Something is afoot in Iowa. Not only have nearly 120,000 voters already cast their ballot, registered Democrats are returning their mail ballots at a higher rate than Republicans in nearly every Iowa county. This, in part, explains the approximately 5:3 partisan registration advantage Democrats have over Republicans among mail ballots returned so far in the Hawkeye state.
To see this more clearly, I plot mail ballots requested against the percent mail ballots returned for each county, as reported by the state. To isolate the comparative return rates of Democrats and Republicans, I only plot Democrats as a percentage of Democrats and Republicans, excluding all other registrants.
The graph shows that in nearly all counties, a greater percentage of Democrats have returned their mail ballots than Republicans, relative to the percentage who requested ballots. This is apparent by how the points on the scatterplot tend to fall above the diagonal line.
There is still plenty of time left for Republicans to return their mail ballots, so this early voting gap favoring Democrats may diminish as Election Day nears. However, Iowa confirms a pattern in Ohio, whereby the earliest voters in these states are tending to be more Democratic. Buckle your seats boys and girls, this ride is just getting started.
Yes, I am not happy with Obama. Not for the same reasons that the GOP/TPrs are. I'm upset that he hasn't gone far enough. Hasn't done enough for his base. Obama stuck with "bipartisanship" long after it was dead and buried. He should have stood his ground and used the bully pulpit. Instead we got watered down legislation. There is no way I could see myself voting GOP. They just don't share my values. I can agree with them on certain things. We need to be more conservative with our money. Too much fraud and waste. What I don't agree is where to start looking for it. Taking unemployment numbers out of the welfare equation. (I don't consider unemployment insurance to be a handout.)
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_budget_2010_4.html
$363 billion for Welfare. $895 billion for the military budget. I agree that there is fraud and waste in Welfare. How many of those who think Welfare is our biggest problem would even mention that there is fraud and waste in the Military Budget? It's such a one dimensional view. There is fraud and waste all around. But to blame just poor people for all the ills of this nation is to show how bigoted your world view is.
When it's this important, people are gonna vote. Prepare for the Democratic Wave
Democrats requested 108,152 - returned 60,252 = 56%
Republicans requested 88,305 - returned 43,640 = 49%
Not registered with a party requested 40,585 - returned 18,414 = 45%
The graph this author chose to show is absolutely worthless. The reality is that 60,252 democrats have returned their ballots and 62,054 non democrats have returned their ballots.
Plus, what this author failed to mention is that democrats are lazier than republicans and always mail in more ballots because they don't feel like getting up off their butts and drive to a voting place.
Oh wait, they do that anyway, even though he's firmly on the side of Wall Street. Railing against the banks rhetorically, and making sure not real financial reform was passed is quite a dramatic hypocrisy, but it's politics. We hold our noses and vote, and we hope a second administration will sweep in real reform rather than this carefully orchestrated piecemeal reform designed to avoid controversy.
Don't ask, don't tell, we were for it before we were against it (Justice is going to appeal the ban). Legalized marijuana, we were for it before we were against it (Justice under the genius Holder is going to continue to prosecute that failed war). And then there's the "war" that so many Republicans judge righteous, but so few want to pay for.
Iowa
This are the requested ballots-- Ballots received %
Dem-118,730 Dem -66,204 Dem-56%
Rep-96,469 Rep-47,653 Rep-49.35%
No party-44,179 No party- 44,169 No party-45%
http://www.sos.state.ia.us/pdfs/elections/2010/genabsenteetotals.pdf
Trying to predict from this patterns is almost impossible unless you take all of the voters registered in Iowa and determine what percentage has voted early . As you can see the difference is about 6 points and not having a scientific example this can very well fall within the ,margin of error in any projection. Sorry the graph is pretty but misleading.
GOP complains of late Illinois ballots to military overseas http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/illinois/article_94014945-0d5e-524b-a6ef-6f6b7b13d158.html
GOP prods Justice on military vote-
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43459.html
Your turn
As we get closer to Election Day, we see a familiar pattern developing. The incessant media mantra is that the GOP is headed for a blowout win in the House with an outside chance of winning the Senate.
Pre-election polls all interview registered voters (RV); likely voter (LV) polls are a sub-sample based on a likely voter cutoff model (LVCM). RV listings are being phased out. It happens in every election cycle
CNN/Time provides 16 Senate RV polls (Democrats lead by 7.7%) with the corresponding LV subsets (Democratic 1.1% margin). But RCP only shows the LVs.
The latest 10 Generic polls listed at RCP are LVs. The GOP has a 1.9% lead in the latest 15 Generic RV polls and a 6.5% margin in 22 LV polls.
Of the 163 Generic 2010 polls, 39 are Rasmussen LVs in which the GOP leads by 8.1%. The GOP leads by just 1.5% in the other 124 polls.
RCP displays two 1883-sample Gallup LV Generic polls. The GOP leads by 53-41 in the high turnout model and by 56-39 in the low turnout model.
The full 3000-sample RV is not shown (GOP by 47-44). The Democrats have a 48-35% margin among the 1118 RV respondents who did not pass the Gallup LVCM.
Not a single Zogby Generic 2010 poll has been listed by RCP. The latest Zogby LV shows a 45-45 tie.
I have to believe that people have been watching what the right has done to Obama and they know he can't move forward because the GOP is blocking everything.
I dont' believe for a minute that Dems are going down. However, the Tpeople have eaten the GOP for lunch and they're the ones everyone is sick of.
Just drag everyone out that you know or we are sunk.
Thanks for that great post. Good information. Please repost that when you see stories about these dumb polls.
F&F
As Election Day approaches, the MSM gradually phases out RV polls for LV polls which lowball the projected Democratic vote share. And so the general public is prepared for the fraudulent recorded vote-counts that the MSM knows are coming.
Since 2000, LV poll projections have closely matched recorded vote shares while RV poll projections closely matched unadjusted and preliminary state and national exit polls. The final exit polls were forced to match the recorded vote. In 2004 and 2008, the Final National Exit Poll required impossible returning Bush voter turnout in order to match the recorded vote. Since pre-election LV poll predictions also matched the recorded vote, what can we conclude?
The media cites low Democratic enthusiasm, but the pollsters won’t provide RV samples in the two weeks prior to the election. The media won't report the evidence: LV polls are accurate only due to systemic election fraud.
that familiar patten, huh?? Is that the pattern that you 'read' in 2006 and 2008???
Nobody likes gloating when the game ain’t over. It's ungracious at best and usually mean spirited. Fires up the whole team to get in the zone. The tea party thinks they are the only ones who vote mad and that they're the only ones who've got a gripe. The tea party candidates think they've got one over on us by not talking to the media. Always running on narrative and never on qualifications. Those resumes are going into the circular file.
Corporate money can get you to close your mind but there is no amount of corporate money that can buy an open mind.
Which party blames the unemployed for laziness while giving tax breaks for the offshoring of jobs?
Which party wants to do away with the minimum wage?
Which party wants to cut Social Security and repeal health care?
Which party would like to abolish the Department of Education?
Which party likes to suppress the vote?
Add it up. Votes for the 'NO' party means no jobs, no pay, no health care, no retirement, no education, and no vote. It's high time for Democrats to GOTV and say NO Republicans.
The majority is not going to put this country back into the hands that broke it. They've been listening and waiting for November 2 to let the GOP know, THIS COUNTRY IS NOT FOR SALE.
Drag everyone you know to the polls.