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Some Thoughts On Early Voting Returns: Mostly Good But Also Some Bad [1]

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Date: 2022-10-25

I’ve been following early voting returns as aggregated by Target Early — Target Early — and some interesting facts are developing. Mostly good, but some red flags about Nevada and (to a lesser degree) North Carolina as well.



First the disclaimers. I’m not a data analyst by training. This is just my layman’s interpretation of data being aggregated by Target Early. Second, I make no claims about the accuracy of the data presented by Target Early. It’s run by Target Smart, “a Democratic political data and data services firm.” They offer a breakdown by “Modeled Party”, which is important because several states do not have Party ID for voters (eg. Virginia and Wisconsin), but I do not know how Target Early arrived at these numbers. Overall, the actual voter data appears consistent with early voting returns in specific states reported elsewhere (notably Georgia). Third, I don’t have access to data of early voting returns from earlier mid-term elections (e.g. 2014, 2010, etc.), so the comparison is limited to view trends. Fourth, please note all the caveats that Target Early also presents on their website:





There is no perfect precedent to compare against. Early vote access has expanded dramatically since 2018, but many states have limited access again since 2020, making comparisons to either year imperfect.

Voting habits change. Trump and ultra-MAGA Republicans' attacks on our voting system have made early voting a political statement. That has had the effect of driving down Republican early voting, while moderates and Democrats continue to embrace the practice. So, while early voting numbers are likely to look good for Democrats, Republicans are even more likely to turn out on Election Day, in person.

The data that we are sharing with you allows us to see if someone voted, it does not allow us to see for whom that vote was cast.

While we update TargetEarly every day, there is a lag time between when election administrators post and when that data is available on the site. That’s because we match those voting records against the entire file so we can learn more about each voter. It’s also important to note that states do not always uniformly upload information: some jurisdictions in the same state are slower than others.

With that out of the way, let me state that my analysis kind of turns conventional wisdom on its head. It’s a truism that turnout matters. That we need “unlikely” voters and first time voters to show up, because infrequent voters typically vote Democratic. Whereas frequent voters tend to vote Republican. While I have no reason to dispute that analysis as a historical matter, 2022 does not seem to fit any historical trends.



All of this data is based on early voter data 15 days out from the election:



Early voting is generally up compared to 2018 — about 19% (6,395,858 in 2018 vs. 7,650,083). That trend is true (to a greater or lesser degree) when factoring gender, race, and age.

Early voting also looks very good when factoring for Party ID. By “Modeled Party”, voting among Democratic voters is up 44% overall from 2018, and their share of early votes increased from 44.8% to 53.9%:





Modeled Party 2018 2020 2022 Democrat 2,863,121 (44.8%) 15,377,096 (52.2%) 4,126,746 (53.9%) Republican 2,955,244 (46.2%) 10,917,682 (37.1%) 2,743,385 (35.9%) Unaffiliated 577,493 (9.0%) 3,149,172 (10.7%) 779,952 (10.2%) Total 6,395,858 29,443,950 7,650,083 National Vote Totals By Modeled Party ID

This is also true (to a lesser degree) when looking at Registered Party ID.

Registered Party ID Vote Totals Registered Party 2018 2020 2022 Democrat 1,468,022 (23.0%) 7,969,426 (27.1%) 2,043,288 (26.7%) Republican 1,387,874 (21.7%) 3,707,389 (12.6%) 1,263,915 (16.5%) Other 86,843 (1.4%) 351,238 (1.2%) 102,928 (1.3%) Unaffiliated 3,453,119 (54.0%) 17,415,897 (59.1%) 4,239,952 (55.4%) Total 6,395,858 29,443,950 7,650,083

There are several caveats to this overall view. For example, the relative share of votes by gender did not move in the direction I would expect following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs. While the total votes cast by women have increased, the relative share of votes by women in 2022 has actually gone down very slightly compared to 2018.

National Vote Totals By Gender Gender 2018 2020 2022 Female 3,376,686 (52.8%) 15,845,240 (53.8%) 4,031,687 (52.7%) Gender Expansive 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) 277 (0.0%) Male 2,929,847 (45.8%) 12,903,809 (43.8%) 3,458,234 (45.2%) Unknown 89,325 (1.4%) 694,901 (2.4%) 159,885 (2.1%) Total 6,395,858 29,443,950 7,650,083

On a more positive note, the relative share of votes cast by non-white voters has increased, especially among African Americans.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/25/2131109/-Some-Thoughts-On-Early-Voting-Returns-Mostly-Good-But-Also-Some-Bad

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