As far as October surprises go, this is probably one of the most nuclear:

“In previous congressional testimony, I referred to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had completed its investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server. Due to recent developments, I am writing to supplement my previous testimony,” Comey wrote.

“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation,” he added.

One thing that might be really interesting to see is if someone’s immunity deal just imploded. That would be amazing because it should open a floodgate of new details

This will not be resolved in time for the election, so it will drag Clinton down, just as the emails about Clinton, Inc shaking down the rich and powerful for personal fortune are dragging her down.

Update: Clinton Tanks Stock Market

Here we are 4 days into the In-Person early voting in Florida (it runs until Nov 6th) and the tables are turning on the Democrats and Clinton. On the first day of In-Person voting, the Democrats jumped out to a 9% lead in ballots. Tuesday that lead had shrunk to 5%. It was 4% on Wednesday and today’s tallies (which cover through Thursday) show that lead is now 3% (5th row, or 2nd from the bottom):

The GOP has the edge in total ballots cast statewide (bottom row), and it has the edge in mail-in ballots submitted (3rd row). The GOP is also submitting more of their mail-in ballots (2nd row), and that is with 53% of the mail-in ballots that were mailed out being returned. The mail-in percentages are about to cement into place.

By next week  I expect the GOP in FL to be in the lead in all categories, given the trend lines this week for In-Person early voting. For the record, the small GOP lead yesterday in total ballots submitted (11,725) expanded slightly today to 14,349.

That would spell defeat for Clinton in FL. You can look at opinion polls all day long, but the fact is the Democrats in 2012 needed a 3% edge in early voting ballots to eek out 0.88% win on election day. As of now it looks impossible for Clinton to even get a lead in the early voting ballots, let a lone a 3% lead.

By mid next week, we will know for sure.

BTW, I am skipping the tables for Broward and Miami-Dade for now. If the state turns to the GOP as I expect, there will be no need to focus at the county level any more.

First off, I detected an error in my tables from the last two days in the last row computing total votes to date. This happened when I added the in-person voting to the tally. Anyway, I look at the percentages more than the totals and it really did not make a difference.

So today Trump has some excellent news.

The GOP ballots are coming in at a greater pace every day. The GOP leads in mail-in ballots returned (2nd row, 42-39%) and they are returning their ballots at a greater percentage of their requested ballots (4th row, 53-49%). Today the percentage of total ballots by party is statistically a tie (41% apiece – last row). So at the state level we see more “energy” on the GOP side as they continue to lead the mail-in ballot tallies.

Due to the strong mail-in returns by the GOP, they have an 11,725 ballot lead overall. They continue to catch up to the Dems in the In-Person voting.  Day 1 the Dems surged to a 9% lead for in-person ballots, yesterday that lead had been cut to 5%, and today (4th row) it is down to 4%. If the GOP continues to catch up to the Democrats, the GOP ballot lead will continue to grow – which has to be great news for Trump.

Also note that 49.4% of requested mail-in ballots have been returned (blue box). I liken this to having 49% of precincts reporting in. The % of mail-in ballots by party are beginning to stabilize and are the best reflection of the current voting in FL – IMHO. Better than any poll since these are actual party ballots. The only hesitation one would have is to review Dem strongholds to see if there are enough ballots out there to shift the statewide numbers.

This is why I continue to look at Broward and Miami-Dade counties, to see if these large democrat strongholds have any juice left to shift the statewide numbers. So let’s get to it.

If the Mail-In ballots represent the county’s general mix of Dem and GOP, then Broward is running about 55% Dem to 24% GOP (row 3, total mail-in pool). We can treat this as their mix of party voters, and as a benchmark to measure their voting performance.

So in the mail-in votes returned the GOP is actually outperforming their base numbers (26% vs 24%, 2nd and 3rd rows). So are the Dems, but by a lesser degree (56% vs 55%). The GOP is returning a higher percentage of their ballots (4th row, 41-38%).  Again, we see more energy on the GOP side for the mail-in voting.

In the In-Person voting, the Dems are actually rocking – 62% (5th row) vs. there 55% base. But this good performance is not helping the Dems at the state level, as we saw above. So while the Dems are doing a great job in Broward, it does not seem to be enough.

