277 Comments
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Oct 31
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Terrifying....and entirely believable.

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Maybe I should wait and raise this tomorrow. I’ll take it down for now.

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Oct 31
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Did Adam B make it over to this blog? Would be interested to get his take on this

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Are there practical remedies? We are in crunch time; if anyone in Pennsylvania knows more? Curious as to the lateness; why did they wait until now to sue?

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In our discussion of the early voting statistics today, let's not forget the immortal words of Skaje:

As the years go by we'll more easily see 2020's vote method polarization for the massive outlier that it was. Simply no way to recreate the dynamic where paranoid liberals, many of whom had voted election day their whole lives, all rushed to mail in their ballots ASAP because of covid and fears over post-office delays...while at the same time the GOP president was telling everyone mail voting was fraud and that true patriots needed to wait to vote in person on election day, since covid wasn't a big deal. The amount of reversion that was bound to happen this year was inevitable. Republicans like voting early now. Democrats are fine with waiting longer to vote, or just showing up in person next week Tuesday. Any comparison to 2020 is absolutely useless.

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Only thing I would add is, remember, independents also vote.

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This is especially worth keeping in mind with regards to e.g. Nevada. Many (including myself) have expressed concern about elevated Republican early voting and the unprecedented R ballot edge. However, if we examine the Independent early vote – which is believed to lean Blue – we see that it is through the roof. Take a look at Dr John Samuelsen’s telling chart.

https://nitter.poast.org/JohnRSamuelsen/status/1851546133610242214#m

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Not absolutely useless – but we have to keep in mind that we’re comparing Pears and Pawpaw. Things. Do. Not. Correlate!

For instance, numerically, it can be useful to look at the 2024 Early Vote as a percentage of the 2020 Total Vote. (But not compare early vote this year to that of a pandemic year.) I would argue it is also useful to examine the gender gap, post-Dobbs.

Another great example: What DiesIrae just posted examining details of the Georgia Early Vote. Specifically the new voters – those who did not vote in the last presidential election. Given that the Georgia Early Vote this year already exceeds 65% of the total vote in 2020, there is plenty that we can learn.

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I don't think that looking at the demographics of the early votes tells us anything, because there's no way of knowing how it will compare to the Election Day voters.

IMO the only interesting stat is, like you said, comparing the early vote totals this year to the total voters from 2020. And sometimes I wish that was the only information that states provided, so people wouldn't be able to over-interpret the demographics of the early vote.

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I disagree – with the caveat that there’s a huge difference between demographic data "telling us something", for instance about ENTHUSIASM (!), and prematurely drawing unfounded "conclusions" based on the same.

To put it another way: the idea that polls of less than a thousand people tell us a lot and are worth studying, while the early vote of millions tell us nothing, is patently absurd!

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The early votes of millions would tell us something if we actually knew how those millions of people voted for. But we don't, and no, partisan registration doesn't tell us anywhere near as much about actual voting patterns as some people think.

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There are some very interesting recent polls asking WHO people actually voted for. These polls are revealing stunning results – and can with advantage be analyzed in conjunction with the Early Voting numbers.

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but that assumes that those polls are accurate themselves, and that may not be the case

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Yes

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I would mostly agree with you but I am impressed with the disparity between female to male overall turnout(obviously this isn't scientific but I would not summarily discount it either)

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The lack of motivation with Democrats wanting to vote is annoying.

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You don't know that. There's nothing contradictory at all about being highly motivated to vote and wanting to vote on Election Day.

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I mean, what I've heard about PA is that the mail-in vote is annoying and inconvenient, and people don't generally trust it in general. Plus, again, who wants to go through the slow 2020 count again?

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This is simply untrue and unproven; as pointed out multiple times

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Absolutely right. For many people, it may be as simple as the nearest early voting location being a half-hour drive but their Election Day polling place is only a five-minute drive.

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Exactly and thank you for reposting the skaje post

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Or wanting to avoid the red mirage in PA, as I just posted.

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Anecdotal, but I work an election day precinct with many older Black voters in the South, and they are both pretty suspicious of early voting and also very into seeing their friends from church who also help work the polls on EDay. It's like a homecoming on a random Tuesday in November. Pretty fun, actually. Mch more so than the stodgy upper middle class White precinct I used to work.

