Early voting offers clues, not answers to outcome
As early voting breaks records across the U.S., political analysts and campaigns are reviewing reams of data on the voters, looking for clues to key questions: Who is voting? And who is winning?
On one level, the answers can be simple. Registered Democrats are outpacing registered Republicans significantly – by 14 percentage points – in states that are reporting voters’ party affiliation, according to an Associated Press analysis of the early vote.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Many Americans’ choices don’t align with their party registration. Meanwhile, large numbers of Republicans intend to vote on Election Day.
Here’s a closer look at what we know about early voters:
Early voting spikes
As of Friday afternoon, 86.8 million people had voted in the presidential election. That’s 63% of the total who cast ballots in the 2016 race.
In one state, Texas, more votes have already been cast than in all of 2016.
New voters are showing up
More than 1 out of 4 of all ballots were cast either by new or infrequent voters, according to AP’s analysis. Those are voters who have never voted before or voted in fewer than half of the elections in which they were eligible. It sounds like a big number, but it’s not too much greater than past years.
A rise in that number appears to be good news for Democrats. Forty-three percent of the infrequent and new voters are registered Democrats, compared to a quarter who are Republicans.
Black voters holding steady
Biden’s fate may be tied to strong turnout among Black voters in the battleground states. So far, about 9% of the early vote has been cast by African Americans, about on par with the 10% of the electorate Black voters made up in 2016, according to a Pew Research estimate of voters in that election.