Another big day of early voting in Georgia: 167k voted yesterday, about the same as Monday and up from 129k on the second day of early voting in October
No, I don't think this augurs for a higher turnout in the general--at least not yet. 98% of these voters turned out in the general--as long as that's true, this level of voting (with respect to the general) won't be sustainable
Demographically, yesterday's voters were a lot like the second day of early voters in the general--which was also true of day one's voters.
And also like day one, yesterday's turnout was at once much higher than the general and a tad more Republican than the same day.
And as with yesterday, I don't really take much from the data so far, except that we have every indication of another high turnout election, with no party obviously poised to enjoy a meaningful turnout edge compared to what they had in the general
We'll probably have to wait until all of the early voting is done before we can try and make a comparison, since there are a lot of crosscutting trends, but at the moment I'd guess we won't ever able to say anything particularly insightful about the electorate v. the general
A few people are curious why I don't take much from the GOP share of the early vote being higher than the general, and that's mainly because the turnout is so much higher.
Dems won day 1/2, as they did in the general, and they netted more votes out of day 1/2 than they did last time due to the higher turnout. And since the other weekdays of early voting were GOP, and 88% of these EVs were general EVs, we'd expect higher turnout to tap into more GOP
Days 1&2 were the only weekdays that the Dems won in the general, so if higher turnout keeps up on GOP-friendly days *and* if the GOP keeps outperforming its vote share, then we could revisit this interpretation by the end of early voting. But for now, better to wait and see
And I should note that there are other confounding factors to keep in mind. There are a bunch of holidays before this election that didn't exist before the general. I'm make a rare prediction and posit that early voting will be down on Christmas compared to the equiv day from Oct
We also have absentee requests and ballots. That whole process is lagging the general, simply because there's less lead time for this race than the general. How that shifts from the general and how that interacts with early voting is an open question still
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