Early Voting 2018 thread of doom

[sushihorn 3,233]

46 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

the fact that the state is still pacing around 90% of the 2016 turnout is still impressive.

30.15% of all registered voters in the state of Texas have already voted early as of yesterday.  That's way past the 19.11% turnout for the entire EV period in 2014.  We won't get to 46% like 2016 but it's impressive as hell. 

[Stringer 1,435]

9 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

Well when you don't vote straight ticket sometimes it takes a while to read through 16 pages of elections.

That and the machines are from the 1950's ( I could be wrong on that).  Not the most efficient program.

[Js1 84,990]

Just now, Stringer said:

That and the machines are from the 1950's ( I could be wrong on that).  Not the most efficient program.

FUCKING SCROLLING CLICK WHEEL OF FRUSTRATION /rant

[yoladu 4,062]

10 minutes ago, slorch said:

Can you share/ explain this part?

 

That seems like a long ass time.

4 minutes of Processing: you check in with 3 separate individuals.

6 minutes of Voting: I don't vote straight ticket for State wide races + City Council votes, 11 Propositions, AISD Board of Trustees, ACC Board of Trustees.

 

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, yoladu said:

4 minutes of Processing: you check in with 3 separate individuals.

6 minutes of Voting: I don't vote straight ticket for State wide races + City Council votes, 11 Propositions, AISD Board of Trustees, ACC Board of Trustees.

 

oh damn... 11 propositions.

Definitely makes sense.

We had zero.  No props, no addendum. No bonds.  Just straight up office races.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,387]

Day 9 (Tuesday) totals:

• Continued downtrend of total voters.  I expect today will be bad because of Halloween plus bad storms in Houston
• Friday should be huge 
• I was surprised that Montgomery has slipped to the bottom 3 in turnout when compared turnout to 2016.  They're the reddest of the top 16 counties.  Note:  they still have much better turnout than other counties.

 

[seven 1,366]

Not a Texan, are there any changes to early voting from 2014?

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

 El Paso with the only row that is green white and red. Very subtle, my “American” friends. 

Edited October 31, 2018 by SuingToGetAMessageBoard?

[bolverk 29,245]

1 hour ago, seven said:

Not a Texan, are there any changes to early voting from 2014?

No, not that I'm aware of. It seems like forever that it's two weeks of early voting prior to election day. Individual counties may tinker with sites and hours though.

[Js1 84,990]

48600 in Harris County. Terrible but bad storms and Halloween. Should rebound today 

[atomheartbevo 89,301]

For those handing out math lessons, better to try and relate it in terms that the other person can understand.  

For instance, say somebody could magically grow their penis from 6 inches to 7 inches.  If they go around telling people that their penis grew a certain percentage, many won’t understand the significance.  

But if that person could grow their penis from 6 inches to 7 inches, and they went around telling people that their penis went from tiny to average, that’s much more relatable and easy to understand. 

[Pig Bellmont 8,664]

You can’t simply look at party registration data and assume you know the vote count. 

Edited November 1, 2018 by Pig Bellmont
Added comment

[sushihorn 3,233]

5 minutes ago, Pig Bellmont said:

You can’t simply look at party registration data and assume you know the vote count. 

That's true.  It's also true that it's the best predictive data we have until the votes are actually counted.

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

Just now, sushihorn said:

That's true.  It's also true that it's the best predictive data we have until the votes are actually counted.

seriously.  i don't think anyone on this board forgets that reg != vote.  but we are trying to triangulate several different pieces of data and that is probably the single best one.

[Js1 84,990]

13 minutes ago, Pig Bellmont said:

You can’t simply look at party registration data and assume you know the vote count. 

Yup.  Remember in the AZ-8 special election, GOP outnumber Dems by 17 points and won that election by 5 or 6 points.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,355]

There are more registered democrats in my congressional district than republicans but the district is solid red.

Why? Lots of olds registered democrat when they were the racist party and never changed party affiliation. 

Some guy I know ran for a local position, completely forgot he was a registered democrat, and didn’t get to change in enough time to remove the (D) next to his name on the ballot.

He got slaughtered.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,387]

2 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

There are more registered democrats in my congressional district than republicans but the district is solid red.

Why? Lots of olds registered democrat when they were the racist party and never changed party affiliation. 

