American election 2012 updates

Only about half of the voters believe each of the six types of fraud occurs infrequently or almost never. Like we saw regarding voter confidence in the Presidential election, the perceptions of the American electorate are very polarized along partisan lines.

Across the six different types of election or voter fraud we asked about in the survey Table 2 of the brief , we generally see that majorities of Biden voters believe that these types of fraud are infrequent or that they never occur, while majorities of Trump voters believe that these types of fraud are very common or that they occur occasionally. A good example of this regards non-citizen voting. It seems clear from these topline estimates from this survey that the American electorate remains confident that their own votes were counted, and that they are quite confident that votes in their counties and states were counted as intended.

Which is a good sign. But we see much less confidence in the national administration of the election, where opinions are deeply divided on party lines. We also see that a reasonably large segment of the electorate believes that various types of election or voter fraud occur, and that perceptions about the incidence of election fraud are polarized by partisanship. This indicates that voters are picking up on elite partisan rhetoric about election and voter fraud, which have been going on since , and which of course has intensified in the past few weeks.

But does this mean that despite high levels of voter participation in the presidential election, will those who lack confidence or are concerned with fraud might be less likely to vote in future federal elections for example, the and elections? Will the lower levels of confidence in the national administration of federal elections, and concerns about election fraud for some segments of the electorate, lead to further erosion of trust in American democratic institutions?

But these survey results provide some cause for concern, and they show that we need to continue our work to inform the American electorate about the integrity of the presidential election. You can see our monitoring reports at Monitoring the Election. So what are we seeing? More later today as we get additional data, and after visiting a number of in-person voting centers today.

The Healthy Elections Project has been running a series of surveys in a half dozen battleground states, asking how voters intend to cast their ballots. I have previously published thoughts on Arizona, Florida , North Carolina , Pennsylvania , and Wisconsin , with a bonus posting about Georgia where we are not surveying, ourselves. This brief note focuses on Michigan. First, about the intentions themselves. The table below shows that there was very little movement in reported intentions across the four waves of the surveys.

Second, to convert these expectations to raw numbers, we need an estimate of turnout. In most of the other memos, I used a couple of ad hoc methods. For Michigan, the low and high estimates are 4. However, turnout in was 4. Third, here is what the combination of numbers above imply for the final distribution of votes in Michigan, by mode:.

Fourth, a final calculation needs to be made, if we want to estimate the number of mail ballots that will be requested, since not all mail ballots are returned.

If that return rate holds for Michigan, then it should expect between 2. There is one data issue that needs to be brought up here. Michigan does not have a full-bore early voting program. Rather, it allows in-person absentee voting, but it does not keep track of this separately. For that reason, and because so few survey respondents indicated they planned to vote in-person before Election Day, I will proceed by considering only mail balloting. The other data issue is that Michigan, unlike most of the other battleground states, does not provide an easily accessible absentee file to the public, nor even a daily report about these statistics.

Elections Project website for these statistics. As of yesterday, the U. Elections Project reports that 3,, ballots had been requested and 2,, mail ballots had been returned. The deadline for requesting mail ballots is this Friday, although the state really, the world has been encouraging voters to request their mail ballots as soon as possible. Therefore, it seems highly unlikely that anything more than 3.

On the returns side, the past week has seen about 66, ballots returned per day. This should pick up in the final days leading up to Election Day. Nonetheless, at this pace, and with the deadline for receipt on Election Day.

That would yield another , ballots, or 2. As for Election Day, this is where the turnout estimate really matters. If we believe the low-end turnout projections of 4.

If the high-end projection of 6. I have previously published thoughts on Arizona, Florida , North Carolina and Wisconsin , with a bonus posting about Georgia where we are not surveying, ourselves. This brief note focuses on Pennsylvania.

First, as to the intentions themselves. For Pennsylvania, the low and high estimates are 6. However, turnout in was 6. Third, here is what the combination of numbers above imply for the final distribution of votes in Pennsylvania, by mode:.

If that return rate holds for Pennsylvania, then it should expect between 2. Pennsylvania does not have a full-bore early voting program. Rather, it allows in-person mail voting, which some cities, notably Philadelphia, have promoted. The Pennsylvania voter file does not have a separate code for in-person absentee ballots, and the conventional way to figure out who was voting in person yielded an implausible number of early in-person voters.

The standard way is to select records in which the request for the ballot, its issuance, and return all share the same date. Therefore, I am assuming that the absentee ballot file does not record in-person absentee voters, although I could be wrong about that. As of yesterday, 3,, ballots had been requested and 1,, returned a mail ballot. Today was the deadline for requesting mail ballots, which means that the number of mail ballots requested will likely hit the low end of the estimates, at around 3.

For the past week, Pennsylvania has been averaging 95, returned ballots each day. If we think that 2. If turnout is at the upper range of 7. This is a considerable range. Whether this is necessary, or an over-reaction, will only be known on Election Day.

I have previously published thoughts on Florida , North Carolina and Wisconsin , with a bonus posting about Georgia where we are not surveying, ourselves. This brief note focuses on Arizona. The table below shows that there was very little movement in reported intentions across the first three waves of the surveys, but in the last one, there is a move away from Election Day voting, in favor of voting by mail.

For Arizona, the low and high estimates are 2. Third, here is what the combination of numbers above imply for the final distribution of votes in Arizona, by mode:. If that return rate holds for Arizona, then it should expect between 2.

The most recent report from Arizona, which is updated to yesterday October 26 states that 3,, ballots have been requested and 1,, returned.

For that reason, we need to combine both early in-person and mail balloting figures to come up with the comparable statistics that are reported by Arizona. On the request side, we need to add expected in-person early votes to estimates mail requests, which get us an equivalent of 2. We then need to add together the in-person early and mail ballot numbers, to get between 2. Over the past week, Arizona has been averaging , returned ballots per day. Applied to the eight remaining days before Election Day, that works out to , additional ballots to be returned.

If we add this to the 1. Note that the 2. Obviously, Arizona will see some degree of turnout on Election Day, but how much? This variable will be added to the next full release of the Time Series study. Candidate-specific corrections: Some candidate-specific corrections are forthcoming for the Time Series Study and will be posted soon. Release with religion master coding, 7-category religion summary, and candidate and randomization variables.

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