I & I Editorial BoardBy now, political junkies have read countless articles about early-voting trends, along with warnings not to overinterpret the results. But the real question isn’t what to make of the data. It’s: Why is this information available in the first place?
The news media don’t even report exit poll data until after the polls close, for fear of influencing the outcome. Yet they are telling us how people are voting long before Election Day, with headlines such as:
- “Early Voting Data Shows Emerging Signs Of A Democratic Advantage In The Midterms”
- “One Week Into Early Voting, Ohio Democrats Are Outperforming Republicans”
- “Democrats dominate early vote-by-mail returns in New Jersey”
- “Early Voting Numbers Show A Shift Toward Democrats”
- “Democrats Take Edge On Mail-In Ballots In Key Midterm Races”
- “Texas Early Voting Breaks County Records in Warning Sign to Republicans”
(We’re going to leave aside the obvious bent of these headlines.)
Election experts are quick to point out that these early voting numbers are highly unreliable as indicators of an election outcome.
“All we really know is the number of early votes at a given point in time. Now we can use demographics and past precinct results to estimate the voting patterns of individuals who have returned ballots or who are identified as having voted early, but these are estimates,” notes RealClearPolitics senior elections analyst Sean Trende on his Substack, Poll Vault.
Organizations such as the University of Florida Election Lab, Vote Hub, Catalist, run the numbers through various models that are meant to predict how these people voted.
The New York Times explains that it “uses lists of voters who have cast early ballots, along with modeling of their likely vote choice, to build estimates of early-vote results.”
Even if you accept that these organizations aren’t biased (which is a tough pill to swallow), the question is, why is any voter data available before polls close on Election Day?
Why are states reporting the number of ballots cast and where they were cast? As Bloomberg reports, “Many states provide that data — even down to the voter level — on a daily basis.”
How does this serve the public?
More importantly, why are news outlets rushing to print stories based on guesses about how early voters are casting ballots, when they know that these reports can influence voter behavior?
After all, the news outlets have access to exit poll data on Election Day, but they don’t report any of their findings until after the polls close in a given state, precisely because they know such information can influence those who haven’t yet cast their ballots.
We already know this is a real phenomenon. In the 2000 election, various news outlets started reporting that Al Gore won Florida when polls closed in the eastern part of the state. But much of Florida’s Republican-heavy panhandle is on Central Time, where polls hadn’t closed.
One researcher found “an unusual and large drop-off in Republican voting rates for Florida’s western Panhandle during the 2000 General Elections. Little change appears to have occurred in the rate that non-Republicans voted.” That almost tipped the balance in Florida – and the election – to Gore.
Today, nearly two-thirds of votes are cast before Election Day, either by mail or at early-voting booths. So the fact that information about who is voting and how they voted is coming out weeks before Election Day can easily sway those who haven’t yet cast a ballot.
We have no doubt that the mainstream media are gleefully reporting early voting results this year (see the headlines above) precisely because they hope it will cause Republicans to stay home.
So, we at Issues & Insights are calling for an outright ban on states releasing any early voting data at all before Election Day. True, voting data is public information. But it serves no public purpose to release any of it before the polls close.
And, until that ban is in effect, we call on news outlets to pledge not to report on early voting data, no matter how tempting. That is, if they care at all about election integrity.
—Written by the I&I Editorial Board
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