Some guy I know ran for a local position, completely forgot he was a registered democrat, and didn’t get to change in enough time to remove the (D) next to his name on the ballot.

He got slaughtered.

While we hear about some states/counties that are quick to remove registrations I wonder if the opposite is the problem for other jurisdictions.  Their turnout is low because because the # of registrations is actually overinflated.  

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,387]

Day 10 (Wednesday) results

• Every county looks to have taken a significant decline on Wednesday
• Dallas county hitting it out of the park compared to previous years.   As a comparison, if Harris voted the same, Harris would have 63K more votes this year.
• I think we see a high vote total today and especially Friday.  
• By Saturday, I will go find the historic EV%/Total Vote for each county so we estimate how many people are voting on Tuesday.  I don't claim any accuracy here except it provides entertainment.

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

I'm somehow encouraged that both Travis and Wilco are in the top 3.  It makes it feel like it must be the Wilco Beto voters that are coming out.  Doesn't seem possible that you'd have the same peak level of engagement with opposite parties in those two adjacent places.  

[Js1 84,990]

Not sure where to find it, but I would bet statewide totals on 10/31/2016 (a Monday) weren't great either.

[Huckleberry 32,644]

Thanks for the update. This is just another one reinforcing that party ID versus actual vote is something we can't know for sure right now.

If you apply the party ID from earlier data to the above voting total numbers, then Cruz would be ahead 50.9%-49.1% in early voting in these counties. But if you apply the way that the counties voted in 2016, then O'Rourke would be ahead 54.2%-45.8% in these counties. If you apply the Upshot-based voting percentages on party ID basis, then O'Rourke is winning 56.0%-44.0% in these counties.

[Js1 84,990]

So you're telling me.....

it could be 2, it could be 17, maybe it's 525,600?

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

2 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Not sure where to find it, but I would bet statewide totals on 10/31/2016 (a Monday) weren't great either.

https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/earlyvoting/2016/oct31.shtml

 

 

[Huckleberry 32,644]

1 minute ago, Js1 said:

So you're telling me.....

it could be 2, it could be 17, maybe it's 525,600?

Exactly. I'm just being annoyingly repetitive about the fact that nobody knows anything.

A great piece of information to have would be voters' party ID from the 2014 and 2016 elections. Then we could compare party ID to actual vote totals in those two elections to this year's party ID numbers. Then again I've only seen one person who published party ID numbers for early voters so far this year, who knows how accurate that was.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Huckleberry

[Js1 84,990]

1 minute ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/earlyvoting/2016/oct31.shtml

 

 

So 307k for 10/31 but 322k for 11/1.   So yes, Halloween dip.

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

I bet we pull out of the current downward trend Thurs and Fri and probably level off as people try to get their vote in before the end of early voting.  So if we match yesterday's 233,000 on each of those days, it would be 36.99% early voting total.

 

It looks like in 2016, 23.3% of votes came on election day from those big counties (percent of total vote, not percent of registered voters).  If we go by that, and get 23.3% of the total vote on election day, we will be up to 48.22% turnout.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33,779]

I bet we pull out of the current downward trend Thurs and Fri and probably level off as people try to get their vote in before the end of early voting.  So if we match yesterday's 233,000 on each of those days, it would be 36.99% early voting total.
 
It looks like in 2016, 23.3% of votes came on election day from those big counties (percent of total vote, not percent of registered voters).  If we go by that, and get 23.3% of the total vote on election day, we will be up to 48.22% turnout.

I think we get very near or even eclipse 50%. Seen a lot more people posting about voting today as compared to the rest of the week

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

2 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

8 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

I bet we pull out of the current downward trend Thurs and Fri and probably level off as people try to get their vote in before the end of early voting.  So if we match yesterday's 233,000 on each of those days, it would be 36.99% early voting total.
 
It looks like in 2016, 23.3% of votes came on election day from those big counties (percent of total vote, not percent of registered voters).  If we go by that, and get 23.3% of the total vote on election day, we will be up to 48.22% turnout.

I think we get very near or even eclipse 50%. Seen a lot more people posting about voting today as compared to the rest of the week

That’s true.  I didn’t take into account yesterday was Halloween.  I treated that as a normal dip.  We should probably this of 290k as more the baseline and adjust up from that based on being the deadline to vote. 

