Author Archives: cstewart

What’s Michigan to Expect with Early Voting?

Charles Stewart III

The Healthy Elections Project has been running a series of surveys in a half dozen battleground states, asking how voters intend to cast their ballots.  I have previously published thoughts on Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, with a bonus posting about Georgia (where we are not surveying, ourselves.)  This brief note focuses on Michigan.

First, about the intentions themselves.  The table below shows that there was very little movement in reported intentions across the four waves of the surveys.  An ANOVA test fails to reject the null hypothesis that the four waves are drawn from independent samples, so I proceed using results from the pooled survey, discarding the “don’t knows.”

Vote mode intention among likely voters, including don’t knows
Date

Election Day

Early Mail Don’t know

N

Sept. 4 – Sept. 11

44.0%

7.2% 45.1% 3.8%

484

Sept. 16 – Sept. 25

40.5%

4.3% 49.4% 5.9%

490

Sept. 30 – Oct. 9

37.2%

4.7% 55.6% 2.5%

484

Oct. 14 – Oct. 21

39.8%

10.5% 48.6% 1.0%

491

Total

40.4%

6.7% 49.7% 3.3%

1,949

 

Vote mode intention among likely voters, excluding don’t knows
Date

Election Day

Early Mail

N

Sept. 4 – Sept. 11

45.7%

7.5% 46.8%

465

Sept. 16 – Sept. 25

43.0%

4.5% 52.5%

462

Sept. 30 – Oct. 9

38.2%

4.8% 57.0%

472

Oct. 14 – Oct. 21

40.2%

10.7% 49.1%

486

Total

41.8%

6.9%

51.4%

1,885

(By the way, the overall 95% confidence interval for all four waves combined is around +/- 2.2 points.  For any one wave, it’s around 4.4 points.)

Second, to convert these expectations to raw numbers, we need an estimate of turnout. In most of the other memos, I used a couple of ad hoc methods.  Since then, I have come across the state-level turnout estimates that are produced as a byproduct of the FiveThirtyEight presidential election forecasting model, and so I’ll use those instead.  For Michigan, the low and high estimates are 4.8 million and 6.2 million, respectively, which is what I’ll use here.  However, turnout in 2016 was 4.9 million, and thus I’m certain that the low estimate is too low.

Third, here is what the combination of numbers above imply for the final distribution of votes in Michigan, by mode:

Vote mode, combining four waves of survey
Assumed turnout

Election Day

Early

Mail

4.8 million

2.712M

125k

1.963M

6.2 million

3.503M

161k

2.536M

Fourth, a final calculation needs to be made, if we want to estimate the number of mail ballots that will be requested, since not all mail ballots are returned.  For the states that make their absentee ballot files available, it appears that in 2016, around 85% of requested mail ballots were returned.  If that return rate holds for Michigan, then it should expect between 2.3 million and 3.0 million requests.

There is one data issue that needs to be brought up here.  Michigan does not have a full-bore early voting program.  Rather, it allows in-person absentee voting, but it does not keep track of this separately.  For that reason, and because so few survey respondents indicated they planned to vote in-person before Election Day, I will proceed by considering only mail balloting.

The other data issue is that Michigan, unlike most of the other battleground states, does not provide an easily accessible absentee file to the public, nor even a daily report about these statistics.  For that reason, I’m relying here on Michael McDonald’s irreplaceable reports on his U.S. Elections Project website for these statistics.

As of yesterday, the U.S. Elections Project reports that 3,109,105 ballots had been requested and 2,255,280 mail ballots had been returned.  The deadline for requesting mail ballots is this Friday, although the state (really, the world) has been encouraging voters to request their mail ballots as soon as possible.  Therefore, it seems highly unlikely that anything more than 3.2 million ballots will be requested.

On the returns side, the past week has seen about 66,000 ballots returned per day.  This should pick up in the final days leading up to Election Day.  Nonetheless, at this pace, and with the deadline for receipt on Election Day.  That would yield another 462,000 ballots, or 2.7 million, total.

The following graph summarizes the important calculations.

As for Election Day, this is where the turnout estimate really matters.  If we believe the low-end turnout projections of 4.8 million and that 2.7 million mail ballots returned, that leaves 2.1 million to vote on Election Day.  If the high-end projection of 6.2 is correct, then Michigan would be at 3.5 million on Election Day. If I had to choose, I’d go with the higher estimate.

What’s Pennsylvania to Expect with Early Voting?

Charles Stewart III

 

The Healthy Elections Project has been running a series of surveys in a half dozen battleground states, asking how voters intend to cast their ballots.  I have previously published thoughts on Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin, with a bonus posting about Georgia (where we are not surveying, ourselves.)  This brief note focuses on Pennsylvania

First, as to the intentions themselves.  The table below shows that there was very little movement in reported intentions across the four waves of the surveys.  An ANOVA test fails to reject the null hypothesis that the four waves are drawn from separate samples, so I proceed using results from the pooled survey, discarding the “don’t knows.”

