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Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Early vote shows Colorado Democrats need big turnout today [1]
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Date: 2014-11-04
• Florida: Democrats had been looking forward to flexing their turnout muscle on Sunday thanks to their "Souls to the Polls" operation, and flex they did.
Among the 96,142 votes cast in Florida on Sunday, Democrats outvoted Republicans 52-27 percent. That allowed them to cut the Republicans' overall early voting advantage to 3.3 points, down from 8 points a week ago and 13 points a week before that. While this overall breakdown is a strong performance for Democrats for a midterm year, it is also a significant improvement for Republicans since 2012. In 2010, the GOP enjoyed an edge of 12.7 points but the Obama campaign's unprecedented focus on mail-voting in 2012 helped Democrats take a lead of 3.8 points in 2012.
I have written in the past about the many reasons that it may be hard to compare Florida's early voting this year to that of past cycles, so all I can say is that this supports the idea that 2014 is in in-between year, and that it would make sense for either gubernatorial candidate to win with such turnout patterns.
• Georgia: In-person early voting ended with 934,485 Georgians having cast a ballot. 32.8 percent of them are black, which is comparable to what early voting statistics showed in 2012 (33 percent).
That alone is a good sign for Democrats, who were fearful of a significant drop in African-American turnout over 2012. They seem to have mobilized minority voters who typically skip midterms: Of early voters who didn't vote in 2010, just 51 percent where white and 37 percent were black. Of course, if the Senate and/or gubernatorial races go to runoffs, Democrats would have to produce such turnout numbers again in December and/or in January to be in contention.
• Iowa: Hawkeye State Democrats have historically been far more mobilized to vote early than Republicans. In 2010, a year that was hardly easy for them, they outvoted Republicans by 5.5 percentage points among early voters. This year, the Democratic advantage among early voters has been more modest. As of Monday morning, Democrats had cast 40.6 of 432,190 early votes, while Republicans had cast 38.8.
This is a product of Republicans raising their early voting game more than it is a product of Democrats' failing at theirs. Indeed, both GOP and Democratic turnout is already up significantly compared to 2010's total early vote. As such, it is possible to the shift we are seeing is mostly due to registered Republicans shifting their preferred mode of voting. But it is also possible that Republicans are doing a better job than Democrats at expanding the voting universe.
Democrats have been saying that their internal tracking shows that many of the unaffiliated who voted early are Democratic-leaning voters who did not vote in 2010. Unfortunately, unlike other states Iowa releases few statistics about early voters beyond the overall partisan breakdown so it is not possible to assess that claim based on these official reports.
• Maine: On Wednesday, independent gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler invited his supporters to back another candidate if they thought he could not win. Independent Sen. Angus King soon switched his endorsement from Cutler to Democratic nominee Mike Michaud, I immediately wondered how many Maine voters had already locked in their vote before hearing of these developments and shifting their vote away from Cutler.
Here's the answer: As of Thursday morning, 84,617 Maine voters had cast their ballots, 24.4 percent of which are independent voters. That may sound like a lot, and in a close race it may well make a difference, but that number corresponds to just 14.6 percent of the total number of votes cast during the 2010 elections.
A little math: Supposing 15 percent of those voters went for Cutler, that two-thirds of them would have chosen to vote for someone else had they waited for his announcement, and that they would have chosen between Michaud or LePage in the proportion suggested in the most recent PPP survey (55 percent Michaud and 35 percent LePage), we are talking about a potential loss of about 0.3 percent for Michaud in the final margin.
• Nevada: For much of the two-week early voting period, Silver State Democrats seemed to have disappeared. The situation stabilized over the last two days of early voting (Thursday and Friday), when Democrats finally outvoted Republicans by meaningful margins in Clark County, the county home to Las Vegas and almost three-quarters of the state's residents.
This at least raised hopes that enough Democratic voters will show up on Tuesday to save the party from unexpected upsets, but it was not enough to make the overall turnout look anything like what Democrats want it to be. Two numbers capture the situation.
