We’re Monitoring The Early Vote — But Carefully
There have already been numerous court battles over the final deadline for counting a mail ballot postmarked by Election Day, or over how many early in-person voting locations should be required. And because of the continued threat the coronavirus pandemic poses, we expect huge numbers of voters to cast ballots ahead of Election Day to avoid day-of lines.
But be warned: It’s easy to misinterpret early-voting data.
In 2016, we saw how it could mislead pre-election analysis, as some commentators viewed the Democratic tilt of the party registration among early voters in states such as North Carolina as a sign Hillary Clinton would win there; instead, the Election Day vote went heavily for Trump and swamped Clinton’s early-vote edge.
And this year, we have to be even more cautious. First, polls suggest that around 60 to 70 percent of voters may vote by mail or early in-person due to COVID-19 — up from 40 percent in 2016 — which complicates data comparisons to past election cycles.
And second, there’s a large partisan split over when voters plan to cast their ballots, with Republicans far more likely to say they’ll vote in-person on Election Day than Democrats. So that means it will be entirely normal to see far more registered Democrats casting early ballots. And doesn’t necessarily mean Trump is going to lose in a certain state.
Yet, one thing we can say about early voting is that the numbers we do have so far suggest heavy turnout, especially given high levels of voter enthusiasm. So far, at least 13.3 million people have cast early ballots, according to Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida. That’s nearly 10 percent of the total presidential votes cast in 2016 — and we’re still about three weeks from the election.
Stay tuned for more updates on early voting and how to make sense of what we’re seeing!