I Voted in the 2016 American election

By editor • Oct 16, 2016

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

It's a little over three weeks until Election Day, but people across the country are already voting. We'd like to know more about how this is working, so we called Michael McDonald associate professor of political science at the University of Florida. He runs the United States Election Project which tracks information about elections and early voting. And he's with us now from Gainesville, Fla. Professor McDonald, thanks so much for being with us.

MICHAEL MCDONALD: Wonderful to be with you.

MARTIN: Can you give us a way to measure how widespread early voting is and how this compares to past election years?

MCDONALD: Well, I start with that last question first. In 2008, roughly 30 percent of the votes were cast prior to the election. In 2012, it was 32 percent. A couple more states have come online. We have about 13 holdout states that don't offer any form of early voting yet, but just looking at the fact that a few more states have come online and popularity of early voting tends to increase, even if a state doesn't change its law, I would project about 34 percent of the votes will be cast prior to Election Day in 2016. That number may change a little bit on the estimate, but I think that's where we start from.

MARTIN: That's about a third. That's pretty big.

MCDONALD: Yes, and in some states, it will be much more than that, and some of the key battleground states like Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada - you could see 50 percent, even two-thirds or more of the votes cast prior to Election Day.

MARTIN: You say that the percentage of the electorate that seems to be voting early or seems to be edging up - you said you think it might be around - what? - 34 percent? Is that because early voting is more popular? Anything we can glean from that?

MCDONALD: What's very interesting about this election is that we're seeing uneven activity in voting across the country. So in the South, in places like Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, for example, we can see interest is up over 2012, in terms of early voting activity. But then you look at the Midwest, and it's exactly the opposite. It's the Democrats who have lowered interests, so we can see in Iowa, the early voting numbers among registered Democrats are much lower than they were in 2012. And in Ohio, we can see places like Cuyahoga where Cleveland is and Franklin where Columbus is. We can see much lower levels of early voting activity than in 2012, and if we take a big step back, and we sort of take a look at the big picture, we'll see increased voting across the board, not only early, but also on Election Day in the Southern states. But yet, in the Midwest, we may see early voting levels lower and then overall turnout levels lower as well.

MARTIN: Have there been any events so far that seem to have had an effect on requests for absentee ballots?

MCDONALD: We do have data out of North Carolina and Georgia where we know the absentee ballot requests by gender, and looking at the gender on - by date, I can see that following that first debate, the number of women that were requesting absentee ballots increased significantly and their share of the - all of the early ballots went up about 4 percentage points.

MARTIN: One of the major party candidates has raised questions about the integrity of the voting process overall and has suggested that, you know, the outcome is somehow sort of predetermined. Does the prevalence of early voting - does that influence people's confidence in the outcome at all in your opinion based on your research over time?

MCDONALD: So it would be extremely difficult for a party to manipulate the election outcomes for a presidential election because we run our elections at the local level, so there would have to be some sort of conspiracy that stretches across multiple counties in some of the key battleground states, and you'd have to have in many cases Republican-elected officials because in many places we have partisan-elected officials who run our elections in this country. You'd have to have Republicans who are complicit in this rigging of the election, but, of course, there are instances of fraud that happen.

But by and large, these are things that happen predominantly at the local level and when they do happen, they actually - they happen in the mail balloting. But, again, you have to recall that you have a lot of Republicans who are engaged in this, too. So they would have to be the - another group that's complicit in this rigging.

MARTIN: Michael McDonald is associate professor of political science at the University of Florida. He runs the United States Election Project. We reached him in Gainesville. Professor McDonald, thanks so much for speaking with us.

MCDONALD: You're welcome.

MARTIN: Just a reminder. The final presidential debate is Wednesday night at 9 p.m. Eastern time. There will be live coverage on many NPR stations, and we'll be fact-checking the presidential debate online at npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

And in Ohio, we can see places like Cuyahoga where Cleveland is and Franklin where Columbus is. We can see much lower levels of early voting activity than in 2012,

Washington (CNN) — Democrats have nearly erased the disadvantage they previously faced in Florida and have improved upon 2012's numbers in Nevada as millions of Americans vote early.

Democrats have also improved their position in Colorado and Arizona compared to this point in 2012, according to a CNN analysis of the latest early voting numbers.

Republicans, meanwhile, appear to be in a slightly better position in Iowa and North Carolina -- where the electorate includes more whites at this stage than it did at the same point in 2012.

These findings represent absentee ballots and early votes cast by more than 12.6 million Americans across 37 states where data are available. CNN has partnered with Catalist, a data company that works with progressive candidates and groups, to receive detailed early vote return information this year. Catalist's voter list connects returned ballots with demographic and registration information, such as party registration, gender and age, and allows a closer look at who has already cast a vote.

