Here’s the racial/ethnic breakdown by gender of the 2.26m Republicans who have voted Early-In-Person or have had their Vote-by-Mail ballots processed by the the state’s 67 Supervisors of Elections through yesterday, November 5, 21016.
[corrected composition %s]
Here’s the racial/ethnic breakdown by gender of the 2.27m Democrats who have voted Early-In-Person or have had their Vote-by-Mail ballots processed by the the state’s 67 Supervisors of Elections through yesterday, November 5, 21016.
As of yesterday evening, 1.15m votes have been cast in the three big SE Florida counties (so, excluding Monroe County).
There are 1.7m registered Democrats in these three Democratic-rich counties; that’s roughly 46% of the 3.7m registered voters as of October 1, 2016.
So far, Democrats have accounted for 50% of the total ballots cast (EIP and VBM). That’s a very good sign for the Clinton camp. NPAs, whose share of registered voters in the three populous counties is 27% of all registrants (slightly higher than the percentage of Republicans, at 25%), account for nearly 21% of total votes cast as of last night. This is potentially good sign for Clinton. Why? Because turnout of NPAs in SE Florida often is not very robust, but Clinton needs NPAs in the three counties because (as the chart below shows), the NPAs who have voted already are disproportionately more likely to be Hispanics.
Of the 234.5k NPAs who’ve already mailed in their ballots or voted in person, 42% are Hispanic, and polling suggests that Clinton is doing fine with Hispanics in SE Florida, even in Miami-Dade County.
Another good sign for Clinton is that black voters in the three counties have started to return their VBM and turn out during EIP. Blacks make up slightly less than 19% of the registered voters in DAD, BRO, and PAL. So far, they constitute slightly less than 18% of the total early (EIP and VBM) votes cat in SE Florida. Including today, there’s still 5 days left of early voting (including this coming Saturday and Sunday) to GOTV, so the dire warnings of low black turnout may be premature.
As I’ve said countless times, be careful reading early the early voting tea leaves…lots of voting left to be had in the Sunshine State.
The story of the election in Florida thus far is that No Party Affiliates and Hispanics who sat out (or who’ve registered since the 2012 General Election) appear to be much more engaged in the Florida election than other partisan or racial/ethnic groups.
Over 1/3 NPAs — 33.7% — who’ve already voted (EIP or VBM) in Florida through yesterday, Saturday October 29, did not cast a ballot in the Sunshine State in 2012.
In contrast, only 18.2% of Republicans who’ve voted thus far didn’t vote in 2012; 1/5 Democrats who’ve voted EIP or ABS through yesterday sat out 2012.
So, although overall numbers through the first six days of EIP (and months-long VBM ballots coming in) aren’t looking terribly robust for Democrats–they’re down 23.5k votes to Republicans — it appears that they are mobilizing a larger share of “new” voters.
The Republican lead thus far, on the other hand, is being floated by disproportionately by likely voters, that is, those who voted in the 2012 General Election. Republicans are also cannibalizing 2012 Election Day voters at a higher rate than Democrats: 18.7% of the 1.51m Republicans who’ve voted thus far in Florida waited in 2012 to cast a ballot on Election Day; 16.8% of the 1.43m Democrats who’ve voted to date voted on Election Day four years ago.
Similar trends can be seen along racial/ethnic categories of voters. Over 29% of the 476k Hispanics who’ve cast ballots thru yesterday are either new to the registration books or skipped the 2012 election. This is true for only 1/5 of the 2.5m white voters who’ve voted, and 17% of the 391k black voters who’ve cast ballots thus far in 2016.
So, what does this all mean?
Florida’s electorate is dynamic. Millions of new voters have registered since the 2012 General Election. Florida’s electoral rules are also fluid, changing back and forth since the 2008 election. As such, the modes of voting by Florida voters is in flux, with voters shifting from one method to another (as I’ve published extensively elsewhere).
As a result, one should be weary of pollsters who model their surveys on expected vote using 2012 voting patterns (if they even have them!), as objects in the mirror may appear closer (or farther) than they they really are.
All I’ll say is there still lots of voting to be done in Florida.
As of this morning, some 1.269m absentee ballots have been counted in the Florida election. The number will continue to trickle up in the coming days as county canvassing boards examine the overseas mail ballots coming in over the next week.
Republicans cast 719.1k absentee ballots. Thus far, .56% of them were rejected by canvassing boards due to voter error (likely a mismatched or invalid signature); another .27% were rejected because they lacked an accompanying signature on the return envelope. So, nearly 99.2% of GOP absentee ballots were valid.
On the Democratic side, nearly 524.8k were received by county SOEs. Slightly less than 99% were processed as valid (98.97%, to be exact). Of the rejected Democratic mail ballots, .61% had a voter error and .42% lacked a signature on the envelope.
Only 21.7k NPAs cast ballots, and roughly 10k more by 3rd party registrants.
More analysis, as time permits, on the partisan/racial/ethnic/age breakdown of absentee ballots as time permits…
ElectionSmith 
You must be logged in to post a comment.