Well, today is the day. While it may sound over-wrought, I truly believe that Democracy itself is on the ballot. There are so many 2020 election-deniers on the GOP ticket that this election’s primary issue is simple respect for the American experiment.
I’ll make one last comment on the status of the races…
While I stand by my data-driven predictive models, the data I didn’t have was any actual 2022 voter information. While we obviously can’t count votes quite yet, what we CAN now do is model the early voting data. Now, sure, no one knows how any given early voter voted. However, other voter data is public information. That data not only tells us how many people voted early, it can tell us exactly who voted and where they voted. That data can then be modeled against previous individual voting histories and patterns (using public, state-specific information). As an end-result, the enhanced early voting data can give us a remarkably accurate picture, in the aggregate, of how the parties are doing in comparison to each other and in comparison to past early voting results. While such an analysis is WELL beyond the scope of this blog, there’s a site called TargetEarly that does a really excellent job of collecting and presenting this data.
I played with this data for quite a while. Of course I did. However, for those of you not so inclined, here’s just a few of my take-aways:
- Things don’t look nearly as bleak for Democrats as most people think.
- Nationally, Democrats are beating Republicans in early voting.
- Nationally, Democrats are beating Republicans in early voting with larger margins than the last mid-term elections in 2018.
- Democrats are beating Republicans in early voting in the Senate battleground states.
- Younger voters are turning out for Democrats in considerably larger numbers than expected.
Since election day voting will likely favor Republicans, I have no clue whatsoever if the above early trends will hold.
Am I predicting a Democratic wave? Nope. I’m not even predicting a Democratic win. There are way too many variables to make any definitive predictions. I’m only saying that the narrative being pushed in the media that the GOP has this election in the bag is totally bogus. Kudos to Republican strategists for pulling that off, though.
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I’ve also been asked how I’ll be following the election results and my standard answer has been “Holding a bottle of good bourbon.” I’m sticking with that but will expand on it just a bit…
- Each state’s poll closing times and vote counting methodologies are unique. Here’s a decent state-by-state guide that I’ll use (although I’ll use my own election models, thank you very much).
- There will be tons of disinformation being constantly pushed out across the board today. My own personal strategy will be to look at the raw state-by-state results in the races that I’m watching. I’ll likely listen to a few of the data-geek reporters out there and will try to ignore all of the other talking heads. In other words, I may pay attention to what some of the better play-by-play analysts are saying while completely tuning out the color commentators. If I could find the election day equivalent of the ManningCast, now THAT I would watch.
- Exit polls suck. I’ll be ignoring them. The media will be pumping these out by the half-hour well before the polls close in attempts to fill dead-air time. These exit polls will show that people care about the economy and pundit after pundit will be immediately screaming how bad that is for Democrats. What crap. Of course people care about the economy. Is that the only thing that matters to them? No. Is there any real data that shows voters believe either party is better at managing the economy? No. The data shows that voters think neither party can control the economy. The data’s not wrong.
- As in 2020, the reporting of election results will vary greatly from state to state. Some states will report early votes first; many states will report election day votes first. I’m going to try not to over-react either way. If I decide to start predicting a state’s final results before all the votes are in, I’ll only consider those counties that have reported 100% of their votes… and then only compare those county’s results with how that county voted in 2018 and 2020.
- There is nothing that is certain about today. Well, okay there’s one thing. There are states where local laws strangely don’t allow early ballots to even begin to be counted until after the polls close (e.g. PA). If the GOP candidates lead before any early votes are considered, I absolutely guarantee that Republicans will prematurely declare victory. They will immediately claim fraud if the early votes continue to be counted. That’s the playbook. They’ll declare victories all over the place separate from any reality.
- Not a whole lot will be decided today. There will be recounts. There will be recounts of recounts. There will be run-off elections. There will be court filings. There will be at least some election-related violence… ‘cause that’s the world we live in now.
Buckle up.