[Data Analysis] Looking at the U.S. Election from Florida Early Voting

The U.S. election has come to a close. Although many people think that because of the delay of mail-in voting, we may not know the result of the election tomorrow. But given the mail-in ballot return rates in key swing states (77.9% for PA, 77.4% for FL, 87.4% for WI, 71.7% for AZ), I'm still leaning towards a clear result the same day.

For a long time, everyone has been accustomed to relying on polls to judge election trends. The famous 538 website believes that Trump's chance of being elected is very small, only about 10%. And RCP's comprehensive poll shows Biden leading by 6.7 in the national polls, which is still the consequence of adding some "outlier" polls. Some traditional mainstream polls such as quinnipica and The Economist/YouGov Poll put Biden with a 10-point national lead. In addition to national polls, polls in various swing states also show Biden in an absolute lead. In FL, for example, quinnipica showed Biden leading by 5 points, well above the margin of error. In PA, NBC news/Marist shows Biden leading by 5 points, and ABC news/wash post shows Biden leading by 7 points. In MI, a CNN poll showed Biden's lead by a staggering 12 points. And in WI, NYtime/siena showed Biden with a massive 11-point lead. So, looking at the polls alone, Trump faces a more significant disadvantage than he did in 2016, and his chances of being re-elected are slim to none.

However, the early investment data in the United States gives us a different perspective. This article will take the relatively complete Florida early vote data as an example to analyze whether Biden is really leading in this election and the gap between the two sides.

Almost everyone believes that the turnout in this election will be very high, and no one dares to make an assertion as to how high it will be. Data from early voting confirms this.

As of 11/01, FL's total votes have come to a staggering 8,974,896. Remember that in 2016, the total number of valid votes for the entire FL was just 9,420,039. The current early vote has reached 63.8% of the total number of registrations. In addition, the number of registered voters has also increased significantly. The FL registered 12.8 million voters in 2016, and this year it has grown to around 14 million. If counted at 78% of registered voters (74.48% in 2016), the total number of votes could reach 11 million.

Early voting in FL shows the party registration of voting voters. Among the 9 million people who voted early, 3.51 million registered Democrats and 3.4 million registered Republicans, a difference of 110,000. This figure was more than 90,000 in 2016. While Democrats gained a larger margin in early voting than they did in 2016, the actual margin was significantly smaller. This is because the voting strategies of the two parties are markedly different. The Democratic Party calls on voters to avoid going to polling stations to vote in person as much as possible for the sake of epidemic prevention, and should avoid going to crowded polling stations on the 3rd, and instead vote by mail.

Judging from the data, this call has achieved good results. In 2016, Republicans held a numerical advantage of 58,244 on FL mail-in ballots. By 2020, the Democrats will lead by 670,000 in mail-in voting. Such a dramatic change is considered a change in voting strategy. Likewise, Republicans currently have a 550,000 lead in in-person voting because they believe there is too much room for cheating in mail-in voting by calling on voters to vote in person. And in 2016, in-person voting was dominated by Democrats by 100,000.

Currently, the percentages voting in person are Democrats at 32.4%, Republicans at 45.2% and independents at 20.9%. Because of the voting strategy, we have reason to believe that the Republicans will have a larger advantage in the live vote tomorrow. That percentage is likely to be 30 percent Democrat, 48 percent Republican, and 20 percent independent in tomorrow's vote. If the two million votes (11 million-9 million) that will be revealed tomorrow are calculated at this ratio, then

Democrats 600,000

Republicans 960,000

Nonpartisan 400,000

The Republicans will have a 96-60-10 = 260,000 vote lead. And Biden's only hope of winning the FL is a huge advantage among independent voters. The number of independent voters currently stands at 1.93 million. Add in the 400,000 people who voted for a hypothetical tomorrow, and the total is 2.33 million. If you want to close the gap of 260,000, then Biden needs to get 1.295 million votes in the independent party. Such a result means the two candidates have a 55-45 nonpartisan support for Biden to Trump, a number that is almost impossible. If we take the RCP numbers (Biden 50.7, Trump 44) the two would get 1.18 million and 1.02 million respectively. According to this result, the total number of votes the two finally got is

Biden 5.28 million

Trump 5.38 million

Trump will lead by 100,000 votes. In addition, considering that there are far more registered Democrats than registered Republicans, the real gap between the two in independent voters is actually smaller, which means that Trump’s actual lead is greater than 100,000 votes. This calculation also shows how absurd the mainstream media polls are. The state polls in which Trump got +1 obviously show that Biden +5, there is a gap of 6 points, which is no longer within the margin of error.

Of course, this calculation itself presupposes quite a few assumptions, and as long as these assumptions do not meet expectations, it is still possible for Biden to win the FL. But in any case, the gap between the two is by no means as mainstream polls show, and Biden is by no means a certainty.