What the 2018 Early Vote Can (and Can’t) Tell Us

The data can be very misleading when presented without context

Credit: Juj Winn/Moment/Getty Images

In this era of polarized politics, a new divisive subject seems to have arisen — the analysis, or lack thereof, of votes cast before Election Day. The predictive stakes have been going up: In 1996, only 11% of the ballots were cast ahead of voting day, but in 2016, early votes amounted to 41% of the total vote. The upcoming and critical 2018 midterm elections may see an even larger share of early voters.

Anecdotally, this cycle has seen diminishing coverage and analysis of early votes. This is likely an overcorrection from the 2016 election, when media dedicated significant bandwidth to parsing the early vote and, in most cases, interpreted it as a sign that Hillary Clinton would win. If you saw me on TV around that time, odds are I was feeding that narrative.

Percent Voting Absentee, By Mail, or Early, 2004–16. Data includes all 50 states, Washington, D.C., American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Mail Ballots were not tracked in the EAVS until 2008. Chart: U.S. Election Assistance Commission

In 2016, we made several mistakes in how we framed early votes. I’d argue the two biggest errors were a lack of historical context applied to the analysis (such as how the vote compared with prior elections) and not giving enough thought to whether the surge in early Democratic votes…