142,510 Americans who have never voted before have already cast a ballot in the 2020 general election. At this point in the 2016 cycle only 38,394 first time voters had cast a ballot.
Among these first time voters, Dems have a modeled partisan ID advantage of 6.4%. At this same point in the '16 cycle Republicans had an advantage of 1.3% among these new voters.
This surge in first time voter turnout among the early votes cast thus far is being driven by big increases from black, asian, and latino voters.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the surge in first time voters casting an early ballot this year is also being fueled by younger voters with an increasing vote share relative to the same point in time in 2016.
In Wisconsin, the number of first time voters has increased more than 8x relative to this same point in the '16 cycle. As of now, first-time voting Democrats have a modeled 3.4% advantage over GOPs, whereas at this point in '16 GOPs had an advantage of 7.6%.
Btw, all of these screenshots are from our TargetEarly site. I know I've been teasing it for a while, but I promise we'll be releasing it in the next 2-3 days. Our team is just putting the finishing touches on it and letting the data fill in. I'll share it here ASAP!
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Over 3.6M votes have already been cast in the 2020 general election.
While Democrats have a large lead overall among those early votes cast, it's reasonable to assume that Republicans will skew somewhat towards Election Day voting, nationally.
For me, the most important datapoint we can gather from the early vote is the partisan distribution among low likelihood turnout targets. At this point, 136k people have voted who never voted before. Dems have a 6.1% advantage.
Just a placeholder here in case it becomes relevant sometime soon - Amy Coney Barrett has voted by mail in Indiana at least 3 times in the past 5 elections.
Oh, while we're on the subject of mail voting, Wilbur Ross requested a mail ballot for the general election in Florida last month. Certainly a safe choice for a high risk individual during a pandemic. Will he be the first Trump cabinet member to vote by mail in this election?
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer was also recently mailed a ballot in Florida for the November election.
In Pennsylvania, registered Democrats have built up an advantage of 835,578 mail ballot requests over Republicans. Donald Trump carried the state by 44,292 votes.
Not every voter requesting a ballot will return it. And yes, more GOPs will vote on Election Day. But the Biden campaign will bank these votes very early, allowing them to focus their resources on a much smaller target universe through November 3rd. That's a huge advantage.
223,612 of these Democrats didn't vote in the 2016 election.
A quick thread on where the vote by mail (VBM) requests stand at this point. Sorry for the megachart, I'll explain as I go!
First, all of the partisan data in here is modeled party, for the sake of consistency.
Looking at this column, we see that Dems lead in VBM requests in every state but 4 (AR, ID, IN, MI).
Keep in mind, this includes automatic/permanent VBM requests, which may explain MI.
Compare this to the partisan distribution of the 2016 electorate in these 15 states, where Dems trailed in all but 5 of the 15 states. Again, this is generic modeled partisanship of the voters who cast a ballot in '16.
We released our report on voter reg trends just before Kamala Harris was named as Biden's VP pick, so you may have missed it!
We found registration surged as the BLM demonstrations began in late May/early June, fueled by young voters and people of color. insights.targetsmart.com/august-11-2020…
Look at this national trend chart. First, the Dem primary was good for Democrats, fueling huge registration advantages. Then the pandemic happened, and reg slowed way down. Until the demonstrations began.
This is incorrect, Republicans are not outregistering Dems in any of the states listed here. The analysis is flawed. I'll explain, and share the actual data.
Start with PA, Dems have a 15 point advantage among those who have registered since Nov of 2016.
Also, note the large share of unaffiliated voters. Who are they? Younger voters are much more likely to register unaffiliated, and are reliably Democratic when it comes to candidate choice. Here's the modeled party of those newly registered unaffiliateds in PA.