Vote mode intention among likely voters, including don’t knows

Date

Election Day

Early

Mail

Don’t know

N

Sept. 4 – Sept. 11

53.5%

2.6%

39.1%

4.8%

489

Sept. 16 – Sept. 25

56.2%

2.2%

39.3%

2.2%

484

Sept. 30 – Oct. 9

56.8%

1.9%

38.2%

3.1%

492

Oct. 14 – Oct. 21

51.9%

3.5%

41.7%

3.0%

491

Total

54.6%

2.6%

39.6%

3.3%

1,957

 

Vote mode intention among likely voters, excluding don’t knows

Date

Election Day

Early

Mail

N

Sept. 4 – Sept. 11

56.2%

2.8%

41.0%

465

Sept. 16 – Sept. 25

57.5%

2.3%

40.2%

473

Sept. 30 – Oct. 9

58.6%

2.0%

39.4%

477

Oct. 14 – Oct. 21

53.5%

3.6%

43.0%

476

Total

56.5%

2.6%

40.9%

1,892

(By the way, the overall 95% confidence interval for all four waves combined is around +/- 2.2 points.  For any one wave, it’s around 4.4 points.)

Second, to convert these expectations to raw numbers, we need an estimate of turnout. In most of the other memos, I used a couple of ad hoc methods.  Since then, I have come across the state-level turnout estimates that are produced as a byproduct of the FiveThirtyEight presidential election forecasting model, and so I’ll use those instead.  For Pennsylvania, the low and high estimates are 6.0 million and 7.7 million, respectively, which is what I’ll use here.  However, turnout in 2016 was 6.2 million, and thus I’m certain that the low estimate is too low.

Third, here is what the combination of numbers above imply for the final distribution of votes in Pennsylvania, by mode:

 

Vote mode, combining four waves of survey

Assumed turnout

Election Day

Early

Mail

6.0 million

3.390M

156k

2.454M

7.7 million

4.351M

200k

3.149M

Fourth, a final calculation needs to be made, if we want to estimate the number of mail ballots that will be requested, since not all mail ballots are returned.  For the states that make their absentee ballot files available, it appears that in 2016, around 85% of requested mail ballots were returned.  If that return rate holds for Pennsylvania, then it should expect between 2.9 million and 3.7 million requested ballots.

There is one data issue that needs to be brought up here.  Pennsylvania does not have a full-bore early voting program.  Rather, it allows in-person mail voting, which some cities, notably Philadelphia, have promoted.  The Pennsylvania voter file does not have a separate code for in-person absentee ballots, and the conventional way to figure out who was voting in person yielded an implausible number of early in-person voters.  (The standard way is to select records in which the request for the ballot, its issuance, and return all share the same date.)  Therefore, I am assuming that the absentee ballot file does not record in-person absentee voters, although I could be wrong about that.

As of yesterday, 3,058,367 ballots had been requested and 1,850,393 returned a mail ballot.  Today was the deadline for requesting mail ballots, which means that the number of mail ballots requested will likely hit the low end of the estimates, at around 3.1 million.  For the past week, Pennsylvania has been averaging 95,000 returned ballots each day.  Leaving aside the ballots that will arrive after Election Day, if the state keeps receiving ballots at last week’s page, it will eventually have 2.5 million mail ballots, which is also on the low side of the estimates.

The following graph summarizes the important calculations.

As for Election Day, this is where the turnout estimate really matters.  If we think that 2.5 million mail ballots (and a small number of early votes) will come in before Election Day, then if turnout is at the low end of 6.0 million, that leaves 3.5 million to vote on Election Day.  If turnout is at the upper range of 7.7 million, then Election Day turnout would have to be 5.2 million.  This is a considerable range.  My own hunch is that turnout will hit the upper range, so Pennsylvania’s election officials would be well served by planning for this larger number. Whether this is necessary, or an over-reaction, will only be known on Election Day.

What’s Arizona to Expect with Early Voting?

Charles Stewart III

One week to go.

The Healthy Elections Project has been running a series of surveys in a half dozen battleground states, asking how voters intend to cast their ballots.  I have previously published thoughts on Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin, with a bonus posting about Georgia (where we are not surveying, ourselves.)  This brief note focuses on Arizona.

First, as to the intentions themselves.  The table below shows that there was very little movement in reported intentions across the first three waves of the surveys, but in the last one, there is a move away from Election Day voting, in favor of voting by mail.  For that reason, I’m going to focus this analysis just on the last wave of the survey.

Vote mode intention among likely voters, including don’t knows

Date Election Day Early Mail Don’t know N
Sept. 4 – Sept. 11 24.3% 7.8% 66.1% 1.8% 493
Sept. 16 – Sept. 25 28.7% 10.6% 57.9% 2.9% 477
Sept. 30 – Oct. 9 27.1% 11.4% 58.1% 3.4% 496
Oct. 14 – Oct. 21 16.6% 12.6% 68.8% 2.0% 495

Total

24.1%

10.6%

62.8%

2.5%

1,962

 

Vote mode intention among likely voters, excluding don’t knows

Date

Election Day

Early

Mail

N

Sept. 4 – Sept. 11

24.7%

8.0%

67.3%

484

Sept. 16 – Sept. 25

29.5%

10.9%

59.6%

463

Sept. 30 – Oct. 9

28.1%

11.8%

60.1%

479

Oct. 14 – Oct. 21

16.9%

12.8%

70.3%

485

Total

24.8%

10.9%

64.4%

1,911

(By the way, the overall 95% confidence interval for all four waves combined is around +/- 2.2 points.  For any one wave, it’s around 4.4 points.)