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Completely unsupported assertion. I'm voting on Election Day. If I crash my car on the less than 1 mile drive there (I'll proceed to work afterward or else I'd walk), I will crawl the rest of the way if I have to.

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In PA, I have talked to many Dems who want to vote in person in order to avoid the Red Mirage problem, when the E-Day vote which is reported first comes in heavily Republican, while the mail in votes which are reported later gradually shift things towards the Dems. In 2022 both my wife and I voted in person instead of by mail. We were both planning on doing the same thing this year, but I had to vote by mail because I will be working as a poll observer on election day.

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Agreed. A good question would be, does early voting/mail-in voting change the electorate? The answer seems to be not really. It’s another option to vote and probably does affect the margins of the margins, but I don’t know how useful it is for nerds like us. Plenty of numbers to look at and judge but it all ends up the same in the end.

It’s more valuable to campaigns who aren’t just looking at numbers, they’re looking to change them in any way they can. A door knocked voter saying they’ve already voted is one less door to knock. A geographic region showing unexpectedly weak turnout means a campaign might need to change GOTV plans or adjust messaging to that area.

And even then, it’s probably too late to do anything on a macro level. They might end up with 10’s of more votes if they do something about it. That can decide some wins in a legislative district or the closest of close congressional seats, but it’s not something I’d bank on. Especially this late in the game.

I’ve yet to read some news article where some Dem strategist calls early voting nothing more than a vote already banked for us.

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YouGov:

NE2 Harris 52-44. Vargas 50-46

Senate Fischer 50-43

https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/economist_20241028_nebraska.pdf

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This is pretty much how I expect things to end up in Nebraska.

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Fischer's up by 7 in NE-2?

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statewide

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No

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Broken down by CD: in this sample Osborn is up 49-42 in NE-02, up 47-46 in NE-01, and down 61-34 in NE-03.

The same sample has Harris up 52-44 in NE-02, down 51-43 in NE-01, and down 70-25 in NE-03.

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NYT/Siena actually has Osborn up by 1 with their poll of registered voters and he only trails by 2 in the likely voter sample.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/28/us/elections/times-siena-nebraska-poll-crosstabs.html

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Broken down by district, in this sample Osborn is up 57-39 in NE-02, up 53-44 in NE-01, and down 62-30 in NE-03, with Harris up 54-42 in NE-02, down 45-49 in NE-01, and down 72-21 in NE-03.

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As one would expect, despite Osborn's best performance coming in the most Dem-friendly district, the Indy outperformance of the Dem is bigger the less friendly the district is to vanilla Dem. In the event Osborn wins NE it will be because of how many Trump voters he won in NE-03.

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It would also be a matter of how much turnout NE-01 and NE-02 get relative to NE-03. If their turnout rates and share of vote exceed that of NE-03, it should benefit Osborn. Easier to pull off in NE-02 since that race always has been deemed competitive and received lots of funds. Outside of Lincoln and Omaha, a lot will also hinge on whether Osborn can win and build margins in the smaller towns and cities, which will add up significantly.

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Sure, if Osborn wins it will likely be by a margin narrow enough that numerous minor factors will be individually decisive. He needs basically everything to go right.

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Too bad we can't ban the gqp conspiracy nuts from voting

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Let's just out vote them

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There's no good way to do that. Adult citizens have the right to vote, period, and it's vital for all of us to fight to keep it that way.

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Since Georgia has a huge percentage of the vote in, it's interesting to look at the new voters - the ones who didn't vote in 2020 (https://georgiavotes.com is good for this). That population, which is about 19% of the overall total, is:

53.3% white (vs. 59.3% overall), 24.8% Black (vs. 26.1% overall), 5.5% Hispanic (vs. 2.8% overall), 4.6% Asian (vs. 2.6% overall), 12% other (vs. 9% overall).

This doesn't look like a MAGA surge among new voters to me. Not saying we've won GA or anything remotely like that, but I don't see any evidence for the Trump campaign's theory that there are a ton of Trump supporters who didn't vote in 2020 and are waiting to be activated. Maybe they all vote on Election Day, but they're sure not voting now.

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Another way is to look at the increase of active voters. Anyone skipped 2020 and 2022, and failed to respond to county communication, will be marked as inactive. They could still vote. Once they turn out, they flip back to active.

At the registration close, SOS reported about 7.19m active voters. As two weeks early voting kicks in, the active pool has only increased 30k ish. These are inactive ones voted and added back as active.

