Summary: African-American turnout in the states CNN looked at is down from 2012. Democrats started out with initial enthusiasm, but that has waned. Still, Democrats as of now are doing well in early voting in key states.
But what will this week and Nov. 8 bring? Cue scary music.
In my state, Texas, early voting is up. Record-breaking numbers showed up for the first week of early voting and about 20% of Texans have cast their ballot already.
I was impressed that this election has more people voting early here than turned out for either Obama election, and those numbers were high, too.
This high number of early voters doesn’t mean that in the end we will have record turnout as a whole, though. Perhaps we will have the same (or fewer) people vote here, and most have just chosen to avoid long lines on Nov 8th. But I think people here feel even more strongly about this election than they did for either Obama election.
I also think it might be a natural reduction in AA voters if they are not representatively high at this time. Certainly many AA voters were excited about and wanted to be heard regarding Obama. But I I think they will mostly show up eventually. Once folks start voting, the tend to continue to do so.
Only in Presidential elections?
So the headlines are that the Black vote is off. But it does not actually seem to be the case.
Here’s a current NYT article about early voting turnout claiming that Black early voter turnout is off. Another from CNN.
The key bits to me: overall early voter numbers are way up. Using FL as the case in point it is up 42%. Black vote *as a share of *early voter turnout is down, a 15% share now from 25% in 2012.
This is being portrayed as Black turnout being down but in fact it does not seem to be the case. What seems to be the case is that White and Hispanic turnout is way up, almost catching up to what Blacks had done as a share of their voting population in 2012.
In 2012 Blacks ended up being about 13% of the electorate. If everyone took advantage of early voting similarly then they’s have been expected to be about 13% of early voters. They were and are more than that. Blacks took advantage of early voting much more than other groups did in 2012. They are taking advantage of it about as much as they did before and now more Whites and Hispanics are as well … of course then the Black share of early voting goes down closer to their overall participation numbers.
So Black voters seem to not be off at all but instead seem to be doing what they did before, a fairly large number voting early. The change is that a larger number of Whites are voting early as well and that a much larger number of Hispanics are voting early. What I’m most hopeful for is that this is not just a larger fraction of the same Hispanic voters voting early but a larger share of Hispanics voting at all.
This actually seems like a plausible explanation – well done.
I think African Americans are less enthused about Clinton but they’re madder than hell about the republican party in general which is just barely hiding its desire to return to the good ole days of Dixie – they’ll show up, even if they’re turned away illegally by southern voting officials.
This look at the early vote in Nevada is very reassuring to me – in short, the early vote points to a very similar result to 2012, when Obama won NV by 7. It’s also several points higher than Hillary’s polling average in NV, likely due to underpolling Hispanics. If this holds up elsewhere, she’ll win rather easily.
Meanwhile the perceived narrative that Black voter turnout is down as per early voting is well used in service of the GOTV effort.
I’ll bet on Black voter turnout as being about even with 2012’s 63%.
Gotta wonder how many people of every minority stripe are voting early mostly to assure that they can vote* at all*. What with all the voter suppression shenanigans going on, that seems a perfectly reasonable precaution. Witness this red-blooded American…
Hmmm. Cheapening and degrading the vote by making it too easy. Sounds vaguely familiar.
As I have mentioned to you before, I think this meme is over played if not plain wrong. Looking at info from the folks at Elections Project, using Census data,
Drop off for mid-terms:
Years White turnout drop Black turnout drop
88,90 14.8% 13.8%
92,94 17.4 17.4
96,98 13.9 12.1
00,02 14.9 15.2
04,06 19.6 14.8
08,10 20.2 27.5
12,14 21.0 31.0
So outside the last two presidentials/midterms (where black turnout surpassed white for the first time ever afaik in the presidential), the drop off in voting seems pretty similar between the two demos.
TargetSmart, in Florida. You can access a list of voters in Florida who have already voted early. So, they did. They called people who voted, asked their political registration, and asked how they voted. 28% of Republican voters said they voted for HRC.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1...In-Perspective
(There are any number of references to the poll, I just picked the Daily Kos one to encourage and promote the spread of liberal cooties. You’re welcome!)
First heard about this a few days ago, and gaped and otherwise flabbergasted. Figured I’d hold off until at least the next day, figuring that if it was an obvious ruse, it would be, like the soldier awakened at reveille, debunked. (You like that one? Got it from Vinyl Turnip, he gets the credit!)
But no, not so far. And its a very unusual situation, this reliable a method for scrutinizing votes already cast is rare. Remember the NeverTrump movement in the Republican Party?
I, for one, just assumed they would express their dismay simply by not voting. But consider: if, say, ten percent of Republican voters still retain some sanity, and they vote…well, I think you can readily see the implications.
Note: that’s a straight subtraction of turnout percentages. So a 60% turnout followed by a 50% turnout would be a 10% drop.
Early vote numbers in Nevada continuing to look very strong for Hillary. Nevada expert Ralston says “If Clinton holds her base here (data I have seen shows she is, and minority turnout is going up) and turnout patterns don’t dramatically shift in the last two days of early voting, she can’t lose Nevada. Solid lean Clinton right now.”
Given how many white women and college educated white men votes Trump has cost his party, that 28% of Republicans voting for Hillary should probably be a little less shocking than it is being played as.
That’s what I’m hearing from many of my friends (a variety of POC).
Well, just as I said, I more or less assumed (for no good reason, apparently) that such people simply wouldn’t vote. Even so, voting against one’s party is quite a bit more, it seems to me, than “sitting out this dance”. If that figure is even somewhat correct and indicative, what does it suggest about Republicans who simply aren’t voting, period? What is the cost there?
Yeah, in my “Why the Democrats lost” thread after 2014 I noted that black turnout was surprisingly robust.
It would seem that the issue isn’t that minority voters don’t turn out, so much as Democrats don’t turn out.
I don’t know. Turning out for Hillary in the same numbers they turned out for the first African-American President of the United States would be an amazing accomplishment indeed.
Black voter turnout had been in a linear rise before Obama. Now trying to find those numbers I am realizing that Silver’s turnout number is in fact a blend between exit polls and census data for the percent, so his 63% for 2012 differs from the 67% that the Cook Report cites here, but it is still apples to apples: 1996 53%; 2000 57%; 2004 60%; 2008 65%; 2012 67%. If one looked at that graph without former knowledge that Obama was the first Black president one would not assume that 2008 and 20012 represented anything other than a continuation of the trend that had been.
Clinton did get even bigger shares of the Black primary vote this time round than Obama got in 2004.
Trump is as offensive to Black voters as Obama was inspirational.
A large part of voting is the social infrastructure that supports it. That, inclusive but by no means exclusively, of the GOTV machine is now in place.
Hmm, the numbers on my chart are noticeably different in that they show black turnout beating white turnout in both '08 & '12. It still shows a steady rise though through the shorter time period the Cook Report covered. I gave the raw numbers page but they graph it here:
http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics