NY Times: Millions Have Voted Early in the Midterms. Here's What That Means -- and What It Doesn't.
Snip: Right now, Republican-seeming voters have cast more ballots than Democratic-seeming voters, but thats largely because mail-in ballots are sent to voters weeks before Election Day (to give them time to cast a vote and mail it in.) That means when early voting first opens, mail-in ballots are usually the first votes to be counted.
Snip: The ebb and flow of the election cycle generally is and its not true in every single state but it is true in the national aggregate Republicans tend to run up the score early with the absentee vote, Democrats come back strong with a pretty massive surge in in-person early voting, then on Election Day the vote tends to be closer to parity with a slight Republican lead, said Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart, a data analytics firm that has collected early voting figures. Republicans tend to have to play catch up on Election Day.
Age is also a factor, Mr. McDonald said.
As we get closer to Election Day, you see that younger people tend to vote later than older people, he said. So younger people will enter the electorate as we get into next week.
Link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/politics/early-voting-midterms.html#commentsContainer