5 Days out and POTUS returns to Duval

To: Curious Americans and President Putin
From: Steve Schale, Proud FloridaMan
Re: 5 Days out -- and 8 years later, POTUS returns to Duval

*5 days until the election
*7 days until the first Thursday after the election.
*9 days until FSU basketball tips off.
*23 days until the Tallahassee Turkey Trot 15K
*113 days until Daytona 500

Welcome to the last Thursday, and before I begin, a note to Democrats:

REALLY? What are you waiting for? Return those ballots!

So beginning today with a point of personal privilege. After hitting send on this memo, I am headed to Jacksonville for President Obama’s rally. 8 years ago today, then Senator Barack Obama was in Jacksonville, for his final rally in Florida, and his first of the final day. It was also the day he lost his grandmother. After the rally, I sat down to explain where were in early vote, and as I tried to explain it in my overly data-centric way (we are ahead by more than Kerry lost by, etc), he finally asked me what I meant, to which I said, “it means we’ve won.”

He left Jacksonville with a little smile, and I went back to Tampa completely freaking out that I just essentially guaranteed him that we had won, thinking ‘holy crap, if somehow we lose this thing, he’ll always remember me as that jerk in Florida who said we had won.” So thank God we won. It is hard to believe it’s been eight years. For a guy who grew up in a small town in rural Illinois, and a small town in North Florida, it has been both the ride, and the professional blessing of a lifetime. Basically, I spend most days wondering how I’ve gotten to do these things.

But why Jacksonville? Forgive me for making this point daily, but Florida is all about managing margins. For Dems to win, we have to run up very big margins in a handful of places, then hang on. For GOP to win, they run up strong margins in more counties, thus both sides want to take away one of the other’s strengths. The GOP for example, in the last few Presidentials has worked to erode Democratic support in Palm Beach. For Dems, the most obvious place to do the same is Duval, because of the county’s large African American population.

Part of what makes such a great place to work is it is ever changing. You can never say you “know Florida,” because just when you think you figure it out, something changes. And in 2016, we are seeing two pretty big changes: the real rise of NPA voters, and the rise of Hispanics – and actually, the two are pretty intertwined. But more on that later.

Yesterday was a big day for early voting. Several counties, including Orange (Orlando), Palm Beach, and Alachua (where UF is) had their biggest days. Many others were pretty close to their best day. And as a former Draft Biden guy, I want to point out the two places the VP visited today saw big increases in early voting over yesterday. Basically, Wednesday was a day that Florida got its vote on.

And while there has seemed to be a collective surprise that Florida has gotten close, a note that the three polls today were C+1, C+2, C+3. 31 million votes over the last 4 Presidentials, and 70K separate the two parties. Yes, it is gonna be close. How close? Well I’ll tell you a little secret: one of the models I ran in early October had the race come back as a tie. Not a tie like “48-48”, an actual, vote specific tie.

So with that, here is where we stand:

Yesterday, we pushed close to the 5 million vote mark, a mark which will happen today.

Republicans won vote-by-mail by a 1K vote plurality, and Dems won In-person early by 7K. In total, 400,489 people voted yesterday. One other note, NPA participation is definitely increasing, a trend which started over the weekend. Statewide NPA participation to date is 20%, but yesterday, statewide NPA participation was 24.

Total Ballots cast: 4,687,113
Total Vote By Mail: 2,273,978 (46.7%)
Total Early Vote: 2,593,135 (53.3%)

Republicans: 1,948,126 (40.0%)
Democrats: 1,936,240 (39.8%)
NPA: 769,241 (20.2%)

Total Margin: GOP +0.22%

Right now, I think about 52 percent of the likely electorate has voted.

And there are still 1,085,676 vote-by-mail ballots sitting out there, and yes, Democrats have more outstanding mail in ballots than Republicans. Unreturned vote-by-mail ballots look like this: 41D-34R-25NPA, meaning 84,088 Democrats apparently think getting daily calls from organizers is more fun than voting.

PRO TIP: IF YOU VOTE, THE EVER INCREASINGLY ANXIOUS CALLS STOP. SAY #NEVERROBO BY RETURNING YOUR BALLOT TODAY.

