This year, the Monday of early voting was in Week One. In 2018 and 2020, it was in Week Two. Maybe we could do this at a time that doesn’t include Presidents Day? Just a thought. In any event, in all cases we have now had seven days of voting, and from here on out the days will line up. Let’s review where we are – remember, there was no voting yesterday, but each year’s totals below reflect seven voting days. Here are your Day Seven early voting totals. The table for comparison:
Election Mail Early Total
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2018 D 11,208 30,714 41,922
2018 R 13,812 27,497 41,309
2020 D 16,651 44,349 61,000
2020 R 18,669 39,216 57,885
2022 D 8,126 31,348 39,474
2022 R 6,115 38,383 44,498
As a reminder, 2018 final totals are here, and 2020 final totals are here.
Dems are a little behind their 2018 pace so far, while Republicans are ahead of theirs. The Republican advantage has mostly been powered by in person voting – they are way ahead of their 2018 pace for in person voting, while having less than half as many mail ballots returned as before. Dems are slightly ahead on their in person pace but behind on mail ballots, for reasons we all know at this point. Saturday was a lighter voting day than I would have thought, though it was slightly ahead of the Dem daily average and below that for the Republicans. Both parties had near identical in person totals for each day over the weekend. Maybe this is where Dems start to catch up, or maybe Republicans just prefer voting during the week. Maybe we see more mail ballots get returned, as hopefully the many problems that have been experienced get fixed. We’ll know soon enough. Have you voted yet?