Here are the latest figures out of Florida, along with some context, and a trend. And by the way, the new Orange County numbers are going to knock your socks off.
Democrats in Florida stomped the snot out of The Idiot Brigade yesterday in early voting. I would bet my lucky stars we did the same thing today.
Here are the latest numbers:
Cumulative Early Vote (in person):
Dems 928,205 (45.80%)
Reps 740,674 (36.55%)
Inds 357,750 (17.65%)
TOTAL 2,026,629
Here are the new additions since the last daily report:
Dems +157,313
Reps +125,686
Inds +70,762
We really kicked some major Republican booty yesterday in early voting. Srsly.
Here are the cumulative absentee (mail-in) numbers:
Dems 737,620 (39.07%)
Reps 821,394 (43.51%)
Inds 328,736 (17.41%)
TOTAL 1,887,750
Here are the new additions since the last report:
Dems +36,650
Reps +40,351
Inds +20,090
We pretty much held our own in absentee/mail-in ballots and crushed the Republicans among early votes. We netted about 28,000 since the previous report. In the previous report, we only netted about 16,000, so this is a big jump.
Total votes, including in-person and mail-in ballots:
Dems 1,665,825 (42.56%)
Reps 1,562,068 (39.91%)
Inds 686,486 (17.54%)
TOTAL 3,914,379
Even with the compressed timetable for early voting, turnout has been very high. In 2008, nearly 4.6 million votes were recorded before election day. Now, the voting population is higher in Florida now than it was in 2008, so proportionally, to keep pace with 2008, around 5 million or so voters should have cast ballots before election day. However, we will likely hit 4.5 million as of the end of today and that's perfectly respectable.
I mean, look, given the shit sandwich we were forced to eat by the dumb cluck Rick Scott, we are exceeding expectations in my view. Many people don't have 3 or 4 hours to spare just to wait in line and vote. Which is why I believe that we'll be okay on Tuesday because nearly half of likely voters will have already voted and there will be so many more voting locations on election day, with much smaller lines.
Additionally, it seems as though the Obama campaign geared its strategy toward getting sporadic and first-time voters out during the early voting period. This article, which has been diaried, elucidates this fact: http://www.tampabay.com/...
Now, let's provide some context from 2008 and also 2004:
In 2008, at the end of the early voting period in Florida, we led by roughly 250,000 ballots (D vs. R). We ended up winning the state by about 240,000 total votes.
In 2004, at the end of the early voting period in Florida, about 2,758,000 votes had been cast and Democratic ballots cast trailed Republican ones by about 76,000.
Currently, we lead Republicans overall by 103,757 ballots cast. My prediction is that we will best Republicans by an additional 40,000 ballots cast in today's voting, which would give us about a 144,000 ballot lead going into election day. This is significantly better than 2004, although not as good as 2008. Will it be enough to win?
My prediction is that we will win Florida by 10,000 votes or less. It may even take provisionals to put us over the top but I think we will win Florida.
Now, please allow me to debunk that stupid, useless Mason Dixon poll which shows Romney up by six points. The poll shows us winning Southeast Floriday by 14 points. Mason Dixon uses the term "Southeast," which means Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami Dade counties. In 2008, Obama won these combined counties by 27 percentage points. Now I realize he will not reach those stratospheric heights this time around, but there's no way in hell Romney is cutting his advantage in half with these counties in just four years. No way in hell.
Look, he's going to win Broward County by at least 30 points (2008 margin was 67-32). He's going to win Palm Beach County by 20 points (2008 margin was 61-38). And he's going to win Miami Dade by at least 12 points (2008 margin was 58-42). That means he's going to win Southeast Florida by 20 points, once you calculate the vote totals for each county proportionally. And who knows, maybe Obama will even surprise us and outstrip his 2008 performance in one, or more, of these counties. And with Obama doing this well in Southeast Florida, he can win Florida.
One more thing I want to mention: Obama is going to carry Hillsborough County. It's a simple case of demographics. From 2000 to 2010, the African American population in Hillsborough County grew by 33%. In the same time frame, the Hispanic population there grew by 71%. And the Asian population grew by 91%, although Asian Americans only comprise 3-4% of Hillsborough County. African Americans comprise 16% of Hillsborough County and Hispanics comprise 25%. Non-Hispanic caucasians account for just 54% of Hillsborough County as of 2010 and the percentage of Non-Hispanic caucasians rose only 4% from 2000 to 2010. The overall population grew by 23% in Hillsborough County between 2000 and 2010, so it's pretty clear which groups are driving this huge jump in population.
Now let's look at the voter registration numbers among different groups in Hillsborough County.
In 2008, here was the breakdown, by race:
White, non-Hispanic 462,417 (65.92%)
Black, non-Hispanic 105,718 (15.07%)
Hispanic 82,455 (11.75%)
Asian/Other 20,975 (2.99%)
Unknown 29,899 (4.26%)
TOTAL 701,464
As of Nov. 2012, here is the breakdown, by race:
White, non-Hispanic 471,993 (63.16%)
Black, non-Hispanic 116,471 (15.58%)
Hispanic 104,880 (14.03%)
Asian/Other 28,690 (3.84%)
Unknown 25,553 (3.42%)
TOTAL 747,587
Non-Hispanic whites have accounted for only 9,576 of the net gain of 46,123 registered voters in the past four years. That is really something. And there's something very important to consider here: Hillsborough County has a large Puerto Rican-American community and a relatively small Cuban-American community. The vast majority of Hispanic-American voters in Hillsborough County are going to vote for Obama.
So why am I spending so much time on Hillsborough County? Well, according to an article that I read (which I can't find now), Hillsborough County has correctly predicted the President of the United States in every election since 1960. Hillsborough County is also considered a bellwether for the state as a whole. Bush won Hillsborough County twice (narrowly) and Obama won it by about 8 percentage points in 2008. I believe that Obama is going to win Hillsborough County (Tampa) and that it will put him over the top in Florida.
Update
There are new up to the minute Orange County (Orlando) numbers to report.
Yesterday, there were 19,664 early voters in Orange County with heavy turnout, but today there were even more - 20,677!
Until today, the average advantage we had over Republicans on a daily basis in Orange County was 3,622 over the first 7 days of early voting.
But look at today's numbers!
Dems 11,331
Reps 4.397
Inds 4,949
The margin in today's early voting was 6,934! Here is a link to the site: http://www.ocfelections.com/...
I got the numbers by comparing the pdf file from the previous day to the current numbers. This is absolutely huge.
Here are the cumulative early voting numbers for Orange County, including today's statistics:
Dems 66,195 (52.27%)
Reps 33,907 (26.78%)
Inds 26,533 (20.95%)
TOTAL 126,635
This represents a jump of about half a percentage point for Democratic ballots cast in early voting from the previous report and a decrease of more than one percentage point for Republican ballots cast from the previous report. Indies went up about two thirds of a percentage point. This doesn't sound like much, but it's a nice shift for the last day of early voting. The point is, there is a clear uptick in the margin. I'm just hoping this extends to the entire state as a whole once all the ballots are in. Btw, these afore-mentioned figures do not include mail-in ballots as far as I can tell.
In Orange County as a whole, here are the proportions of registered voters as of now:
Dems 42.83%
Reps 29.53%
Inds 27.63%