First, registered Democrats have been narrowly outvoted overall in Clark County, a dramatic reversal from the large leads that Democrats had amassed there over the past cycles. Second, only 23 percent of Clark County's active registered voters have cast a ballot for now. In many of the state's rural counties, where Republicans do well, more than 30 percent of active registered voters have voted.
Unlike what has happened in Iowa, the GOP's gains in Nevada come from a significant drop in turnout compared to the previous midterms. Some of this makes sense, as there is no high-profile competitive statewide race this year unlike Harry Reid's re-election campaign four years ago.
Nevada reporter Jon Ralston wrote on Sunday that the turnout gap is so favorable to Republicans that Democrats are risking heavy losses in races that were not supposed to be on our radar. We're talking about Rep. Steve Horsford, attorney general nominee Ross Miller, secretary of state nominee Kate Marshall, and many legislative and down-ballot candidates. These races now depend on the Democratic ground game—led in part by the Culinary Workers Union—succeeding in turning out enough voters to close the GOP's edge to a more manageable margin than the current gap of 7 percentage points.
• North Carolina: In-person early voting concluded on Saturday on a strong note: a total of 1,097,560 North Carolinians took advantage of one-stop voting, a 121 percent increase over 2010. And much of that growth came from Democrats and from African-Americans.
About 284,000 African-Americans voted early this year, an impressive 45 percent increase over 2010. White voters increased their participation in early voting by just 12.5 percent. Among Democrats, the growth from 2010 was 25 percent, compared to just 5 percent among Republicans. The biggest increase, however, comes from independent voters: 45 percent more voted this year. Who these voters are is obviously the big question heading into Election Night.
And as you would expect given the numbers above, the most Democratic areas of the state saw particularly strong turnout. Orange County (that's Chapel Hill) finished 43 percent above its 2010 number, and Durham County finished 34 percent above. Throw in North Carolina's relatively modest mail-voting as well, and here is where we stand: 1,155,124 North Carolinians have already voted, 47.6 percent of them Democrats and 31.9 percent of them Republicans. That's an edge of 15.7 percentage points. That compares very well to 2010 (46-37) and is only a drop of 0.4 percentage points compared to the presidential year of 2012.
Of course the big question is whether the growth in early voting is just a result of voters who would vote anyway just doing so early. We have numbers to indicate that this is not the case. Twenty-five percent of early voting Democrats did not vote at all in 2010, compared to 20 percent of Republican early voters. And whites made up just 66 percent of voters who didn't vote at all in 2010, compared to 72 percent among all early voters.
That said, while the early voting electorate is much less white than in 2010, it is also significantly more so than in 2012: 71 percent versus 67 percent. This highlights that Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan needs to win a significantly greater share of the white vote than Barack Obama did two years ago.
• Others: There are many other states to go through, but there is only so much time. You can check Michael McDonald's excellent site for the latest statistics from all the states.
Race Ratings: We have quite a few changes to our race ratings as we finalize things ahead of Election Night. As always, you can check out all our ratings on our big board.
Senate:
• KS-Sen: Republican Sen. Pat Roberts recently ran a spot starring Kansas State University football coach Bill Snyder, who is phenomenally popular with fans. However, the college is not happy that they're being used in a political ad, and they've asked the campaign to take it down. Snyder himself claims he didn't know that his comments praising Roberts would be used like this but he's apologized to the university, and he has also asked for it to be pulled. Roberts campaign has continued airing it despite saying they would stop. It's a very strange late-minute controversy, but it probably doesn't hurt Roberts to remind voters that Snyder is a friend of his.
• KS-Gov, Sen, SoS: This is seriously messed up:
"This is a big change for Kansas. In 2010, we only rejected .03 percent of voter registration applications," said Patrick Miller, a University of Kansas assistant political science professor. "Whereas in 2014, we've suspended or rejected almost 20 percent. That's a massive increase."
The whole article is disturbing, and of course, all of this can be laid at the feet of Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Rick Hasen offered a really troubling scenario : What if there's a recount in the (very tight) Kansas Senate race, overseen by Kobach, who might possibly be a lame duck at that point if he loses Tuesday night?
