By Kate Phillips
Published: 10-30-08
With millions of people taking advantage of early voting in states across the country election experts have been examining the data available and discussing the impact on next Tuesday’s exit poll results and ultimately the election itself.
Some analysts are projecting that early voting will amount to more than 30 percent of the total turnout this election. And more than 30 states now have some form of early voting with much of it continuing through this week and long lines reported in many of them.
The enthusiasm level offers a sign that overall turnout may be at record-breaking numbers according to both campaigns and many analysts.
Indeed Bill McInturff the McCain campaign’s pollster in a memo published today told the campaign staff: “I now believe turnout will begin to approach levels not seen since other comparable presidential campaigns in 1960 and 1968. In today’s terms that could mean breaking the barrier of 130 million voters! There is simply no model that begins to know or predict the composition of the electorate at this level of turnout.”
So as the nation braces for what many expect to be astounding lines of voters on Tuesday analysts and politics junkies have been wondering how the early-voting patterns and demographics will be reflected in the Election Day exit polls and how the electoral map is changing.
Experts have been cautioning against drawing any hard conclusions from this increasingly popular phenomenon given the quixotic nature of this election and the fact that the early voting reports only indicate in many states how many Democrats or Republicans have voted not who they voted for.
Getting Ready for the Big Night
Joe Lenski the executive vice president of Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International which conducts the exit polls for a consortium of news organizations said the group has already expanded its plans for telephone surveys of early voters to 18 this year from a dozen states in 2004. The states are selected based on their competitiveness in the election and on their high rates of voters who cast ballots before Election Day.
Pre-election surveys of early voters have long been conducted by exit polling operations and the results weighted and adjusted on election night as the live results come in and totals are known. He said the group also conducts a national survey of early voters.
Adding in the exit polls conducted on Tuesday at various places around the country Edison/Mitofsky expects to capture the views and demographics of more than 100000 voters Mr. Lenski said.
A Flood or a Deluge?
At this point predicting how big a portion early voting will represent in the final turnout (or in the exit polls) remains difficult. Michael McDonald an associate professor at George Mason University who will be working with the exit poll organization on Election Day likened the historical early voting trend to turning on a spigot that would start off as a trickle and then increase.
“What we don’t know in this election is if that faucet analogy is really great here” he said noting the eye-popping numbers earlier this week. “There could’ve been a backup of pressure in the pipe and as soon as we turned on the spigot we had a flood.”
So far he said: “If we look at North Carolina African-Americans are exceeding their share of the vote in 2004 by about 8 percentage points.”
Paul Gronke a professor at Reed College in Oregon who oversees its Early Voting Center said this season’s early-voting patterns pose particular challenges for those trying to analyze changes in the electoral landscape. “There are flies in the ointment that make things particularly complicated this year” he said noting the expected high numbers of new voters or young people using only cell phones.
“Past patterns are not doing very well in predicting the current state of the world.”
Trend-spotting
Some traits of early voters remain the same; where data are available they’re still a bit older on average. Over the course of the last several election cycles (including this one) Mr. Lenski said some trends have been shifting. More Republicans had been early voters until about 2000 he said when the Democratic party became more actively engaged in getting a headstart.
“Now there are some states where it’s actually flipped where Democrats are more likely to vote early than Republicans” he added.
But other factors are still outstanding and unknown highlighting the dangers in drawing too many conclusions about the ultimate characteristics of the electorate less than a week away from Election Day.
Mr. McDonald cited one big question; how significant will the Republicans’ 72-hour mobilization effort to get out the vote just before Election Day be? Predicting that factor especially in battleground states as he noted may be one of the biggest unknowables – evidenced by 2004 (think Iowa and Senator John Kerry’s pre-election voting mount vs. President Bush eking out a win in the state on Election Day.)
Even with high numbers of African-Americans voting and so many pro-Democratic votes already in the bank Mr. McDonald said that a strong 72-hour Republican campaign could make Election Day “look really different than the early vote.”
In 2004 for example the Republicans’ 72-hour campaign “swamped’’ Ohio and Florida.
Still with voter enthusiasm seemingly on the Democrats’ side Mr. McDonald said that Republicans are facing “a very steep hill. It’s a cliff that they have to climb here.”
Here are some other notes on how the exit polls incorporate the early voters:
The surveys
Beginning this week through the weekend Edison/Mitofsky will conduct random phone surveys in those 18 states asking detailed questions of people who actually say they voted early. Mr. Lenski wouldn’t release the list of all 18 states but it’s pretty apparent that California Colorado Nevada Florida North Carolina Georgia and New Mexico will be among the targets.
We’re told that Pennsylvania and Virginia – still considered battleground states – won’t be among those surveyed before Election Day because those states’ rates of early voting/absentee voting are traditionally lower than others.
One caveat: This survey is conducted among landline telephone users only despite pollsters’ growing practice of capturing cellphone users as well. Mr. Lenski and others asserted that shouldn’t make much of a difference because recent research indicates that there aren’t huge differences on issues between landline and cellphone respondents.
But the Pew Research Center has detected a slight difference when it comes to horse-race figures suggesting that cellphone surveys capture more younger voters who heavily favor Senator Barack Obama. On Election Day exit poll interviews will include questions about cells.
How popular will early voting be? :
At this point the projections for the portion of the electorate that will cast their votes before Election Day range from a little more than 20 percent to a little more than 30 percent. The latest Gallup tracking poll through Monday indicated that 18 percent in its survey said they had voted early; another 15 percent said they planned to do so.
A new Pew Research poll released yesterday showed that 15 percent of the respondents said they had voted early.
Ultimately Mr. Lenski said the early voting might represent somewhere in the ballpark of 20 to 25 percent of a blending in with the Election Day exit interviews.
The Value of Exit Polls
Some states will be too close for races to be called on Tuesday based on exit polls alone and problems with releases of horse-race figures relying on early exits have been problematic in the past.
While lamenting the fact that so many of us rely too heavily on the exits on election night as an indicator of who will win Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com extolled the treasure trove of information mined from them. It’s a snapshot of “who voted why they voted what their demographics are.”