Second, to convert these expectations to raw numbers, we need an estimate of turnout. In previous memos, I’ve done this by adding 10% to 2016 turnout and then utilizing a simple regression model.  Since then, I have come across the state-level turnout estimates that are produced as a byproduct of the FiveThirtyEight presidential election forecasting model, and so I’ll use those instead.  For Arizona, the low and high estimates are 2.7 and 3.7 million, respectively, which is what I’ll use here.  (For the record, a 10% increase would get you 2.7 million and the regression technique would get you 3.5 million.)

Third, here is what the combination of numbers above imply for the final distribution of votes in Arizona, by mode:

  Vote mode, combining four waves of survey
Assumed turnout Election Day Early Mail
2.7 million 456k 345k 1.898M
3.7 million 625k 474k 2.601M

Fourth, a final calculation needs to be made, if we want to estimate the number of mail ballots that will be requested, since not all mail ballots are returned.  For the states that make their absentee ballot files available, it appears that in 2016, around 85% of requested mail ballots were returned.  If that return rate holds for Arizona, then it should expect between 2.2 million and 3.1 million requested ballots. Of course, with the large size of the Arizona permanent absentee list, I should put the word “requested” in quotes (which I just did), because most of these requests didn’t even need to be made for this election.

I’m relying on data being collected and reported on a private website maintained by Data Orbital.  The most recent report from Arizona, which is updated to yesterday (October 26) states that 3,343,186 ballots have been requested and 1,816,615 returned.

One thing to keep in mind is that according to Michael McDonald, Arizona combines early in-person and mail voting statistics, so we can’t distinguish the two.  For that reason, we need to combine both early in-person and mail balloting figures to come up with the comparable statistics that are reported by Arizona.  On the request side, we need to add expected in-person early votes to estimates mail requests, which get us an equivalent of 2.5 million to 3.6 million estimated requests.  We then need to add together the in-person early and mail ballot numbers, to get between 2.2 million and 3.1 million estimated early votes.

Over the past week, Arizona has been averaging 118,000 returned ballots per day.  Applied to the eight remaining days before Election Day, that works out to 944,000 additional ballots to be returned.  If we add this to the 1.8 million already returned, we get an estimate of 2.7 million early votes eventually to be returned, which is within the estimated range from previous paragraph.

These early voting estimates can be summarized in the following graph:

Note that the 2.7 million early votes that I estimate will be returned, if Arizona keeps on its current track, is 100% of the lower estimate for total turnout.  Obviously, Arizona will see some degree of turnout on Election Day, but how much?  The midpoint of the two turnout estimates is 3.2 million.  Taking that as the turnout point estimate, then we get an estimate of 500,000 to turn out on Election Day.  This is  only slightly below the half-way point between the high and low estimates of Election Day voting first calculated above, which suggests that an Election Day turnout level in the range of 500,000 to 600,000 on Election Day would not be out of the question.

What’s Florida to Expect with Early Voting?

Charles Stewart III

It’s just over a week before the election.  The Healthy Elections Project has been running a series of surveys in half a dozen battleground states, asking the intention of registered voters about how they intend to cast their ballots.  I have previously published thoughts on North Carolina and Wisconsin, with a bonus posting about Georgia (where we are not surveying, ourselves, but have survey evidence from elsewhere.)  This brief note focuses on Florida.

To summarize what follow, if we make reasonable assumptions about turnout and take the survey results as a starting point, the actual pace of mail and early voting exceeds what we would expect, which also means that estimated votes on Election Day seem way too small.  To make the math work, we either need to assume that turnout will be around 11.5 million (a 20% increase over 2016, which would be astonishing), that this coming week will see a throttling back on the pace or early and mail balloting, or that survey respondents have been significantly under-reporting their intention to vote on Election Day.  Alas, we won’t know which explanation holds until Election Day, by which time it will be too late to do anything about it.

First, as to the intentions themselves.  The table below shows that there was very little movement in reported intentions across the first four waves of the surveys, but in the last one, there was a clear decline in reported likelihood of voting on Election Day, associated with an increased tendency to prefer voting by mail.  Although an ANOVA test fails to reject the null hypothesis that the percentages from the four waves come from different underlying distributions, the apparent break in mid-October suggests that it might be useful to consider the last set of results separately.

Vote mode intention among likely voters, including don’t knows

Date

Election Day

Early

Mail

Don’t know

N

Sept. 4 – Sept. 11

29.2%

24.5%

41.8%

4.5%

493

Sept. 16 – Sept. 25

29.5%

30.3%

38.2%

2.1%

486

Sept. 30 – Oct. 9

25.7%

32.2%

39.7%

2.4%

489

Oct. 14 – Oct. 21

21.3%

31.2%

46.6%

0.9%

492

Total

26.4%

29.5%

41.6%

2.5%

1,960

 

Vote mode intention among likely voters, excluding don’t knows

Date

Election Day

Early

Mail

N

Sept. 4 – Sept. 11

30.6%

25.6%

43.8%

471

Sept. 16 – Sept. 25

30.1%

30.9%

39.0%

476

Sept. 30 – Oct. 9

26.3%

33.0%

40.7%

477

Oct. 14 – Oct. 21

21.5%

31.5%

47.0%

487

Total

27.1%

30.3%

42.6%

1,911

(By the way, the overall 95% confidence interval for all four waves combined is around +/- 2.2 points.  For any one wave, it’s around 4.4 points.)

