Florida’s early vote numbers are in:
FL #earlyvote Race change vs 2012 via @electionsmith
Afr-Am +70.6K (+9.2%)
Hisp +453.8K (+86.9%)
White +900K (+27.2%)
Other +121.5K (+48.3%)— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) November 7, 2016
One number looks good for Trump, and that’s the raw white vote of 900,000 people. But consider that if Floridian whites split 60-40 for Trump, this would only net him 180,000 votes. A 90-10 split for Clinton among blacks would net her 56,000, and an 80-20 split among Latinos would net Clinton 272,000.
President Obama won the state in 2012 by only 72,000 votes, so that 87% increase in the Latino vote has to be concerning for Trump.
According to Joshua Green’s reporting for Bloomberg, the Trump team has long identified the Miami “designated market area” as the most critical one for him in the nation, but nearly 30,000 county residents registered to vote in October, and “through Saturday…(of the) 707,844 county residents (who) had already voted: 44 percent were Democrats, 30 percent Republican, and 25 percent had “no party affiliation.” That last group, unaffiliated voters, skews younger and more racially diverse than the electorate as a whole. “The demographic mix of early voters also looks highly favorable to Clinton: 58 percent Hispanic, 17 percent African-American and 20 percent white.”
But the late registrants, Smith says, give the clearest indication that sentiment in Miami-Dade is running strongly against Trump. Of the 29,657 voters who registered last month, 41 percent are Democrats, 44 percent are unaffiliated, and only 12.5 percent are Republicans. “That’s nuts,” said Smith. “These are the barometers that indicate the hostility toward the GOP candidate.”
Campaign organizers like to bank as much of their vote before election day as possible. For one thing, fewer outstanding votes means fewer people you need to contact and drag to the polls. But you’d ideally like to get the unlikely voters to show up early because likely voters generally get themselves to the ballot booth sooner or later. If all you’re doing in the early voting period is “cannibalizing” you’re election day vote, that’s only modestly helpful. It avoids losing a few votes here and there to car problems and family emergencies, but it otherwise doesn’t much improve your candidates’s prospects. The thing is, a lot of the people who have voted in Miami-Dade County have either never voted before or have only voted sporadically.
“Of the 707,844 voters in Miami-Dade, 201,000 did not vote in 2012—and 127,000 of them are Hispanic,” he says. “Hispanic voters are over-performing their share of the electorate.”
Despite early concerns, it appears that black turnout in Florida will exceed the raw numbers from the last presidential election and, from the Clinton campaign’s point of view, getting 127,000 Latinos (in Miami-Dade alone) who didn’t vote in 2012 to the polls already is a big boost to morale.
But it gets better. In the Miami “designated market area,” which includes Broward and Monroe Counties, “351,000 (of the early voters) did not vote in 2012—and 47 percent are Hispanic.”
These are very big numbers for a state that was decided by only 72,000 votes four years ago.
In the Orange County belt around Orlando, (where there Latino community is more Puerto Rican and less Cuban) the numbers look similarly promising for the Clinton team.
Not to be lost in the shuffle, Orange County set a new record by 4K votes today. 28k voted early.
D- 12800
NPA – 8779
GOP – 7146— Steve Schale (@steveschale) November 7, 2016
Democratic optimism in Florida needs to be balanced against concerns about black turnout in North Carolina (it’s way down due in large part to Republican efforts to suppress it with “surgical precision“) and Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio. Early voting in Iowa also looks bad for Democrats as their advantage is far below where it should be. But Trump cannot become president without Florida so, on balance, the news out of the Sunshine State is looking potentially decisive.
As a word of caution, Nate Silver gives Clinton only a 52% chance of winning Florida in his Now-Cast, which assumes that the election will be held today instead of tomorrow. On the other hand, the folks at Huffington Post give Clinton a 89% chance of carrying the state.
downright jaw-dropping.
I’m all the way back up to “cautiously optimistic” at this point.
How are these data about voters’ racial identification even collected?
