#earlyvote update 9/23: at least 5,721 people have voted in the 2022 general election
So far in North Carolina, the mail ballot return rate for registered Republicans and Democrats is running about the same, 6.2% for Republicans and 6.1% for Democrats. It's very early in the early voting period, but no apparent enthusiasm gap (confirming many polls)
Although no returned ballots are in the system yet, Pennsylvania election officials report they have sent 158,663 mail ballots earlier this week
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Never forget the nation's largest organization to provide voter registration to low income communities -- ACORN -- was taken down by Project Veritas edited videos
An ACORN employee managed to settle for $100,000 for a deceptively edited video. But Republicans in Congress used the videos as a reason to cut federal funding to ACORN for its assistance to low-income communities (aside from voter reg), and now it is gone prwatch.org/news/2013/03/1…
Billionaires will continue to fund Project Veritas and pay their legal fees regardless of the truth of what they do because they deliver for them
Two things happening. First, midterm turnout rates are historically correlated with presidential rates. In recent years the presidential rates increased while the midterm stayed low. The 2018 election restored the relationship, which makes me suspect this will carry forward
Second, why are turnout rates higher now? Trump is an obvious. As long as he is around he drives political interest. But we've also entered a period of higher polarization on major issues. That was last seen in the 2nd half of the 19th century when turnout rates were also high
Why did I not sign on to this, as one of the leading experts on U.S. elections? Because adopting multi-member congressional districts would likely hurt Latino representation by shifting representation from population based districts to turnout based PR nytimes.com/2022/09/19/us/…
If adopted for smaller state legislative districts, multi-member districts would likely further hurt representation for low-turnout Native American communities
The experience in Illinois, which had 3-member state legislative districts using PR until the 1980 cutback amendment is that it was still possible to gerrymander for the additional seat. Yes, more difficult, but not impossible
Re: the recent pundit thumb exercise over Latino vote in 2020, here is a chart of ecological inference estimates for Florida Hispanics for every statewide Republican candidate 2016-2020
Clinton in 2016 and Trump in 2020 are outliers. Most of the other estimates fall between these two extremes. It is possible that there has been a drift of Florida Hispanics towards Republicans, but it could also be that the 2016 and 2020 prez elections are exceptional cases
My guess is the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections are outliers, not part of a trend, and that we're over-estimating the movement of Hispanics towards Republicans because we are comparing two outliers
In a reminder that campaign consultants care more about being right than election handicappers, McConnell’s Super PAC is shifting ad money from Arizona to Ohio politi.co/3QP2jUO
This is probably true: the Senate Republican campaign strategy has shifted from winning control to minimizing losses in a bid to stop Democrats from winning 52 seats and overturning the filibuster
I'm willing to believe Ohio Senate is still lean R (but increasingly competitive so on the watch list), but Arizona Senate is not a toss-up, which is where just about every election handicapper has it. It merits lean D given polls and ad buys
This is why -- unless there is clear intent to commit a crime -- I believe people should be forgiven for committing election fraud. And yes, that includes Donald Trump who committed a Florida felony for signing a voter registration form with false information