Second, to convert these expectations to raw numbers, we need an estimate of turnout.  I’ve done this in two ways, as I have for all the states in the previous memos.  The first is just to assume that turnout is 10% above the 2016 turnout level of 9,580,489.  This would place 2020 turnout at 10.5 million. The second uses a very simple linear regression to predict the log of turnout in terms of the log of registered voters in the most recent six presidential elections, and then extrapolating based on the coefficients derived from that regression.  This gives us an estimated turnout level of 10.8 million. (For those paying close attention to the various posts on this subject, the difference between the two estimates are the tiniest yet.)

Third, here is what the combination of numbers above imply for the final distribution of votes in Florida, by mode:

 

Vote mode, combining four waves of survey

 

Vote mode, using last wave of survey

Assumed turnout

Election Day

Early

Mail

 

Election Day

Early

Mail

10.5 million

2.846M

3.182M

4.473M

 

2.258M

3.308M

4.935M

10.8 million

2.927M

3.272M

4.601M

 

2.322M

3.402M

5.076M

Fourth, a final calculation needs to be made, if we want to estimate the number of mail ballots that will be requested, since not all mail ballots are returned.  In the 2016 election, 86% of the requested mail ballots were returned.  If this holds for 2020, then Florida should expect between 5.2 million and 5.9 million ballots to be requested.

The most recent report from Florida, which is updated to yesterday (October 25) states that 5,988,213 mail ballots were either unreturned or had been counted, which I take to be the estimated number of mail ballots that have been requested.  Because the deadline to request mail ballots has now passed, it seems that the number of mail ballots requested will be just above the upper level estimated here.

Also, as of this writing, 3,805,775 mail ballots have been returned. Over the past week, Florida has been receiving an average of 173,000 mail ballots each day.  If this pace continues—and we actually can expect for the pace to quicken—Florida would have 5.1 million ballots in hand by election day, which is also just above the upper limit of the estimates here.

This brings us to early voting.  Over two million Floridians cast ballots in the first week of early voting, with seven more days to go.  Even at this pace, Florida will see more than four million early votes—and we know that the early voting pace will pick up, too.  Thus, early voting is likely to exceed even the upper bounds of these estimates by around 600,000 voters.

These early voting estimates can be summarized in the following graph:

As noted, Florida is already right above the high end of these estimates for mail ballots and is on the way to do the same for early voting.  Where does this leave Election Day?

Let us assume a turnout level of 10.8 million.  If we subtract 5.1 million mail ballots and 4.0 million early votes,  which is the path the state is currently on, that leaves a paltry 1.7 million ballots to be cast on Election Day.  That’s an astonishingly small number, by any standard.  Of course, it all depends on the turnout model and the accuracy of the extrapolations I’ve been suggesting.  Here are some additional thoughts.

  • A 10% increase in turnout over 2016 is already pretty bit, but what if it’s even bigger, at 20%? Then, we’d expect 11.5 million to vote, leaving 2.4 million to vote on Election Day.  That would get us to the lower range of the estimates, but only because we’ve assumed an astounding turnout level.
  • What if the early- and mail voting are more front loaded than in past years? In that case, the pace of mail and early voting might throttle back in the next week, giving more space for Election Day voting.

These two thoughts take off from the current level of mail and early voting and question whether certain assumptions are right.  It’s also the case that we could go back to the survey responses and ask why the proportions voting using the four modes is so off, especially the first three.  That’s the subject of another post.  A favorite hypothesis of mine right now is that both Democrats and Republicans have been responding to these polls reflecting on the clear preferences of their party’s political leaders.  If so, then it does raise important questions about using survey research to anticipate voter behavior in the realm of election administration.

 

 

What’s Georgia to Expect with Early Voting?

Charles Stewart III

I’ve been working on estimates about the number of mail ballots and early ballots we can expect in the battleground states where the Healthy Elections Project has been surveying about voter intentions.  I’ve published estimates for North Carolina and Wisconsin, and should have estimates for Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, and Ohio shortly.

In hindsight, there’s at least one battleground state where I wish I had been surveying in, and that’s Georgia.  However, there is some other data available we can use, from the Voter Study Group, which can help provide some guidance to where things will be going.

Before jumping in, let me give the spoiler alert.  The survey research I have seen that has asked Georgians how they plan to vote–early, by mail, or on Election Day–seems to be under-predicting early voting turnout and over-predicting how many will cast votes by mail.  Whether Election Day ends up being relatively quiet, with voters siphoned off to early and absentee voting, or busy, with historic turnout rates continuing through to November 3, depends on what your model of the turnout level is.

