Ny-20: Absentee Ballots Are Hard To Predict
Posted Apr 06, 2009 at 9:39 AM
Maurice Berger, Political Director, PollTrack
Michael Barone, in an excellent analysis of the absentee ballots already received (but still uncounted) in the NY-20 special election, concludes that there are contradictory signs, one pointing to a slight Democratic advantage, the other a slight Republican tilt: "Of those 5,995 votes, 48 percent were cast by registered Republicans, 36 percent were cast by registered Democrats and 16 percent by others. That's a 12 percent Republican advantage, a little less than the 15 percent advantage Republicans have in total party identification. It suggests to me a pretty good Democratic absentee voter drive, since registered Democrats in an Upstate New York district are likelier to be behavioral Democrats than registered Republicans are to be behavioral Republicans. (Reasons: a lot of people register Republican to vote in legislative and local primaries in jurisdictions which are now or have been heavily Republican in general elections; some people may have registered as Republicans years ago out of conviction but lately have been voting Democratic, which is in line with the Democratic trend over the last decade or so in Upstate New York)."
Barone concludes: "Thus this absentee electorate could be a little more Democratic than the voters who voted on election day. However, it's also possible that an effective Republican absentee voter drive targeted those registered Republicans who also indicate that they are behavioral Republicans; if I were setting up an absentee voter drive that's what I'd aim at doing. So this absentee electorate could be a little more Republican than the electorate as a whole. There's no real way to know until the votes are counted."
One factor to consider, as PollTrack observes, is that more absentee ballots were returned from registered Republicans than Democrats. As Tedisco lead inches every so slightly upward in the re-cancassing state, will these votes put him over the top? Or will many of these GOP voters break from their party to vote for Murphy? The outcome of NY-20 ultimately rests on the question of how registered Republicans will break in absentee voting.
