Phone bank for Busby from anywhere

I know that it is probably best to usually project an image of confidence in electoral outcomes. I also know that online and elsewhere we have been hoping for Francine Busby to win the election on April 11th with more than 50% of the vote, thereby eliminating the need for a run-off. However, based on my analysis of early absentee returns and of recent poll data, the result I now see as most likely on Tuesday will be a mid to high-forties performance from Busby, leading to a very close and interesting run-off on June 6th.

This projection is based on the internal partisan self-identification numbers from the two most recent non-partisan polls on the race (Survey USA and Datamar (PDF)) combined with the early absentee returns by partisan registration as reported by David over at Swing State Project. Information of this sort actually makes it pretty easy to develop a reasonable estimate of the absentee voting returns. According to David, who got his information from the Busby campaign, with half of the absentee vote in the current partisan breakdown among absentee ballots is 46R-37D-14I. Looking a the internals of the Datamar and Survey USA polls, we see very similar breakdowns for candidate preference according to partisan self-identification:

• Datamar: Busby is at 87% among Dems, 55% among Inds, and 8% among Reps.
  
  
• Survey USA: Busby is at 87% among decided Dems, 51% among decided Inds, and 10% among decided Reps.

Simply multiplying these preferences for Busby according to the partisan breakdown of the absentee returns gives Busby 44% of the vote. With half of the absentee returns in, we can expect the remaining absentee ballots to have a very similar partisan breakdown to the first 50%. With absentee ballots set to make up over half of all votes in the April 11th "open primary," we can expect the final vote to be similar to the absentee totals.

There is one major caveat here, however. In the CA-48th special election, Steve Young, the Democrat, did far, far better among voters on Election Day than he did among absentee voters. In fact, Steve Young actually narrowly won Election Day voting, with 35% of the vote to Campbell's 33%, despite losing the election to Campbell 46%-29% (source). The same can be said for Ciro in the TX-28. On Election Day itself, Cuellar was held to 47.8% of the vote, while Ciro had 46.9% (source). Had those been the overall numbers, we would probably be talking about Ciro returning to Congress in 2007 by now. In fact, Republicans generally do better among absentee voters than Democrats. Thus, while it seems very likely that Busby will come in with a mid-40s total among absentee voters, her final vote total on April 11th should be higher than 44%.

And that, my friends, is where things get interesting, both on April 11th, and potentially on June 6th. With Busby looking like she will score higher than 44% on April 11th, it is no wonder that the NRCC is dumping $360K into the district. Anything higher than 44% starts putting Busby close to winning the election outright on April 11th. I still think that the most likely results is a run-off, with Busby coming in at around 47% of the vote. A total like that would put Busby in a very good position to win on June 6th, as she would not have to draw many votes at all from the candidates who did not make the run-off.

Of course, no matter what the result on April 11th turns out to be, Busby will need resources to challenge in the next election, whether that election will be in June or in November. You can still volunteer for this election, and in a race this close, you can make the difference. Anyone can volunteer to phone bank, no matter where they live. Please take action today.