Posted on 11/06/2006 6:23:03 PM PST by freespirited
I've been doing my best to keep up with data on Republican and Democrat use of absentee ballots and early voting. Both of these are said to be good predictors of turnout. Here's what I have so far:
State of Maryland
Party identification is 52% D 23% R according to the Pew Center. About 78K Democrats requested absentee ballots. If requests had been proportional to registration 34,2320 GOP voters would have made requests. The number of requestors has been TWICE the expected number: about 68K. These numbers are nothing short of remarkable--and all that is necessary to explain The Washington Post's decision to run a second idiotorial against Michael Steele.
Broward County FL
The data I found show 75% more Democrats than Republicans in the county. Based on this, we'd expect 75% more early votes from Democrats than Republicans. Democrats slightly missed that mark; 70% more Democrats than Republicans voted early. IOW, GOP voters turned out at an equal or slightly higher rate. More important, there is no evidence of GOP voters "staying home" in Broward.
Sarasota County FL
The elections office reports that 20% of registered Republicans voted early, compared to 19% of registered Democrats. Again, so much for the demoralized GOP voters are staying home story.
Shreveport LA
I could not find any data on the party identification of Shreveport voters, but see that the city is 51% black. I will therefore tentatively assume that Republicans are outnumbered there quite a bit.. Nonetheless, they slightly outnumbered Democrats in early voting. That would mean that they turned out at a higher rate than their counterparts.
Washoe County NV
This county has 25% more GOP than Democrat voters. Absentee ballot requests fell somewhat short of this. There were 21% more requests from Republicans than Democrats.
Johnson County IA
Early voting requests from Democrats are down 21 percent and requests from Republicans are down 43 percent. An official said it's possible, but not likely, that more people than usual are waiting to vote on Election Day. WE NEED MAJOR IMPROVEMENT HERE FOLKS.
Finally, this tidbit: early voting is up 79% in Tennessee's Hamilton County, home of GOP Senate Candidate Bob Corker. Go, Bob!
Summary: Talk is cheap folks. Democrats excel at telling pollsters tales about what they are going to do. GOP voters get it done. Still, I am not as confident as most around here. After all, we are dealing with rats.
Please change 34,2320 in first paragraph about State of Maryland to 34,320. Thanks.
Great work Free S !!! Thanks for the data....JJ61
In Maryland that could mean a high Black turnout for Steele. We will know soon enough.
https://election.dos.state.fl.us/FVRSCountyBallotReports/FVRSAvailableFiles.aspx
Did Rove seem confident today? That is what I base my feelings on. He seemed to be OK about the Senate, what did he convey about the House..."it won't be pretty"...I guess he means it's hard-fought and close. He did seem to think they'd hang onto it though.
Ok, I'm probably repeating what someone else has said elsewhere (and they probably said it more eloquently than I can) but the whole premise of the Democratic party is "sit back, relax, we'll take care of it. Don't worry about a thing - be happy and all your problems will be taken care of by Mommy-state and Daddy-hand-outs."
So have you ever tried to get a spoiled kid to clean his room when company comes over? Ain't gonna happen. He'll expend more effort in trying to get out of the cleaning than he would have if he'd actually gone and cleaned his room.
My point? Why should the Democrats suddenly get the urge to get off the couch and actually do something? Their leaders have told them they didn't HAVE to do anything (ie: work, be responsible, have accountability, etc). Now suddenly they do...
It seems that the more the place turns into a nanny-state, the less the recipients of all the hand-outs are going to want to do - and the fewer votes they will cast. In that aspect, the Democratic-Socialist party is doomed... eventually...
Remember early votes are counted last,pay no attention to the old media calling elections for the dems early.
Early voting in the largest 15 counties in Texas is about the same as the 02 election..... Can't separate by party as Texas doesn't register voters by party identification
http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/earlyvoting/2006/general/nov3.shtml
Early voting ping.
Magnificent, I am just going to get up early and meet Rush at the polls, for that 'early vote'.
If everything had stayed the same, the Republican in the election this year would only have to unify the party base, and he should have been in an excellent position to win. Unfortunately, two of the parishes where the Republicans received their biggest margins of victory were two that were hardest hit by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. All of those Republican voters were forced to move because their houses aren't there anymore. Many of them have likely found new places and will be voting in other districts. Without the votes that they bring, the race will be much tougher.
In any case, if you're looking for a Republican pickup tomorrow, look to Louisiana's 3rd district. Around midnight tomorrow, we might be learning that in at least one district, the Republicans will be taking a seat from the Democrats.
Bill
I can tell you that my county, Collin, which had a 16+% early voter turnout, is a predominantly Republican county.
For whatever that's worth.
I can guarantee you that I voted early and voted straight Republican.
in Maryland, there is a surge in absentee ballots because the ehrlich campaign called gop voters and asked them to vote by absentee ballot
governor ehrlich doesn't trust those voting machines either
The lower than expected absentee ballot request by Republicans in Washoe County, NV could be explained by Nevada's two week early voting. A great percentage of voters take advantage of the early voting so there is less need for absentee ballots.
I just checked on this. I erroneously wrote absentee ballots but the data I had was for both absentee and early voting. Sorry for the error.
Yeah, it looked like a horse race with the projections on these early voters in Harris County...
But after yesterday the Republican party leadership better get its act together...The base, and the voting Precinct Chairs did our best to try and wrap around "their" idea of how this election was going to go...
And look where that got us...
We showed up (sort of)...Did what we had to do...And that still didn't make a dent...
Somehow the Democrats, even in my precinct mobilized, showed up and voted...And they won bigtime...
There is nothing you can do about that...
The conservatives that should've showed up, didn't...Some of us did, but for the most part, it wasn't enough...
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