ABC News is reporting a poll that shows 9% of likely voters have cast their ballots. Gary Langer (Director of Polling) walks through the breakdown, finding both regional differences (the South and West vote early) and partisan advantage (Obama is receiving a lot of these votes) that are in line with our expectations. The 9% figure sounds a little low to me given the activity we’ve seen—though Langer asserts that 34% will have voted early by this time next week.
A quick update from Nevada: the trend continues. Democratic early turnout is around 75% higher than Republicans’ level. As we’ve mentioned before, Clark and Washoe counties include Las Vegas and Reno, and account for nearly 90% of the state’s population.
Unlike the last graphs, I’ve included Clark County’s absentee-by-mail ballots above, which raises the overall total slightly, but doesn’t change the partisan breakdown. In-person voting is clearly the preferred early mode in the state.
| Clark County Modes of Early Voting | |||
| Mode | Democrat | Republican | Unaffiliated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early In-Person | 133,064 | 71,440 | 40,405 |
| Absentee by Mail | 15,776 | 17,283 | 5,215 |
| Data captured on 10/28, at 11:00PM PST | |||
Gov. Charlie Crist has issued an executive order instructing early voting locations to increase their hours from 8 to 12 per day for the remainder of the early voting period. Given the disparity in rates of early in-person voting between Democrats and Republicans, this is very likely to benefit the former. Says (Republican) Crist: “This is not a political decision. This is a people decision.”
More at the WSJ…
A couple of interesting notes about Louisiana. The state is considered to be safe presidential territory for the Republicans, with Pollster currently reporting McCain up 13 points. Democratic incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu, on the other hand, has a fairly strong lead over Republican challenger John Kennedy.
So, what do the voting numbers say? Louisiana has no-excuse in-person early voting, and it appears to be taking off. In 2004, just 6.5% of the voters cast their ballots early. This year, more than 260,000 voters—9%— have so far voted. We’ve had anecdotal reports of lines up to five hours in the state, which has relatively limited provision of early voting locations (particularly in the large cities).
Despite some 1.5 million of Louisiana’s 2.9 million registered voters being affiliated with the Democrats, this party has a hard time in a state where many voters do not vote along party lines. African-American voters, however, are as reliably Democratic as in other parts of the country, and the Party has targeted its registration drive at this community. At the start of October, black voters comprised 30% of registered voters in the state, whites 65% (exactly the same proportion as their populations).
On the other hand, the impact of Hurricane Katrina introduces a further uncertainty into the vote: the exodus into neighboring states disproportionately affected African-Americans. In a state where turnout is crucial, the Landrieu campaign was maintaining an understandably conservative position in its African-American turnout models—but early voting returns give them cause for optimism. 95,000, or 36%, of the early voters are African-American, while just 161,603, or 55%, are white.
Let’s be clear: though records are being broken, early voting turnout is still likely to be comparatively low in this state. It’s much more difficult to extrapolate broad trends than in a big early voting state like North Carolina or Nevada. Certainly, this is not reason to consider conservative Louisiana unsafe for McCain. Still, it is an interesting state to watch.
Since early voting began this election cycle, and since it has become apparent that turnout among registered Democrats has been higher than among registered Republicans in some states, an important question has been raised: does public knowledge of who is voting early affect the outcome of the election?
This is an excellent question for which we, unfortunately, don’t have an answer. Yet.
There are a couple things to keep in mind, however, when searching for possible conclusions.
We do not know how individuals voted, we only know if a voter is registered Democrat or Republican. This may be an indicator of how they have or will vote, but voters do not always cast ballots for the same party with which they are registered.
This said, it is difficult to ignore the fact that Democrats in many states that allow early voting have cast more ballots than their Republican counterparts. (See EVIC’s previous posts or articles in USA Today and BBC News.) Might just knowing this, might just the impression that there have been more ballots cast for the Democratic candidate affect the outcome of the election, whether or not it is true?
A question I am sure we will ponder in the months to come…
Interesting things to report from Georgia. First, the early voting turnout has already broken previous records. In 2004, around 20% of the 3.3 million voters cast their ballots early. As of today, the state reports that 1,206,981 ballots have already been cast in this election–22% of Georgia’s registered voters. Advance voting is open in the state until Friday; I predict significant further increases.
The state also provides a limited racial breakdown for early voters. The graphs below show slightly different things. On the left, a straight breakdown of the number of votes cast by racial group. Nothing looks too surprising about this graph–white voters are overwhelmingly the dominant racial group in state.
The graph on the right, however, shows the percentage of votes cast against registered voters within each racial group. This, again, yields the interesting finding that African-Americans are voting early at higher rates that whites, in proportion to their group size. The trend continues.
Georgia is unexpectedly close this year, and it remains to be seen how good the pollsters’ “likely voter” models are.
We had heard tell that Nevada had high rates of Democratic turnout, and the data confirm it. The state is a battleground this year, and the early vote will be crucial: Nevada is traditionally a big user of advance voting—in 2004, 52% of those who voted did so early.
The graphs below show early in-person voting rates in Clark and Washoe Counties, which include the Reno and Las Vegas metropolitan areas, and account for around 87% of the population of Nevada.U.S. Census Bureau estimate
Since these numbers don’t include the more rural areas outside of Reno and Vegas, they probably slightly understate the Republican vote. If so however, it’s not by much—the totals are not far from the statewide figures reported by Nevada’s Secretary of State. (Clark County, in particular, simply contains a huge part of the state’s population.)
Graphs updated 10/29, text from 10/26.
Even states as safe as Tennessee are seeing increased levels of early voting this year. Early voting is widely available in the state, and traditionally sees high levels of use. I’ve put our graphs from 2004 underneath for comparison. The patterns of voting are very similar, but note the daily turnout increases.
(October 19th was a Sunday, by the way, and early voting locations are closed.)