The Early Vote In Nevada Suggests Clinton Might Beat Her Polls There
Nevada is fairly unusual among states that allow early voting because it releases data on the party registration of early voters. Most people in the state vote early, and it hasn’t changed its early voting rules, giving us the 2012 election as a baseline. That means we can know if one party is voting in large numbers while at the same time understanding whether that large lead is going to hold through Election Day. Of course, it’s always possible that the early vote can mislead, so some caution is warranted.
Still, many more Democrats than Republicans have voted in early balloting. Through early Tuesday, 43 percent of early and absentee votes have been cast by registered Democrats and just 37 percent have been cast by registered Republicans. Democrats have a lead in the number of raw votes of greater than 30,000 out of more than 500,000 votes cast, which is about 50 percent of all votes cast in the 2012 presidential election.
Indeed, the pattern in early voting looks pretty much the same as in 20121. After one week of early voting in 2012, Democrats made up 45 percent of early voters and Republicans made up 37 percent. Those numbers held through the second week of early voting and into the general election. Democrats had a 7-point edge after early voting that year and a 6-point edge after all the votes were counted. The fact that the registration numbers didn’t change very much after early voting shouldn’t be surprising, because absentee and early voters made up about 70 percent of all ballots cast.
The similarity to 2012 in the early numbers in Nevada is good news for Clinton. Obama won the state by 7 points (or about the Democratic edge in the registration of those who voted). Some polls have given Clinton the same-size lead in the past month, but the current FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecast puts her advantage at between 1 and 2 percentage points in Nevada. If Trump were to lose Nevada, the polls-only model gives him just a 9 percent chance of winning the election. It’s a near must-win for him, as most swing states are.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-early-vote-in-nevada-suggests-clinton-might-beat-her-polls-there/
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