Hillsborough:

It was a very good day for Democrats in Hillsborough. Almost 25K ballots were processed today, and Dems won the day by 1,400 votes, carrying both the VBM returns and the in-person vote. Also, NPA made up 25.5% of all votes today, as Dems maintain their 6 point edge over the GOP (+18,600).

There is a Hispanic surge happening here. 26% of Hispanic voters so far have no voting history, compared to 13% for both whites and blacks. What is interesting about Hillsborough is while it is known for its Cuban roots, it is actually home to the largest populations of Mexicans in the state, a demographic that has begun to change the county’s politics. Right now, the county is about 66% white, 14% black, and 13% Hispanic, but it will be interesting to watch it change in the coming days. Given the rise of NPA, I suspect it will get more Hispanic.

Metro Orlando

Rather than looking at I-4, I wanted to take a deeper look at the metro Orlando area.

It is easy to think about what is happening politically in Central Florida as an Orlando phenomenon, but the demographic shifts that have occurred in the region really spread out over the three county metro Orlando area (Seminole, Orange and Osceola). The difference from the Bush wins to the Obama wins has been stunning: In the two Bush wins, Bush carried the three county area by an average of 22,000 votes. In the two Obama wins, the President carried them by a margin of roughly 100,000 votes -- a nearly 122,000 vote margin improvement for the Democrats.

No place is more stark than Osceola County, a place that Bush won by 5 in 2004, but Obama won by 24 just 8 years later. That, my friends, is what Puerto Rican growth is doing to politics.

It is obvious, but still important to stress, that the reason Puerto Ricans are changing the politics so fast, is unlike all other Hispanic migrants to Florida, they can vote on day one as US Citizens, so their growth has an acute impact on politics. Orange County, for example, once one of the whitest, and most Republican places, is now majority-minority in registered voters, and overwhelmingly Democratic. The changes aren’t as significant in Seminole, but they are still happening.

In terms of total early voting there, you can see how the NPA’s compared yesterday to previous voting. What you are seeing, in part, is Puerto Rican surge.

Seminole: 43R-35D-22NPA – Total: +8,907R (Yesterday: 41R-33D-26NPA)
Orange: 47D-30R-23NPA – Total +46,974D (Yesterday: 46D-28R-28NPA)
Osceola: 48D-28R-24NPA – Total +15,430D (Yesterday: 46D-24R-30NPA)

So to that point, let’s dig a bit deeper. In Orange County, 29% of Hispanics who have voted were first-time voters. In Osceola, it is 31%. 55% of Orange County Hispanics have voted in no more than 1 of the last 3 elections, a number that rises to 59% in Osceola. And many are registering NPA, not Democratic, which is why it is significant that yesterday, on the biggest day in early voting in Orange County, 72% of voters were Dem and NPA.

South Florida

Yesterday, 114K people voted in South Florida, of which 27% were NPA. In total, Democrats won the day by almost 29K votes, with the margins 48D-25R-27NPA, and total votes in the Palm Beach and Miami media markets accounted for 30% of statewide votes. Miami continues to over-perform, and Palm Beach is a little low. If Palm Beach can catch up to its historical levels, South Florida is going to turn in some very high margins for Hillary Clinton.

You can see the NPA surge below.

Palm Beach: 48D-29R-23NPA – Total +53,135 D (Yesterday: 45D-29R-26NPA)
Broward: 57D-23R-20NPA – Total: +146,704 D (Yesterday: 54D-21R-25NPA)
Dade: 44D-31R-25NPA – Total +73,185 (Yesterday: 43D-27R-30NPA)

Duuuuuuval

The President is going to arrive in a Duval that looks a lot more like it did in his two elections than the previous two.

As a reminder, Bush in 2004 won Duval by 17 points, or about 61,000 votes. In Obama’s two wins, the margin averaged around 10,000 votes. In 2008, we lost by only 8,000, and honestly, I am still annoyed we didn’t get closer. That and losing Sarasota by 227 votes are the two places that still but me. In my opinion, anything under a 20K vote loss in Duval is a win.

