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12
Days until election day

News|US Elections 2020

Analysis: Don’t be fooled by high early US
voting numbers
Early vote totals are historically not a good predictor of the outcome of the presidential race.

Voters in Lakeland, Florida after casting their ballots early, October 19, 2020 [Chris
O'Meara/AP]
By 
Steve Chaggaris
19 Oct 2020

This is the point in a presidential campaign where people want to know, “Who’s going to
win?” Rarely is there a certain answer to that question at this juncture, yet many still look for
facts and figures to try to solve that mystery ahead of time.

One of those tangible pieces of evidence that has received a lot of pre-election publicity is
early vote totals. Currently, more than 29.6 million people have voted early by mail or in
person, shattering 2016 records.

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If recent election analysis is prologue, we are likely to see pundits looking at these early
statistics as a crystal ball regarding the final vote count. The problem is this data is an
extremely imperfect prediction tool.
Play Video

To wit: A huge story just prior to the 2016 election was a supposed “surge” in Latino turnout
based on limited data that early voting offered. The New York Times confidently wrote just
before Election Day: “Early voting data unequivocally indicates that Hillary Clinton will
benefit from a long-awaited surge in Hispanic turnout, vastly exceeding the Hispanic turnout
from four years ago.”

The reality wasn’t the bombshell it was made out to be, as the Pew Research Center
summarised: “Overall turnout remained flat despite expectations heading into Election Day
of a long-awaited, historic surge in Latino voters.”

This is just one example of the trap some analysts fell into by reading too much into early
voting statistics in the last presidential race.

Traditionally, early vote totals are a minority of the total vote. In 2016, according to the US
Election Assistance Commission, 41 percent of the total votes were cast early in person or by
mail. And although that percentage is expected to be significantly eclipsed this year due to
the pandemic, there’s still only a certain amount of information – albeit important
information – that can be gleaned from early voting statistics.

 In the 16 states that offer party registration data, we can tell how many voters by party
affiliation have requested and returned ballots
 In addition, nine states offer statistics on how many voters by party voted early in-
person
 There are even some states that break down early vote data by race and ethnicity

This is all interesting information and absolutely offers excellent insight into who is most
enthusiastic about voting. This is also data that campaigns can use to gauge where to stress
their last-minute get-out-the-vote efforts and with whom to target those efforts.

What it doesn’t tell us is which candidate these voters picked or how the early numbers fit in
the overall turnout picture after all votes are cast on Election Day.

Even with the pandemic leading to a skyrocketing number of votes before November 3, there
is still likely to be a significant in-person turnout on Election Day, especially among
Republican voters. And that makes it very difficult to use this information as a predictor of
the outcome.

Recent polling suggests that Joe Biden will benefit from early voting by a wide margin.

Play Video

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released last week revealed that one in five voters say
they’ll vote early in person with an additional one in three saying they’ll vote by mail. In the
poll, Biden leads by 35 points among the in-person early voters and by 50 points among the
mail-in voters.
But there’s an important reminder in the NPR poll: 45 percent of respondents say they plan
on voting in person on Election Day. Of that 45 percent, two-thirds are Trump supporters and
Trump leads day-of voters by 27 points over Biden.

Day-of voters have messed up many analysts’ predictions in recent elections. In both 2012
and 2016, North Carolina was seen as moving in Democrats’ direction during the early voting
period. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton lost the state after all of the votes were
counted. In 2016, Florida and Arizona were being discussed as potential wins for Clinton
because of early Latino turnout. Trump won both.

Those should be lessons for those seeking to draw conclusions during the next couple of
weeks. The number of expected Election Day voters is significant. In 2016, exit polling
showed that Trump won over the 13 percent of voters nationwide who made up their minds in
the final week of the election. Enormous caution should be taken before linking a potential
final outcome to early vote totals.

SOURCE : AL JAZEERA

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