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

It's also weird to think about how quickly the population turns over.  350,000 Texans have died since the 2016 election.  Those 350,000 have been replaced by 1,150,000 people being born or moving to the state (or in voting context, reaching the age of majority or moving to the state).  That's a pretty huge number of physically different humans casting votes.  If they register to vote at the same rate as everyone else 76.63%, that is a loss of 268,000 old registered voters and a gain of 881,000 new ones.  Out of 15.3MM registered voters, that seems like a big percent for just 2 years.  Like 7.5%.

[Huckleberry 32,644]

28 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

I bet we pull out of the current downward trend Thurs and Fri and probably level off as people try to get their vote in before the end of early voting.  So if we match yesterday's 233,000 on each of those days, it would be 36.99% early voting total.

 

It looks like in 2016, 23.3% of votes came on election day from those big counties (percent of total vote, not percent of registered voters).  If we go by that, and get 23.3% of the total vote on election day, we will be up to 48.22% turnout.

There's more than a leveling off, usually, in early voting as people get it done right at the end. You have the super enthusiastic at the beginning, a general dip, then the group of "oh shit I'm almost out of time to vote early" people.

imgur

This is only the counties that the Texas SOS site has numbers for in both 2016 and 2018. Day 8 was Halloween in 2016. Yesterday was a big dip for 2018, although I suppose maybe weather could have had something to do with it. Don't think it had that much to do with it, though.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Huckleberry

[hayden_horn 11,352]

I just voted at the Randall's at Brodie and slaughter. Line was out the door, about a 30 minute wait. Looking at the sheets posted, I reckon somewhere north of 15k voted there yesterday. 

Why did I have to put my phone away? Is that new?

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

Some random googling to see what I can see about smaller counties.  Looks like people everywhere are voting.

 

21,000 reported in Wichita County through day nine (Wichita Falls).  Means 2333 a day, on pace for 28000.  That would put them at 103% of 2016 pace, 233% of 2014.

 

20,574 early voting in Taylor County (Abilene).  2286 per day.     32,992 in 2016, 12,954 in 2014 total   83% of 2016, 212% of 2014.  

Even an informative graph in Taylor news, but I can't embed here.  https://www.reporternews.com/story/news/2018/10/31/taylor-county-early-voting-tops-20-000/1817656002/

 

Fannin County (Bonham) reporting needing to stay open later because of high turnouts:

 

Fannin County Clerk Tammy Biggar says that large turnout in early voting in the county has triggered extended hours next week. County polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on  Tuesday, Oct. 30, and Thursday, Nov. 1. Early voting in Fannin County is at the Civic Center (Armory), 1100 West 5th Street, in Bonham. Times for other weekdays remain 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday, Oct. 27, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,387]

Funny how some counties use common sense in that when there is heavy demand for voting, they opt to extend the early voting hours.  Other counties tell their voters to FO if they can't make it during the listed hours.    I will be cynical and assume that the party of the county officials and the demographics of the voters may affect the attitude.

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

 Now that I think about it that rural county report maybe isn’t so bad for Beto. I read somewhere before that rural voters are more likely to vote than urban voters by 5 to 15% or something like that. It seems like it’s closer to being in line with urban turn out rate this time. 

( I found a quote, it’s in the below article. It compares urban and suburban votes. I don’t know if it’s also true with even more rural areas. )

https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/campaign/309190-cities-lead-the-nation-in-many-ways-but-not-in-voter-turnout

Edited November 1, 2018 by SuingToGetAMessageBoard?

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,355]

 

[bolverk 29,245]

I know it's only one small conservative county out in West Texas, but the election office where I grew up (Howard Co.) has a FB page and they're reporting 4,178 votes as of tonight. Given that the county had a little more than 17,000 registered voters in 2016 according to the TX SOS site, that would imply turnout of about 24.6% so far. I'm not entirely sure whether their EV numbers include absentee ballots or not.

Take it for whatever it's worth, but that ~25% EV turnout is a much smaller share than what most of the big counties are reporting. They had a grand total of 14% EV turnout for the full period (25% TOTAL) in 2014. I don't know if they are indicative of the rest of rural Texas but probably are - at least in how they vote. For example, 76% of Howard Co. voters went for Trump in the 2016 presidential election (51% TOTAL turnout in the presidential election and 39% turnout during EV).

