The Vote And Voting Problems, Pre-Election Day 2020

A.S. from New Jersey: Have you considered factors such as rejected absentee ballots (which would affect Democrats more because they’re more likely to use those) in your probability estimations?

No, our model doesn’t attempt to account for anything that happens after ballots are cast, such as mail ballots being rejected or Trump successfully challenging the outcome of the election. We’re not trying to dismiss these concerns; they’re just outside the scope of a statistical analysis. Things like human error or the whims of the president can’t be modeled!

If you’re interested in reading more about rejected ballots, I humbly recommend this article I wrote last week. It’s certainly concerning for democracy that hundreds of thousands of otherwise eligible voters will probably see their ballots invalidated this year; however, I would be surprised if it actually affected the outcome of the election. First of all, only 30-40 percent of ballots are expected to be cast by mail this year. Second, only about 1 percent of mail ballots are rejected. That means an election would have to be within 0.3 or 0.4 percentage points for rejected mail ballots to be decisive. And even in that case, it’s not as if all mail ballots are cast for Democrats. So even a Democratic lead of 0.3 or 0.4 points probably wouldn’t be erased (just narrowed) by rejected mail ballots.

Of course, this is a very rough, hypothetical example. In some states there will be a lot more than 30 percent of votes cast by mail. Furthermore, the rejection rate could be higher this year because so many people are voting by mail for the first time and are unfamiliar with the rules (although experts are optimistic that this will be mitigated by states extending their ballot-receipt deadlines, allowing voters to fix mistakes on their ballot and making ballot instructions clearer). So we can’t totally rule out rejected ballots being decisive in a hyper-close race. I just think it’s unlikely.

Another election-related order came down from the Supreme Court on Wednesday evening. By a 5-3 vote, with conservatives in the majority and liberals dissenting, the court blocked a district court judge’s ruling that kept Alabama state officials from preventing counties in the state from providing curbside voting, a measure designed specifically to help voters with disabilities or those at risk of catching COVID-19 who were uncomfortable waiting with other voters in an indoor space. A few counties had wanted to implement the measure, which would allow people to vote from their cars or hand their ballot to a poll worker at curbside. The district court’s order would have permitted (but not required) counties to provide the service over the objections of the state.

The Supreme Court didn’t explain its reasoning in siding with Alabama state officials. But the liberal justices did sign onto a dissent authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She wrote that the court didn’t have a good reason to stand in the way of counties trying to make voting easier for elderly or disabled people. “If those vulnerable voters wish to vote in person, they must wait inside, for as long as it takes, in a crowd of fellow voters whom Alabama does not require to wear face coverings,” she wrote. “The District Court’s modest injunction is a reasonable accommodation, given the short time before the election.”

In the past couple of weeks, a number of states like Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania have seen huge upticks in voter registration numbers. Geoffrey, you wrote something on this recently. Tell me, what’s happening? Are more Republicans registering in a state like Florida?

Geoffrey: At first glance, the answer is yes. More Republicans are registering to vote in a state like Florida. Since the deadline to register for Florida’s March presidential primary, Republicans have registered about 147,000 more voters than Democrats have, and the share of Republican registrants has ticked up.

However, this is complicated by the fact that: 1) more Democrats registered in the months before the presidential primary because they were more engaged by the competitive Democratic nomination contest than Republicans were; and 2) many voters who register as independent tend to be younger, and we know that those voters are more likely to vote Democratic, even if they don’t identify openly that way.

Moreover, party identification can be a lagging indicator of who a person supports — meaning someone may have previously supported the party they’re switching their party registration to now.

So … the long answer is that we can’t actually know whether more Republican voters registered than Democratic ones!

Kaleigh: I’ve also seen a lot of reporting about Republicans “closing the gap” in states like Pennsylvania, but what they’ve really done is narrowed the gap. There are still currently 700,853 more Democrats than Republicans registered in Pennsylvania.

Nathaniel: Yeah, I wouldn’t put much stock in those registration numbers if you’re trying to understand how the election might swing. The polls are just a much more direct way to answer that question — they ask directly who a person supports instead of depending on an unreliable proxy for it like registration.

And the polls are designed to pick up all voters — new and old!

Geoffrey: That’s right, Nathaniel. You might even say that voter registration numbers are a Rorschach test of sorts — you can sort of make what you want of them, especially with the increasing number of voters who register as independent, which makes it even harder to draw big conclusions from these numbers.

Kaleigh: Earlier this year, Nathaniel and I reported on how the pandemic had taken a huge toll on new voter registrations. At the beginning of the year, we were on track to see a record number of new voters registering, but with lockdowns (and, in particular, the closure of DMVs), those new registration numbers plummeted:

David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, who was one of our sources, recently told NPR they’re seeing a bit of a rebound but “[I]t’s not making up for all of the activity that we’ve lost due to the pandemic.”

Nathaniel: Yeah, and new registrations are really a drop in the bucket compared to existing registrations. So even if a majority of new registrants are voting for Trump, if existing registrants strongly support Biden, it wouldn’t matter.

Sarah: OK, between early voting data and voter registration numbers … how should I be factoring this into how I think about the election?

Is it an indication that voter turnout/enthusiasm might be high? Or should I disregard this?

Geoffrey: Look to the polls. First, they show that Biden is generally doing better than Trump among people who identify as independent. So, even if the GOP has added more voters, a Biden edge among independents could override that.

Second, for turnout I’d look to polls about enthusiasm and interest. For instance, Gallup found in late September that 71 percent of registered voters said they were more enthusiastic about voting in 2020 than in past elections — the highest percentage since Gallup started asking this question in 1996.