First, as to the intentions themselves.  According to the VSG’s October 23 update, utilizing data from August 27 to October 21, 30% of Georgians plan to vote in person on Election Day, 36% early, 32% by mail, and 2% don’t know.  Following the convention in my other analyses, I omit the “don’t knows,” leaving us with 30.6% on Election Day, 36.7% early, 32.7% by mail,

Second, to convert these expectations to raw numbers, we need an estimate of turnout.  I’ve done this in two ways.  The first is just to assume that turnout is 10% above 2016 (4,165,405), which would place it at 4.6 million.  The second uses a very simple linear regression to predict the log of turnout in terms of the log of registered voters in the most recent six presidential elections, and then extrapolating based on the coefficients derived from that regression.  This gives us an estimated turnout of 6.0 million. 

Yes, I know this is a huge range.  What makes Georgia’s turnout rate tricky to estimate, using the registration rate, is that its adoption of automatic voter registration has caused its registration numbers to balloon since 2016.  The regression estimate assumes that turnout of registered voters who would not have been registered except for AVR is the same as those who would have registered otherwise.  That seems unlikely, but for now, I’m sticking with the high estimate, simply because it’s probably better under these circumstances to over-estimate turnout than under-estimate it.

Third, here is what the combination of numbers above imply for the final distribution of votes in Georgia, by mode:

 

Vote Mode

Assumed turnout

Election Day

Early

Mail

4.6 million

1.408M

1.688M

1.504M

6.0 million

1.836M

2.202M

1.962M

Fourth, a final calculation needs to be made, if we want to estimate the number of mail ballots that will be requested, since not all mail ballots are returned.  The return rate of mail ballots in the 2016 general election was 88%.  If that holds for the general election in Georgia, it should expect between 1.7 and 2.2 million mail ballots to be requested.

As of yesterday (October 25), 1,539,302 mail ballots have been requested.  Last week saw an average of 7,700 new mail requests each day.  If that is the pace of requests in the coming week (the deadline for submitting an absentee request is Friday), Georgia won’t even see 1.6 million requests for mail ballots. In other words, it appears that Georgia will under-shoot even the low-ball estimate.

If requests appear to be coming in below the estimate, then the number of mail ballots requested are likely to, as well.  As of yesterday, 963,616 ballots had been returned.  To reach the low end of the estimated range of absentee ballots, Georgia would need to see about 79,000 ballots returned each business day between now and November 3.  That would be nearly double the pace of past week.  This is not out of the range of the possible, but it would still put Georgia on a track for 1.5 million mail ballots cast, which is right at the low end of estimates, assuming the survey results are correct and Georgia gets turnout of 4.6 million.

The big story is early voting, and here the pace exceeds poll-based expectations.  As of yesterday, over 1,792,000 early votes had been cast, which means that it has already pierced the low-end estimate of 1,688,000.  For the past week, Georgia has been averaging nearly 135,000 early votes a day.  With five more days left for early voting, that pace would add another 675,000 voters, pegging total early voting turnout at around 2,467,000, which is well above the high-end estimate of 2.2 million.

However, there’s every reason to believe that the pace of early voting will accelerate even further next week.  This expectation is based on the pattern of early voting thus far, which is illustrated by the accompanying graph, which compares daily early voting numbers for 2016 and 2020.  (Click on the graph to enbiggen.) Weekday early voting volumes have ranged from 29% to 70% higher than the comparable day in 2016.  Furthermore, early voting picked up the pace in the final week before the election in 2016, crescendoing to a quarter million on the last day.

If we assume that daily early voting turnout will continue running about 40% above last year’s pace, as it did last week, then Georgia is on a path to add an additional 1.4 million early votes by the end of this week.  Combined with the 1,792,000 early votes already in the ballot boxes, we could see around 3.2 million early votes cast in Georgia when it is all over.

All told, it is looking like Georgia is on a path to see 3.7 million advanced votes this cycle, 1.5 million by mail and 3.2 million early in person.  (In contrast, it saw nearly 2.4 million advance votes in 2016, with total turnout at near 4.2 million.) 

The following graph summarizes these estimates.

Where does this leave Election Day itself?

This is where the turnout estimate really matters.  Simply assuming that turnout is 10% above 2016—in other words, slightly above population growth—gives us a turnout estimate of 4.6 million, leaving only 900,000 voters for Election Day.  The regression-based estimate of 6.0 million leaves a much larger number, 2.3 million.  For context, nearly 1.8 million cast Election Day votes in 2016.

Although we do not know what total turnout will be, nor how many early and mail ballots will be cast next week, it already seems obvious that the Voter Study Group estimates are off by quite a lot. Those estimates are consistent with the volume of early votes being only about 10% greater than the volume of mail votes.  But, the trajectories are currently putting early votes at twice the rate of mail votes.  This is no particular dig at the Voter Study Group, whose results are entirely consistent with other polling that has been shared with me in confidence. 

Nor does this appear to be simply a matter of voters intending to vote by mail and then switching to in-person early voting.  Thus far, around 10% of early voters are recorded as having previously requested a mail ballot.  It’s certainly true that if we reallocate 10% of the estimated early voters to the mail ballot group, the early/absentee voting gap closes, but the relative dominance of early voting would still be roughly a factor of two, rather than parity.

