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The Florida Ballot Return/Early Vote Numbers
Confirmation bias is a real thing. I understand that. I try to behave rationally and look at all the data, but it amazes me how people often look at things as black or white and in particular as it relates to this election. I do not see anything as black and white. I think people who look at bare numbers, without understand nuance, get bad results. But, I also understand that what I want to believe is often not what reflects reality.
I’ve seen pundits on both sides of the debate discussing the early voting and vote-by-mail numbers from Florida. As of this morning, here they are:
| Republicans | Democrats | No Party |
| VBM 1,213,630 | 1,828177 | 817,158 |
| EV 1,176,216 | 860,690 | 464,681 |
| 2,389,846 | 2,688,867 | 1,281,839 |
The apparent wisdom is that the Democrats have a 299,021 lead in votes. I think that misreads the situation on the ground very badly.
Florida requires a person to go to the courthouse and register as either a Republican or a Democrat in order to vote in the primary election, but it makes no such requirement to vote in the general. For many people, particularly thinking people (the kind of people who rejected Judge Roy Moore in Alabama and who will kick Doug Jones to the curb for his ACB vote) the idea of declaring your patronage to a particular party or platform seems counterintuitive. The only reason I registered as a Republican was to vote for Donald Trump in the primary in 2016. But I cross party lines when it’s appropriate to do so.
And for someone like me, who was in third grade when Kennedy was assassinated, I know that there have been decent Democrats in the past. I voted for Carter (disappointment) and for Obama (bigger disappointment). This was, of course, before Obama’s true self was revealed. But if I had been required to state a party affiliation in 1980 or 1990, I would have gone with No Party Affiliation. I really don’t think most races are affected by primaries because the people the party wants to win (in most cases) is the person who wins. That changed in 2016 with Trump. The party wanted someone “stable” and the people were tired of losing.
So, given that 1.2 million votes have been cast by people without a party affiliation, I have my doubts that Trump is behind 299,000 votes. First, I believe many of the folks who are NPA in the above numbers were recent registrants who had no desire to identify their party affiliation, and simply wanted to cast their vote for Mr. Trump. These are not the “shy” Trump voters, these are missed Trump supporters. They are not registered to a party, so they don’t get polled. And because they are a smaller sample of the electorate than those with party affiliations, they are not accounted for in the polling data as they should be. I believe, based on the folks I have talked to in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia, that the NPA people are going about 70% for Trump. That’s particularly true where they’re Hispanic.
Then you have to consider whether all those Democrat affiliations where the ballots are returned are really votes for Biden-Harris. Many of those voters registered 15 to 20 years ago, as Hispanics, and before the Democrat party went so far to the left that it fell off the plane of reason. These are folks like Max Alvarez who know that if the US falls, there is no other place to go to escape the horrors of socialism. It’s important to note that family ties and the Catholic religion are strong in Hispanic families, and Trump’s support for capitalism, his appointment of life-supporting federal and supreme court judges, and his support from the Hispanic business community all make a difference with them. Sure, they voted for Carter, Clinton, Kerry, and Gore because they believed the rhetoric. But they see Portland burning. They see Philadelphia – the cradle of liberty in America – on fire, and the police running from a mob, and they understand the playbook. They’ve seen this movie before and they know the ending is not a happy one.
Couple this with what we’re seeing: thousands of people at Trump rallies, tens of people at Biden’s. Car, truck, and boat parades organically organized in Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, and elsewhere. People waving Trump flags at Cardi B in Los Angeles. People are excited to vote for Trump. Even the union worker who has voted Democrat 30 years in a row isn’t excited by Biden. They look at him the way a person looks at a barium enema.
Voters, particularly Hispanic voters, know the “Green New Deal” is really the green raw deal, and that the platform Biden presents is entirely aimed at the destruction of the nuclear family, elimination of the right to keep and bear arms, and eventually, packing the Supreme Court with liberal judges.
Of course, there are a lot of stupid people in this world. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that Donald Trump could lose in Florida. But Biden has made only three trips to Florida since the campaign began. Trump has been all over Florida, from Pensacola to Miami, and he’s had surrogates out there campaigning hard in those areas. He has planned the work and is working the plan. He’s campaigning hard, showing the violence perpetrated by Democrat partisans and letting people know what is in store for the country if Biden wins. Even the polling data, which lag behind sentiment, show that he is moving the needle.
Biden should have taken a cue from Abraham Lincoln, who said that “things may come to those who wait, but only the things left over from those who hustle.” Trump has been on the trail, using the power of incumbency, touting his accomplishments over 47 months while comparing Biden’s failures over 47 years. Every day he is punching hard on the Biden laptop, the Biden corruption, and the lack of any substantive accomplishment. I found it hilarious he asked Nora O’Donnell on CBS “what’s he running on?” I wanted to scream “his record, you [insert appropriate expletive here].”
