Brian’s Utah Weblog

Salt Lake County Absentee votes get counted Monday and Tuesday. The unofficial election results we saw two weeks ago will change, as I explained last week. Let’s see what we can learn about early and absentee votes from a look at detailed data about individual voters.

The early voting returns showed a strong Democratic trend, with even Pete Ashdown up over Orrin Hatch (R-Big Pharma) by 20%. Early voting is new this year and our great county clerk Sherrie Swensen promoted it widely so the wide advantage of one party compared to election day results was unexpected. The +25% Democratic trend indicates not just that early Democratic turnout was stronger than Republican but that a large proportion of independent voters (more than 2/3) voted for Democratic candidates.

I took a list of the early voters day by day and matched them against my lists of partisan voters, mostly by voter registration, and plotted them over time. The final week of early voting was apparently similar to this trend, but I don’t have individual data for it yet.

Remember that Republican Registration runs higher than Democratic countywide among active voters, about 26% D, 28% R, 46% I. But a lot of those I’s are Republican primary voters who changed their registration back to independent. Nevertheless, independents lean Democratic just enough to make Salt Lake County a slightly Democratic leaning county with all three countywide council positions, the mayorship, and Salt Lake votes for governor in the past two cycles all going to the Democrat. (I’d argue our candidates were just better, but that’s a lot of wins in a row.)

You can tell that the trend here is not registered Democrats with a 25% advantage but must include a very strong current of independent voters to the Democratic candidates added to the small registration advantage.

As I detailed last week, there are still 3000 absentee ballots to be counted. They come in and get counted slowly so many, possibly most, absentee ballots are still uncounted. The late absentees will be counted for the first time Monday and Tuesday so let’s take a look at the trends in who voted absentee up to the beginning of November and see where it’s heading.

Looks a lot like the early voter trend doesn’t it? Unless there is some large and unexplained difference between early voters and absentee voters of the same party, we should expect to see a significant lead in Democratic registered voters and another large lead among independent voters trending Democratic.

Remember, I predicted that the 600 paper ballots would trend about 3-to-1 Democratic and the 7,000 provisional ballots would trend Democratic on the east side and Republican on the west side (based on the affiliations of recent arrivals, those most likely to vote provisional). I now predict the 3,000 absentee votes will come in just like early votes, with a 25% Democratic advantage.

Remember,

• Carl Duckworth needs 25 votes to rejoin the State House
• Laura Black needs 32 votes to join the State House
• Jay Seegmiller needs 46 votes to join the State House
• Jeff Hatch needs 344 votes to be Salt Lake County Auditor

I predict that Jeff Hatch will be our new County Auditor and that Laura Black is the most likely candidate to swing her House election. But I’d like to see them all win.

It’s Time For You To Vote!

There’s a poll in the right hand column on the main page of Brian’s Utah Weblog. Vote on how many of the four possible will turn their elections around in the final canvass. Don’t worry if your opinion isn’t based on extensive solid data; I want to see your dreams and speculations, too. Thank you for participating.