There’s a great website out there called “Joe Is Done” and it’s tracking Florida early voting with updates something like every 20 minutes. As of right now, about 7pm eastern time, Democrats have a lead of about 203,000 early votes over Republicans.
This might sound like bad news, but it’s actually great news: because Republicans are going to clean up on election day, whereas Democrats, due to their misplaced fears of 😨THE VIRUS 😨, are overwhelmingly voting by mail this year.
The site says that Biden needs around an 8% lead in the early votes by election day in order to have a shot of winning Florida overall. Biden’s advantage right now? 1.3%.
Here’s the most recent numbers:
As for the acronyms: IPEV = In-person early voting. VBM = Vote by mail. EV = early vote.
It’s estimated that Biden will need about a 650k total early vote lead on election day, and he’s only at 204k right now.
CNBC’s Jake Novak, a former Larry Kudlow staffer, put out a video on Monday basically saying Florida is in the bag for Trump, and that the Biden people will know this for certain by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest:
On Monday, Biden’s total early vote advantage was over 300k. Now it’s just over 200k. So it’s actually swinging hard towards Trump.
7,313,707 people in Florida have already voted, which according to the site is 77.6% of the 2016 total turnout. That number was about 9.1 million. This means that if turnout in 2020 is identical to 2016, there’s a little under 1.8 million votes still left to be cast in Florida.
According to the Florida Department of State’s webpage on early voting, “The early voting period must start at least on the 10th day before the election and end on the 3rd day before the election. In addition, supervisors of elections have the option to offer more early voting on the 15th, 14th, 13th, 12th, 11th, or 2nd day before an election.”
Meaning the early voting period ends, I believe, on the 31st, or in some counties the 1st of November. There’s still three more days of early voting left after today, but things look very good for Trump. He’s way ahead of where he needs to be going into election day.
This whole election was always going to hinge on whether Republicans could remain within striking distance throughout the early voting period so that their superior turnout on election day could more than make up the difference.
It just doesn’t look like Democrats have the early vote enthusiasm they were banking on–at least in Florida. And, as Ace of Spades points out, also in North Carolina as well.
None of this should be a surprise. Democrats hate Trump, but they are not excited about Joe Biden. He does not generate enthusiasm. Hating Trump might be enough to motive hardcore liberals to vote, but it’s not going to get the less politically-engaged people out to the polls. It’s just not going to cut it.
Finally, things are even looking good for Trump in Nevada, where Las Vegas-based journalist (and obvious Biden-lover) John Ralston writes:
To meet 2016 metrics at end of early voting, Dems would need 54K statewide and 88K in Clark — they are not on track to get either with three days left.
That NYT poll may show 6-point Biden lead, but I doubt the Dems are sleeping well tonight.
Trump has a great shot in Nevada, too.