I have to tell you that if there was anything that would make me not vote for someone, it would be their promise to pack the Supreme Court. Biden’s tried to finesse this, but I don’t think anyone sentient believes him. The idea that you can simply install the judges necessary to get your way on questions of constitutional law should scare every voter. Because what it effectively means is the end of a constitutional republic. What the constitution means becomes the product of judges appointed to reason backward from result to rationale. Everyone understands the need to protect the Courts from politicization, but only Republicans seem committed to keep the Court at nine.
But, as I said, there are a lot of stupid people who don’t read, watch the network news, and respond to the emotional pleas designed to elicit fear and loathing. That number, however, has dwindled from prior years, and alternative media like Ricochet, Facebook, Twitter, Parler, and others provide a means to learn things that the mainstream media doesn’t want people to learn.
Still, Trump could lose Florida, but if he does, it is likely because of Biden’s “voter fraud” organization. It certainly won’t be because people are willing to low crawl over salted broken glass to vote for a doddering incompetent.
Published in Elections
I’ve been an Independent in Florida for decades. Most of the “right wingers” I know are also registered as Independent.
I think the Democrats are losing big in Florida.
I like the way you think.
We went to vote on Saturday in Walton County. At our polling place there was ONE Biden sign, surrounded by about 50 Trump signs. The current early voting count in Walton County (where Matt Gaetz runs along with Escambia and Okaloosa) there have been 12,190 R ballots and 4,357 D ballots counted so far. Walton is VERY red.
Heh!
I hope you are right. I admitted I vacillate between hope and despair daily. The polls are terrible, but the incentives for Trump voters to answer honestly are small. This doesn’t feel like it is a landslide yet some data points that way. It is going to be a long week. I hope we win, but in the end all I can do is my part.
Obama was the farthest Left democrat Senator when he ran for President. And the most partisan.
Pray also. Pray for the Nation. — Leave it up to God what is best for the Nation. I think it is Trump, God may differ.
I respect your faith. Unfortunately at the moment God and I aren’t on speaking terms, so I think I will demur.
It certainly does seem hard to believe the polls. And unless Joe Biden really is as out of it as some of us suspect, I can’t believe the Dems are still hiding him in the basement. It matters in Presidential elections to appear strong and vigorous vs. weak and decrepit. Nixon may have lost the 1960 election just because he didn’t wear makeup and sweated too much on a TV debate.
Catching COVID actually helped Trump I suspect. Instead of being dominated by it, he kept appearing on TV, got over it in a few days, and resumed campaigning. He came on stronger than before. Being the master of COVID rather than being dominated by it I think is resonating with the public. It’s become common knowledge that COVID is mostly dangerous to the elderly and sick, and the young and healthy have little to fear from it. Joe appearing to be dominated by COVID, embracing the role of the elderly man beaten down by the disease, hiding in his basement, is just a terrible look. Even here on local Massachusetts talk radio, they are starting to talk about lockdown fatigue and overblown COVID panic – and I don’t mean conservative populists like Howie Carr.
And now we have more riots in Philadelphia. That’s another thing people are sick of. Voting for Biden is voting for more lockdowns and riots or, worse, giving a payoff to the riots. I just don’t believe America is at that point yet.
Here in PA, the early votes are about 3:1 in favor of the D’s. All my D acquaintances bring it up with every other sentence. Oddly, it isn’t with great confidence. Actually, I guess it isn’t odd at all. They were expecting a more lopsided share and more votes overall. D’s in PA are really scared right now. Biden doesn’t have much of a shot without PA and if the R-heavy parts of the commonwealth show up in numbers similar to the registration numbers post-2016, Trump will win PA and by a larger margin than last time.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if Trump is a better Democrat candidate than the Democrat candidate?
What are the odds democrat ballots are Trump votes?
I have posited this very thought as it relates to Florida. I think particularly for the Hispanics in FL the issue of socialism scares the jeepers out of them. Many of them were registered Dems, but I think lots of them voted red. That’s a nice turn of phrase too, Stina. It does seem he’s a better Democrat than the Democratic candidate.
Hey Anthony I’m in Okaloosa County next to you! Maybe we can find a few more “panhandlers” and do a Meetup sometime!!!
I would like that. I’m about 20 feet into Walton County. We’re in Paradise Retreat if you know where that is. I love the fact that we have one of the very few Congressmen with actual testicular fortitude and who takes the fight every day to the enemy.