The media reports are about record early voting …..
Mostly by Democrats….
The polling is favourable for Democrats….
But?
In the back of some of us is the 2016 Hillary Clinton case where the record early voting was followed by storing Election Day voting that got Donald Trump the win for the state….
There is this….
Charlie Cook: “What I am wondering is if this will be one or the rarest species of national elections—a wave election in a presidential year ending in a zero, meaning it will reverberate for a decade thanks to the coming redistricting. There are not a dozen Republican Senate seats that could fall, as Democrats suffered in 1980, but Joe Biden may well replicate Ronald Reagan’s 10-point victory over President Carter. The odds are it will be a bit less, perhaps in the 53 to 44 percent range, with 3 percent going to independents and write-ins, half of the number from four years ago.”
Or could there be this?
A weak get out the vote effort because of virus worries that Republicans went ahead and did anyways….Democrats have come down to hoping the senior vote can pull things out like the polling seems to say…
Democrats are sounding the alarm about weak voter turnout rates in Florida’s biggest county, Miami-Dade, where a strong Republican showing is endangering Joe Biden’s chances in the nation’s biggest swing state.
No Democrat can win Florida without a huge turnout and big winning margins here to offset losses elsewhere in the state. But Democrats are turning out at lower rates than Republicans and at lower rates than at this point in 2016, when Hillary Clinton won by 29 percentage points here and still lost the state to Donald Trump….
…
Miami-Dade is home to nearly 634,000 registered Democrats, or 41 percent of the county’s total. Republicans comprise 27 percent and independents 32 percent.
As of Thursday morning, 337,000 Democrats had already cast early and absentee ballots in Miami-Dade, nearly 80,000 more than the 253,000 Republicans. Independent voters, namely those with no party affiliation, have cast an additional 219,000. Polls indicate they’re leaning Biden, which Democrats point to as a potential saving grace if Republicans once again cast more votes overall in the election.
While the Miami-Dade numbers look robust at a glance, the turnout rate is too low for Democrats to feel comfortable as Republicans statewide have steadily eaten into the Democrats’ margins in the days after in-person early voting started Oct. 19….
Here’s a more look at the Biden effort which is more hand’s off and safer…
The effort reflects a broader reality for Democrats: Many of the voters who were energized to come to the polls for Barack Obama did not turn out for Hillary Clinton, contributing heavily to her loss. Now the party wants to do all it can to ensure that this year’s election resembles those earlier years more than 2016….
…
While Biden’s team is not holding big rallies because of the pandemic, it is deploying top surrogates such as former president Barack Obama to talk to voters who sat out in 2016, including Black voters and young voters, according to the campaign.
Part of Obama’s message is aimed at voters who supported him in the past but have lost their enthusiasm because the country did not change as much as they had hoped.
“If we don’t get a hundred percent — we just get 50 percent of what we want — then that’s good,” Obama told voters in Florida recently. “And then we keep on going, we vote some more, and then we get more done.”
Obama is set to have his first joint appearance on the campaign trail with Biden on Saturday in Michigan. He has already made stops in Florida and Pennsylvania.
Though the specific effort to turn out 2012 voters is relatively recent for Biden’s team, the campaign has been making an effort since the summer to tailor a message to lower-frequency voters, said Celinda Lake, a pollster for the campaign….
Note…
Remember Donald Trump winning margin in most states was not much…
A record number of votes could change that dynamic come Tuesday….
And Biden is ahead in places that where NOT in contention 4 years ago….
image…WTOV