Democrats See Some Good Signs In Booming Early Vote Numbers
By Cameron Joseph
November 1, 2018 9:52 am
Voters are turning out in record numbers in states with early vote options across the nation — and Democrats are excited about a lot of what they’re seeing.
Turnout is way up across the map, with both Democrats and Republicans far exceeding their early vote numbers in nearly every state with a competitive statewide race on the ballot this year. Eighteen states and counting have already surpassed their total early vote counts from four years ago.
“We’re seeing high levels of Democratic engagement. And if you add that with Republicans continuing at their 2014 levels that gets you a very high turnout rate,” said University of Florida Professor Michael McDonald, an early vote expert. “What we’re seeing so far with the early vote is a hybrid midterm-presidential election [model]. We’ve never seen anything like this.”
McDonald said that just four years after one of the lowest-turnout midterm elections in U.S. history, there’s a real chance that this turns into the highest-turnout midterm since 1966 if current trends hold. If turnout breaks a bit above 50 percent, it would be the highest since 1914.
And while analysts of all stripes are cautious about overstating what these numbers mean after many predicted big things for Hillary Clinton based on the early vote two years ago and the news isn’t uniformly good for either side, most see some promising signs for Democrats in some key races.
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