After two days of voting in Nevada, the Democrats have a big lead. But, before you get excited, things are not what they seem. While it’s true that it’s nice to have rolled up a 13,400 vote advantage in just two days, four years ago the Dems rolled up a 16,000 advantage in two days. Four years ago, among registered voters, the Dems had a 60-24 advantage. Right now, they have a 53-31 advantage. On the other hand, the Dems are outperforming the relative registration split by seven points, and that’s after dramatically improving their registration numbers over where they were at the beginning of the year.
In North Carolina, it’s interesting to look at a graph that compares the early voting for blacks and whites in 2008 and so far this year. Overall, the numbers are up among both groups, but the enthusiasm jump among whites disappeared by the weekend. According to Dr. Michael Bitzer on Twitter, Sunday’s early voting was 60% registered Democratic, 20% registered Republican, 19% unaffiliated. For perspective, the Dems had 4,000 more votes yesterday than on the same day in 2008, while the Republicans only had 2,400 more. Unaffiliated voters were up by 2,000 votes.
Here’s a good write-up of how to go about interpreting early results in Florida. There are two ways to vote early in Florida. You can request an absentee ballot or you can go to an early voting center. In 2008, the Republicans had a big lead among people who used the absentee method and Democrats had a bigger lead among those who voted early in person. To address this Democratic advantage, the Republican governor cut down early in-person voting hours dramatically, which led the Democrats to make a major effort to get their voters to use the absentee method this year. In-person voting hasn’t started yet, but we can compare the absentee ballot voting to 2008.
As of yesterday, the Republicans have 5.3% advantage among those who have already returned their absentee ballots. In 2008, the Republicans had a 15% advantage with absentee voters. So, that’s about ten points better the Democrats are doing this year, so far. However, there are two reasons not to get excited. First, every voter the Democrats convinced to vote by absentee this year will not be able to vote again in person. Second, because there are going to be fewer hours to vote in person, the Democrats will bank less votes that way this year than they did four years ago. In 2008, the Democrats had an overall 8.3% advantage in early voting of all types, despite having a 15-point disadvantage with absentees. So, it’s a promising sign that the absentee deficit has been narrowed, but it could be a wash.
Nate Cohn has some hard to decipher thoughts on the early voting in Iowa.