This is a puzzle to be resolved by the researchers after the election.  Where does it leave the state, as it plans for the next eight days? First, it seems obvious that the state needs to brace for even greater early voting volume this coming week.  Second, it also seems that the state cannot be complacent about Election Day.  The cruel reality this year is that we won’t know if this is a high turnout election, or a high HIGH turnout election until the polls close on November 3. 

What’s Wisconsin to Expect with Early Voting?

Charles Stewart III

It’s now twelve days to the general election.  The Healthy Elections Project has been running a series of surveys in half a dozen battleground states, asking the intention of registered voters about how they intend to cast their ballots.  This brief note focuses on Wisconsin.

First, as to the intentions themselves.  Not surprisingly, as the following table demonstrates, as Election Day has approached, voters have become more certain of what they intend to do.  Overall, as the uncertain voters have decided what to do, they have tended to gravitate toward voting by mail.  This is a small trend, based on small numbers, so I wouldn’t make too much of it.  If we take the average across all three waves of the survey and exclude those who don’t know how they will vote, we can expect 44% on Election Day, 12% during in-person absentee (early) voting, and 44% by mail.  If we take just the most recent wave, these numbers are 42%, 10%, and 48%, respectively.

Vote mode intention among likely voters, including don’t knows

Date

Election Day

Early

Mail

Don’t know

N

Sept. 4 – Sept. 11

44.7%

11.1%

40.3%

4.0%

496

Sept. 16 – Sept. 25

42.7%

12.6%

41.6%

3.1%

496

Sept. 30 – Oct. 9

40.8%

9.9%

46.2%

3.1%

494

Total

42.7%

11.2%

42.7%

3.4%

1,486

 

Vote mode intention among likely voters, excluding don’t knows

Date

Election Day

Early

Mail

N

Sept. 4 – Sept. 11

46.5%

11.6%

41.9%

476

Sept. 16 – Sept. 25

44.1%

13.1%

42.9%

480

Sept. 30 – Oct. 9

42.1%

10.2%

47.7%

479

Total

44.2%

11.6%

44.2%

1,435

(By the way, the overall 95% confidence interval for all three waves combined is around +/- 2.5 points.  For any one wave, it’s around 4.4 points.)

Second, to convert these expectations to raw numbers, we need an estimate of turnout.  I’ve done this in two ways.  The first is just to assume that turnout is 10% above 2016, which would place it at 3.3 million.  The second uses a very simple linear regression to predict the log of turnout in terms of the log of registered voters in the most recent six presidential elections, and then extrapolating based on the coefficients derived from that regression.  This gives us an estimated turnout of 2.8 million.

Third, here is what the combination of numbers above imply for the final distribution of votes in Wisconsin, by mode:

 

 

Vote mode, combining three waves of survey

 

Vote mode, using most recent wave of survey

Assumed turnout

Election Day

Early

Mail

 

Election Day

Early

Mail

2.8 million

1.238M

0.325M

1.238M

 

1.179M

0.286M

1.336M

3.3 million

1.459M

0.383M

1.459M

 

1.389M

0.337M

1.475M

Fourth, a final calculation needs to be made, if we want to estimate the number of mail ballots that will be requested, since not all mail ballots are returned.  During the summer, it seems that 90% of requested mail ballots were returned.  If that holds for the general election in Wisconsin, it should expect between 1.4 and 1.6 million mail ballots to be requested.

As of this morning (October 21), 1,419,484 mail ballots have been requested.  In recent weeks, requests have been running at around 10,000 per day, so Wisconsin is on target for around 1.5 million mail ballots.

Also, as of this morning, 947,811 mail ballots have been returned.  This means that about 60% of the ballots that will be returned have been returned.  It also suggests that between now and Election Day, Wisconsin should be seeing an average of 60,000 mail ballots arrive each day, which is just a bit above what was received this past Monday.

One final thing:  Today was the first day Wisconsin started separating out in-person absentee voting from is daily absentee report.  In this first day, nearly 80,000 people voted early.  That’s much higher than the number of mail ballots that were returned (30,846).

Here is the graph that summarizes this all.

 

 

 

 

 

North Carolina Is on Track to More than 1.3M Mail Ballots and 2.1M Early Votes

What’s North Carolina to expect?

Charles Stewart III

It’s now two weeks and a day to the general election.  The Healthy Elections Project has been running a series of surveys in half a dozen battleground states, asking the intention of registered voters about how they intend to cast their ballots.  This brief note focuses on North Carolina.

First, as to the intentions themselves.  Not surprisingly, as the following table demonstrates, as Election Day has approached, voters have become more certain of what they intend to do.  Overall, as the uncertain voters have decided what to do, the fraction saying they intend to vote during the early voting (one-stop absentee) period has grown.  This is a small trend, based on small numbers, so I wouldn’t make too much of it.  If we take the average across all three waves of the survey and exclude those who don’t know how they will vote, we can expect 30% on Election Day, 43% during one-stop (early) voting, and 27% by mail.  If we take just the most recent wave, these numbers are 27%, 46%, and 27%, respectively.