Now on to Miami-Dade:

Miami-Dade illustrates why Broward may not have enough juice to change the trajectory of the Florida Election. Again, if we assume the mail-in ballots reflect the overall make up of the county, then the Dems look to be about 42-43% of the voters there with the GOP around 32%. Unaffiliated make up a sizeable portion coming in around 24-27%.

BTW, Miami-Dade’s population is larger than Broward’s, so it can overwhelm the Broward performance.

The first thing to note is the mail-in ballots have hit 44% returned of the number distributed. Again we are reaching a point where the percentages between GOP and Dem will begin to lock in. Here in Miami-Dade the GOP is rocking the mail-in vote, returning 49% of their ballots to the Dems 44% (4th row). The Dems are rocking the in-person voting (so far, this is only day 3) as can be seen in the 5th row.

It would seem to me the Dems are performing above par in Miami-Dade and in Broward. So the fact they continue to lose ground at the state level indicates to me that these two counties will not turn the trajectory of the state.

At least in early voting.

Tags: 2016 Election, Florida Early Voting

My day job has been very busy so I cannot get these posts out as early as I would like.  And I have had to just not do the general election posts for two days now (hope to catch up here soon). But as goes FL, so goes the entire election – so I want to do this update today.

Before we begin, recall Obama’s 2012 high water mark and how well the Dems did in early voting that year.  Their edge in the early vote helped Obama squeak out the thinnest of victories. If the Dems do not do as well this year, it is unlikely Hillary will win FL (not impossible, just unlikely).

Here are the early voting numbers by party ID and the final tally from 2012:

Early Votes: 4.3 million

Democrats: 43%

Republicans: 40%

That edge in early voting no doubt helped push Obama over the top in Florida to beat Romney:

Note the final vote difference in 2012 was very small = 74,309.  Keep this in mind as we look at the early voting as of today.

Good news for Trump on many fronts. First off, go to the bottom row and look at the total % of ballots by party. The major parties are split 39% -40%, which is basically a toss up so far. Therefore, as of today the Democrats are not repeating their 2012 energy.

This is the second day of in-person early voting, and yesterday it was clear the Dems jumped out of the shoot with a big turnout edge. But one day does not a trend make.

Yesterday early Vote-In-Person tallies had the Dems with 46% of that day’s total and the Rep with 37%. So a 9% edge to the Dems. Only one day later that 9% edge has wilted to a 5% lead (second to last row in table above) 39-44%. As I suspected, we should see a leveling out of the voters in the “In-Person” group that will mimic the vote-by-mail group.

The reason this makes sense is the vote-by-mail data is a much larger sample of ballots. With 45% of the mail-in ballots returned this is a GREAT poll of the state, using real ballots to measure party intensity. And if you look at the 2nd row down, you can see the GOP is returning their mail-in ballots at a higher rate than the Dems (42-40%).

This larger “sample” of the FL voters does not indicate a tie, it would hint to an edge for Trump (if everyone voted by party ID). So I am expecting the in-person vote totals to trend towards the much larger (and longer running) vote-by-mail numbers.

But even so, the only conclusion anyone can come to today is this that race is a toss up.

As a sanity check lets look at the two big Democrat leaning counties, beginning with Broward which is the most heavily tilted to the Dems.  Their performance here should be an indicator on Dems across the state.

Some interesting data points. First and foremost is that the Broward County Democrats are NOT returning their mail-in ballots at the same rate as the GOP voters, 37%-34% (4th row). This would seem to be counter-intuitive. Minority parties in counties like this tend to be less energized because they can never push the down ballot elections into their column. Think GOP voters in Washington DC.

Conversely, in terms of in-person voting the Dems seem to be performing above their % of Broward county.  Looking at all the vote-by-mail percentages Broward appears to be 55-56% Democrat and 23-24% GOP.  In the two days of early voting the Dems are at 62% and the GOP is at 20%.

I seriously doubt the GOP energy seen in the vote-by-mail will be absent in the in-person voting. But this may be why the Democrats and Media are trying deflate GOP voters with bad poll news.

Now onto Miami-Dade:

Miami-Dade is bigger than Broward, and less Democrat. If we use the vote-by-mail numbers as a benchmark of the voters in general it looks to be about 42% Dem to 32% GOP. But again, we see a distinct intensity edge for the GOP in the rate of returning mail-in ballots (44-40%). As with Broward we see an initial lead for the Dems in the in-person voting, but it is shrinking. Yesterday the Dems led in-person voting 27-53% (+26%). Today that edge is down to 23%.

