| Both Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight and the folks at Campaign Diaries have been looking at the geographical distribution of absentee ballots and have reached the same conclusion, basically that given Murphy's election day performance in the counties with the most ballots outstanding, the distribution would seem to favor Murphy. First up, Nate:
NY-20: Absentee Ballot Distribution Appears to Favor Murphy (D)
One thing that seems fairly clear is that there tend to be a relatively higher proportion of absentee ballots returned in counties where Murphy performed well on election night. For example, Columbia County, where Murphy won 56.3 percent of the of the vote last week, accounted for 9.8 percent of ballots on election night, but accounts for 15.3 percent of absentees. Conversely, Saratoga County, which is a Tedisco stronghold, represented 36 percent of ballots on election night but only 27.2 percent of absentees:
If I simply apportion the absentee ballots based on the distribution of the election day vote in each county, I show Murphy gaining a net of 173 ballots during the absentee counting phase. In addition, as Michael Barone has noted, although a plurality of the absentee ballot returns are Republican, they are somewhat less Republican than registration in the district as a whole.
And some more from Campaign Diaries:
1. 3107 (45,8%) ballots have been returned from registered Republicans and 2383 (35,1%) from registered Democrats. Among the entire electorate, the gap between the share of registered Republicans and of registered Democrats is 15%. That means that the pool of absentee voters is significantly Republican than the electorate at large.
2. Counties where Murphy performed well are dramatically over-represented in the pool of (uncounted) absentee ballots:
* Columbia County, which gave the Democrat 56% of the vote, cast 9.8% of the district's votes last Tuesday; but 15,3% of the absentee ballots come from there!
* Two other counties that gave Murphy 56% are over-represented. Warren County and Washington County represented 10% and 8,1% of last Tuesday's districtwide, respectively; but they make up 15% and 9,2% of the incoming absentee ballots!
* Inversely, Saratoga County, which saved Tedisco's candidacy by giving him 54% of the vote, represented 36% of the districtwide vote last Tuesday. Now, only 27% of absentee ballots come from Saratoga - a sharp drop.
Let's put this otherwise: Murphy is winning Columbia County and Warren County by 12%; he is losing Saratoga by 8%. Last Tuesday, Columbia and Warren combined made up 20% of the districtwide vote, while Saratoga made up 36%. Now, there are more absentee ballots from Warren and Columbia combined than from Saratoga. That does not bode well for Tedisco.
While these analyses do indeed look good for Murphy, do keep in mind that the Tedisco campaign has brought in the Sith Lord of GOP vote counting dirty pool, Roger Stone. All the more reason to drop a few nickels in the Protect NY-20 cup. |
