10-28-2020, 09:13 AM
It’s really difficult for pollsters in the USA to figure out what the early vote means, let alone someone like me thousands of kilometres away. All I can do is regurgitate bits of what I’ve read or heard.
The first issue is whether the total vote will really increase. The total of votes cast already exceeds votes cast before the 2016 election but this may just mean voters who would normally vote in person have voted early because of the pandemic and the greater availability of mail-in voting.
The next issue is whether Trump’s war on mail-in voting has dissuaded his base from voting early. In Florida and another State, the GOP was alarmed that he was undermining their successful attempts to persuade a Republican voters to vote by mail. Ironically, Trump had to tell voters in those 2 States that voting by mail was fantastic! But if Democrats vote early and GOP voters vote mostly on Election Day, this won’t change the final voting tallies anyway. Bear in mind that Trump only seems to attack mail-in voting, not in-person early voting or absentee voting (despite the latter being mail-in voting!)
It would be tempting to say the large early vote must mostly be Democrat but it’s hard to say. Not all States reveal the registered party affiliation of the early voters but the ones that do show that 48% of them are registered Democrats while registered GOP voters make up 29.1% of early voters. While this is encouraging for the Democrats, remember that registered Democrats can vote for Trump and registered Republicans can vote for Biden. There’d be quite a few voters who have switched parties over time without changing their details. Then you have the almost 23% whose affiliation isn’t known.
Another area of uncertainty is how Biden and Trump are able to register voters so they can vote and how able they are to chase them up to make sure they do. Trump has been organising rallies in swing states while Biden has preferred video events. This advantages Trump as his workers record the information of rally attendees and use that to register them and nag them to vote. They also do this with merhandise sales. Trump’s volunteers are also more active in door-to-door canvassing than Biden’s given Biden’s concerns about Covid. There have been reports in Florida of the GOP having a big edge in new registrations in the Miami-Dade region.
Then there’s the question of how successful Trump will be in suppressing the votes of Democrats. How many mail-in votes will be rejected for one reason or another? How many Biden voters will be turned away from voting booths because the GOP has managed to kick them off the voting rolls? How long will voters in urban areas have to queue to vote on Election Day? Will armed militia men succeed in dissuading black voters from voting?
In other words, who the hell knows? I’ll just wait until the votes are tallied. I’d have better luck figuring out who’ll win next week’s NFL matches than working out who’ll win the election based on early voting trends.
The first issue is whether the total vote will really increase. The total of votes cast already exceeds votes cast before the 2016 election but this may just mean voters who would normally vote in person have voted early because of the pandemic and the greater availability of mail-in voting.
The next issue is whether Trump’s war on mail-in voting has dissuaded his base from voting early. In Florida and another State, the GOP was alarmed that he was undermining their successful attempts to persuade a Republican voters to vote by mail. Ironically, Trump had to tell voters in those 2 States that voting by mail was fantastic! But if Democrats vote early and GOP voters vote mostly on Election Day, this won’t change the final voting tallies anyway. Bear in mind that Trump only seems to attack mail-in voting, not in-person early voting or absentee voting (despite the latter being mail-in voting!)
It would be tempting to say the large early vote must mostly be Democrat but it’s hard to say. Not all States reveal the registered party affiliation of the early voters but the ones that do show that 48% of them are registered Democrats while registered GOP voters make up 29.1% of early voters. While this is encouraging for the Democrats, remember that registered Democrats can vote for Trump and registered Republicans can vote for Biden. There’d be quite a few voters who have switched parties over time without changing their details. Then you have the almost 23% whose affiliation isn’t known.
Another area of uncertainty is how Biden and Trump are able to register voters so they can vote and how able they are to chase them up to make sure they do. Trump has been organising rallies in swing states while Biden has preferred video events. This advantages Trump as his workers record the information of rally attendees and use that to register them and nag them to vote. They also do this with merhandise sales. Trump’s volunteers are also more active in door-to-door canvassing than Biden’s given Biden’s concerns about Covid. There have been reports in Florida of the GOP having a big edge in new registrations in the Miami-Dade region.
Then there’s the question of how successful Trump will be in suppressing the votes of Democrats. How many mail-in votes will be rejected for one reason or another? How many Biden voters will be turned away from voting booths because the GOP has managed to kick them off the voting rolls? How long will voters in urban areas have to queue to vote on Election Day? Will armed militia men succeed in dissuading black voters from voting?
In other words, who the hell knows? I’ll just wait until the votes are tallied. I’d have better luck figuring out who’ll win next week’s NFL matches than working out who’ll win the election based on early voting trends.