Broward has been running the same both days (~43% lead).

But in the end, even with Broward and Miami-Dade with solid GOTV for the Dems, at the state level the race is tied. At some point Broward and Miami-Dade will be tapped out. Give this a week to run its course and we will see where we are

Tags: 2016 Election, Florida Early Voting

Really? What inside the beltway idiot thought this was a good idea?

The Post story features anecdotes of the CASA activists working in tandem with the SEIU, the government employees union and long-time Democratic Party community organizing arm. CASA and the SEIU are using their resources to knock on doors in Virginia and Pennsylvania and plan to expand their operations into Arizona and other battleground states.

I seriously doubt that will make a big difference on the Clinton side, but if you want to energize a Trump voter the best way to do it is to have illegal aliens come to your door and lecture you on Democracy and what it means to be an American.

Thanks Hillary!

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

Two  recent “news” media polls are suffering from serious over sampling of Democrats (hard to call these organizations “news” media anymore, now that we know they are the propaganda arm of the DNC and political elite).

ABC News came out with a 12% Clinton lead with a 9% sampling edge in Democrats over Republicans:

METHODOLOGY – This ABC News poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 20-22, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 874 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 36-27-31 percent, Democrats – Republicans – Independents.

This is an unrealistic 9% edge for Democrats

Then today a CNN/ORC poll came out with Clinton at 51% and ahead by 6% in the 2-way race (she was ahead by 4% in the 4-way poll). To pull this off the sample was once again skewed to the Democrats:

Respondents were asked questions about whether they are registered to vote, their likelihood of voting, past voting behavior, and interest in the campaign. Based on the answers to those questions, 779 respondents were classified as likely voters. Among those likely voters, 37% described themselves as Democrats, 30% described themselves as Republicans and 33% described themselves as independents or members of another party.

This is 7% edge for Democrats, but it only produced a 6% lead for Clinton (where the 9% edge in the ABC “News” poll produced a 12% lead)

So how bad are these turnout models? For comparison 2012 was a great year for Democrats and President Obama. A year Hillary Clinton has little hope of replicating. The results from that year were:

Lets compute how far off each poll is from 2012, a rare, high watermark year for Dems:

• ABC “News”: 2% low for Dems, 5% low for Reps and 2% high for Indies.
• CNN: 1% low for Dems, 2% low for Reps and 4% high for Indies
• In 2012 the Dems led the GOP by 6% and the Indies by 9%
• ABCE “News” has the Dems leading the GOP by 9%, Indies by 5%
• CNN has the Dems leading GOP by 6%, Indies by 4%.

So these “polls” show a much lower GOP turnout and a much better Indie turnout than in 2012?? 2016 is the same year Trump broke all primary voter and small donor records? The year union members abandoned the Democrats? How does that equate with a worse showing for the GOP???

My guess is these polls reflect the dearth of GOP respondents to the pollsters. As I have noted in my Florida early-voting posts, it is the Dems who have a problem with turn out and returning ballots, not the GOP. The GOP is ahead of where they were in 2012, and ahead of the Democrats overall. In addition, the 3rd largest voting group (“Independents”) is the group really lagging behind in returning ballots.

So there is no basis for either polls’ turnout model, except to speculate Trump supporters (Les Delporables) are just not interesting in responding to rigged election polls.

This is the 7th day I have looked at the general election polls for POTUS at RCP. For the 7th day the race looks to be a statistical tie or toss up. Today we have 4 polls:

This is basically an uncomplicated assessment of the general election taken each day by averaging the % of the general election polls for each candidate. Here are the bottom line results for today:

• HRC averaging 42.25%
• Trump averaging 42.50%
• Difference 0.25% (Trump)

This is clearly a statistical tie, and not significantly different from the last 5 days since the last debate. Here is the trend (without yesterday’s over-sampled ABC News polls):

Pretty much the same – toss up with slight edge to Trump. If this trend holds up to election day it will be very bad news for Clinton.

Now let’s deal with that ABC News Poll from yesterday. It clearly was an outlier, and it clearlyy over-sampled Democrats. Given this over sampling was a DNC/Clinton/News Media strategy to deflate support for Donal Trump, I did not even bother to compute what a trend would look like with both versions (yesterday’s post only had the one version of the poll (4-way, which came out first)).

This media poll was starkly different from the last 15 other general election polls. So it gets dumped as an unreliable pile of noise.