Vote mode intention among likely voters, including don’t knows

Date

Election Day

Early

Mail

Don’t know

N

Sept. 4 – Sept. 11

29.8%

39.8%

24.7%

5.7%

483

Sept. 16 – Sept. 25

30.3%

38.7%

26.8%

4.2%

487

Sept. 30 – Oct. 9

26.6%

45.4%

26.3%

1.7%

488

Total

28.9%

41.3%

26.0%

3.9%

1,458

 

Vote mode intention among likely voters, excluding don’t knows

Date

Election Day

Early

Mail

N

Sept. 4 – Sept. 11

31.6%

42.2%

26.2%

455

Sept. 16 – Sept. 25

31.6%

40.4%

28.0%

467

Sept. 30 – Oct. 9

27.1%

46.2%

26.7%

480

Total

30.1%

43.0%

27.0%

1,402

(By the way, the overall 95% confidence interval for all three waves combined is around +/- 2.5 points.  For any one wave, it’s around 4.4 points.)

Second, to convert these expectations to raw numbers, we need an estimate of turnout.  I’ve done this in two ways.  The first is just to assume that turnout is 10% above 2016, which would place it at 5.0 million.  The second uses a very simple linear regression to predict the log of turnout in terms of the log of registered voters in the most recent six presidential elections, and then extrapolating based on the coefficients derived from that regression.  This gives us an estimated turnout of 5.3 million.

Third, here is what the combination of numbers above imply for the final distribution of votes in North Carolina, by mode:

 

Vote mode, combining three waves of survey

 

Vote mode, using most recent wave of survey

Assumed turnout

Election Day

Early

Mail

 

Election Day

Early

Mail

5.0 million

1.500M

2.150M

1.350M

 

1.350M

2.300M

1.350M

5.3 million

1.590M

2.279M

1.431M

 

1.431M

2.438M

1.431M

Fourth, a final calculation needs to be made, if we want to estimate the number of mail ballots that will be requested, since not all mail ballots are returned.  During the summer, it seems that 90% of requested mail ballots were returned.  If that holds for the general election in North Carolina, it should expect between 1.5 and 1.6 million mail ballots to be requested.

As of this morning (October 19), 1,331,050 mail ballots have been requested.  In recent weeks, requests have been running at around 100,00 per week, so North Carolina is on target for the 1.5 – 1.6 million requests estimate.

Also, as of this morning, 622,781 mail ballots have been returned and 920,337 early ballots have been cast.  On the mail ballot side, this means that about 45% of the ballots that will be returned have been returned.  It also suggests that between now and Election Day, North Carolina should be seeing an average of 50,000 mail ballots arrive each day.  Last week’s peak days saw just over 25,000 ballots received, so from this point out, the average day moving forward will be twice as busy as last week’s peaks.

On the early voting side, with 920,337 votes cast already, this leaves between 1.2 and 1.5 million votes go to.  In other words, North Carolina is also a bit over 40% of the way to processing its early voting, as it is its mail votes.

Here is the graph that summarizes this all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What to Make of President Trump’s Tweets?

Charles Stewart III

President Trump is apparently exercised that some states, especially battleground states, might be mailing absentee ballot applications to all their voters, so that they can request a mail ballot be sent to them. In fairness to the president, many of these states are new to the large-scale mail-ballot game, and have been struggling to keep up with demand.

But, notice the problem. He is angry at states for nudging their registered voters to take advantage of their absentee voting laws, and yet calls absentee voting good, because it involves an application.

Where do they mail ballots to all residents, which the president apparently hates? In five states, none of which is a battleground state, and each of which has a reputation for clean elections. In fairness, two of these, Hawaii and Utah, are new to the mail-ballot party in 2020. But say what you want about 100% mail balloting, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington have not been beset with nonstop election-fraud allegations since they adopted their systems.

Not only that, but some of the most prominent proponents of mail balloting in these western states have been Republicans. These include Sam Reed, the three-term Washington Secretary of State who ushered in that’s state’s adoption of all-mail balloting. Republican Kim Wyman has vigorously defended the system since she succeeded Reed. Since losing his 2018 re-election fight in Colorado, former-Secretary of State Wayne Williams has been defending his state’s system against all comers.

What is going on here? It’s obvious. For some reason, President Trump (and many national Republican leaders generally) have gotten it in their heads that Democrats are inherently advantaged by mail balloting. In fairness, I think that Democrats believe this, too. Both are wrong. Nonetheless, bowing to conventional wisdom, from a strategic perspective, he believes that mail balloting needs to be limited.

But, the logic doesn’t work, even if you twist it in Escherian ways.

The problem, of course, is that President Trump himself votes by mail, as does his family. The distinction, as I understand it, is that he has requested the ballots; the ballots haven’t been mailed to him automatically.

Yet, this is precisely what is happening—or might happen—in the battleground states he seems so worried about.

What President Trump is railing about it not happening—or at least not in the states that will decide his political future.

One final thing. Despite the fact that President Trump says he votes absentee, that’s not what the State of Florida—where he is registered—says he is doing. Florida changed its election code several years ago, getting rid of the term “absentee balloting,” replacing it with the term “vote-by-mail.”

There is plenty to do to prepare for the upcoming election. Getting mail ballots to the right people and protecting in-person polling place is where attention to should be paid right now. All of us need to avoid the chaos and keep to the serious work.

