I have done the comparison also. It is not an apples to apples comparison. Every election cycle going back to 2010, absentee ballots consume a larger and larger share of the electorate compared to early voting and election day voting.
Before it was primarily GOP votes used to using absentee voting - now it’s Dems and indies also using this voting.
This of course would necessarily affect ratios of who’s voting.
The sheer volume of absentee voters this election cycle makes moot any comparison to 2014. It appears that the usual early voting Dems are now using absentee ballots instead. This will be confirmed once early voting starts next week.
It is next to impossible to compare 2014 to 2018 and it’s even difficult to compare to 2016.
Iowa on the other hand - it is rather easy to compare to 2012, 2014, and 2016.
You are 100% right. More and more people are voting absentee/early because it is convenient and in FL you can freely do so.
I’ve done some analysis on about 30 counties which encompass 95%+ of the votes. I am throwing out some of the counties where the absentee numbers in are so low they aren’t worth analyzing. The numbers don’t add up to zero as the difference is the change in independents.
This is taking absentee votes comparing R/D percentages from 2014 to 2018 based on votes returned so far in 2018.
Charlotte - R -1.2%, D +5.1%
Collier - R 0.0%, D +0.6%
Escambia - R -3.1%, D +2.0%
Hernando - R +5.7%, D -4.6%
Indian River - R -8.4%, D +5.7%
Lee - R -0.6%, D +2.1%
Orange - R -4.1%, D +4.1%
Pasco - R -1.4%, D +0.9%
Pinellas - R +1.3%, D -0.2%
Sarasota - R -3.9%, D +6.4%
It’s not catastrophic or anything, but the 30k lead in votes is driven more by the counties the ballots are coming from so far.