Tomorrow I will add a second trend chart that removes the earliest poll so we can see a 7 day sliding window, as well as this summary trend.

My previous posts were:

• Oct 23, 2016
• Oct 22, 2016
• Oct 21, 2016
• Oct 20, 2016
• Oct 18 & Oct 19, 2016

Tags: 2016 Election, General Election Polls, Toss Up

My previous post is here.

In Obama’s 2012 reelection the Democrats produced more “early voting” ballots in Florida than the GOP did (obviously these are not votes for a candidate, but simply ballots by party ID). They led the GOP by 3% last cycle.

Florida [2012]

Votes: 4.3 million

Democrats: 43%

Republicans: 40%

That edge in early voting no doubt helped push Obama over the top in Florida to beat Romney:

Note the actual vote difference in 2012 was very small = 74,309 votes.  The early voting ballot tally for the Dems represented a lot more than the final difference (129,000 ballots). Keep this in mind as we look at this year’s data.

This year the FL Democrats ARE NOT doing as well as they did in 2012 in early voting (per this site). This year the GOP is ahead in ballots requested AND ballots returned (so far). The table below is the data from the FL site with additional information (click to enlarge):

[New from previous post]

There is a lot of information here, so let’s walk through it. Florida reports two rows of data everyday. The top row is the number of ballots requested, but not yet returned. The second row is the number of ballots returned (= votes cast by Vote-by-Mail).

Everyday both rows change. So to compute the total potential ballots you need to sum the first two rows, which I did in the 3rd row. I added the percentages so you can see how the ballots break down by party affiliation.

The blue box lower right shows how much of the total potential ballot pool has been received as a submitted vote (who the vote is for is unknown). These ballot tallies are the same data as from 2012 above – they are not votes (yet). As of today about 38% of the ballots have been returned.

Some bottom line findings (highlighted in red in the table):

• The GOP pool of potential ballots is larger than the Democrats 40-39% (3rd row %)
• The GOP has returned a higher percentage of ballots requested than the Democrats 42-40% (2nd row %). This is confirmed in the last row as well which shows % returned by party affiliation. This indicates some intensity on the GOP side
• Not surprisingly, the Democrats have a higher number of requested ballots not yet returned 39-38% (1st row %). This is also confirmed in the last row which shows % returned by party affiliation. This could indicate some ambivalence in the Democrat voting.

If you think the last bullet means the Dems can catch up by submitting more ballots later, I would have to point out that they can never “catch up” (as of now) because the GOP has the edge in total ballots requested (first bullet).

So are the Dem strongholds of Boward and Miama-Dade counties holding a potential reservoir of late breaking ballots that could close this gap? I had a look and the answer is – probably not.

First, let’s focus in on Broward county using the same table (data is from the same FL State website):

If we first look at the Total Pool of ballots as of today (3rd row) Democrats as expected have a huge edge in total ballots 55-24%. They are returning ballots in higher numbers than the GOP (2nd row), but as a percentage of their total pool they are running behind the GOP 32-30%. Yes, Broward does have a pool of “not yet returned” ballots that is larger than the GOP pool, but it is unclear if they will catch up in percentages. Nearly 30% of Broward ballots are in as of today.

Note that the huge edge in Dem Ballots in Broward are already part of the state-wide numbers above. So while the Dems could do better in Broward, they cannot yet bridge the gap with the GOP.

Now Miami-Dade:

The first thing to note is Miami-Dade county has the largest voter/ballot pool in Florida by far. But unlike Broward, the Democrats represent a smaller fraction (Miami-Dade = 43%; Broward = 55%). The GOP is conversely stronger in Miami-Dade (Miami-Dade = 33%; Broward = 24%). So while Miami-Dade is larger it will not produce as much of an edge for the Democrats as Broward.

So what do we see here. The GOP and Dems are returning ballots at about the same level (last row).  The GOP is running ahead in returned ballots in terms of their portion of the total pool. They represent 33% of the total pool, but they represent 36% of the total ballots returned (2nd and 3rd rows). The Democrats are only slightly higher in returned vs total pool. This again indicates a higher level of voting in the GOP ballots than in the Democrat. So while there are a lot of votes left to be returned, the current trend looks like the GOP has both a hard bottom line edge (more ballots out), but an intensity edge (more GOP ballots showing up “returned”).

