{"id":10828,"date":"2018-06-07T07:00:42","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=10828"},"modified":"2018-06-06T13:06:42","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T17:06:42","slug":"what-percentage-of-voters-will-vote-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=10828","title":{"rendered":"What Percentage of Voters Will Vote Early?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Long ago, the overwhelming percentage of voting occurred on Election Day.\u00a0 Absentee and provisional ballots played roles mainly in tight races.\u00a0 So campaign activities were performed on tight, escalating schedules and reached a climax on the one day when voters headed to the booth.\u00a0 But in the era of early voting, it\u2019s not so simple anymore.<\/p>\n

Early voting in Maryland was established by a state constitutional amendment passed in 2008<\/a>.\u00a0 It was first used in the 2010 elections.\u00a0 Usage of the option started slowly, with only 10% of voters voting early in the 2010 primary.\u00a0 But in the 2014 general and 2016 primary, 18% of voters voted early and the percentage spiked to 31% in the 2016 general.\u00a0 Democrats tend to vote early at higher rates than Republicans and unaffiliated voters.<\/p>\n

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Early voting has been less heavily used in MoCo than in the rest of the state but MoCo closed the gap in 2016.\u00a0 In that year, MoCo\u2019s early voting percentages were very close to state averages.<\/p>\n

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There are huge variations in early voting between counties.\u00a0 Talbot County, on the Eastern Shore, is the early voting champ.\u00a0 Forty-five percent of Talbot\u2019s voters voted early in the 2016 general election.\u00a0 Kent, Prince George\u2019s and Queen Anne\u2019s Counties also stand out.\u00a0 On the other side, early voting is least frequent in Western Maryland\u2019s Allegany and Washington Counties.<\/p>\n

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What percentage of voters will vote early this time?\u00a0 Our hunch is that the huge spike in the 2016 general election was anomalous and related to strong feelings about the presidential candidates.\u00a0 If we throw those results out, the long term trend is still up.\u00a0 Our best guess is that between a fifth and a quarter of Democrats at the state level and in MoCo will vote early in the upcoming primary.\u00a0 We shall see if we are right!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. Long ago, the overwhelming percentage of voting occurred on Election Day.\u00a0 Absentee and provisional ballots played roles mainly in tight races.\u00a0 So campaign activities were performed on tight, escalating schedules and reached a climax on the one day when voters headed to the booth.\u00a0 But in the era of early voting, it\u2019s … Continue reading What Percentage of Voters Will Vote Early?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[151,227],"tags":[1545,1571],"class_list":["post-10828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-early-voting","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-early-voting"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2OE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10828"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10833,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828\/revisions\/10833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}