Early Voting

Colorado had about 2.2 million early votes with Democratic early votes lagging Republican early votes by about 8,000 votes, far less than the 35,000 vote early voting lead that Republicans had in 2012 when Colorado ultimately cast its electoral votes for President Obama.

Lots And Lots Of Early Votes

Early voting patterns don’t tell us who will win the election, but they certainly reveal that Americans in battleground states want to have their voices heard. We now have tallies from several that show record-breaking early voting turnout, particularly among Latinos in some states. 

In Florida, 2,636,783 people voted by mail before Election Day, while 3,874,929 voted in person during early voting. That’s more than the total number of Floridians who voted in the 2000 election, period. The number of Latino early voters in the state doubled in number since the last election. 

In Nevada, 41 percent of in-person early voters were registered Democrats and 35 percent were Republicans, which does not mean everyone voted for their party of registration, of course. FiveThirtyEight’s Harry Enten wrote about the possibility that heavy early voting may have swung the state for Clinton. 

In North Carolina, the 3.1 million early absentee votes include 42 percent registered Democrats and 32 percent Republicans, which is a narrower advantage for Democrats than they had in 2012. 

Election laws vary by state, of course, but early voting is proving increasingly popular, with a record 46 million Americans voting in advance of Election Day this year.

From 538.

I think it is likely that early voting will be the biggest source of disparities between actual results and the results predicted by polls this year. Generally speaking, early voting has favored Democrats in swing states this year compared to prior years.