Early Voting in Key three states trending back toward even.

                While the initial signals from the early vote looked positive for Democrats, as more votes have come in the outlook has gotten slightly less positive for the party of FDR. We focus today on three states: Nevada, North Carolina and Florida.   Democrats may need only of these states and potentially none of them to ultimately prevail.  So today’s analysis takes nothing away from what we found earlier would be necessary for Clinton to win.   But each of these states is certainly in play so it’s worth looking at what we know even though early voting trends should not be overstated.  One key thing we have seen from the early vote, which is very helpful in reading the polls, is that we are looking at an electorate that looks much like that from 2012. There are variations, some helpful for Democrats, some helpful for Republicans but the bottom-line is that 2012 closely resembles what we are seeing this year.  A similar electorate can easily produce a different result, but it is unlikely to produce a dramatically different result.  Now let’s get to the states:

Nevada:

This is the one place where the Democratic bright spot has not lost its shine. The first remarkable thing is that as you read this half of all the Nevada ballots may already have been cast en route to a turnout that looks just like 2012.   In Clark County with four days to go and with the last day traditionally being the largest, Democrats have a 47,980 vote lead on Republicans casting ballots.  In 2012 when all was said and done, Democrats had a 70,708 lead countywide.  Democrats are smoothly on pace to exceed their 2012 margin, if current trends continue.  In Washoe County, things are even a touch better for Democrats.  In 2012, Republicans cast more early votes in Washoe by 880. As of Monday, (Tuesday cut the margin before posting) Democrats have cast 2296 more ballots. That is meaningful improvement, and if it were to hold for the entire voting period, life would become very difficult for Trump statewide because he seems likely to need Washoe in order to win the state. Obama won Washoe as part of his 6.6% win.  Things can still change in the last four days of early voting, but for now Nevada looks good for Clinton. 

North Carolina:

Both North Carolina and Florida are very difficult to get a read on.  When it comes to North Carolina, there is absolutely no doubt that Hillary Clinton is winning North Carolina’s early vote.  She has a 12.5% advantage and a 234,000-vote lead. Yet these numbers mask the reality that she leads by smaller margins than Obama had in 2012.   And even in this there is a catch. It was believed that the Romney campaign made a very strong effort to focus early vote activity only on low propensity voters. This is an important tactic because getting unlikely voters to turn out is more important than getting people who are already likely to vote to vote early. But it also means Obama’s lead may have been artificially high and not likely to be repeated unless Trump was also following the same early vote approach. North Carolina also seems to be on track for seeing way more people vote early than in 2012. This means building as big a percentage lead is harder because more people are included in the overall early total.  Democrats should be cautiously optimistic about North Carolina’s early vote, but certainly nothing here challenges the consensus that North Carolina is exceptionally close. 

 Florida:

Just read this is instead.  It is by the guy who won FL for Obama in both 2008 and 2012. http://steveschale.squarespace.com/blog/2016/11/1/one-week-to-go.html We have nothing to add. Florida is exceptionally close and likely will be to the end.  The Early vote has a 16,000-vote lead for R’s, yet No Party Affiliation voters may be leaning D, and there’s a chance for Dems to gain if some unreturned mail ballots come in.  Dems have 80,000 more such ballots than does the G.O.P.   That is where the race stands.