shot Self By Making His Base Suspicious of Mail-In Voting
by making his own supporters suspicious of mail-in voting.
Florida is the very few states that reports voter registration, mail-in voting, and early voting by party registration. Everything involving the two parties is always almost 50-50 in Florida, but not this time when it comes to mail-in voting. The obvious reason for this is that Trump made the possibly-fatal mistake of persuading his supporters, without evidence, that mail-in voting invites fraud. To use Rick Wilson’s phrase, Trump “stuck his prick in a light socket, and the results aren’t pretty.”
This is especially interesting because Florida is an early-counting and early-reporting state. Mail-in votes are counted as they come in and included with the first results reported on Election Night. Thus, the Trumpian hope that he will be seen as the apparent winner because in-person-on-Election-Day votes are reported first does not apply to Florida (or North Carolina). If Team Biden (that’s us) has a big lead in Florida on Election Night, or better yet, if the state is called for Biden-Harris, every sentient person in Trumpworld will know it is over.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost Florida by 1.2 percentage points, or less than 113,000 votes. Mail-in ballots provided were dead even, 1,314,929 for Democrats and 1,309.197 for Republicans. There were more Democratic ballots not returned, so of those actually voting by mail, GOP had the lead, 1,108,053 to 1,049,809, a lead of over 58,000 votes. Early voting, meaning pre-Election Day voting at the polling places, was 1,580,003 for the Democrats and 1,425,309 for the Republicans, a Democratic lead of 154,694 votes. Combining the two, before 2016 Election Day, declared Democrats had cast 96,450 more votes than declared Republicans. “No Affiliation” (Indepedents) cast 504,895 mail-ins and 89,990 in-person pre-Election Day votes. I’m ignoring “other party” registrations.
In 2018, through the whole cycle, registered Democrats requested and were sent 1,394,728 mail-in ballots compared with 1,347,397 for Republicans. GOP voters returned 1,080,080 of these (voted) compared with 1,026,600 Democrats who actually voted by mail. So Republicans had an advantage of 54,208 in actually voting by mail (including absentee) in 2018. The Democrats had a slight advantage in early (pre-Election Day) voting at the polls, 1,139,103 to 1,053,254, or plus 85,849. Thus, more Democrats voted before election day (mail-ins plus at-the-polls) than Republicans did by 31,641, or 0.59% (roughly six-tenths of one percent) of all who voted early. There were mixed results, with Democrats flipping a net of two House seats and GOP flipping the previously Democratic Senate seat by 0.13% (thirteen one-hundreths of one percent).
For 2020, as reported so far, with some weeks to go, Democrats hold an enormous lead in mail-in ballots requested, with 1,721,893 going to registered Democrats, 1,180,108 to registered Republicans, a lead of 541,785. As between the two parties, nobody and nothing ever leads by that much in Florida. I believe that this number is fairly current, but as you can see by clicking the link at the beginning of this paragraph, Florida officials are promising to update it more than once daily. These numbers had not been reported since “as of” June 30, and I check for them daily, but suddenly this weekend they have appeared!
Florida cuts off registration early (Monday, October 5), but the deadline to request a ballot by mail from those already registered is (received by) October 24. We can sleep better if we can get that 541,785 lead up to 750,000 or even more. How high can it go? Then, we have to outperform the GOP, as we have done in the past, in early at-the-polls voting.
In Florida, polls close at 8:00 p.m. local time, but the state spans two time zones. While results will be reported as received starting at 8:00 p.m. EST, the networks will not call the state until 9:00 p.m. EST because of polls still being open in the Panhandle.
This Diary is from a Florida watcher but not a Florida person, so please correct or redirect anything I have wrong. But I believe that this is the state that can put an end to the Trump years, to the threat to American Democracy.