Florida 22 Days Out - Why Am I Still Doing This To Myself?

To:       Interested Parties, Twitter, and Fellow Disgruntled Jaguars Fans

From:   Steve Schale

Re:       Too many days out to be writing memos about vote by mail

Date:    October 11, 2020

Welcome back to another season of Steve’s memos about the election, as well as random semi-mad mutterings about the Jaguars.  I hope everyone had a relatively uneventful last two years, and I do appreciate people who read these.  

As a starter, I do not know what these things in my own life are going to look like over the next three weeks.  In both 2016 and 18, I spent the general election in the bullpen, so I had a little more time to devote to them.  This cycle, is well, a little busier.  I suspect I might write one more at the end of this week and will make every effort to pick up on the daily versions next week.  That being said, there are no promises in life, and that includes my ability to write a memo every day.   But I am going to try – just like Blake Bortles always tried.  But just like Bortles, no promises I will complete this goal every day.

The primary purpose of this memo is to say one thing. It is really too early to be fixating on the VBM numbers.  Why you ask?  Well 2020 is different in every way possible, not the least of which is the rapid changes in how people are choosing to vote.  In the past, there was some rhyme or reason to return rates, but this year, the combination of COVID, a coalition of groups on the left working on VBM requests, and Donald Trump setting a torch to Republican confidence in voting by mail has left us in uncharted territory.

So, before we get into the numbers, let’s look some 2016 context.

Raw numbers.  In 2016, 3,347,960 Floridians requested a vote by mail ballot throughout the entire general election period.   So far, in 2020, 5,582.120 Floridians have requested a ballot – with 22 days to go.

To put a finer point on it: nearly 2,234,160 more Floridians have requested a ballot with 22 days to go than all of 2016.

More raw numbers:  2,732,075 Floridians voted by mail in 2016 – over the entire cycle.  With 22 days to go: 1,669,753 Floridians  have voted by mail.   To give a sense of scale, about 500,000 Floridians had voted by mail at this point in 2016.

In other words – without even talking about partisan changes in how people are voting, a lot more people are voting by mail.   

Now before we talk about partisan composition, let’s take a short walk down History Lane. 

If we go back 25 years, Republicans in Florida began to build a significant advantage in absentee ballots.  It is also worth nothing, 25 years ago, the Jaguars were a competitive NFL franchise, but I digress.  Following the debacle of 2000 – and no I am not talking about the Jaguars’ defensive inability to contain Steve McNair in the AFC Championship – following the 2000 recounts, the State of Florida made voting absentee an excuse-free option – and Republicans, using their institutional funding advantages, built up a vote by mail machine.   Back in my State House campaign days, we would just assume that we’d start several thousand votes behind in every campaign, because they were able to bank real votes – and even in 2008, despite us trying to close the gap, more than 200,000 more Republicans than Democrats voted by mail.   Democrats made up the difference with a robust in-person early effort.  

Over time, these gaps have closed:  Democrats have progressively done better in vote by mail, Republicans with in-person early voting.  

In 2016, out of the 3.35 million VBM requests, Democrats had a roughly 5,700 request average – but because Republicans had a higher return rate, when all was said and done, about 58,000 more Republicans voted by mail than Democrats.

In terms of in-person early voting, of the just under 2.9 million people who voted before election day at an early voting site, roughly 154,000 more Democrats voted this way than Republicans – meaning about 96,000 more Democrats took advantage of voting before Election Day.  When all of that totaled, Secretary Clinton won the pre-Election Day vote by roughly 247,000 votes – a total that accounted for 68% of all the votes cast.  Well, we all know that wasn’t a big enough lead.

Two things happened:  one – there were a lot of Republican voters left to vote on Election Day, and two, the race broke late.  I don't think we can forget about the second piece -- because that tends to happen in Florida. The same thing happened in 2012 when the public polls predicted a Romney win.

Fast forward to today. 

First at just under 5.6 million vote by mail requests, if return rates roughly model 2016, that means about 4.6 million voters will cast a ballot by mail - if not another person requests a ballot.  In the 2020 primary, return rates exceeded return rates in the 2018 primary – so that might indicate higher overall return rates.  Then again, it might not.  

That being said, as of today, about 30% of all ballots have already been returned – so return rates are running well ahead of where we were in 2016 at this point.   Again, it is too early for me to take a gander on whether this means anything for return rates overall – so let’s check back on that in week.

Overall, there are 785,000 more Democratic requests than Republican ones – and as of this morning, 362,547 more Democrats have returned ballots than Republicans.   

BUT.  

Keep in mind, while this is a good thing, a significant part of this is due to the fact people are changing the way they vote – with more Democrats voting by mail, and arguably, more Republicans waiting to vote on Election Day.

Of the 844K Democrats who had voted by mail as of Sunday night (the changes weren't significant on Monday morning), about 720K of them voted in 2016 and/or 2018 – or about 85% of the Democratic ballots. 

