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More on the Myth of Early Voting

Josh posted this morning on the subject of early voting in California, and though I discussed it here yesterday, it’s probably worth tackling the subject at full length.

The conventional wisdom is that early voting may have given Hillary an insurmountable lead. Let’s get the big news out of the way up-front: there’s no good reason to believe that those who vote absentee in California will break much differently than the electorate at large. And if they do, it’s unlikely to hurt Obama.

There are, to the best of my knowledge, just three polls in the last month that have looked closely at this issue. Unsurprisingly, they were all sponsored by in-state organizations that are familiar with the vagaries of California voting. Two were done for the LA Times/CNN/Politico consortium, and one by the highly-respected, nonpartisan Field Poll. We’ll take them one at a time.

First, the Field Poll. In polling done between January 25 and February 1, it found Hillary leading 36-34% over Obama. There was, in fact, some variation by method of voting, but it wasn’t what the pundits expected: “Precinct voters narrowly favor Clinton 40% to 36%, while those who already have or intend to vote by mail are evenly divided (Obama 32% vs. Clinton 31%).” Those are, however, modest effects. In every sample, the electorate appears fairly evenly divided.

The LA Times consortium conducted two polls. The first, from January 11-13, found Clinton leading 47-31 among likely voters, 49-30 among early voters, and 48-32 among election day voters. The differences among those results are not statistically significant. The second, taken from Jan 23-27, had Clinton’s advantage virtually unchanged at 49-32%. But it found evidence of a big split: early voters backed her 53-30, but her lead among precinct voters was down to just eight points. In their write-up, the pollsters theorized that this was an artifact of Obama’s late surge – that precinct voters were backing him in larger numbers, but early voters had cast their ballots when Hillary still had a substantial lead, and so couldn’t change their minds.

As best I can tell, it’s on this second poll that pundits who predict a big early-voting advantage for Hillary are hanging their hats. But here are three reasons they’re likely wrong:

(1) It’s just one poll: There were three polls taken in January, and this is the only one to show such a split. The sub-sample sizes for these questions allow for a very large margin of error.

(2) Early voters hadn’t actually voted yet: The pollsters asked whether voters had or intended to vote by mail – they didn’t break those two categories apart. In California, the ballots have to arrive at the county election offices by mail, or be hand-delivered to the local precinct, before the end of voting on Tuesday. The Field Poll (Jan 25-Feb-1) found that scarcely six percent of Democratic voters had cast their ballots when they called them, even though 30-40% of the votes are likely to be absentee or vote-by-mail. I’d encourage the LA Times pollsters to visit a post office on April 15 – it might permanently disabuse them of the notion that Americans ever mail things in before the deadline.

(3) It’s all about the demographics: In the unlikely event that the LA Times is actually documenting a real effect, it probably has much more to do with the demographics of early voters than it does with their being “locked in” to their choices. A Field Poll this spring found that those who vote by mail (VBM) are older, whiter, more female, more partisan, and more Republican than the general electorate. By contrast, Hispanics, young voters, the LA and San Diego areas, men, and independents are all overrepresented at the precinct level. So if Obama is surging among independents, Hispanics, and young voters, but Hillary is holding on to her share of voters over the age of 65 (30% of VBM, 34% of Democratic VBM) and women (56%/58%), you’d expect to see a bit of a split. But here’s the crucial point – it’s not because these voters mailed their ballots too soon, it’s because different kinds of people vote different ways.

We actually have a precedent on early voting this cycle. In Florida, we heard much the same blather before the Democratic election there. When all was said in done, exit polls showed that early voters had backed Hillary 50-31, and precinct voters went for her 50-33. Those results are well within the margin of error, meaning there was no statistically significant difference. What a shock!