511,141 in-person "early votes"
(+99,119 over yesterday)
More requests than I'd like to see at this point (these folks might not even get their ballot in
time, let alone have time to return it) but it has slowed a lot since a week and half ago.
Big day of returns, and, as hoped/expected we pass a 75% mail return rate, passing 475k mail votes cast. This is about two days ahead of 2022's return pace and has caught up (and slightly
outpaced) 2020's return rate which was at 74.43% one week out from Election Day.
The big story remains in-person absentee voting, which is showing, so far, no signs of abating from a record setting first week.
There are now 150k more early votes cast than this point in 2020.
27.83% of registered voters (as of 10/1) have cast a ballot already. We're definitely in uncharted territory here. We don't know what Election Day will look like and how much these voters are just moving from Election Day to early but everything is pointing to massive turnout
next week.
At the municipal level, Milwaukee lags by about 6%, similar to where things were before the weekend, and now has almost exactly the same number of mail and early votes- 31,886 mail and 31,878 early.
Madison continues to pull away from the statewide rate and is now
at 77.73%. Madison has solidly joined the other elite cities with high return rates- Green Bay (77.23%), Kenosha (77.37%), Appleton (77.32%), Janesville (79.55%), Oshkosh (77.33%), and Eau Claire (78.18%) are all approaching 80% and many of them should make it tomorrow.
Brookfield and New Berlin (Waukesha suburbs) continues to overperform but have fallen back behind Kenosha and Wauwatosa, a blue Milwaukee suburb.
The City of Waukesha, which had trailed badly, is now starting to catch up to its suburbs, just behind the two already mentioned and
passing Menomonee Falls and Muskego.
There are now 262,540 ballots in Central Count municipalities, 91k of which are in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Kenosha. Another 14k are in previously mentioned Wauwatosa, which could make for more drama on Election Night.
At the County level,
Milwaukee is just 3.6% behind the statewide rate at 71.80% and the suburbs minus the City of Milwaukee have a 74% return rate on their own. The County has about 5k more early votes than mail votes.
Dane County has a 77.33% mail return rate and has passed 150k ballots total.
Waukesha had a strong day of early voting and about 2k early votes ahead of Dane (while being about 50k votes back overall due to lower mail voting- where they are in line with the statewide rate at 75.30%)
Milwaukee remains ahead of the statewide turnout rate at 28.62%, but
behind other large counties like Dane (33.66%), Waukesha (38.18%) and Brown (31.29%). The highest turnout is in ruby-red Washington county at 38.61%. Rural counties continue to lag badly in turnout with Clark County in the back at 8.72% turnout of registered voters.
We JUST missed a million votes cast by about 11k, so tomorrow will definitely be the day for those of you who voted in yesterday's poll. We will also likely pass 500k mail ballots tomorrow, so a day of milestones is in store.
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499,576 mail returns (78.3%)
(+21,039 over yesterday)
609,576 in person "early votes"
(+99,320 over yesterday)
A big day for returns with a 3% jump in the rate but JUST missed 500k. The return
rate is about 6% and 3 days ahead of 2022. We remain at a slightly higher return rate than 2020 at this point (which was 77.45%).
We are definitely on track to meet or exceed the 90% return rate originally estimated but the real story
continues to be the absolutely bonkers early vote numbers. Yesterday was the third highest day so far, so no signs of slowing down.
There are now 196k more early votes cast than at this point in 2020. We are now only 35k votes away from the TOTAL 2020 early vote and approaching
191,869 in-person "early votes"
(+94,433 over yesterday)
Big day, passing 400k mail returns and almost doubling the number of early votes. The second day
of in-person absentee voting usually has a pretty significant dropoff but this year there was almost none while yesterday was also a big day for mail returns, with the return rate jumping over 3% to hit 2/3 of all ballots returned(as the request rate thankfully continues to drop)
With today's numbers in, 592k votes have been cast in Wisconsin already, continuing to indicate high enthusiasm across the board and the likelihood of very strong turnout.
The obvious headline here is the massive early vote turnout. This is almost triple what we saw in 2022 and
20k higher than we saw in 2020. Another possible sign of high turnout/enthusiasm.
The return rate jumped by over 2%, breaking 60%, and mail ballots currently make up 79.51% of all ballots cast so far.
At the municipal level, Milwaukee continues its boom and bust processing of
mail ballots, falling back again to about 8% behind the statewide rate at 54.04%. They had a massive day for early voting with 4,490 ballots cast.
Madison remains ahead of the statewide rate by a bit at 62.34% and is 825 mail ballots ahead of Milwaukee. They also had a big day
The state released numbers very late today and I had real life stuff going on, so apologies for the late report.
A very strong weekend leading into what is
likely to be a very strong report tomorrow. It looks like reports are starting to peter out a bit which is good because the window for a ballot to get to a voter and get mailed back is closing more rapidly than folks might think. If you have a ballot in your hand, please mail it
back ASAP or drop it off (with your clerk, a drop box, at an early voting site, whatever your city allows).
Tomorrow is the start of in-person absentee "early voting" so there's going to be a new metric in these reports starting Wednesday. As for today-
At the municipal level,
585,515 ballots requested
(+11,765 over yesterday)
283,123 ballots returned (49.09%)
(+15,599 over yesterday)
Another solid day of returns puts us on track to pass 50% return rate tomorrow, as expected. We'll also pass my benchmark for 3.325m
turnout based on absentee requests tomorrow (we're just under 6k short right now) so it looks like we're in for another big turnout Wisconsin election.
At the municipal level, Milwaukee continues to creep up on the statewide rate, now just a hair over 7% behind at 42.00%.
Madison is keeping pace at 48.92%. Madison now has just under 1k more ballots returned than Milwaukee.
The City of Appleton (50.29%) joins the 50%+ club today and Racine continues to lag at just 38.99%.
At the County level, the Milwaukee suburbs (combined return rate of 47.28%)