15 Days Out.

To:                  Only people who want this election to end, and no one else

From:              Steve Schale    

Re:                  15 Days out in Florida

Date:               Time is a flat circle

In a state where elections turn on the smallest of margins, and sometimes the most seemingly trivial of events, here is one key fact:  Democrats have never lost Florida or the Presidency in a year that the Tampa Bay Rays have played in the World Series.    Today, in-person early voting kicks off in many Florida counties, and just like 2008, in-person early voting starts as the Tampa Bay Rays prepare for Game One of the 2020 World Series.  

We enter in-person early voting in a place we’ve never been before.  As of Monday morning, nearly 5.8 million Floridians have requested a ballot – and over 2.5 million returned their ballot – more than double the number who had voted by this point in 2016.  In addition, the vote by mail totals are overwhelmingly Democratic – a function of Democratic focus on vote by mail, voters concerned about COVID, and President Trump deciding to torch the Florida GOP’s 25-year vote by mail advantage. 

Here we stand right now by party (and rate of return):

Democrats:      1,227.883 (47.2%)

Republicans:    754,894 (42.1%)

NPA:                523,668 (38.4%)

Total:               2,509,245 (43.5%)

And ballots not yet returned:

Democrats:     1,374,919

Republicans:   1,043,604

NPA:                841,136

Total:               3,259,659

But this data needs to be viewed in context.  There are just under 8 million Floridians who have who voted in 2016 and/or 2018 but who haven’t voted yet in 2020 – folks who are probably pretty certain to vote.  Among these voters, Republicans have an advantage north of 400,000 voters in comparison to the Democrats – and that is without any additional sporadic or newly registered turnout.  Quite simply:  a lot of people have voted and a boatload more will.  

So far, based on an analysis by the team at Hawkfish (who have been kind enough to share some data with an aging Florida Man saving me from hours of creating excel sheets that no other human could follow), Democrats are turning out a slightly higher share of newly registered and sporadic voters – sporadic in this case being defined as anyone who didn’t vote in 2016 or 2018.  As of Sunday night, roughly 13.7% of Democratic ballots were cast by voters who did not vote in either 2016 or 2018 compared to about 11.5% of GOP ballots.    Because of the Democrats’ edge in returns, that small percentage difference adds up to roughly 80,000 more Democratic new and sporadic voters. 

When we look at NPA/minor party voters, that number rises to 22.4% -- with a full 15% of ballots from independent voters coming from voters who are newly registered with no voting history.  In fact, from a raw number standpoint, there are more newly registered or sporadic voters who are NPA who have voted already than Republicans.   Again – as I caution on everything – this is just a data point in time, because we know that Republicans will vote, however, I am hopeful this will over time mean that turnout among NPAs is higher this cycle. 

Couple of other small observations:  The vote by mail universe is far more diverse than it typically is at this point.   Over 30% of ballots have come from voters of color, which is a solid 10 points higher than at this point four years ago.   Three things are driving that:  more ballots, more Democratic ballots, and just a more diverse electorate.   

Secondly, the VBM returns are more representative of typical vote shares in media markets than is often seen at this point.   Not surprisingly, markets such as Tampa, Fort Myers, and West Palm that all tend to be a bit older in median age have a disproportionate share of ballot returns, and younger markets, like Miami are a little low.  This will balance out over time.

It is hard to know what will happen during the in-person early voting period.   There are about 550,000 Floridians who voted early in person 2016 who have chosen to vote by mail this election, and not surprisingly, this includes about 200,000 more Democrats than Republicans – so I would expect in person early voting to be more Republican than normal, but who knows…we are learning new trends in real time. 

That being said, I think we need to give it a full week before we get a real sense of things.  Republicans traditionally do a little better during the week, and Democrats have better weekends – so while there will be a temptation to draw big conclusions from today, I would urge caution until we get more data.

Voter Registration

I want to take a quick second to talk about the voter registration data that came out last week, showing Republican gains.  First, as any long-time follower of mine will know, I have long had frustrations with voter registration efforts in Florida – frustrations I am happy to repeat at another time.   Notwithstanding those thoughts, I do think there are three things to keep in mind.

One – The Biden campaign made a decision to follow the public health guidance and limit in-person campaigning – and this call is most acutely felt in voter registration.  Many of the groups on the independent side did the same thing.  The Trump campaign did not follow suit.  First, I absolutely believe the campaign did the right thing, but given the most effective registration is done in person – and that Democrats historically do most of their registration in the last few months of each cycle (hence the frustration noted above), the numbers surely felt an impact from the decision to follow public health experts.

Two:  Not all of the GOP growth came from organic growth.  Some of it came from the last bastions of old southern Democrats registering inside the party where they mostly have been voting for the last forty years.  More specifically, there were 31 counties where Democrats saw an actual decrease in registration since 2016 – and in those the Republican margin over the Democrats grew by over 116K voters – making up over 60% of their entire gain in the overall statewide voter registration margin.   In total, these 31 counties make up 5.5% of statewide registered voters – and of these 31 counties, if we go back to 2000, Democrats have only carried a handful of these counties in any given cycle – and none in 2016 (and I think 2012).  I am not suggesting none of it matters - but I do think a lot of this shift is baked into where voters were in 2016 and are likely to be in 2020.

Third:  There are two things happening at once – Republicans are gaining with Republican voters – and Florida’s overall electorate is getting more diverse, with that diversity largely splitting between Democrats and No Party Affiliated voters.  In 2016, roughly 64.5% of registered voters were white.  Today, that number is 61.7%.   We’ve seen over the last ten years, more younger voters – which includes an increasing share of voters of color – registering outside of a political party.   This isn’t just a trend isolated to politics:  traditional organizations in general are struggling to maintain membership within a segment of the population that doesn’t organize itself in the same was as older generations.   Generally, I believe these two things will cancel each other out.

What next?

Couple of things to watch:

• What do we learn in the first week of in-person early voting?  Is there a continued surge of expansion voters – and if so, who are they.  And can the Democrats continue to build the kind of advantage with expansion voters to offset the GOP advantage in certain voters – and/or, does the GOP see an uptick in new and sporadic voters?

• How do VBM return rates change?  Can Democrats maintain an edge in both total returns – as well as the rate of returns?   Personally, I would like to see an increase in the rate of ballot returns – which may very well happen with drop boxes coming on-line this week.  

• After getting blown out for the fourth straight week, can Doug Marrone keep his job in Jacksonville, or do we finally see the kind of regime change in Duval that the fans have been begging for?  And will Blake Bortles get signed by another organization?  

I will probably do another update midweek, after a few days of in-person early voting, though as I said in last week’s note, there are no guarantees in life.  Heck, FSU won this week, proving that even the craziest of scenarios will occasionally happen.  Regardless, I will continue to use Twitter as a way to share some insights on early voting (as well as bad Florida Man jokes), so you can follow me there as well.

All in all, if you are a Democrat, there is a lot to be excited about – and plenty to be cautious about – and even more we don't know -- but this should surprise no one, because after all, Florida is always gonna Florida. 

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