• Polling:
Udall's campaign claims its final poll (presumably from Keating Research) has the race tied at 46 , but they didn't provide any further details beyond a bare-bones tweet. In any case, we're about to find out for sure where this race stands.
Gubernatorial:
• Polling:
Note that Rauner's internal comes from an obscure Republican pollster that's really a robocall marketing firm, and "undecided" was not an option.
SUSA's final poll for MN-Gov is pretty blechy, given that Dayton has usually had roughly 10-point leads. It's also a little strange that Al Franken has maintained a double-digit lead (see Senate polling section above) while Dayton has not; generally, the two Democrats have polled very similarly.
House:
• NY-11: This is a pretty amazing slip-up by Mike Grimm (and a really good catch). It won't matter in time for Tuesday, but it could hint at where his legal fortunes are headed afterwards.
• VA-10: On Friday, House Majority PAC and Patriot Majority announced a major ad buy, quite possibly their last of the cycle. They are spending a combined $418,000 going after Republican Barbara Comstock on ethics. In mid-October the DCCC made news when they pulled out of the district, but House Majority PAC stepped in quickly and calmed speculation that Democrats had given up here. This seat hasn't gotten too much attention since then but it's at least a good sign that the national party thinks that John Foust can pull this off on Tuesday.
• Polling:
• San Jose Mayor: This will be the largest city to host a mayoral race this year, but the polling has been scarce. However, SurveyUSA gives us a rare look at this contest and gives Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese a 44-38 lead over San Jose City Councilmember Sam Liccardo. A mid-October poll from San Jose State University gave Cortese a 34-26 lead.
Both candidates are Democrats, but there are real differences between them. Cortese is a labor ally, while Liccardo is closer to outgoing Mayor Chuck Reed. Reed's pension reform policies have inflamed unions, and they're hoping that Cortese and a more-friendly city council can undo some of the incumbent's actions.
• State Legislatures: The most basic building block of electoral politics—the state legislatures—usually gets shoved aside in the last-minute hubbub before Election Day. However, David Jarman takes an in-depth look at where things stand with the most competitive state legislative battles. Most of the danger lies on the Democratic side, with the state Senates in Colorado, Iowa, and Nevada in particular trouble. However, the state Senate in Wisconsin could be a potential bright spot.
Grab Bag:
• Election Night: Tuesday will be a very busy night, with plenty of races to watch all over the country. To help keep track of everything, Jeff Singer has put together an hour-by-hour guide to the evenings' House, Senate, and gubernatorial races, arranged by poll closing time. There's a lot to look forward to: Polls start to close in Kentucky at 6:00 PM Eastern, with the Aleutian Islands finishing at 1:00 AM Eastern. We'll be liveblogging the results every step of the way and beyond.
• Polltopia: Looking at the past few of months generic congressional ballot polling data, it turns out that Democrats are now positioned better than they were six months ago. But how can that be? The switch to Likely Voter screens obscured this improvement. In other words, if we hadn't had this improvement, the Likely Voter numbers would now be averaging around -5 instead of where they are now:
: David Rothschild writing at HuffPost Pollster tackles the subject of polling errors , showing that for polls done just before an election, the actual results are within the 95 percent confidence interval (the famous Margin of Error) only 75 percent of the time. The margin of error only accounts for one source of polling error, random sampling error, but does not include several other types of error that tend to result in an undercount of Democratic-leaning voters. As a result, the polls wind up being more favorable to Republicans than they ought to be more often than the other way around.
• YouGov: YouGov conducted last-minute statewide polls in seven states with "fresh samples," though it's not quite clear what means given that YouGov uses opt-in panels. They also released some fairly crazy House polling—fairly crazy because they polled every single district, and fairly crazy because the margins of error range from plus-or-minus 6 percent all the way to 38 percent! In a normal poll, that would imply a sample of just 7 people (though YouGov calculates the margin of error differently than traditional pollsters because they don't use random sampling).
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, with additional contributions from Jeff Singer, David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Taniel, and Dreaminonempty
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