Early voting surged in key Democratic battlegrounds Wednesday, a good sign for Hillary Clinton as she attempts to weather a late surge from Donald Trump.
Analysts and operatives monitoring early, in-person and vote-by-mail returns across the country reported big numbers in Florida, Nevada and North Carolina in regions Democrats need to be successful.
Still, Republican performance is holding steady, with signs that early and absentee voting is robust enough in GOP strongholds to keep Trump competitive heading into Election Day, particularly in Iowa and Ohio.
“It seems that the Democrats feel good about where North Carolina and Nevada are right now, while the GOP feels good about the Iowa and Ohio numbers,” said Mark Stephenson, a Republican strategist who is monitoring early vote totals.
Florida, Stephenson said, is giving both sides something to cheer about.
FLORIDA (29 electoral votes)
By the end of the day Thursday more than five million Floridians will have voted, well over half of the more than 9 million expected to cast ballots in the presidential election.
Through Wednesday, Republicans comprised 40 percent of that, with Democrats at 39.8 percent and independents at 20.2 percent.
Democrats are performing well in their southeast Florida strongholds (Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties) and leading so far in key swing counties of Hillsborough County, which encompasses Tampa, and in two of the three important counties in metro Orlando.
What’s really exciting Democrats is the flood of votes from Hispanic ethnic groups that tend to vote Democratic and appear to be first-time voters. That, and Democrats appear to be holding down Republican advantages in GOP counties to levels that are manageable.
Steve Schale, a Democratic consultant who ran President Obama’s Florida operation in 2008 and 2012, said early voting shows the state’s 2016 electorate growing less white by the day — a crucial advantage for Clinton in such a tight race.
“Florida is almost surely going to be more diverse in 2016 than it was in 2012,” Schale said, during an interview with “Examining Politics,” a weekly podcast from the Washington Examiner.
Republicans are heartened by their lead in absentee ballots returned, more than 70,000, an improvement of more than 10,000 over the party’s early performance in 2012.
IOWA (6 electoral votes)
Per tradition, Democrats are leading the early vote in Iowa. But it’s not as strong as it was in the past two presidential elections.
The extra focus Republicans have put on the early vote, in an effort to overcome the Democrats’ natural advantage, probably has something to do with that.
In 2012 at this point, the GOP trailed the Democrats by 60,000 in votes banked. With more than 460,000 votes tallied so far, that deficit this year is only 43,000. And Republicans are at 97 percent of their 2012 vote total overall, while Democrats are at just 90 percent.
David Kochel, a Republican operative in Iowa who supported Jeb Bush in the GOP primary, said he suspects Trump has a small lead there, and he’s not seeing anything in early voting to dispel that analysis.
“Where I think the Democrats should be most concerned is that the performance of [unaffiliated] voters is way off” for them, he said.
NEVADA (6 electoral votes)
Polls in Nevada show a tight race between Clinton and Trump. But early and vote-by-mail totals tell a different story, especially after Wednesday.
Democrats won the day in Clark County, the state population center that includes Las Vegas, by nearly 5,000 votes. Four years ago on the same day, with President Obama on the ballot, Democrats won Clark County by only 4,000.
Democrats now have a 55,000 vote lead in Clark, and appear to be holding down GOP margins in Washoe County, a Republican-leaning region that encompasses Reno.
True, more than 25,000 more Republicans have voted early this year than four years ago. And, the GOP had a slight edge in absentee ballots mailed in. But right now, Nevada is looking a lot like 2012, with strong Hispanic support for Clinton.
If that holds, there might not be enough votes left on Election Day for Trump to win. “The Democrats are building a firewall in Clark County that could win them the presidential race,” said Jon Ralston, a political analyst based in Nevada.
More than 500,000 Nevadans have cast ballots; with a 17 percent increase in total votes coming from Democratic-leaning Clark County.
NORTH CAROLINA (15 electoral votes)
Democrats are optimistic about eking out a victory here; so are the Republicans. Whatever happens, it’s going to be close.
Buoying Republicans: Their early voting numbers are up over 2012 by more than 90,000, while Democrats were running slightly behind their pace from four years ago. Democrats have a 12 percent advantage in returned ballots, but it was more than 15 percent in 2012.
Yet Democrats also are encouraged: The first three days of this week, nearly 110,000 African-Americans voted. Their participation has been down compared to 2012 but this number surpassed the equivalent period from four years ago.
Plus, in Democratic-leaning Durham County, the early vote is beating 2012’s performance by 19 percent. There are similar reports of Democratic over-performance in other Democratic counties.
More than 2 million have already voted in the state, and the higher the turnout, the better Clinton does.
OHIO (18 electoral votes)
With more than 1.2 million votes in the door, this close race is shaping up good for the Republicans.
Key Obama counties like Franklin and Lucas are voting at a slower clip than they did in 2012, with absentee and early voting up in counties that voted for GOP nominee Mitt Romney four years ago, including Butler and Warren.
Democrats point to the fact that in-person early voting started later in this election cycle than it did in 2012, and that the first week of total early votes outpaced the same period from four years ago.
Although early voting in general has shown a decline in African-American participation compared to 2012, when Obama was on the ballot, Democrats like was they saw out of Cuyahoga and Franklin counties, home to large populations of this cohort that is so key to Clinton’s prospects.
“What appear to be Republican leaning independents, many of whom may be splitting their tickets Clinton and GOP Sen. Rob Portman, are turning out,” a source said. “The Republicans are cautiously optimistic about the data.”
