We've surpassed 10M ballots cast nationally, with 21 days remaining. What's more, early voting will only accelerate as key states begin early in person voting.
We can clearly state that Dems are building a lead in the early vote, not just cannibalizing E-day votes.
Details...
We've added a filter on our TargetEarly site allowing users to filter just to aggregate data for Presidential or Senate battleground states. targetearly.targetsmart.com/index.html?vie…
Limiting the scope just to presidential battleground states, Dems have a lead of 15% among early votes cast thus far, almost doubling the 8% lead they had in those same states at this same point in '16.
In the battleground states, 328,389 first-time voters have already cast a ballot. Compare that to 114,852 at this point in '16. Dems have a 7% lead with these voters, while they only led by 1% with new voters at this point in '16.
Another 1.2M sporadic voters have already cast a ballot across the battleground states. That's almost 600% the 220k vote from sporadic voters at this point in '16. Dems lead among these voters by a 19% margin, improving upon the 13% margin at this point in '16.
Black voters and college educated white voters have seen the biggest surge in turnout, relative to 2016, while non-college white voters have seen a plummeting early vote share.
Women are turning out in massive numbers in the battleground states. The electorate is +12 women right now, while at this point in '16 women outnumbered men by 6 pts.
Let's talk about turnout by age. Not surprisingly, seniors are seeing the biggest increase in electorate share as they pivot to safer voting methods, while younger voters are accounting for a reduced share. But there's a broader context here to be aware of...
Voters under the age of 30 are accounting for a larger share of early votes cast among sporadic voters in every single battleground state but one at this point, with a 4 point increase over '16 in aggregate.
I could go on about these numbers for hours, but I've rambled on long enough. I'll share other random thoughts later. But for now, some conclusions...
- Dems are on a trajectory to have a wide lead by Election Day.
- GOPs will likely turn out on Eday in larger numbers, the question will be if they're in too deep of a hole at that point. There's no way of answering that question until we get there.
- The Dem coalition is broad. Young voters, people of color, women, first time voters, college educated voters, and even surge voting seniors who lean more Dem this year than they have in several cycles... all are voting in record numbers.
We are certain to see record turnout, in terms of total ballots cast, and very well may see the highest turnout % in a century. Not accounting for rejected ballots, turnout could exceed 155M votes.
I will offer a caution here - less than 10% of the total votes that will be cast in this election have been submitted. Lots can change in 21 days, and none of this means anything if people don't get out and vote. We'll keep tracking and reporting on what we're seeing.
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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.
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.
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.