Michael McDonald Profile picture
Professor at the University of Florida who specializes in American elections.
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Aug 30 4 tweets 2 min read
Mark was kind to provide me with the GA file the AJC obtained for this story. One of the striking things I saw was the rise in "17.5" registrations -- young people who will be 18 by November but are still 17 We should expect younger and more diverse voters to continue to register before Election Day. It happens every election! This is one of the reasons why I've thought polls that sample from voter registration files may be under-estimating Harris by a point
Jul 30 6 tweets 2 min read
After long ramblings and multiple Ingraham prompts Trump finally says why Christians won't have to vote again:

1) He'll "fix the country" with new voting laws
2) People will love "us" (Republicans? He wouldn't be able to run again) Now there are premises here that are false. Trump says Christians don't vote but religious people -- particularly those who attend church frequently -- have higher turnout rates
Sep 18, 2023 8 tweets 2 min read
National Voter Registration Day is upon us, and so it is time for my annual screed against voter registration First, we don't need voter registration. North Dakota doesn't have it, you just need id to vote. This is how most developed democracies manage their voter rolls, with the important exception their governments give national id cards to everyone without additional costs
May 16, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Impossible to defeat the front running candidate without criticizing him DeSantis’s Super-PAC Never Back Down is essentially a grift to take money from one uber-wealthy donor - Bigelow
May 10, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
Appears some of these charges against George Santos are similar to allegations of Herschel Walker redirecting campaign funds to a personal company thedailybeast.com/emails-reveal-… From the Santos charges of allegations of him redirecting campaign donations to a personal company... Image
May 3, 2023 10 tweets 3 min read
I posted updated graphics and statistics for demographic turnout rates calculated from the Current Population Survey to include 2022 electproject.org/election-data/… (For the election nerds, these turnout rates differ from the Census Bureau tables in that I make a weight adjustment for the 17% of respondents who did not answer the CPS voting and registration supplement, and for vote over-report bias found in all surveys)
Apr 5, 2023 11 tweets 2 min read
Wisconsin Republicans have already begun talking about impeaching Protasiewicz jsonline.com/story/news/pol… This may actually be the race to watch for control of Wisconsin's Supreme Court. A Knodl win gives Republicans the two-thirds majority needed for impeachment in the heavily gerrymandered state legislature Image
Nov 29, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Long lines again forming in Fulton County, Georgia for in-person voting. The longest is now 3 hours. Georgia's new law forbids outside groups and individuals from offering people locked in this endurance test either water or a seat arcgis.com/apps/dashboard… Gwinnett's longest lines are only 1 1/2 hours gwinnettcounty.com/web/gwinnett/d…
Nov 17, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Trafalgar's pollster blames his likely voter model for their misses. Likely voter models are the secret sauce of polling, and for us to assess a poll's assumptions, pollsters need to be more transparent about who they think will vote nymag.com/intelligencer/… If pollsters like Trafalgar released multiple turnout scenarios, like some major pollsters, that allows an external assessment of how much the likely voter model is driving estimates. To encourage this, poll aggregators should only include polls that provide this transparency
Nov 9, 2022 11 tweets 2 min read
Florida Democrats ran a Republican-lite candidate who ran a tepid campaign for Gov against DeSantis, who has a $100+ million war chest and the power of incumbency. Democrats clearly said...meh I'm not voting Just to say, I'm not a big fan of Charlie Crist. Hopefully this is the end of his political career
Nov 7, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Today's Colorado early report (updated thru Sun.) continues to show Democratic strength. In 2018, reg Republicans had a 0.8 point lead at this point in time. Today, Dems have a 3.2 point lead. There are likely reporting delays affecting data, but Dems have consistently led Reps The Colorado graphical report is here if you want to play along at home coloradosos.gov/pubs/newsRoom/…
Nov 7, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Running through some same-day-before election comps for Wisconsin

Total early vote 1 day before election:

2022: 719,429
2018: 547,954

Change: +131%

I doubt we'll see a 131% change in total turnout, but I think this is a strong indicator 2022 will beat 2018's turnout More here that makes points that where these votes are coming from shows mixed signals about the direction of Wisconsin's elections (which is what we would expect if the Gov and Senate races are indeed close) pbswisconsin.org/news-item/wisc…
Oct 29, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
#earlyvote end of day update 10/28: at least 18.3 million people have voted in the 2022 general election 🥳
rpubs.com/ElectProject/e… Notable out of Georgia is the Black share of the early electorate has slipped to 29.9% in a strong day of Friday voting

Warnock advanced to the run-off in 2020 with 27.7%
Oct 27, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
If you want to know why election forecasters are cheering for a Republican victory, it is because their fundamentals forecasting models say it will happen More in this genre of election forecasting
Oct 27, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
#earlyvote evening update 10/26: at least 13 million people have voted in the 2022 general election 🥳
rpubs.com/ElectProject/e… And that is without the Georgia evening update
Oct 25, 2022 7 tweets 2 min read
#earlyvote midday update 10/25: at least 9.2 million people have voted in the 2022 general election 🥳
rpubs.com/ElectProject/e… Added Florida in-person which increased the national total to at least 9.3 million voted. The FL in-person data file is still blank, so I had to hand enter the topline numbers. Hopefully that will be fixed so I can generate more content
Oct 22, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
#earlyvote evening update 10/21: at least 6.6 million people have voted in the 2022 general election 🥳
rpubs.com/ElectProject/e… Georgia recorded 140,166 in-person early votes on Friday. There will likely be an upward revision by a few thousand more in the coming days
Oct 21, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
The Washington, DC Board of Elections provides evidence of how deluded people are about "mules" using mail ballot return drop boxes. Of the 19,538 mail ballots returned so far in DC, only 5,323 (27.2%) have been returned via a drop box dcboe.org/Elections/2022… Drop boxes are arguably *more* secure than mail boxes in that voters return ballots directly to election officials without the post office serving as a middleman
Oct 20, 2022 8 tweets 2 min read
Where are the Georgia early vote statistics?

Georgia runs a batch job to pull data from their servers every day, starting ~8pm. For some reason this process is very very slow, and as the number of votes increases, so does the file size, and the time to generate the file It's a hopefully good sign the file is taking so long to generate today. Let's hope that means lots of voters were added to the file, and not a bug that required restarting the data pull
Oct 18, 2022 9 tweets 3 min read
#earlyvote afternoon update 10/18: at least 3.1 million people have voted in the 2022 general election 🥳
rpubs.com/ElectProject/e… This update welcomes Massachusetts to the tracker. This plus a Michigan update pushed us over 3 million voted
Oct 18, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
#earlyvote evening update 10/17: at least 2.3 million people have voted in the 2022 general election 🥳
rpubs.com/ElectProject/e… This update welcomes Idaho and West Virginia to the tracker courtesy of @DubickiRyan of the Associated Press. I hope to onboard CT and MS this evening (also courtesy of Ryan), and build out more statistics for Georgia's in-person early voting