It's not like this is unexpected, and it's an important reminder that we're going to see unprecedented partisan polarization between the early/mail batches and the Election Day batches tonight.
For those of you who are saying "oh, it's just one county..." actually no, this pattern is consistent across pretty much every FL county almost an hour in. And the fact Broward Co. is an EDay Dem-GOP tie so far is consistent w/ a strong GOP EDay overperformance vs. early vote.
Also keep in mind: the Election Day share of the overall FL electorate is going to be historically low this year b/c 62% of registered voters already cast ballots before EDay polls opened.
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Have a hard time believing reports there are only 120k uncounted ballots remaining in Philadelphia. That would put it at 695k, leaving it short of the 707k total votes cast in 2016.
Turnout declines aren't happening anywhere in PA, including Pittsburgh...
In other words, I'm extremely skeptical that estimate is accurate. Nonetheless, even if it were borne out, it wouldn't alter my thinking on who's likely to finish ahead.
If Philadephia's turnout was in line with similar cities (and there's no real reason to believe it would be way out of line w/ Detroit, Milwaukee, etc.), there might be 200k-250k ballots left to count there - in which case Biden could take the statewide lead w/ Philly alone.
Not sure we'll get more "final" national live-interview polls, but here are my average crosstabs (in situations where pollsters polled twice in Oct., "October 2020" includes the first poll and "FInal 2020 Polls" includes the second).
Most striking: stability of the race and Biden's lead. But a strange/fascinating twist: Biden's weakest point, September, was also his high-point w/ non-whites.
Since then, Trump has narrowed Biden's lead w/ Black & Hispanic voters, even as Biden has stretched his lead overall.
Maybe the latter trend is noise, maybe it isn't, we'll see in a few days. But two things that are impossible to call noise:
- Biden has made remarkable gains vs. Clinton among 65+ voters, esp. in the final month
- We're headed for a historic gender canyon, not gap
Morning update: Texas reporting 9,669,246 votes cast at the close of early voting. That's 57% of registered voters and 700,020 more votes than were cast in Texas in *all of 2016.*
Largest increases in 2020 early votes cast vs. 2016 total votes cast (TX counties w/ 100k+ registrants only):
The final day of TX early voting was a relatively strong one in the most heavily Hispanic counties. Total votes cast in the six most populous border counties (El Paso, Hidalgo, Cameron, Webb, Starr, Maverick) jumped 9.3%, vs. 6.2% everywhere else in TX.
Morning update: Texas just surpassed 95% of its 2016 total votes cast w/ two days of early voting & Election Day left to go. We're just headed for a massive, unprecedented turnout there (and a lot of other places).
Top TX counties in current '20 votes cast vs. '16 total votes cast (pop. growth a factor here):
In Sumter Co., FL, as of this morning 72,695 out of 105,612 registered voters (69%) have already voted - which I believe is the highest turnout rate outside of auto-VBM states.
Although we know that Trump is likely to better in the EDay vote than the early vote virtually everywhere, there's not *that* huge a difference between the Sumter voters who have voted so far and those who haven't...
Among the 72,695 Sumter voters who have cast ballots, they break down:
58% R
25% D
17% NPA/Other
Here's the breakdown of the 32,917 Sumter registrants who *haven't* yet cast ballots:
Tfw you've been devouring hundreds of district-level polls for decades and everyone has suddenly woken up to how instructive they can be.
The truth is, the majority of presidential race polling is conducted at the *district,* not state or national level.
Most of it is never made public by parties/PACs, but is of high quality b/c it's conducted to make critical resource allocation decisions in House races.
Four years ago, these district-level polls showed flashing red warning signs for Clinton in heavily white working-class districts (see below), but many people overlooked them.