VA Election Trends: 'Never Vote' Voters
VA Election Trends: 'Never Vote' Voters
Early voting stats show active voters who never vote, until 2024 when they came out. Plus, Provisional/Same Day Registrations surpass 20,000 in early voting.
Welcome to Election Day, Nov. 5th, Virginia’s final day of voting to elect President, Vice President, U.S. Senator, and 11 Congressional Districts among their ballot choices.
Early voting came to a close on Saturday, Nov. 2nd with 2.3 million of Virginia’s 5.8 million active voters casting ballots in the 45-day stretch, just under 40% of the active voter population. Turnout has been steady, with no major problems reported.
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: 2.316 million
On Machine: 1.836 million on machine (in person)
Mail in: 459,275
Propensity Voters with Velocity, and ‘Never Vote’ Voters
Of all the stories coming out of the voting data are the so-called Zero-propensity voters. 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.
—Zero Propensity = Voter has never voted in November General Elections on record.
(Earlier editions had used ‘Low’ to describe these voters but ‘Zero’ Propensity is accurate.)
This has been the story throughout the Early Voting period when so-called “High Propensity” voters dominate the count. That trend has not changed.
However, “Zero Propensity” voters and “Medium Propensity” voters have also shown to be much more active in casting ballots during early voting.
Here is a sampling of localities, compared to the 2020 final tallies.
(Mobile readers can “pinch up” the images.)
We see this “never vote” (“zero propensity”) voter showing up in all of the 11 Congressional District races. The chart below also includes provisional ballots, which are over 2,000 in many of the races including the competitive VA-7 and VA-10 races.
(Mobile readers can “pinch up” the images.)
Here we highlight that segment of Congressional District races:
RECORD-SETTING PROVISIONAL (SAME DAY REGISTRATION) RECORDS:
As of Nov. 4th, Provisional/Same Day Registrations had tallied 20,180 in the early voting data, a massive increase over past years.
In 2023, a year after Same Day Registration began, the SDR/Provisional tally was just under 4,000. In 2020, just over 1,000 provisional ballots were cast before SDR began.
Below is a sampling of a locality map where the counts of Provisional/SDR tallies are highest:
The bulk of these tallies began to take off after regular registration ended in Virginia on Oct. 15 as we noted in our last report.
That number is now just over 20,000 and likely to go higher when regular voting concludes today.
Many voting precincts across Virginia were adding extra “Same Day Registration” specialists to their election worker rosters.
In the past, electoral boards had but a handful of provisional ballots to review.
After the Nov. 5th voting concludes, electoral boards have a tall order to ensure the SDR ballots are cast by eligible voters.
UOCAVA/OVERSEAS:
The UOCAVA (Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act) vote tallies as of Nov. 5th DAL data had broken out to countable ballots as:
Overseas Citizens = 14,509
Military = 30,862 (includes active military in Virginia locales outside their homes). **
The numbers appear to have settled into similar patterns as observed in the 2020 data.
EPEC Team’s Own Surge to Report:
While we have been heads down on the EPEC Team mission throughout early voting and today’s voting, we experienced a surge in new donors and subscribers!
On behalf of all the volunteers who give of their time and expertise for this charitable mission, we say thank you and look forward to building on our work with this support.
EPEC Team is publishing more frequently during the 2024 Presidential Election, including analysis of turnout trends, voting propensity, and process management — and results!
For more about early voting ballot types cast, check out daily absentee list (DAL) summaries on EPEC.info and DigitalPollwatchers.org.