Dem
52
Ties
3
GOP
45
A few times between now and Election Day, we'll take a peek at trends in early voting, which may—or may not—be instructive.
Starting with the topline number, 1,680,703 votes had already been cast as of yesterday. About 80% of those (1,376,492) had been returned via mail, while about 20% of those (304,211) were cast in-person. At this point in 2022, around 264,000 ballots had been cast. This certainly suggests greater voter enthusiasm this year, as opposed to the previous midterms. It also reflects the fact that more states have made it easier to vote early.
As to the partisan breakdown of the early votes, Democrats are outpacing Republicans a little more than 2-to-1 among ballots for which the partisan ID is known. 471,946 registered Democrats have cast votes so far, as compared to 216,093 registered Republicans and 137,337 folks who are either registered with a third party or who are not registered with any party at all. This adds up to 825,376 votes in total; that is considerably fewer than 1,680,703 because many states either do not register voters by party, or else do not report early votes by party.
Thus far, in the states that report ages for early voters, only 1.9% of ballots were cast by people under 25. And in states that report ethnicity for early voters, only 2.2% were cast by Latinos. Democrats would surely like those numbers to be much higher, because they are counting on a surge in voting among those two populations. That said, the Latino figure in particular comes with a bit of an asterisk. Only two states are currently reporting early voters' ethnicity, and those are Georgia and North Carolina, neither of which is the Latino capital of North America. Among the three states that are currently reporting early voters' gender identities (those two plus Colorado), 49.1% of the voters are female, 44.7% are male and 6.2% chose not to state. That breakdown will be more pleasing to blue-team muckety mucks, since they are also relying on heavy turnout among women voters.
Taking a look at more localized data, the number of early-ballot requests by Democrats make up 67% of the total in Iowa, 66% in Pennsylvania, 57% in Maine and 42% in North Carolina. That's up 13 points, 4 points, 4 points and 6 points, respectively, as compared to this point in 2024. The list of states here is somewhat limited because some states don't allow early voting, others allow it but don't report numbers, and still others send ballots to everyone, such that there are no "requests" to count.
Among states that don't register voters by party, or don't report early voting totals by party, it's possible to make an educated guess as to who is casting votes based on what localities the votes are coming from, and how those localities voted in 2024. In Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Virginia, Democrats look to be responsible for about 70% of the ballots cast so far. In Maine and North Carolina, the blue team's share isn't quite as large, but the Democrats are still outpacing the Republicans by 3-to-1 or so (57% to 17% in the former, 45% to 16% in the latter). In Florida, the Democrats are also in the lead, but by a more modest margin of 43% to 36%.
It is extremely difficult to take early-voting numbers and to turn them into firm conclusions. That is particularly true at this point in the cycle, when many large states have not yet commenced early voting, or have just barely begun. But it's also generally true, because Democrats are demonstrably more enthusiastic early voters than Republicans are. Also add in that widespread early voting is a fairly new thing, and that much of our data from the "Early Voting Era" is skewed by the pandemic, while the data this year is probably going to be skewed by voters (mostly Democrats) who are worried their mail-in ballots will get tossed in the trash. Whether that fear translates into more Democrats voting early in-person instead of via mail, or it translates into more Democrats voting on Election Day instead of via mail, we don't know.
In other words, we have a lot of numbers already, but relatively little to say about what they all mean. Perhaps the only real assertion we can make at this point is that the early voting numbers do nothing to argue against the notion that the election is going to be a blue wave/tsunami. Oh, and they do also mildly suggest that you probably shouldn't bet too much on Florida's governorship or U.S. Senate seat flipping. By and large, Democrats really need to run up the score in early voting to have a chance there, and it doesn't look like they are doing so. (Z)