In looking at the early voting numbers in North Carolina, I’m struck by a few things. First, voting is up among all groups, which is not what most people would have expected. As a general rule, higher voter participation is good for the Democrats. Throughout the year conservatives have frequently questioned the polls under the assumption that 2012 would have much lower turnout than the pollsters were assuming based on 2008 models. While all things may not be equal (polling hours, for example), after five days of early voting there are no signs of depressed turnout. In fact, the evidence suggests that turnout will be higher this time around.
Second, in 2008 blacks made up 22% of the North Carolina electorate. So far, they are 35% of the early voting electorate. In fact, if I am reading this correctly, 12,000 more African-Americans have voted in North Carolina than have white registered Republicans.
Third, it looks like about 55% of early voters are women and that about 60% of those women are registered Democrats. Those are two numbers that should concern Team Romney because, in combination, they suggest that left-leaning women are pretty fired up about voting in this election.
Fourth, and this is the only bad news, Monday was the first day that the Democrats didn’t exceed their numbers from 2008, but Republicans and unaffiliated voters stayed above the 2008 watermark. This could be a blip, or the first indication of a problem.
I’m not willing to sign off on MattTX’s methodology, but he presently estimates that Obama has banked a 93,000 vote lead in the Tarheel State. But, remember, he only won the state by 14,000 votes the last time around.
I think it’s important to look at these number for more than just what they can tell us about North Carolina. They seem to prefigure a high turnout election, much like 2008. We are still seeing the Democrats show much more enthusiasm than the Republicans for early voting, but the advantage hasn’t necessarily increased; there are just more voters on both sides. In any case, what we’re seeing in North Carolina is encouraging for what it tells us about the state of the race.
In my canvassing, I am seeing more and more early voting in SD.
Slightly O/T but I early-voted yesterday (Washoe County, NV) and it was easy. Steady stream of people at the shopping center I went to but no waiting.
Booman- Here’s the place to see official early voting tallies for Washoe County. There are 241,312 total registered voters in the county. Registered voter breakdown: 37.6% Dem, 38.3% Rep and 24.1% Other (mostly unaffiliated.) Of all, 30,503 (12.6%) have early-voted as of Tuesday. Early voting has been heavier this year than it was in 2008. Not sure what to read into the numbers, if anything can be, though.
Does this not indicate a higher than 2008 turnout is likely, and that this is generally good for Democrats?
Turnout is expected to be very high this year. Good for Democrats, sure. Dem GOTV is intense. Could also be good for the R’s though even though they don’t have a good GOTV effort. All of the echo chamber is telling them they’re “under attack” by evil Dems, so maybe they’ll make sure to vote. I don’t know though. Statewide the vote should go to Obama by a few percent. But Washoe is the redder of the two big counties in the state. Clark County is very blue and the rest of the state is pretty empty (desert) but very red where there are pockets of people.
well I never seen a blue desert…
can I just say that I think it’s hilarious that you get to vote in shopping centers out there in NV
The other bit of good news from NC is that a lot of the early voters appear to be first time unregistered voters who are availing of the one stop voter registration and voting facility.
These voters would not have passed the pollsters likely or registered voters screens and are thus in addition to what the polls are telling us. Their demographics indicate that they are primarily Obama voters, and many potential student voters have not yet returned to college.
Many of the white Republican voters, on the other hand, are merely already registered voters voting earlier, and thus not increasing Romney’s total potential vote.
The other point worth noting is that an early voter is a 100% voter and not a “likely voter” with perhaps an 80% chance of getting around to voting at some stage if other activities do not intervene. I’m not convinced that pollsters adequately account for this differential.
That is good news. One of the things that I think is overlooked in early voting is that if turnout is high, it might just mean more of your existing pool of voters is voting early. It doesn’t mean you’ll get more votes, just the same number of votes more quickly. So don’t read too much into it.
Yes and no. If there is bad weather on Nov 6, every early vote will really count. Plus, there was OH 2004 and the rigging of hte count by the apportionment of machines.
Good point. That’s one reason Molly Ball’s story in The Atlantic (Booman has given it it’s own post) is encouraging. It sounds like not only is the Obama campaign well-organized, but also that they’ve been targeting infrequent voters for early voting, and saving their GOTV efforts for reliable voters for Election Day.
Who is counting the votes in NC? An honest count by a bi-partisan commission? Or Tagg Romney?
Someone’s counting the votes. They’re counting the number of people who have voted or are they counting the votes for Obama or Romney? Which is it? If the latter, I find the procedure very screwy.
No! No! I mean the FINAL official vote total, not the interim results.
Higher turnout means registered voter data is more accurate than the many likely voter screens in predicting the election. And in states like NC, registered voter data is a moving target because of one-stop voting.
good point.
I’m going head to head with Nate Silver.
I’ve created my own “model” that accounts for two factors that Nate dismisses out of hand…Voter party identification, and historical percentages of undecided voters decisions weighing a challenger vs. an incumbent.
I’ll update you daily…
National Popular Vote: Romneg 50.6, Obama 48.4
Electoral college: Romney 279, Obama 259
Deciding state: Ohio: Romney 49.7, Obama 49.3
I’ll post my final predictions on the morning of Tuesday, November 6th…let’s see whose “model” is more accurate!
You can call it the Donuts Model. Here’s the formula illustrated.
Here’s the beauty of it…
Either I’m right, or Nate Silver is…
He cherry picks which variables to use…
His “model” had worked in exactly ONE election…
I’m introducing additional variables that have worked over 40 years and 10 elections…
Let’s see how Nate does…we’ll see how I do…
13 days…scoreboard…clear winner, clear loser…
(doesn’t mean Romney will win…underlying fundamentals might change…but Silver’s ignorance of fundamental polling factors like party ID and historical data on the behavior of undecideds will come back to haunt his “model”.)
Care to share the details of your model so we have some idea of what it’s based on?
I concur on Ohio. No matter what the real totals, Bain will deliver for Romney. Arthur Gilroy is right, the election is rigged with Bain counting the votes in six states.
Who’s side are you on anyway?
Should I not bother to vote because the election is rigged?
Is that the message you are trying to send?
Voice is on your side…
Please vote…the election is not “rigged”…left-wingers talk about rigged voting machines, and right-wingers talk about “dead people voting”…
It all equals out…
This is about supposed “unbiased” media folks like Nate Silver pretending they are unbiased observers…
He conveniently dismisses variables that are not favorable to his desired outcome…let us see…right now, his popular vote total vs. RCP average favors Obama by 1.7…my popular vote total favors Romney by 1.6…RCP is mid-way between our “models”…can’t wait to compare!!!
But please…vote!!! I’m giving my employees a half-day off to vote, even though half of them will likely vote for Obama!!!
What an idiotic idea. Voter party ID? Dems are still a majority in GA, AL, and MS, doofus.