Week 44: "Early Voting" (October 23, 2016)

Dear Readers,

The election is approaching very rapidly. I’m going to help you make sense of everything.

Days until General Election: 16

The Third Presidential Debate

The third debate was remarkably uneventful. The three main takeaways were all in things that Donald Trump sais. First, he referred to illegal immigrants as “bad hombres.” (Watch Jeffrey Lord try to defend them here, I promise you it's worth it). Then, he called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman.”  But lastly, and most importantly, when asked if he would accept the results of the election, Trump said “I’ll keep you in suspense.” Now, I’m not going to get into a whole debate about whether this is okay (Jeff Lord’s response was to cite Al Gore, laughably). Point is, we are a democracy. In a democracy, the losers go home and don’t complain. If Trump threatens that, then we can no longer be a democracy, plain and simple.

Early Voting Overview

According to some statistics, 30% of votes in the election will be cast through early voting, whether it is done by mail or through in-person early voting. Many states’ early voting has begun, at least in some capacity, and we have some data from those - 5 million votes have been cast already. I’ll go through that, and compare it to 2012 numbers when I can:

Nevada: In-person voting started yesterday. Turnout in Clark County (home of Las Vegas) is up considerably over 2012, as well as turnour in Washoe County (home of Reno). Those numbers, showing high turnout in urban areas, appear to be good for the Democrats.

Florida: Hispanic turnout is up from 9% in 2012 to 12%, a good sign for Clinton,

North Carolina: Votes by Democrats are decently up, and votes by Republicans are considerably down. This is good news for the Democrats.

Ohio: There are mixed messages from ballot requests there. Some numbers in big Democratic counties are up, but others are down.

Wisconsin: The counties containing Madison and Milwaukee make up 29% of ballots so far. They made up just 26% in 2012. Meanwhile, the heavily GOP Milwaukee suburbs make up 12.3%, the same as in 2012.

Virginia: Turnout is up substantially in heavily Democratic Northern Virginia and even in other places.

Weekly Predictions:

Electoral Votes: Clinton 352, Trump 186

Popular Vote: Clinton +8

Senate: Democrats 51, Republicans 49

This Week In World Elections

Montenegro: The Democratic Party of Socialists coasted to a victory here. They gained 5 seats to increase their margin over the Democratic Front to 18 seats. Milo Đukanović should continue to be Prime Minister

Thanks for reading! As usual, comments are welcome!