Of the 485K Republicans who had voted by Sunday night, about 430K of them voted in 2016 and/or 2018 – roughly 89% of the GOP ballots. 

For the NPA voters, it is about 79% of their 330K ballots that fall into a 2016 and/or 2018 voter model. 

Note – I am not comparing the numbers here because I suspect President Trump has scared new and sporadic Republicans from casting a vote by mail - something we have done safely in Florida for as long as I’ve worked in politics - meaning i suspect we will see higher new and sporadic voter totals from Republicans once we get into in-person early voting.  Key word: may.  We also might not know until after this thing is over.

Overall, the electorate is about 74% white, 26% non-white – which is less diverse than the state, but more diverse than it is typically is this early.  That being said, with a lot more Democrats voting by mail, this shouldn’t be a surprise.

Now inside that, there is some good news for my home team:  more Democratic sporadic and new voters are showing up.  Nonetheless, it is way too early to know if this is a function of higher Democratic turnout among sporadic voters – or just higher VBM usage.  We won’t know much about this until in-person early voting starts – and frankly, probably won’t know until this thing is over and we are writing post-mortems. 

The other piece of good news for my home team, which is genuinely good news:  Democrats are returning their ballots much faster than Republicans, which quite literally, never happens.  As of Sunday night, Democrats had returned 33.3% of their vote by mail ballots, and Republicans 27.5%.   For those who had questions about Democratic enthusiasm, well, Democrats are voting in Florida.  And this does matter -- had Democrats simply returned ballots at the same pace as Republicans in 2016, another roughly 63K ballots would have come in.

However, to go back to the whole point of this memo:  You can’t take any of this without a massive grain of salt.  This election will look completely different – and more than likely, there are upwards of at least 9 million more Floridians likely to vote beyond what we have already seen - meaning despite the massive early numbers, we are only about 15% towards the total turnout.  We are a big state.

We also don’t have a good sense of what in-person early voting will look like, for example – more Republicans used it in the 2020 August primary than Democrats did – and it is probably a fair assumption we will see that in the general, given the sheer number of Democrats who are likely to vote by mail.   But we don’t know that.  

We also don’t have the final voter registration numbers – which may, or may not, change some assumptions.   

But what we do know:  more Republicans than Democrats voted in 2016, and there are more Republicans out there who are absolutely certain to vote than Democrats – in the neighborhood of 400,000 voters.   If we take just the voters who voted in either 2016 and/or 2018, the GOP edge is north of 300,000 voters.    In fact, if all that voted for the rest of the election were 16 or 18 voters, Democrats would turn out slightly more voters than Republicans this cycle - but that's not all that will vote this cycle.  Where those extra voters land will matter -- and if those voters continue to slightly favor Democrats, that is, to quote Joe Biden, a BFD.  

All of this is why I am hesitant to get too far ahead of this train until we see more.  I do think the first few days of in-person early voting will give us some clues.  That's why I don't want to get too far into this until we see how much it starts to level out when people can vote in person.

So, there you have it.  Memo 1.  Good news for my team – but with the context that these numbers, at least when attempted to be viewed through the prism of other elections, are really deceptive.  

Let me close with a few final responses to the inevitable twitter conclusions about this memo.

For my Democratic friends, no, Schale didn’t say “Democrats are crushing it – whoop whoop, Trump is gone.” What I said, I am happy to see the enthusiasm which Democrats are returning ballots, and I am happy to see a slightly higher percentage of Democratic ballots coming from new and sporadic voters.   

For my Republican friends, no, Schale didn’t say “Republican turnout will swamp all these vote by mail ballots from Democrats and Go MAGA."  No, what I said is while Republicans will absolutely crush election day, while there is a lot we don’t know, if I had to guess right now, we are probably heading towards an election where partisan turnout isn’t that far apart – and given the fact Joe Biden is doing better with Democrats, Republicans and NPA voters than Trump did against Clinton, I would take a relatively even partisan turnout. 

And one other point:  like where this election is headed, we don’t know enough to know if Gardner Minshew is the solution, but what we do know, he’s not the biggest problem this year.  Sadly, for my Jaguars friends, to quote noted philosopher Rob Schneider, one thing is clear:  “Oh no, we suck again.”

One final reminder: these memos are not designed to be elixer for my Democratic friends - nor do I say everything I know in them.  They are designed to provide some context from someone who has spent way too many years eating cold pizza in the trenches of Florida politics.  To this end, one pro tip:  no human should ever work on three Presidentials.  Trust me on this one.

Also, as a reminder, these voting numbers are not predictive - they are in fact, interesting - and the trends do impact how campaigns adjust.  That is their value.  

If you haven’t read my preview of Florida 2020, check it out here.    I’ll probably write another one of these things when the final voter reg numbers come out, and update some of the above numbers.  Until then, may you enjoy the next seventeen October surprises to come this week.  

Oh - and if you want to receive these on e-mail, sign up here: https://madmimi.com/signups/5066/join.  Outside of a few random blog posts during the year, I promise I won't deluge your inboxes.