VA Early Voting: Record Provisional Ballots
VA Early Voting: Record Provisional Ballots
Close to 40% of Virginia's active voters have cast ballots for the Presidential Election, U.S. Senator, and 11 Congressional Districts. Quick rundown on the stats, plus 18K provisional ballots.
Virginia’s 45-day Early Voting stretch came to a roaring close Saturday, Nov. 2nd, with some 38% of Virginia’s 5.8 million active voters casting early ballots. A growing number had never cast ballots — including a spike of over 18,000 provisional ballots.
According to the Dept. of Elections’ Daily Absentee List (DAL), the tallies so far before Tuesday’s, Nov. 5th General Election are as follows:
Countable: 2,289,483, which breaks down to:
On Machine: 1,834,799 (in person)
Mail in: 435,751
Early Analysis:
EPEC Team has been tracking zero/low/medium and high propensity voters during the 45-day stretch, as well as following L2 Data, which has been modeling likely turnout throughout.
As of Saturday, it had the political affiliation as:
Democrat-leaning voter = 50% (over a million ballots).
Republican-leaning voter = 40.8% (just under 900,000 ballots).
Independent/No Affiliation Noted = 9% .
EPEC sees a similar increase in Republican-leaning ballots, a change from previous years when Republican voters averaged about 30% of the early turnout compared with past years when 60% of Democrat-leaning voters who turned out early.
Propensity Voters with Velocity
EPEC Team’s volunteer CTO, Jon Lareau, has been breaking out the “countable” tally by three voter types with the early voting data:
High Propensity = Voted in 75% or more of the November General Elections on file. Medium Propensity = Voted in less than 75% of November General Elections on file. Low Propensity = Voter has never voted in November General Elections on record.
The Countable Breakdown:
High propensity voters cast 1,354,229 of all ballots so far, up 87% in a week.
Medium-propensity voters who had cast a ballot in less than 75% of November General Elections made up 685,169 of the tally thus far, also an 87% increase in a week.
Voters who had never cast a ballot (in last five years) showed the most velocity, growing by 113% in a week to 250,085 of the count.
Here’s a sample of some localities:
More to follow from EPEC Team analysts in our next report Monday.
PROVISIONAL BALLOTS SET RECORDS
At the end of early voting, 18,378 provisional ballots had been approved for review during the canvas that follows the Nov. 5th election, according to the DAL data.
As the chart below shows, the growth in provisional ballots began to take off on Oct. 16th, the start of Same Day Registration (SDR) in Virginia, which began in 2022.
We note that provisional ballots in 2020 were 1,002.
Lareau checked provisional ballots cast since SDR began in 2022 to find 3,149 provisional ballots cast in 2023, which is about 0.329% of total approved DAL records.
See chart below (mobile readers can “pinch up.”)
The number of provisional ballots cast, likely many Same Day Registrations, is still below 1% of the 2.3 million ballots cast during early voting. But the huge spike likely explains why many precincts across Virginia are adding extra “Same Day Registration” specialists to their election worker assignments.
It also raises many questions about how these ballots might be handled by locality electoral boards that have to review them after Nov. 5th.
The breakouts below show how many provisional ballots have been cast in Congressional District races, including CD 10, an open seat, as well as CD 7, which shows over 2,000 provisional ballots cast in those competitive races.
EPEC Team is publishing more frequently during the 2024 Presidential Election, including analysis of turnout trends, voting propensity, and process management.
For more about ballot types cast, check out daily absentee list (DAL) summaries on EPEC.info and DigitalPollwatchers.org.
Our next report Monday rounds it up before Game Day Tuesday, Nov. 5th.
Now that Early Voting has wrapped, we urge citizens to get out and vote on Tues., Nov. 5th.