Update: Clinton in Broward draws tiny crowd – End Update

Yesterday the In-Person early voting began in Florida and will run through November 6th.  This is distinct from the Vote-by-Mail ballot tallies we have seen up until now.  So our data table has expanded to include the early voting in person as well as the vote-by-mail.

It is clear the Democrats have come out in force on day 1 of in-person early voting.  The only thing we can do today is look at the total ballot by party. And as before it really does not reflect the polls we see in FL. At least not yet.

On day 1 the Dems represented 46% of the day’s total and the Rep voters 37%. So a 9% edge which boosted the ballot totals into the Dem column. But day 1 represented less than 10% of the total votes-by-mail so far. So while this one day performance was impressive – at the end of it all the Dems and Reps are separated by 1% different in total ballots returned. So a tie in ballots

The GOP  is still returning more of their vote-by-mail ballots by than the Dems (44-42%), so in that category the edge seems to be on the GOP side.

Finally, note that 41% of the vote-by-mail ballots have been returned with votes. So I tend to put more weight on those percentages than a single day of early vote totals. We have a few days of data to collect before we can say for sure what is happening.

But stand back and think about this a moment. Who has been the candidate to bring out voters in the primaries? Was it Hillary (only in her dreams)? Or was it Trump? And who is getting the crowds on the ground? Dem VP candidate Kaine was able to attract a whole 30 people in FL recently, to Trumps many thousands over the same time period. So no one should assume all Democrat Ballots (or even a strong majority) will go to Clinton. We don’t know who anyone voted for.

One thing that was clear in the primaries is that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump voters had an intensity Clinton failed to achieve. And Trump had a lot of crossover voters – especially with the blue collar and union workers. If there is intensity – how can it be attributed to Clinton running as government insider and 4 more years of Obama?

How is that exciting??

Let’s look at the two big Democrat strongholds and see where these stand. First Broward County which is the most Democrat of the two:

Again, good one day surge for Democrats, but still only a little above 10% of the vote-by-mail totals.

And yet, the vote-by-mail rate of return for the Dems is pathetic! The % returned of total Democrat ballots is 14%, where the GOP is at 35%! That is a red flag in my opinion. It would indicate the Rep voters are energized. Broward overall is not returning their mail-in ballots at the same pace as the state overall. Maybe Broward is a microcosm of the hard core Dem enclaves – just not energized. Could be.

Now let’s look at Miami-Dade County:

As with the other tables, Miami-Dade shows the Dems bolting out of the shoot for in-person early voting. But Miami-Dade is more evenly split Dem and GOP, so I would be surprised if this lead holds over time.  Will have to see. At least here the Dem vote-by-mail returns are competitive.

We have a lot of voting to get through. But even now the bottom line does NOT show a 5% lead for the Dems.  Still a tie.  Will see what tomorrow brings