Here we go:
Date Early Mail Total Mailed
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11/15 27,596 18,196 45,792 41,994
12/15 35,756 22,116 57,872 39,649
The runoff numbers are here, and the final EV totals for November are here. Believe it or not, we’re almost halfway through early voting – basically, today is Hump Day for EV. After today, there are only two and a half days left, since the hours on Sunday are only one to six. Early voting has been pretty heavy, but as we’ve said before there just isn’t as much time for it to accumulate. The same is true for absentee ballots – note that only three more mail ballots have been sent out since Wednesday. The ceiling for mail ballots is going to be lower than it was in November.
It’s too early to talk turnout, but not too early to speculate about how much of the vote might be early as opposed to on Election Day. Are the early voting shares the same for runoffs as they are for November elections? Let’s take a look at some other elections:
Year Early E-Day Total Early%
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2013 22,608 13,569 36,187 62.47%
2011 24,398 31,688 56,086 43.50%
2009 67,660 87,215 154,975 43.66%
Year Early E-Day Total Early%
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2003 93,868 204,242 298,110 31.5%
2009 81,516 98,261 179,777 45.3%
2011 58,345 63,123 121,468 48.0%
2013 109,370 65,250 174,620 62.6%
2015 134,105 134,767 268,872 49.9%
The first table above has the numbers for runoffs, while the last table has November numbers. I hesitate to draw any broad conclusions, since turnout in runoffs can vary greatly depending on what races there are, but the shares for the last three elections are pretty darned similar for November and December. Is that a pattern or just an oddity? Hard to say, but if it is a pattern, then we can guess that about half of the votes will show up by Tuesday. I don’t know that I’d bet my own money on that proposition, but we’ll keep it in mind. Have you voted yet?
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