That suggests of the ones registered in GA and skipped 2020, very few voted now. The vast majority of the “new” voters are from new registrations since 2020, those turned 18 since, and a vast number of transplants.

However, the tricky thing about Georgia, is not if Trump digs out a whole bunch of previous non voters. It is if Democrats can hold enough lower intensity voters. If everyone voted in 2020 and still lives in the state votes again (even some would change their minds), plus these new votes, it won’t be close.

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Sounds like you’re cautiously optimistic on where we’re at in GA?

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Unfortunately, no

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The last several elections have shown that older voters in Georgia are mainly white and without a college degree and are among the most conservative in the country . However, younger voters are racially diverse and the white voters are way more educated than the older voters and they are overwhelmingly liberal. Georgia have been moving leftward by around 4 points every election since 2012.due to this and I suspect that the polls are not catching this because they are getting similar poll results as states like Wisconsin, which is not moving left or right, and Nevada, which is the only swing state that is notably getting redder.

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The same applies to a lesser degree in Arizona.

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Racial polarization having been less among Arizona whites than Georgia whites, but the proportion of the electorate which is non-Hispanic white decreasing faster in AZ than Georgia.

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"Remember, remember, the 5th of November!"

(This year, Election Day coincides with Guy Fawkes Night.)

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A friend pointed out to me the other day that this year, Rishi Sunak made the (for him disastrous) choice to hold the UK's general election on the biggest night for fireworks in the USA, and the USA is now having its elections on the biggest night for fireworks in the UK.

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Interestingly, at least here in Newcastle upon Tyne, nobody calls it Guy Fawkes Night anymore. It is universally referred to as Bonfire Night, I believe to purposely purge it of its anti-Catholic history.

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Never mind that Guy Fawkes wanted to turn England back into a Catholic absolute monarchy in the mold of Spain, France, and Portugal..............

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He may well have, but he acted to overthrow a regime which legally held all Catholics to be guilty of high treason and in practice denied them basic rights unless they pretended to be Anglican.

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The point being he was hardly the "freedom fighter" he's been made out to be.

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Except that revolt against oppression is actually freedom fighting, whatever the illiberality of the oppressed.

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I'm not going to pretend that the England he wanted was more democratic than the England that was. The irony of the American Revolution was that our #1 ally France was actually LESS democratic than the country we were breaking away from. We were "allies" with France for the same reason we were "allies" with the USSR during WWII: "the enemy of my enemy........"

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EARLY VOTE – KEY STATES (new update)

(UPDATE, 9pm) Today, Arizona, surpassed 50% of their total 2020 turnout, thus joining Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Texas, Florida, Montana, Tennessee, South Dakota and New Mexico in reaching this milestone. Meanwhile, Georgia continues to up its game, soon approaching an astonishing 70% of their total vote in the 2020 election, while North Carolina and Tennessee are over 60%.

All in all, more than 59 million people have already voted. Over 31 million people have voted Early In-Person, while almost 28 million Mail Ballots have been returned.

Here are the vote totals so far, plus the 2024 Early Vote as a percentage of the Total 2020 Vote, for seven swing states plus Florida and Texas:

GA 69.3% 3,481,876<

NC 60.7% 3,367,548*

TX 59.1% 6,704,936

NV 56.1% 789,960

FL 55.8% 6,220,645*<

AZ 53.4% 1,826,892<

MI 39.4% 2,197,885

WI 33.5% 1,109,037

PA 22.2% 1,547,486

*) States that report party registration.

<) Updated now.

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Other key states; MT/OH/NE are included because of vital Senate races:

MT 51.1% 312,814

VA 37.4% 1,692,388

OH 32.7% 1,952,112<

NE 27.7% 267,699

(Vote totals and percentages are from Prof. Michael McDonald’s Election Project, which in turn are based on official reports from the various Secretaries of State.)

<) Updated now.

https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/

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Do we know how many total registered voters in US? (At least estimated since some states allow same day voting?) You may have answered this on a day I missed.

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I don’t know. On a related note: For some time I have been trying to find out how many new voters Field Team 6 have registered, and in which states. So far to no avail.

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Don't know how it's changed since 2020, but in 2020 there was 2/3 turnout of eligible voters (not registered) and 158,429,631 votes. That would put the number of potential voters at 237,644,447.

Total US population has increased by ~4.5m in the intervening four years, so the number today is unlikely to be substantially different.

