Sarcasm? That's what I'm getting, but not sure.

TBH, Dems are solidly behind Kamala, while the GQP base is much softer and likely to have significant defections. All good for Kamala!

It's usually a slight difference and a small percentage, mid-single-digits for either side.

In 2016, a higher percentage of Dems voted for Trump than Reps for Clinton, 5% to 4%.

In 2020, it was 5% to 4%, but the reverse, with the slight edge to Biden.

Mass defections are predicted every election, but historically, there's no basis for it. Everyone said many of the same things in 2020 that people are saying now, and those predictions proved to be mostly wishful thinking.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/

There is a significant shift in the republican base away from tsf. Much more so than any previous election.

It is estimated at 9%.

Whether those voters vote for the tsf, harris, a third party, or nobody, is unknown. But they arent answering questions supportive of tsf.

This is VERY different than 2020.

Jan 6, convictions for felonies, and Dobbs will lead to much marger than normal defections.

Dobbs alone will likely make double digit defections based on how EVERY ABORTION AMENDMENT has moved voters, in deep red states

Yeah, right.

Just like the red mirage of election night, early vote numbers can produce a blue mirage.

But early vote numbers surpassing 2020 numbers is a positive sign.

And election data experts can make some very informed predictions based on early voting. Jon Ralston damn near has called Nevada before Election Day in the past based on it. We knew that Florida was going to be a problem in recent years based on it.

Once again, it's not definitive -- nothing will be until the night of the election (if not later) -- but it's far more meaningful than any other polling we have right now.

of knowing if we're just cannibalizing our Eday vote from those numbers. Smart data people in the party probably know. But what it does for sure is take those people off the GOTV lists so we can focus on the lower propensity folks.

Jon Ralston in Nevada is a perfect example.

I think I said the other day that Georgia has already met 25% of its 2020 vote total through its 2024 early voting. You think election data experts can't extrapolate meaningful information from that?

It's not definitive, but actual early voting is far more meaningful in terms of the actual results than anything else we have right now -- period.

But to say X number of democrats have voted, X number of Republicans have voted, therefore democrats are going to win... is untrue. Leading in the early vote without context is in no way predictive. Like i said.

Nevada is a state that is almost entirely vote-by-mail or early voting. So, you have a pretty good idea where the candidates stand by election day as there will be so few same-day election day voters.

Pennsylvania is not. You can vote by mail but in 2020, nearly seven million people voted there. So, two weeks out, we're about six million short of the total turnout and only 13% the total turnout from four years ago.

So, it's not really meaningful because at this point, it's such a small subset of the actual amount of votes that you can't make a definitive claim - or even an assumption - based on these numbers.

Maybe a week from today.

But not right now.

These numbers don't tell us if the polling is off - they don't tell us if Harris is positioned to win ... the only thing they probably tell us is that it's not a disastrous number. I don't think people see warning signs (really for either candidate). it points to likely what we know already by just looking at polls: this election is sure to be a close one.

And data experts can do wonders, literally extrapolating precinct-by-precinct based on early voting as results are updated. No, of course it does not guarantee anything -- nothing short of the actual results coming in on election night (and maybe later...) can claim to do that -- but a lot can be gleaned from early voting, and I've given several past examples (both good for us and bad for us) where it has done just that.

It doesn't tell us anything meaningful at this point, especially when we're dealing with such small numbers. You can't look at this data and make a prediction one way or another. Maybe in ten days or so - but certainly not now. It's pretty pointless. The campaign will have no level of insight from this data that they can't pull from their own polling.

has a dashboard called targetearly available at its website that has all kinds of early vote information broken out and filterabke in many ways.

Just because more registered Democrats are voting apparently means nothing. Give me a break.

more early voters are Democrats. This goes back to when Trump was demonizing voting by mail just as PA was first getting vote by mail. Trump has been sending out fliers saying to vote early, but we've been so inundated by election crap I doubt anybody on any side is still paying attention. It doesn't much matter to the results, because in PA they can't even open the ballots until election day.

More republicans vote on election day than vote early. Just how many is the key question.

were mine and my wife's and I can assure people that we aren't pretending to be Democrats.

Seems like this year is even better.

But not all.

What were the numbers like at this same time in 2020

64% of Ds
23% of Rs
Voted early in 2020 to a total count of 2.6 million (so we are about 1/3rd of the way there)

So I think we would see similar final results for PA this cycle compared to 2020 just based on early voting.

See: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/PA.html

That's a decent swing for Republican compared to 2020 (six points total). But I suspect there will be more same-day voting for Democrats since COVID isn't an issue this go around.

But this is why these numbers are useless at this point. You can't really pull anything from this because you just don't know the dynamic of in-person voting. If Democrats vote by mail at the same pace they did in 2020, but the final numbers mirror these results, they would be in a bad spot.

72 to 6. That's how badly my high school lost a football game way back when. And it feels to me like the final outcome will be far closer to a blow-out than so close we won't know for a week.

Although the real question is when do states count those early votes? I remember in 2020 some quite populous state (Pennsylvania?) had a law that absentee ballots could not be counted until after the regular polls closed. Hope that's changed already.

This is from Tom Bonier of TargetSmart

https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/