It’s that time again, time to track daily early vote totals. Let’s get right to it, shall we?
Year Early Mail Total Mailed
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2019 7,973 5,407 13,380 20,148
2015 8,889 14,240 23,129 40,626
2013 5,028 8,560 13,588 28,620
The 2019 Day One file is here, the final 2015 file is here, and the final 2013 file is here.
The most striking thing here is the drop in mail ballots that have been sent out this year compared to the two previous election years. A small percentage of mail ballots have been returned so far as well (26.5% this year, 30.5% in 2015, 29.9% in 2013). Without knowing more about who has and has not been sent mail ballots, I can’t say who this might benefit. Turner had a plurality of the mail votes in 2015, with King in second place, for what that’s worth. Early in person voting is down modestly, but as I would expect overall participation to be down from 2015, which was an open Mayor’s race and had a much hotter ballot proposition to go along with it, that’s not a surprise. Honestly, my opinion now is what it was before – this has been a relative snoozer of an election, with mostly negative campaigning. Doesn’t sound like the making of a big number.
All that said, this may be a year where there’s more turnout at the back end than at the front end. Maybe more people are undecided about more races and are thus taking their time. Maybe the percentage of votes cast early will be slightly lower than it was in 2015. It’s too early to say. This is what we have. We’ll know more every subsequent day.