MyDD :: Early Voting Looking Good For Kerry

Early Voting Looking Good For Kerry

by Chris Bowers, Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 06:41:01 PM EST

Supposedly, there are some very happy wingers over at Free Republic who noticed an internal of today's ABC News tracking poll:

Nine percent of "likely" voters in the ABC News tracking poll say they've voted for president, either by absentee ballot or early voting, a number that's jumped in the last week. Fifty-one percent say they went for George W. Bush, 47 percent for John Kerry.

Sound like good news for Bush, right? Well, I have done some quick analysis of the states where early voting at polling places (not no fault absentee balloting) is taking place, plus Oregon where all voting is early via mail, and the opposite appears to be true. Twenty-five states fit this category: AL, AK, AZ, AR, CA, CO, FL, GA, HI, IN, IA, KS, ME, NE, NV, NM, NC, ND, OR, SD, TN, TX, UT, VT and WV. According to Dave Leip, in 2000 Bush received 24,464,219 votes in these states, while Gore received 21,029,384. In other words, Bush won 54.0% of the two-party in these states, while Gore only won 46.0%. Thus, if the ABC poll is accurate, Bush is under-performing his 2000 levels by 2-3 points, while Kerry is over-performing Gore’s level by 1-2 points. This is actually horrendous news for Bush. If Kerry is losing in Republican areas by four points less than Gore was in 2000, then things look very good for Kerry indeed.

Before we get too excited, the margin of error on this subset of the ABC poll was plus or minus eight percent, so a difference of four points might not be significant. Further, some of the voting was done by absentee ballots, which could be from everywhere. However, 51-47 is clearly lower than Bush's margin among early voters in 2000, which according to NAES actually was in the double digits with Bush hovering just above 55%. Further, Kerry's over-performance on Gore among early voters also seems to be real, as Democrats in Florida and Iowa are voting at a rate higher than their share of registered voters. These are definitely reason to be chipper.

Update: I think I have all of the states and vote totals correct now. I think.

Second Update: OK, now I finally have it all striaghtened out. Phew.

Third Update: I stand by my current definitions as posted and I'm not changing things again.

Tags: General 2008 (all tags)

Permalink :: 18 Comments :: Post a Comment

South Dakota has early voting (none / 0)

http://www.hersethforcongress.org/absentee.htm

by Eric H on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 06:51:02 PM EST

I am /very/ curious (none / 0)

what the day-by-day breakdown is. If there was massive early voting in Republican areas on Sunday, then I would attribute that to a faith-based GOTV effort, which won't repeat itself on next Sunday since it's Halloween (which is clearly the best thing to happen to Democrats this election cycle).

by niq on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 06:53:21 PM EST

more early states than that (none / 0)

Early Voting

The following states permit in-person early voting at election offices and, in some states, other satellite locations.

Alabama
Maine
Alaska
Nebraska
Arizona
Nevada
Arkansas
New Mexico
California
North Carolina
Colorado
North Dakota*
Florida
Oklahoma
Georgia
Tennessee
Hawaii
Texas
Indiana
Utah
Iowa
Vermont
Kansas
West Virginia

* Early voting is not offered in all counties. In North Dakota, it is offered at the county election officer's discretion. In Illinois, whether or not is offered depends on the regular hours and location of the county election official's office.

** Early voting is offered in presidential election years only.

by boulderfreak on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:00:06 PM EST

Re: more early states than that (none / 0)

Thanks. I'll get on it.

by Chris Bowers on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:02:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]

San Francisco, at least, has early voting (none / 0)

See http://www.sfgov.org/site/election_index.asp?id=4435

I therefore cannot imagine that California does not have early voting. But I could not find an official announcement to this effect at http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections.htm

by JCT SF on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:05:02 PM EST

CA and KY (none / 0)

We have early voting in San Diego, CA.

When I lived in Lexington, KY (Fayette Co.) there was also early voting there. In KY that could be on a county-by-county basis however.

by tilthouse on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:11:45 PM EST

Re: CA and KY (none / 0)

A correction:
http://elect.ky.gov/registrationinfo/infoguide.htm#Absentee

I think the local county clerk was just lax in who could vote early. But you probably did have to say you'd be out of town on election day.

by tilthouse on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:15:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Democracy Corps (none / 0)

The latest Democracy Corps poll has a breakdown for early voters too, 44-40 in favor of Bush (16% refused, total sample of only 78 early voters). The overall results for the poll were 49-47 Kerry (1036 likely voters.) I know a few people have been getting down about the early voter numbers from that poll and this ABC poll, and I figured that early voting was probably concentrated in red states. Your analysis confirms my suspicions.

