Michael McDonald

Some thoughts on what Virginia's early vote foreshadows about overall turnout...

As of Saturday, 180,043 Virginians have already voted. Obliterates the 2014 record for a non-presidential election of 123,221. In-person early voting is over, some mail ballots still to be received by Election Day. Say about 185,000 final early vote total

A simple projection of percent early vote to 2017 yields 6.3% of vote cast early. Turnout would be 2.9 million. Would be highest overall turnout since 2006 of 2,398,589. That seems much too high...

...more reasonable is early vote percentage has risen higher than trend, along with overall turnout. If early vote is 7.5% of overall turnout, project 2.5 million overall turnout

Probably not a coincidence previous record overall turnout for non-presidential election was 2006, a wave Dem year. Strength in early voting across state, but particularly in Dem Northern Virginia. We'll see if voting interest follows thru on Election Dayhttps://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/927311027687043073 …