[sushihorn 3,233]

5 hours ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

That’s true.  I didn’t take into account yesterday was Halloween.  I treated that as a normal dip.  We should probably this of 290k as more the baseline and adjust up from that based on being the deadline to vote. 

A dip for Halloween is expected.  This was big even relative to 2016.  Monday's turnout was 89.35% of 2016 (avg of counties, not pop weighted).  Tuesday was 83.18%.  Wednesday was 66.52%.  That's the first strong evidence that the parties are starting to run out of motivated core supporters willing to vote early.  Travis Co was the notable standout with 86.52% of 2016 turnout yesterday.

[Mack Tripper 693]

Harris County back up to over 64,000 for Thursday.

[Js1 84,990]

3 minutes ago, Mack Tripper said:

Harris County back up to over 64,000 for Thursday.

Good rebound! 

[elfenix 34,161]

The storms Halloween night were pretty nasty in Harris county - lots of trees leaning along Allen parkway when I walked my dog this evening.

[MaybeACoordinator 8,349]

Got my son, the soldier with three addresses when he enlisted, to the polls today. He voted, provisionally. Line was about 10 minutes long at SPJST Hall in inner NW Houston. 

[Huckleberry 32,644]

Poking around county sites, the Top 15 counties minus El Paso and Galveston had 218,544 votes on Wednesday. They had around 287,000 votes on Thursday. El Paso hasn't posted yesterday's totals and I can't find any reports on Galveston's crappy site.

[Huckleberry 32,644]

So after some corrections to my erroneous earlier chart, here is an update through 11/1 with the 2018 Day 11 numbers being estimated using the top 13 counties' websites:

[Guest]

8 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Got my son, the soldier with three addresses when he enlisted, to the polls today. He voted, provisionally. Line was about 10 minutes long at SPJST Hall in inner NW Houston. 

so did he vote all 3 times whilst only going through the line one time?

That's efficiency...

[Huckleberry 32,644]

El Paso reported now, essentially no change to that chart as they followed the pattern of an uptick on Thursday compared to Wednesday.

Let it be known that Galveston has the shittiest County Clerk website of any large county.

Edited November 2, 2018 by Huckleberry

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

2 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

So after some corrections to my erroneous earlier chart, here is an update through 11/1 with the 2018 Day 11 numbers being estimated using the top 13 counties' websites:

No Halloween dip in 2016 (day 8 ) or 2014 (day 12).  They could be hiding in the fact that one was the last day and it could have been even higher and one was a Monday so it just doesn't look low because it is next to the Sunday trough.  Still though, I don't think either no matter how you slice it would have the dip we saw this year.

[Biff Tannen 45,432]

Got one of my 20-something co-workers who most definitely would not have voted to cast her ballot today.  Have another one going at lunch.  Odd thing happened though.  There's another guy in my office, probably early 30s, ex-military, musician, seemingly nice guy, who got REALLY offended when someone asked him if he had voted.  He basically told them to STFU and mind their business.  That came out of nowhere.  

It wasn't like someone was holding a Beto sign in his face, they were simply trying to get people in the office to do their civic duty.  I don't give a shit who you vote for, just fucking vote.  It's fucking important.

Edited November 2, 2018 by Biff Tannen

[High Plains Drifter 10,961]

On 10/31/2018 at 1:05 PM, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

I still don't understand how that's not a 196% increase, not 96%

96% of 100 is 96 (.96 x 100 = 96).

So an increase of 96% would be the original amount (100) plus the 96% (96). 100 + 96 = 196.

A 196% increase from 100 would be 100 x 1.96 = 196. 196 plus the original 100 is 296.

[SuingToGetAMessageBoard? 3,861]

Just now, High Plains Drifter said:

96% of 100 is 96 (.96 x 100 = 96).

So an increase of 96% would be the original amount (100) plus the 96% (96). 100 + 96 = 196.

A 196% increase from 100 would be 100 x 1.96 = 196. 196 plus the original 100 is 296.

[High Plains Drifter 10,961]

You are going to have to explain that one to me.

 

Anyway, just came in to say I voted straight ticket for the time in my life yesterday. And no, it wasn't straight R.