Summarizing all of this it looks nearly impossible for Clinton to perform anywhere near Obama’s 2012 levels in early voting. As noted at the top of this post, 2012 Obama barely squeaked out a win (74K votes out of 8.4 million). Even a tiny under-performance by Clinton in 2016 could tip Florida to Trump.

Finally, if early voting trends are an indication of the voting trends on election day (big leap here), then it would appear that Florida is not in play, as the polls show. The large Democrat strongholds in Florida are showing an intensity gap similar to that seen state-wide, which does not indicate a Clinton win.

The hard data of early voting ballots clearly is at odds with the current polls (today a 3.8% lead for Clinton). Yes, I guess Clinton could be pulling in some unaffiliated voters (the 3rd largest ballot pool), but one would think she would also have a lead in the Dem vs GOP battle if this was the case. I doubt Florida is safely in the Democrat column, and could argue it is in the Trump column right now.

Tags: 2016 Election, Early Voting, Florida

This is the 6th day I have looked at the general election polls for POTUS at RCP. For the 6th day the race looks to be a statistical tie or toss up. Today we have 4 polls , with one from ABC News that looks like an outlier (click to enlarge):

This is basically an uncomplicated assessment of the general election taken each day by averaging the % of the general election polls for each candidate. Here are the bottom line results for today:

• HRC averaging 44.25%
• Trump averaging 42.00%
• Difference 2.25% (Clinton)

OK, we have a big change today (Clinton in the lead), but it is statistically still a toss up race.

Now let’s address that ABC News Poll. It is not only out of sync with the other three polls from today, it is out of sync with the other ELEVEN polls over the last 4 days (10/20-10/23). So it is questionable at best; and, therefore, so is the impact it has on the numbers today.

If we compute without ABC News we get:

• HRC averaging 42.33%
• Trump averaging 42.33%
• Difference 0.0%

This is a big difference. This is also much more in line with what we have been seeing ever since the last debate.

So is it cherry-picking to remove an outlier? Not really, many of the more sophisticated poll-of-polls remove outliers , or at least lower their weighting (e.g Nate Silver’s 538). Note that all the other polls are daily tracking polls, and this ABC News poll probably comes out once a week at most. So it is a different animal at its core.

So let’s look at the trends, both with and without the ABC News “noise”. First without the outlier:

As we can see without the ABC News Poll very little has changed. There is a statistical tie with both candidates hovering around 42%. Which means there is 16% of the electorate hovering between undecided, a 3rd party candidate, not saying or not voting.  These are the voters who will decide the  election – and I doubt we will get an accurate read on them until the results come in.

Trump is still trending slightly up and Clinton slightly down, but the projections of the trend (dotted lines) are converging as each day we see about the same results. This shows the race is stabilizing at these levels and, bar something unforeseen, this is where it will be when the voting ends.

So let’s now add in the ABC News Poll:

We see how one outlier poll can move a result quite a bit in a single day. But only for that day.  The trend lines demonstrate how the previous polls we have been sampling, when included, actually carry more weight than the one outlier.

So what does this mean? Same story since the debate. Basically tied, small trend for Trump.

I expect more polls may come out today – so if I get a chance I will update later this evening. If the ABC News poll is not an outlier we will see more general election polls moving towards HRC. I can use either path going forward (with or without ABC News).  We need to see a few days before we pick our path.

One final note. If you are wondering why my numbers are so different from the RCP numbers it is most likely due to the fact that I do not differentiate between the 2-way and 4-way polls. By including both types of polls I get a clear picture of the die-hard Trump and Clinton support, which is amazingly consistent. I believe this is a more solid number, because:

• 3rd party candidates always fade out on election day as voters’ wishes must face reality. The more stark the choice, the more 3rd party candidates fade for serious (regular) voters. This is a very “stark choice” election.
• Turnout models in all these polls are basically “experimental” this election cycle. With the Trump effect, the Bernie effect, the historic turnout in the GOP primaries and the major shifts in party registration, it is hard to tell who will come AND how they will vote. This has been a caveat from all the pollsters and poll-of-polls analysts. It adds yuge uncertainty to all polling results.

In a post later today I will show why I think the turnout models for Florida are incorrect based on the Vote-by-Mail statistics. (Update: here is the post)

My previous posts were:

• Oct 22, 2016
• Oct 21, 2016
• Oct 20, 2016
• Oct 18 & Oct 19, 2016