Could everything change this weekend?

We will have another tracker on Saturday, but the big thing to watch for will be the Tuesday AM report, where we will see our first chunk of large-scale in-person voting from the weekend.

The early returns have continued to see Democrats overperforming their registration at 53% of returns, with Republicans not exceeding their share of the electorate at 24% of ballots cast. While this seems contrary to everything we’ve been reading about high Republican enthusiasm, we also know from 2020 that the Republican voting pattens have changed.

During the last presidential election the conservative electorate became polarized about methods of voting. Party leadership and talking heads promoted voter fraud conspiracies, taking particular aim at Vote By Mail. This pushed many of their voters to want to vote at the polls.

It is an open question if we will see that again this election cycle. Either the pundits and pollsters were wrong, and there isn’t a partisan enthusiasm gap, or they were right and we should expect to see a spike in their turnout once in-person options become more widely available.

This weekend will be their first large scale chance as voting centers open at the 11-day out period. More will open three-days out, and then we will see more full-scale in-person voting opportunities throughout the state on Tuesday the 14th.

Even though these will be in-person votes, we expect to receive the same reports from counties and hope to be able to bring you detailed information on those votes as they get cast.

Get today’s PDF here: https://www.dropbox.com/t/LuJJDViQ0byTYH1v

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Paul Mitchell
Vice-President
Political Data