Florida 2016 Presidential Vote by Precinct, by Method of Voting

(In each graph, the X-Axis is a precinct’s Election Day or Vote-By-Mail or Early In-Person votes cast out of total votes cast in that precinct by all three methods. The Y-Axis is Trump’s and Clinton’s share of total votes cast out of votes for all presidential candidates for each of the three methods.)

Exclusive first cut at 2016 Turnout rates in Florida…by Party and Race/Ethnicity

According to the Florida Division of Elections, some 9.58m Floridians turned out to vote in the 2016 General Election, or 74.5% of the “Active” registered voters at the time of the state’s October bookclosing.

After some routine parsing and cleaning (more on that later), I’ve crunched the numbers from the January 10, 2017 statewide voter file and vote history files.

According to these records, some 9.592m registered voters (active & inactive) cast ballots in the 2016 General Election, or 69.98% of the state’s 13.7m registered voters. When limiting votes cast to just those who are considered “Active” by the counties, the total votes cast drops to 9.590m, indicating that nearly 2,600 “inactive” voters cast ballots. (The plurality of these “inactive” voters, incidentally, were Democrats.)

As for turnout among party registrants (limiting the following analysis to “active” voters), 74.4% of the state’s 4.908m Democrats turned out to vote. In contrast, 81.2% of the state’s 4.577m registered Republicans cast ballots. Only 63.3% of the state’s 3.132m No Party Affiliates (NPAs) voted, whereas 70.2% of the 347k Third Party registrants turned out.

With respect to turnout by race/ethnicity, 77.1% of the state’s 8.302m white voters voted. That’s considerably higher than the 68.9% turnout rate of the state’s 2.055m registered Hispanics and the 69.0% turnout rate of the state’s 1.743m registered blacks.

What about race/ethnicity by party?

Among Democrats, 77.5% of the 2.39m white Democrats voted; 70.9% of the 812k Hispanic Democrats voted; and 72.1% of the 1.41m black Democrats voted.

Among Republicans, 82.6% of the 3.814m white Republicans voted; 75.4% of the 519k Hispanic Republicans voted; and 61.2% of the 61.3k black Republicans voted.

Among NPAs, 66.0% of the 1.819m white NPAs voted; 61.9% of the 693k Hispanic NPAs voted; and 54.1% of the 255k black NPAs voted.

In previous posts, I’ve documented extensively the early in-person and vote-by-mail turnout rates by party and race, but until now, we haven’t been able to delve into Election Day turnout.  I’m working on a couple of academic papers on this topic, so I’m not going to go into details here.

But here’s the kicker:

Of the roughly 2.959m voters who cast ballots on Election Day, 39.5% of ballots cast were by Republicans.  Only 34.2% of ballots cast on Election Day were by Democrats. Another 23.4% of Election Day ballots were cast by NPAs, and 2.9% were cast by Third Party registrants.

Say what you will about the many developments in the waning days of the campaign that likely hurt Clinton, her ground game in Florida apparently failed to deliver, as nearly 1.3m active Democrats stayed home.

On Cannibalizing the Vote in Florida…Here’s some data, @NateSilver538 @Nate_Cohn to work into your models

Working on fumes, so this will be quick.

One day (“Souls to the Poll”) of Early-in-Person voting still to tabulate, and thousands more Vote-by-Mail ballots still to make it to election offices by 7pm on Tuesday, but we’re headed for record turnout in Florida.

Over 6.1m votes already cast, rapidly approaching the 8.5m tallied in 2012.

So, with Election Day voting still to come, the Big Q is , which party has cannibalized voters who waited 4 years ago, until Tuesday, November 6, 2012 to vote, by getting them to vote early in 2016?

Let’s start with the parties first:

So far, of the 2.43m Democrats who’ve voted early, 76% voted in 2012.  This includes slightly more than 1/2 million Dems who in 2012 waited until Election Day to cast their ballots.

Of the 2.40m Republicans who’ve cast their lot through this am, 79% voted in 2012, including 558k who voted on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2012.

Of the 1.16m No Party Affiliates who’ve already voted in the Sunshine State, only 60% voted in 2016, but the plurality of the 2012 voters cast their ballots on Election Day.

So, Republicans are cannibalizing their 2012 likely voters at a slightly higher rate than Democrats, and both parties are drawing in their likely voters at a much higher clip than NPAs.

Flipped upside down, this means that NPAs who stayed home in 2012 are coming out a a much higher rate than the partisans.

None of this surprises me.

What is notable is that nearly 1/4 Republicans who have already cast their mail or in-person ballots in 2016 waited to vote on Election Day in 2012, whereas it’s only slightly more than 1/5 Dems and NPAs who voted on Election Day in 2012 who have already voted. That means there are more votes (raw and percentage) to be had by Clinton than Trump as the final GOTV push occurs on Tuesday.

I don’t feel like writing up the Race/Ethnicity & Age & Gender cannibalization rates right now, but suffice to say, they ain’t pretty for The Donald.

As a tease, I’ll leave you with this tidbit: So far, 36% of the 907k Hispanics who have voted in 2016 didn’t vote by any method in 2012. That’s a full 12 points higher than whites, and will likely be the key to who wins the presidency.

Hey, @NYTimes, Millennials in Florida are still registering as Democrats

I feel compelled to push back on this New York Times story that ran yesterday.

I’ll leave it to others to analyze party registrations in other states, but in Florida, newly registered millennials are actually as partisan as ever. They are not, as Jeremy Peters and Yamiche Alcindor write, citing a PEW study, “declaring themselves unaffiliated with either party at a rate faster than any other generation.”

Here are the facts:

Of the 650.9k Floridians who registered to vote between January 1, 2016 and September 1, 2016, 221.7k (34%) are between the ages of 18-30.

Of those 221.7k, 24% registered at Republicans, 37% registered as Democrats, and 35% registered as NPAs (No Party Affiliates).

Only 137 of these millennials registered with the Green Party and another 768 registered with the Libertarian Party. That’s less than 1/2 of 1% of the total new millennials.

Compared to the other, older 429.2k who newly registered over the same time period, newly registered millennials were actually MORE likely to register as Democrats. Only 33% of all 30+ newly registered voters registered as Democrats.

So, in short, Clinton may indeed have an enthusiasm gap in Florida, but it’s not the case that millennials in the Sunshine State are “not moving toward the party” as Peters and Alcindor write.