Oh.  One last thing.  Most of the news today has focused on the last line of the President’s tweet, asking about whether we should postpone the election.  That’s such a ridiculous idea, and so easily debunked on a bipartisan basis (as it has been), that I don’t think it deserves any more comment than what I’ve just given it.

Nine Thoughts about Lost Votes by Mail

By Charles Stewart III

A “lost vote” occurs when a voter does all that is asked of her, and yet her vote is uncounted in the final tally. Estimating the magnitude of lost votes in American presidential elections has followed the work of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project (VTP), which initially estimated the magnitude of lost votes in the 2000 presidential election—due to failures of voter registration, polling-place management, and voting technologies—to be between 4 and 6 million out of 107 million cast that year.

Because of data and conceptual limitations, lost vote estimates have tended to focus on in-person voting, ignoring lost votes due to mail ballots. In a paper I recently finished, I revisited an article I wrote in 2010 that attempted to fill the hole in our understanding of lost votes, by considering mail votes in the 2008 election. That paper estimated that as many as 22% of mail ballots were “lost”—as defined by the VTP—in that election. Despite the fact that I opined in the article that this was clearly an over-estimate, this 22% statistic has been repeated without the caveats that appear in the article. (For examples, see here, here, here, and here.)

Over the past decade, it has been suggested that I should reconsider that earlier article, for two reasons. First, mail balloting has become much more complicated, with states adopting a variety of approaches to mail balloting. Each approach, from excuse-required absentee balloting to vote-by-mail, creates unique risks for and protections against lost votes. I owe it to the evolving policy to align my thinking with the new reality. Second, the data have become better than they were in 2010. A reconsideration should reflect that new data.

I encourage you to take a look at a draft of the paper, which is slated to be published in the Harvard Data Science Review before the election. Below are the take-aways from the article, as a preview.

  1. “Lost vote” is a term of art that draws our attention to the gap between a voter’s intention to vote—in this case by mail—and the completion of the intention. In no way does it refer to ballots that have been physically lost, in the literal sense that there are millions of ballots sitting in a trash heap somewhere.
  2. The number of lost mail votes in 2016 was more like 4% of mail ballots, not 22%. The principal source was rejected ballots, which has garnered plenty of attention in the 2020 primaries, for instance, because they arrived late. The next-largest cause was a heightened residual vote rate, that is, over- and undervotes. The smallest contributor, which is also the most difficult to estimate, is problems with the postal service and the non-delivery of requested ballots.
  3. The states that have the most expansive vote-by-mail laws have the lowest lost-vote rates. This is because no requests for absentee ballots are lost in the mail in these states and because vote-by-mail states reject a much smaller fraction of returned mail ballots than states that require voters to explicitly request them.
  4. Conversely, states that require voters to request absentee ballots have higher lost-vote rates, mostly because these states are more likely to reject them when received.
  5. The fact that 22% of the ballots that were mailed to voters in the vote-by-mail states in 2016 were not returned for counting is due almost entirely to voter abstention, nothing more.
  6. The biggest empirical puzzle remains why 7% of voters in excuse-required states and 14% of voters in no-excuse states who requested a mail ballot never returned one. If 99.5% of the mail gets delivered within the window of postal service standards, this can’t be because ballots are getting lost by the USPS. But, these percentages seem too high to be explained simply by ballot requesters getting cold feet.
  7. The states that will expand the use of mail ballots the most in 2020 will be among those with the greatest ballot-rejection rates in 2016. New York’s 2016 rejection rate was over 10%, which is entirely consistent with reports currently coming out of the state from the primary.
  8. One sign of hope is that the heightened scrutiny of mail ballot rejections, including some court-case settlements, may keep rejection rates in check in November. Georgia is a good example. In 2016, its mail-ballot rejection rate was 6.9%. In the recent primary, it was closer to 1%.
  9. Voting by mail is risky.  So is voting in person, especially in the age of COVID-19.  The risks are of a different nature.  It is the responsibility of election officials to try and minimize voting risks as much as they can.  It is the responsibility of voters to weigh the risks of voting, and to vote using the mode they feel the most comfortable with.

Mail Ballot Watch

By Charles Stewart III

The MIT branch of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project has started a time series to follow the fraction of ballots cast by mail in the primaries.  We will be updating on a regular basis and posting the graph to Twitter and here.  Here is the most recent graph, as of July 6, 2020.  Please let me know if you find any errors, have questions, or have leads on data.  Below the graph are some notes on data sources.

About data sources:  In general, we relied on the official state election returns or other state records (such as voter files) to record the data.  The following are exceptions:

  • Texas.  In 2016, the state did not report percentage of votes cast by mail, although some counties did.  The data for 2016 and 2020 reflect the percentage of votes cast by mail in the counties that reported the data in 2016.
  • Arizona.  Data are only from Maricopa County, which constitutes 61% of the state’s population.  
  • Pennsylvania.  Data from 2016 are general election rates, taken from the Election Administration and Voting Survey.

The following states are excluded because they held caucuses in 2016:  Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Utah, North Dakota, Alaska, Kansas, and Hawaii.

States that are normally all-mail are excluded.

Vermont is excluded because 2016 data are unavailable.

The other states not on the graph, but which have held primaries, await the release of data from the state.