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Remember, in 2020, roughly 2/3rds of the total vote was early + mail. Around 154 mil total & 101 mil early, IIRC.

Variance by state, of course.

So far though, if GA & NC Republicans were aiming for voter suppression, there is no evidence of that, yet.

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You are reading the site wrong, I think. In person is 29, mail is 26.

Total Early Votes: 55,184,113 • In-Person Early Votes: 29,131,062 • Mail Ballots Returned: 25,983,040 • Mail Ballots Requested: 65,614,014

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My bad. Corrected!

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The City of Milwaukee added 6596 in-person early votes, than 450 more than the previous record, set on Monday. 1,100 of these voters were new registrations. Some of those may have been people who moved, but it seems like some low propensity voters are heeding the call.

So far 38,833 early in person votes for the city. That’s a little under 1/6 of the total votes for the entire election. These numbers don’t include mail in ballots. The city will have between 80-100,000 ballots back before Election Day.

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Wednesday's PA Mail-In Ballot Update is in.

52,495 new requests, R+6,321. Final request advantage now down to D+485,910

76,303 ballot returns, R+1,739. Overall ballot advantage now D+380,043. 10k short of the (once) popular firewall, 60k below my firewall

Total Requests (FINAL):

D - 1,196,132 (54.71%)

R - 710,222 (32.48%)

O - 280,096 (12.81%)

Total - 2,186,450

Total Returns:

D - 881,779 (73.72% return rate)

R - 501,736 (70.64%)

O - 166,613 (59.48%)

Total - 1,550,128

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Is this the first day the "firewall" has actually decreased?

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That's because they did a bunch of what's essentially early in person voting yesterday at counties and satellite centers. Republicans were heavily represented there (indeed Trump was whining about the line in Bucks County). But it's the last day of EIPV and the next few reports will be mail only.

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Long Outstanding Ballots (Over a week old):

D - 210,478 (66.96%)

R - 76,577 (36.73%)

O - 67,562 (59.53%)

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A couple of thoughts: If there does happen to be an anti-Trump backlash to the attacks on Puerto Ricans, when might we expect such a bounce in returns to show up in the total returns? And, would it be noticeable by looking at total D returns or O returns? (And I acknowledge that we may not see such an impact until election day, if at all. Just trying to get some hopium.)

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Mail-in ballots is PA are disproportionately white, older & female. The PR backlash WILL NOT be seen in mail-in voting in PA.

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There are older Boricua voters in PA, but I doubt enough to see a big trend in mail-in returns, unless it pushes some of the LOBs that you noted above into the mail

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Sorry, what are LOBs? All I can think of is men left on base.

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Long outstanding ballots, I think. Ballots issued over a week ago would be LOBs. They were referenced above.

I had the same thought, but why would they be left on base?

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I knew it didn't mean left on base in this context.

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Dems just aren't showing up. There is an enthusiasm gap between MAGA and Dems. We see it in PA, NV, AZ. Dems are not as motivated as Republicans. We are getting more and more evidence each day.

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Yeah it’s becoming obvious.

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Or, like me, they're going back to Election Day voting. As far as PA is concerned, the GOP started embracing mail-in voting this time. Per Tom Bonier, about 40% of GOP mail-in ballots were returned by 2020 Election Day voters as opposed to 10% of Dems.

Comparing 2024 EV to 2020 EV is NOT an apples-to-apples comparison.

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Nevada and Arizona, yes, but PA still has Dems leading (the firewall isn't as high as we'd like, sure, but that's a separate issue).

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Why is it that every day, someone who's never posted here before shows up and repeats the same debunked BS that we've discussed almost every day for the past month?

Come on. Newbies should be lurking here before they start commenting, so they know what we've already discussed a thousand times and don't need to discuss again. And they should also be reading the comments already made today, where we once again debunked this idea.

This is really getting tiresome.

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Remember the Skaje!

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I appreciate the shout out upthread but I want to clarify I'm not trying to shut down discussion. If people want to read negative things into the early vote, they're entitled to do so. I think they lack conclusive evidence for their interpretation, and will say so. But as long as they're not spamming up the threads with repetitive doom, I'm fine to say "I disagree" and move on, without making it as confrontational as you are. I understand the frustration, but people aren't obligated to not comment on this because you or I consider the issue settled.