States that have historically discriminated against blacks voting have to keep these stats. That’s why you see them in states like Georgia and North Carolina but not in Iowa or Ohio.
Something called the voting right act required it.
Roberts’ court gutted then, eh?
Not that part of it. Roberts gutted pre clearance, which is where you have to get prior approval to change an election law, even a precinct location.
Please let us get the senate seat too
Amen. That’d be awesome.
On the white vote issue, I wonder how many women are like my independent but Republican leaning aunt, who didn’t vote for Trump? She finds him “disgusting.” She also doesn’t see “why an older woman can’t be president” either. I wonder how many women there are like her out there?
I want to ask Steve Schale this question, but maybe others could answer it for me: how much has the collapse of the Puerto Rican economy effected the election in FLA?
I know people from PR also move to other states, but many of those are not swing states in any conventional sense.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/donald-trump-puerto-rico-230779
There’s your answer.
More than half of all Hispanics live in Texas or California.
The impact is less than you would think.
Correct but still essentially wrong.
Roughly 50% of Hispanics live in Texas and CA (in fact the #1 county of density is Los Angeles, #2 is Harris). However, actual population is different from voting population, Elligible voters is different from actual voters and actual voting population as a % of overall political boundary population is another kettle of fish altogether.
Hispanics “… make up 40.1 percent in New Mexico, 27.4 percent in Texas, 26.9 percent in California, 20.3 percent in Arizona, 17.1 percent in Florida, 15.9 percent in Nevada, 13.2 percent in New York, 12.8 percent in New Jersey, and 10.3 percent in Connecticut …” of ELLIGIBLE voters.
For obvious reasons, rates of participation in CA, CN, NJ, NY (and most likely AZ and TX) are irrelevant to the final outcome. Nevada, Florida and New Mexico? If Hillary takes all 3 of those states it is over, kaput, done and the future looks blue (presidentially) for a generation.
Nevada and Florida are having senatorial races which are rated as Tied (NV) or close (FL). An upsurge of first time Democratically voting Hispanics (as currently being seen in both states) can most certainly affect those elections.
Note that all of the above does not HAVE to be true. But it is beginning to look like it. And we’ll know by the end of Tuesday (assuming no reprise of 2000).
“CN”?
CT
That’s not what I asked.
I think it’s pretty clear Iowa has been trending away from the Dems since 2008. Lost governorships, senate seats, legislature, recall of state supremes, it was bound to hit the presidential level eventually.
Great piece. A few small additional points:
1. Puerto Ricans are a big deal in this election (even more than in 2012 when some considered them the tipping point faction for Obama). The economy on the island is in shambles and there’s been something of an exodus to FL since 2012 (a smaller version of the mid-century PR migration to NY) (http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-26/puerto-rico-s-mass-migration-puts-florida-in-p
lay-for-2016)
Right now the EV margin is 1.4% versus 3.8% in 2012. The NPA (No Party) racial breakdown suggests another 80K net by my math.
It is very hard to know much of anything right now. The black vote is down as a share (funny games played with in this piece). The Hispanic vote looks like it is more than making up for that.
But none of the EV is an apples to apples comparison to 2012.
I know Hillsborough, and the numbers are about the same as in 2012 when we won by about .9.
It’s Florida. Who the hell knows.
That is what I learned from 12 years working on campaigns.
Jews account for 3% of FL population, but (usually) 5% of the electorate. While dem on balance, orthodox Jews tend to vote GOP, but … (http://www.jpost.com/US-Elections/One-word-ad-warns-Florida-Trump-is-a-threat-to-Jews-too-471917)
Interesting.
I have several in-law relatives who are Orthodox and uniformly they despise Trump … and just as uniformly will vote for him.
Real Politic, anyone?
Eretz Yisrael, from the River to the Sea. They figure they’re more likely to see it with Adelson, Netanyahu & Trump
Nothing else matters to them.
http://steveschale.squarespace.com/blog/2016/11/7/1-more-day-we-can-do-this.html
“What a fool believes…”
LOL