More than 20,000 people voted yesterday, mostly through in-person early voting, which the Democrats won, leading to the Dems winning the day by about 100 votes. Not a ton, but succeeding in keeping the margin in check. The GOP margin now stands at 1.3 (43.2R-41.9D). This is a place where African-American turnout is a little low, about 25% to date (compared to about 30% statewide). But this is also a place where African American turnout rises in the final weekend and into Election Day, so the President is right on time.

Additional notes:

The electorate continues to get more diverse. Through the Sunday vote, Hispanics are now 14% of the votes so far, with Black voters (African American and Caribbean) at 11.8. White is down to 69. Keep in mind, it was 67 in 2012, and it has come down from 71 in just a few days.

Real quick, I use Black voters, and not African American for a very specific reason: a rather sizable piece of the Florida Black population isn’t actually African American, but instead is Caribbean American.

I wanted to look at turnout another way though. As of the voter specific data I have available (ending Tuesday – this runs a day behind), about 34% of the state has voted. But when you look at it from an ethnic perspective, it looks like this: about 36% for whites, 30% for Hispanics and 30% for Black voters. Now, when you keep in mind that the vote by mail electorate is quite white, one would expect the white turnout to be way out front, then come back to the rest of the state. This is basically what is happening.

So let’s revisit briefly this black turnout piece from yesterday. If you think about the state as a pie, each ethnicity takes up a piece. Between 2012 and 2016, the white piece got smaller, the black piece stayed about the same, and the Hispanic and other pieces all grew. Also, when you think back to 2012, Black voters actually exceeded their voter registration share. That is not normal, thus when people talk about black turnout being down, it is important to remember there are two reasons: 1. Barack Obama was a historic figure and isn’t on the ballot, and 2. Hispanics are owning more of the pie.

As I described to someone today, comparing 2016 Clinton black turnout to 2008 or 2012 is like comparing the 91 Bulls to the 96 Bulls. The 91 Bulls won 61 games and the Championship. The 96 Bulls won 72 with arguably the greatest pure team of all time. We all like to talk about the 96 Bulls, but the 91 team was damn good and has a ring.

Clinton doesn’t need 08/12 turn-out, she needs Black share of electorate to approach its share of registered voters. And when you look at Black turnout today as it relates to whites, as well as how the share has grown since the start of in-person early voting (Blacks have been 15% of in-person early voting), it is trending well towards that goal.

One last piece, because I don’t think it has gotten the attention it deserves: the Republican early leads have been built, not completely, but in part by cannibalizing their own Election Day vote. The conventional wisdom is the GOP wins election day, but honestly, specifically in 2008 and to a lesser extent in 2012, they won election day because we were basically done, and thus won Election Day, not because they were better at it, but because they had a larger pool of highly likely voters left to vote.

In 2016, they have gotten a larger share – and number of their traditional Election Day voters to vote early, which has left an interesting scenario: Democrats have more “2012 voters” left to vote than do Republicans.

Quickly looking at how the state is playing out. It looks like Fort Myers, which has gotten a lot of ink for high turnout, is really coming back to Earth, an indication that it might have just voted quickly, instead of really expanding. The Fort Myers media market yesterday made up just 3% of all the votes (it is about 6.7% of statewide votes historically). The market is still over-performing, at about 8% of statewide totals, but that is down from about 10.5% last Friday.

On flip-side, for Republicans, North Florida did come out yesterday, making up about 25% of statewide votes, raising its statewide share to 17%, which is closer to being in-line with where it typically falls. Granted some of that is strong Dem days in Leon & Alachua, but on the whole, more North Florida voting is good for Trump.

Dems can take heart that Miami and Orlando continue to be strong, with 22% of statewide votes yesterday coming from the Miami DMA, an 20% from Orlando, keeping both markets above their historical shares. In the back of my mind, a 500K vote margin out of Broward and Dade is probably the upper-end of HRC numbers – and also, possibly the number that makes it pretty tough for Trump to win. If Miami can continue to stay about 20% of the state, getting close to that 500K margin looks attainable.

With that, I am off to Jacksonville. Talk to you all tomorrow.