Here is what I wrote to Larry Schweikart on twitter earlier today:
I don’t know if the proper comparison of the Nevada vote should be 2018 vs. 2014. In 2014, there was no Senate election, the only competitive House race was the newly-created 4th Congressional District, and the GOP incumbent governor was leading his opponent by 20-25 points.
After looking at the Week 1 turnouts of the 2014, 2016, and 2018 General Elections, it looks like a better comparison would be 2018 vs. 2016.
In comparing 2018 vs. 2016, I’m taking out Esmeralda, Lander, Lyon, Mineral, Nye, and Pershing Counties right now, since the 2018 numbers do not include those counties yet. This way, I can attempt to compare apples to apples as close as possible.
I’m also looking at the party breakdown between Day 1 of the 2018 midterm early voting vs. Week 1 of the 2016 early voting. I could not find the party breakdown of each day of early voting in the 2016 General Election early voting, so this is the best I could do.
In 2018, the total votes from in-person early voting and absent/mailing ballots are 55,445 ballots on October 20th (First Day of early voting). The party breakdown is 43.6% D, 38.95% R, and 17.45% I.
In 2016, the total votes (not including the six aforementioned counties) from in-person early voting and absent/mailing ballots are 55,445 ballots on the First Week (October 22-28) is 368,645. The party breakdown is 44.2% D, 35.5% R, and 19.47% I.
Comparing 2018 (Day 1) to 2016 (Week 1) yields a percentage shift of -0.6% for the Democrats, +3.45% for the Republicans, and -2.02% for Other.
Now, this is WAY too early to make any definite projections, since we don’t know what the daily party breakdown of the early voting was in 2016. We still need data from the 6 counties which haven’t reported yet. We also need the data from the rest of the 1st Week of 2018.
Yes precisely. Still early but better than 2012 and 2016.
Dems always vote early, everyone get out and vote
Interesting! The Washoe county results are a bit discouraging, but its one day. Thanks for pinging me.
Just for fun I produced projected data including the 6 missing counties in a simple methodology that I do not claim to be predictive. I did this because I am getting excited as I do not think that I have seen any negative R results so far.
For the base figures I used Ravi’s post #12 in this thread which totaled 60,166 votes. I used the 2016 Trump vs Clinton vote totals (from the 2017 World Almanac) and found that the 6 counties represented 4.4649% of the overall Nevada total. I assumed that the totals would be the same %. I bumped up the total by 4.67365% or 2,812 votes for these 6 counties. I assumed that the independent % will not change. To get the D/R split, I noted that 72,72% went republican for those 6 counties in 2016. I ended up with the following:
D: 26,966 (42.8%) or - 1.4% from 2016
R: 25,048 (39.8%) or + 4.3% from 2016
I: 10,964 (17.4%) or - 2.1% from 2016
Caution: These are fun #’s and are not real.
A question for LS. As NV (although extremely early) seems positive, does that mean we have seen no actual data that does not have R gains? If this continues to be the case then most, if not all of the polls would be worthless, and the results would be beyond anyone’s projection. Without an unforeseen cataclysmic occurrence, I do not believe that it is possible that additional R surge would not translate throughout the final voting.