14 Days Out

To: Anyone, but for today, mostly Democrats

From: Steve, your friendly Florida Sherpa

Date: No clue

Re: What will likely happen this week.

Friends, I do not plan on writing these daily (though I might), but thought it would be useful to take a minute and share a few thoughts.

Couple of quick toplines:  Florida has now topped 3 million total votes, and yesterday was over 500K total votes between VBM and In Person Early (that from this point on will only be called Early Voting) - over 366K who voted early, a record for Florida.  I don't know if the 500K votes combined is a record - but it is, what us hacks might call, a sh*t ton of votes.  Well done Florida.  Keep it up. 

I did not expect more Democrats to vote than Republicans yesterday, for one simple reason:  the funnel of Republicans who are certain to vote who have not voted yet is bigger than that of the Democrats -- and the Democratic funnel includes a lot more people with VBM ballots in their hands.  In other words, the likely audience for early voting is substantially bigger.  

Needless to say, I was surprised when Democrats narrowly out-voted Republicans on Day 1 -- and when combined with VBM, had a pretty solid day.  

For historical purposes, yesterday:

VBM: 150,907 votes (Dem +12,132)

Early: 366,406 votes (Dem +261)

In total, 3,025,778 have voted, and D's hold a 482,762 voter edge.

The purpose of this note is simply to prepare you for two things over the next few days that are highly likely to happen.

One:  Vote by mail numbers should really jump from the drop box collections.  At the time I am writing this, north of 54,000 VBM ballots have been processed today in just Pinellas and Hillsborough counties (anchor counties of the Tampa media market) - far more than any day since VBM ballots have started being returned to election offices.  Dems have a 320K ballot advantage among people who have not returned their ballot - so should continue to "win days" - but given the GOP return rates have been slower (49% Dems have returned, 44% of GOP), it can be expected that these daily gaps will not be as robust.   

Two: Republicans will "win days" in early voting.  For context, there are about 450K more GOP voters with voting history in the 16 and/or 18 elections than there are Democrats left to vote in that cohort.   In other words, their pie of certain to nearly certain voters left to vote is simply bigger - so it becomes a math question more than anything.  

*Quick note for Democrats (everyone else skip):  This does not bother me.  It is baked into the electorate.  What you need to do is keep turning out voters.  Don't play prevent defense with the lead.

For fun, lets assume turnout surpasses 08 and 16 - so let's say 76% (I am not ready to predict that - this is just for fun), then we are about 27.5% of the electorate having voted.  Right now, as a percentage of all active voters, turnout is 21%.  Democratic turnout (% voted among all registered Democrats): is: 27.3%.  GOP turnout is: 18.6%.  NPA turnout is: 15.6%.

As I said to the media yesterday, keep in mind we are living in unique times.  This election has no model.  In the end, the goal for Democrats is to equal or better Republican turnout.  Republicans are going to vote - the question is if Democrats can match them.  If we do that, I believe Biden will be in good place here.

But it is a long long ways to go.