We’re back from the weekend, where the only votes tallied are in-person. We have five more days of early voting to go. Here’s the Day Six report for 2020, and here are the totals from 2012, 2016, and 2018. The totals after Day Four:
Year Mail Early Total
==============================
2012 5,609 11,880 17,489
2016 8,850 23,384 32,234
2018 9,620 24,335 33,955
2020 15,101 36,712 51,813
2012 12,111 25,097 37,208
2016 12,205 32,641 44,846
2018 12,642 21,856 34,498
2020 16,528 32,630 49,158
Democrats had 11,538 voters on Saturday and Sunday combined, Republicans had 7,852. Week Two is where it should start getting busier. Dems have fallen behind their earlier pace, as they now have increased their 2016 vote by about 61%; Republicans are ahead of 2016 by about eight percent. I think things will pick back up this week, but if we want to guess final turnout, the great unknown is how much of the vote will be cast early, and how much will show up on Tuesday, March 3. There’s no obvious pattern in recent primaries:
Year Mail Early E-Day E-Day%
========================================
2008 9,445 169,900 231,560 56.4%
2010 7,193 33,770 60,300 59.5%
2012 8,775 30,136 35,575 47.8%
2014 8,961 22,727 22,100 41.1%
2016 14,828 72,777 139,675 61.5%
2018 22,695 70,152 75,135 44.7%
E-Day% is the share of the vote cast on Primary Day. In the two high-turnout Presidential-year primaries, more than half the vote was cast on Primary Day. My gut says we’ll see similar behavior this year, but whether it’s 55% of the vote on Primary Day or over 60%, I don’t know. We’ll take a shot at guessing final turnout another day. Have you voted yet?
Pingback: 2020 Primary Early Voting, Day Nine – Off the Kuff
Pingback: Final 2020 primary early voting report: “Healthy but not historic” – Off the Kuff