I have been remiss in the last few posts in linking to the site where I have been pulling my data – so here it is!

Today we see a pattern beginning to set in. The more people vote in FL, the more the percentages begin to freeze into place. I have not seen a major shift in any of the three numbers I have been watching over the last 3 days.

The GOP continues to outperform the Democrats in Mail-In ballots by an edge of 42-39% (2nd row). They also continue to return Mail-In ballots at a greater rate than the Dems (4th row).

The Democrats have held the same small lead in In-Person voting for the past three days: 39-42% (4th row).

Bottom line: GOP ballots continue to lead Dem ballots overall (bottom row). The percentage has been the same for 3-4 days: 41-40%. But the gap has been growing over that same period, albeit at a snail’s pace. Today the difference is 23,446 more GOP ballots than Democrat. Yesterday it was 22,736.

A slow but steady increase.

So will the Democrats pick up the pace? I am not sure, but I don’t see how. The Democrat Get Out The Vote (GOTV) machine must be in full swing right now in this pivotal state. GOP voters are demonstrating high energy- at least enough to be competitive. So Clinton’s edge in organization and money over Trump only seems to be keeping her from sinking quickly.

I decided to look at the trends over the past week to see if we can glean any insights:

As the legend shows the GOP has been consistently adding to their Mail-In tallies through out (blue line).  I have added a trend line to project where the data indicates this could go 3 days out (dashed lines). If the trend continues, the GOP will have submitted 1 million mail-in ballots around Nov 2.

Skipping the red line for a moment (Democrat Mail-In ballots), lets look the GOP In-Person (green) and Democrat In-Person (purple) voting. These two group definitely have settled into a pattern. The rate of increase is not only steady, but very similar. The GOP lags behind, but consistently.

Which brings me back to the Mail-In voting by Democrats (red line). It is definitely beginning to taper off. My guess is the Democrat GOTV effort is pushing people to get to the polls. Especially those with mail-in ballots still out. So they may be cannibalizing their mail-in pool to keep the in-person rate up.

Whatever the reason, if that trend continues the Democrats will lag behind the GOP in total ballots.

Now the big caveat: The mail-in ballot pool is not infinite. Total ballots sent out is just over 3.3 million. By Nov 2nd most of those will likely have been returned. In-Person can keep growing, it has no cap.

As can be seen in the chart above, the In-Person voting is growing at a faster rate than Mail-in voting. In-Person voting has only been going on for 6 days, and it runs to November 6. So at some point it will overtake the mail-in vote tallies. That point looks to be Nov 2. The GOP will still be in the lead, but the Dems could begin to eat into that lead from Nov 3rd on.

Summary FL is still competitive – as seen in this new poll:

Donald J. Trump has slowly but surely improved his standing in state and national polls since the final presidential debate.

A New York Times Upshot/Siena poll released Sunday is consistent with that trend: It gives Mr. Trump a four-point lead in Florida, 46 percent to 42 percent, in a four-way race. In our first poll of Florida a month ago, Mr. Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by a percentage point.

Tags: 2016 Election, Florida Early Voting