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That's the thing though. They *are* spamming these threads with repetitive doom. We've seen comments like this pretty much every day for a couple of weeks now, sometimes by the same people. And they're not making any acknowledgement of everything we've said to debunk their claims, which makes it clear that they're not arguing in good faith.

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because they don't know what they are talking about!! likely republicans anyway!

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I really don't agree with this, but for a subtle reason. We're seeing high-propensity Republicans vote (see: Waukesha, Forsyth, etc.). We're also seeing high-propensity Democrats vote (see: Dane, Fulton, etc.). What we're not seeing quite as much of is either side's low-propensity voters (see: outstate Wisconsin, but also Milwaukee city and the Black belt in Georgia). For Republicans, these are the MAGA-surge voters. For Democrats, they're minority voters. Turnout in these brackets appears to be lower.

And yes, which side can bring out more low-propensity voters will be a huge factor. But we just don't know who's going to show up late in the process and/or on Election Day.

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Actually they are, but I am past the point of argument

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Not in MI, WI, NE-02, or GA, it isn't.

Dems are all ahead of 2020 EV spread in all those states via Target early.

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Poll after poll of the people who have already voted are showing that they are voting heavily for Harris even if the registration numbers show otherwise.

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Don't a lot of the EV exit polls seem to indicate otherwise?

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SCOTUS: The U.S. Supreme Court has paused a lower court ruling that orders Virginia to restore some 1,600 registered voters that a state program purged too close to this fall’s election in violation of the National Voter Registration Act.

https://nitter.poast.org/hansilowang/status/1851624138323939539#m

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Another US law (90 day rule) that SCOTUS decides can be ignored when they just don't like it. NPR had a story a while back that included two US citizens who were unregistered but could not re-register in time. The salvation of sorts is that legal voters who are disenfranchised can still re-register on election day.

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Not in all states

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True but the case was only VA.

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If I had my druthers, Election Fraud would be a Federal crime – and would include purging citizens from the voting rolls or otherwise disenfranchising them.

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It should also include intimidating voters at the polling place, reducing voting access for voters whose politics you don't like, requiring ID and then making them hard to obtain, etc.

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Totally agree! By "otherwise disenfranchising" I meant all of these and more. A recent example is, if I remember correctly, Ohio allowing only a single polling site in each county – regardless of population. Another example from elsewhere: placing polling sites so that they’re difficult to access by public transportation.

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MI 7 (Slotkin's seat): Barrett 47-45. Trump and Harris tied. Biden won it by 1.

https://emersoncollegepolling.com/michigans-7th-district-barrett-r-47-hertel-d-45-7-undecided/

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At first I wondered if Hertel might be an unexpectedly poor candidate or something.

Then I noticed this is from Emerson. Like I've said before, Emerson is simply not a reputable polling firm, regardless of whether their numbers are good or bad for Dems. Time to ignore it.

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I live more than an hour from the district but am in the Denver media market so every other ad is a Caraveo or Evans ad with all the propositions sprinkled in. I think Caraveo and Harris will each prevail in the 3-7 range in the district.

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Supreme Court allows Virginia to purge voters from rolls ahead of election as part of a plan to weed out noncitizens who might be registered to vote, although there is evidence citizens have been swept up too.

6-3, liberals dissenting.

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Seems to primarily be people who failed to check the "I am a U.S. Citizen." box on their driver's license form/renewal, plus naturalized citizens who had dealt with the state before they were citizens. At least VA has same-day registration, so if they show up, they can at least cast provisionals.

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Sounds like more Virginia’s caused the problem rather than the voters.

Anyone not checking that box shouldn’t be registered in the first place, (try that online to see if you can successfully register.) and the bureaucrats should tell the prospective voters the mistake right away, directly asking them to check it under the penalty of perjury, or not registering at all. There is no reason they should be registered up front and then cancelled so close to the election.

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Might be time for torches & pitchforks at SCROTUS.

EDIT: I mean protests by that, if anyone is confused.

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Virginia has same day registration so not all is lost. But the SCOTUS continues to show that the law/precedent is whatever has five votes in favor.

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Yeah hopefully someone at VDP has done an analysis of the registrations and figured out who to follow up with.

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Q3 GDP growth was 2.8% and ADP’s jobs estimate is a gain of 233k - one of their most bullish figures in a long while.

Will be interesting to see what the BLS figure on Friday is

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More good economic news !!

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