I took notice of a snippet of information from last night’s Sioux Falls School Board Election, where they noticed that absentee voting was twice as high as it had ever been in a previous school board race. The School voting supervisor noted they had something in the neighborhood of 400 votes in an election that had 4335 total votes cast – about 10%.
10%? In a race where 1st place and 2nd place wasn’t much more than that apart, those kinds of numbers can make a difference. And when you look at higher level political races, the numbers become much more prominent.
Another anecdote – I helped a candidate in the last election who put forth a solid effort that any candidate could have been proud of. He advertised, did door to door, did direct mail, signs — the works! He maximized every dime he had as it came in. He didn’t do an early vote piece, because the money wasn’t there, so he geared towards peaking on election day. And make no mistake, he ran a darned good campaign.
When the votes came in on election day, and they came in precinct by precinct… he won! But then the absentee/early votes were counted. And it flipped the other way in a wave.
Why? Because in the 2016 general election 28.6% of the votes came in on an absentee basis. In this instance, that was in the neighborhood of a tremendous 3500 votes, with many of these votes cast before he was fully on the ground.
If you look at it, the number of votes that are put into elections on an absentee basis should give candidates great pause, and if they didn’t have an early/absentee voting program in place, they should thank their lucky stars that their opponent must not have, either:
| SD Statewide Absentee Voting numbers |
President or Gubernatorial race? |
Absentee % Turnout |
|
| “2004” | 94634 | P | 23.96% |
| “2006” | 93285 | G | 27.35% |
| “2008” | 100780 | P | 26.02% |
| “2010” | 63750 | G | 19.71% |
| “2012” | 91145 | P | 24.70% |
| “2014” | 55292 | G | 19.50% |
| “2016” | 108733 | P | 28.60% |
When the number of votes coming in early ranges anywhere from 20% to 30%, it’s an indication that candidates need to pay very strong attention to a campaign where people are voting 45 days out – all the way back into September in a general election.
Absentee voting seems to be higher in many presidential years, but then you get an anomaly such as the 2006 Gubernatorial race, which was the highest absentee turnout aside from the 2016. With waning numbers, 2014 had politicos recommending to candidates to put more of their eggs into the basket, solely geared towards peaking on election day. But in light of the massive numbers put up in 2016, that wisdom should be re-evaluated.
The Absentee/Early Voter needs to be part of any campaign strategy, and in light of numbers approaching 30%, they need to be courted and have sufficient resources devoted towards attracting their favor.
In other words, The Early Bird Catches the Early Voting Worm.
At least, that’s what I’m telling candidates.
Pat,
You are missing the reality that having special interest caucuses which check off all the liberal hot buttons combined with a robust ballot initiative effort must be at the root of a successful election.
Unless you have the above, you won’t be able to give viable potential candidate recruits the confidence they can overcome a voter registration disadvantage.