Here's the survey.

by fwiffo on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:18:01 PM EST

Interactive maps with goodies (none / 0)

Just found, at the Center for American Progress, a couple of interactive maps with some helpful data about our glorious nation under our glorious president. I've posted the links at my website -- direct link. Enjoy!

by Bean on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:29:19 PM EST

I have already voted (none / 0)

I live in Riverside, CA. There are five early voting sites in the county (the county is huge-it's the size of New Jersey, although 90% is desert with few people). Four in shopping malls, and one at the registrar's office. I voted at the Galleria at Tyler in Riverside on Sunday. There were eight electronic voting machines, and the line was about 15 people long (and steady-the line was always 15 people long or so-I walked by while I shopped later).

I plan on going to Nevada to help the Kerry campaign starting this weekend, so getting voting out of the way was good.

by Geotpf on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:32:38 PM EST

Did someone say early voting? (none / 0)

I exercised my early voting rights today in CO. Now we are 1 vote closer to giving the Dems 1 more Congressman, 1 more Senator and 1 new President. CO is going blue do not listen to the polls. There are too many dem transplants from other states, too many hispanics, too many rich resort living liberals who weren't in CO four years ago. Not to mention in my county dems out registered the bad guys by a 2.5 to 1 margin. If that holds true statewide then CO is a blue state thru and thru.

The problem I have with polling is that they favor the registered party voters. CO has a huge percentage of Independents. This year those indies are going against their 2000 vote. you can fool a CO citizen once Mr. President but you can't fool..er you can fool...well we can't get fooled again. :+)

by proudliberal on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:33:31 PM EST

ABC Sample is too small to draw any conclusions (none / 0)

According to the poll, the sample size was approx. 1600 likely voters. They, themselves said 9% of them were early voters. That means that there were 144 voters. Out of them, 51% or either 73 or 74 voted for Bush, and 47% or 68 voted for Kerry.

Additionally, given the varying absentee and early voting rules from state to state, a margin of just 5-6 voters is not much to get excited about.

Plus, I seem to remember from somewhere that Republicans have done better with early and absentee voting.

by bushsucks on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:35:12 PM EST

This is true (none / 0)

Traditionally, Republicans tend to be more likely to vote absentee (because they are more likely to be business people who will be out of town on election day, etc.).

With this small sample, and the vargaries of early voting, I have no idea if this is good or bad. I'm leaning towards good, but who knows.

by Geotpf on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:39:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Third update, by the way ... (none / 0)

OK has early voting, OR does not.
More votes for Carson in the bank? ; )

by JCT SF on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 07:36:03 PM EST

Re: Third update, by the way ... (none / 0)

Oregon has vote by mail, so doesn't that count as early voting?

by PonyFan on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 08:18:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Comparing to polls in early voting states (none / 0)

Okay, the early voting sample size is too small, so MoE is huge, and I see that Chris may have missed some states, but still... I compared the ABC numbers with a weighted average of polls (weighted by EV) from the Excel sheet for Oct. 26 from www.electoral-vote.com. According to my estimate, Kerry is polling 43.6% in the states listed by Chris while Bush is polling 50.2%. Of course, some of those poll numbers are old.

by coomes on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 08:37:08 PM EST

Colorado early voting (none / 0)

Some numbers from yesterday in Colorado

325,000 votes cast, 135,000 early, 190,000 absentee.

Nearly one-third of 153,000 registered voters in Douglas County had voted by the end of last week.
Douglas County is very heavy Republican!

Jefferson County reported about one-sixth of its registered voters, more than 60,000 people, had cast early votes or returned absentee ballots as of 3 p.m. Monday.
Jefferson County is a swing county.

Relatively few absentee ballots have been returned in Denver, where a mix-up with a vendor caused about 13,000 ballots to be mailed later than planned.

More than 66,000 voters have requested absentee ballots from Denver. As of Friday, 5,710 had been returned, according to the secretary of state's records.

Denver is the most Dem county in the state.

Clearly, the Repugs are banking their votes in Colorado better than the Dems.

by pollwatcher on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 09:50:17 PM EST

More on errors (none / 0)

The standard deviation in this case for a sample of 150 is about 4%. That is, the average sampling error is the difference between the Bush and Kerry totals. Not only is the gap within the margin of error, it is within the average sampling fluctuation.

by coomes on Tue Oct 26, 2004 at 11:34:38 PM EST

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