Reading Tea Leaves in the Early Vote in Battle Ground States

We like to think that election day is election day, but it’s not. Many states will begin their early voting process within the next three days; the first day of early voting in North Carolina was today. In 2012 about 36% of the all votes were cast early or absentee. In many states with such options, far more than half of the vote was cast that way. Before we go further, it is important to note that most of the base data that shapes our understanding comes from Professor Michael McDonald and his fantastic work at electionproject.org.

Early voting means a campaign can come very close to wrapping up the election by building a lead that is very difficult to overcome on election day. In-person early voting in particular is a vote of choice for African Americans and thus it helps Democratic candidates. Democrats depend heavily on success in the early vote in three states, North Carolina, Florida and Nevada. In 2012, 56% of Florida’s vote was early, 70% of Nevada’s vote was early and 61% of North Carolina’s vote was early. The trend in these states is toward even more early voting.

Because partisan identification and demographics will play a large role in this election, having a clear idea of who has voted and how they have voted can say a lot about how the election will go. If a candidate builds a lead with a high percentage of the vote in, it becomes difficult to overcome.

Nevada has no data in yet. In both Florida and North Carolina, Democrats are running ahead of their 2012 pace while Republicans are running slightly behind. It is also significant that so far those states’ results are from absentee mail ballots, a method that traditionally favors Republicans but one which Democrats have cut into pretty well so far. Florida in-person voting will start Monday. Results from North Carolina’s first day of in-person early voting should tell us a lot about how effective the Democratic efforts will be.  

In addition to a polling update on Monday, we will be giving early vote updates on Tuesdays and perhaps on Fridays as well. We can learn a lot from early vote and will try to bring it to you first.