About Those Early Voting Numbers

I'm not a statistician so don't expect me to be able to look at early voting comparisons from election-to-election and come up with any startling new information.  There are guys who do that for a living, and David Freddoso has a pretty good look at early voting patterns, especially as they were analyzed by Nate Silver at the Five Thirty Eight blog.  You should take a look at that in a moment.

But first, a lot of emphasis is being put on the GOP vs DEM early voting patterns, but they may be missing the real story.  Most GOP early voters (high 90% range) are going to vote for a Republican, and most DEM early voters (probably a lower percentage but still pretty high) will vote for Democrats.  The real key, and something that none of us can really know, are how the independents are voting.  There's a bunch of them voting early as well and depending on how they break, thus goes the election.

The various generic polls imply that the independents should break pretty strongly toward the GOP - maybe by anywhere from 5 to 9 points.  Given that the GOP lost independents by 3 points in 2004 while gaining seats and winning the White House, and lost by 18 points in 2006 when they also lost 31 seats, an advantage of 5-9% on the GOP side this year could result in a landslide of seats for the GOP.

But no one is going to know that until the votes are counted on Nov. 2.

Best advice - make sure you vote and take someone who wasn't planning to vote with you.  This will be my son's first election since he turned 18 and I made sure to sign him up.  We'll be going together next Tuesday and although it's only one additional GOP vote, they all count.  That's one youth vote that won't be staying home on Election Day.