Another day of VBM and early voting in the books, and another day where the Republicans increase their lead. Yes, Democrats are turning out to vote, but so are Republicans. And even though Democrats may have the lead in pure turnout numbers, they still lag behind in turnout rate.
There are two reasons Democrats are lagging behind Republicans. First, as I mentioned yesterday, Democratic-leaning NPAs in places like Orange and Osceola Counties are not turning out to vote. But second, and more importantly, Republican turnout remains high. This election could disprove the myth that “high turnout elections favor Democrats”.
Even with this being the case, the election is still very, very close. Also, Palm Beach has not reported their complete vote numbers to the Division of Elections, which will skew the model more Republican as of now. Hopefully those numbers will be correct soon.
Turnout summary: So far 3,834,633 voters have voted in Florida, which is a turnout rate of 28.88%. Turnout among Republicans is 34.33%, which among Democrats it is 30.89%. NPA/Minor party turnout is at 19.16%.
Bottom Line: The new model projection shows that a generic statewide Republican candidate would get 48.81% of the vote, while a generic Democratic candidate would get 48.16%, a .65% gap. This is a swing of .39% to the Republicans. However, because of the Palm Beach issue, the vote gap is probably not that large. Nonetheless, it doesn’t seem to be shrinking either. The Enthusiasm Gap has opened up to 4.05%, swinging toward the Republicans by .3%.
Details: Basically, Republicans are turning out their voters in Republican counties. Yes, Democratic counties might be having record pre-Election Day vote turnout, but those numbers are also happening in heavily Republican counties, and sometimes by a larger margin. With each passing day, Democrats are having to rely on Election Day to win this election. That isn’t a good sign.
What to watch for: Yes, the needle moved in favor of the Republicans, but this is still a very close race. If all of Palm Beach reported today, we would still be in recount territory. Still, this cannot be good news for Democrats. Keep watching Orange and Osceola. If they do not get over 60% for Democrats, I don’t see how they can win the election. With each and every day, Broward County turnout becomes increasingly salient to Democratic hopes of winning…so keep an eye on Broward County turnout.
The Florida Squeeze 
Palm Beach VBM came in, shaved roughly 1,300 off raw GOP ballot lead.
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Yeah, but I wish we had EV as well.
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Looks to be in.
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Actually, it isn’t all in. On the Palm Beach elections website, they say that around 13,500 EVs were cast yesterday. But when they updated the numbers with the Division on Elections, they only added around 4,500. So there are a lot missing from the DoE website.
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Looks like PB is still about 8200 short of the PDF the county is posting on their elections site, even as of now on the 1st at 7:30pm.
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Yep!
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I read somewhere that the panhandle counties will have an extra day of EV due to the hurricane? They started late, so they get an extra day to compensate. Is that true? If so that’s more bad news for Dems.
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Mr Shmoe – per EO 18-283 there are eight counties which can have EV at their discretion on Monday. Bay (leans R) and Gadsden (leans D) are the only ones that would produce any material amount of votes. It won’t move the needle more than a thousand or two at the most either way IMO.
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Dave – just curious. What kind of election day turnout would you expect at this point? We will probably be pushing 4.5 million votes (if not surpassing it) before Tuesday.
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That is the $64,000 that can never be answered. That is why polls are so unreliable, because they assume that public opinion is turnout.
There are really two scenarios. First, we have the same overall turnout rate as before, which means that people have just shifted from voting on Election Day to pre-Election voting. This means that Election Day turnout would be lower. The second scenario is that we really are seeing more energy in this election, and Election Day can break records. Either one is entirely possible, which is why I stay away from making final projections, and only project vote choice based on the current votes that have been cast.
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