These are not results -- ballots aren't tallied until Election Day. But the findings provide clues on who is voting, and which party is turning out to vote. And while the numbers track voters' party affiliations, not all Democrats are voting for Clinton, and not all Republicans are supporting Donald Trump.

Here's a look at the early voting data from several battleground states:

Arizona
Registered Republicans are leading in returned ballots by about 11,500 -- a 1.7 percentage-point-edge over Democrats out of 682,000 votes cast so far. But that's well off the 8.5-point advantage the GOP had at this stage of the 2012 race.

Two-thirds of Arizona voters cast their ballots before Election Day in 2012 -- making these early voting numbers crucial to watch for Clinton and Trump.

Colorado
The election is fully underway in Colorado, which conducts its elections almost entirely by mail. So far, 422,677 Coloradans have voted, and things are looking good for Clinton.

Democrats are ahead of Republicans in terms of returning ballots, and their lead is growing. Their advantage doubled this week, from about 10,000 to almost 24,000. And that's not the only bad news for Republicans: At this point four years ago, the GOP actually had a lead of more than 6,000.

Florida
The Republican advantage in Florida may be slipping away as Democrats turn out to vote early.

Now that in-person early voting is underway, the GOP advantage has been slashed by about two-thirds. They were up by about 18,000 votes earlier this week, but now they lead by only about 6,000 -- or 0.3 percentage points. While they are still leading, they are far behind the advantage of 6.8 points -- almost 73,000 votes -- that they had at this point in 2008.

In more possible good news for Clinton, there are signs that Hispanic turnout has swelled in the Sunshine State. So far this year, about 13% of early voters are Hispanic, up from about 8% at this point in 2008.

We don't have comparable data from Florida for 2012, which was a closer race than in 2008.

In each of the two previous presidential races, more than half of Florida's electorate voted early. The early vote share was 56% in 2012, and that number is expected to continue climbing in 2016.

Georgia
Almost 827,000 votes have already been cast in Georgia, a 39% increase from this point in 2012 -- when half the state voted early.

The Peach State doesn't register voters by party, so it's impossible to know whether more Democrats or Republicans have voted.

But if Clinton is going to pull off the upset here, she'll need strong turnout from African Americans -- and there are signs that their share of the vote has dropped a bit from where it was at this point in 2012. Black voters made up 34% of Georgia's early voting population at this stage of the 2012 race, compared to 30% this year.

Iowa
Iowa, where 43% of the vote came early in 2012, continues to be Trump's strongest state in terms of early voting.

Registered Democrats still have an advantage over Republicans, to the tune of about 40,000 votes, or 12.6 percentage points out of nearly 340,000 ballots cast.

But at this point in 2012, Democrats led by more than 55,000 votes, or 14.9 points. They'll need to close that gap if they want to hold onto the state that Barack Obama carried twice.

Overall turnout is down for both Democrats and Republicans this year in Iowa. At this point in 2012, nearly 419,000 ballots had been cast.

Nevada
Democrats have benefited greatly from early voting in Nevada, which began last weekend. They now lead Republicans by almost 23,000 votes, or 11.3 percentage points -- which is slightly ahead of their 2012 edge of 10 points at this stage.

Republicans had small leads earlier this month, when voters were casting absentee ballots.

But in-person turnout has been strong in Democratic-heavy Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.

Nevada is a crucial early voting state. In 2012, 69% of the state's electorate cast their ballots before Election Day.

North Carolina
Democrats have built a large lead ahead of Republicans in North Carolina, and their lead has grown in recent days are voters hit the polls early. Right now, they lead the GOP by about 149,000 votes, or 18.4 percentage points of the state's nearly 812,000 votes cast.

However, for the first time since in-person early voting started last week, Democrats are behind their 2012 pace. At this point four years ago, they led Republicans by 167,401, or 20.5 points, in the early vote. And even with that advantage, it wasn't enough for Obama to win the Tar Heel State against Mitt Romney.

North Carolina reduced its early voting window, but the total ballots cast so far are largely on track with 2012 -- when 61% of the vote was cast early.

If Clinton wants to flip North Carolina blue this year, she'll need strong turnout from African-Americans. At this point in 2012, black voters were 30% of the electorate. They're only about 24% today. Meanwhile, the share of white voters has climbed from 64% at this point in 2012 to 72% now.

Ohio
Almost 680,000 people have already voted in the battleground state of Ohio.

That's about 18% down from the turnout levels in 2012. After the last presidential election, Ohio's Republican-controlled legislature slashed back the number of early voting days. There are some signs that the drop-off has been heavier in Democratic-leaning counties, bad news for Clinton.

CNN's David Heath contributed to this report.

over 13 million people have already voted across the country

I just heard 17 million this afternoon on MSNBC

Quote:

I just heard 17 million this afternoon on MSNBC

That's a wonderful thing to hear. Americans all across the country are performing their civic duty. I hope we have record breaking numbers across the country.