For North Carolina Republicans, the Early Vote Was Better Than 2016 or 2012

National Review ^ | 11/3/2020 | Jim Geraghty

[NohSpinZone]

The Biden campaign feels pretty confident about North Carolina, telling reporters today that by their calculations, Donald Trump will need to win 62 percent of the in-person votes cast in the Tar Heel State today.

I’m not sure that the early vote should be all that reassuring to Democrats, as the share of the early vote that is registered Democrats is down compared to four and eight years ago. In 2012, the early vote split 47.5 percent registered Democrats, 31.5 percent registered Republicans, and 20.8 percent no party affiliation. That year, Mitt Romney won the state, 50.3 percent to 48.3 percent.

In 2016, the early vote split 41.7 percent registered Democrats, 31.9 percent registered Republicans, and 26.1 percent no party affiliation. That year, Trump won the state, 49.8 percent to 46.1 percent.

[NohSpinZone]

Go Tar Heels!

[Baladas]

want Tillis to win there also.

[ReelectTrump2020]

Can someone explain to me how Cunningham is ahead? Tillis is an incumbent and Cunningham is just sleeping with every married woman he runs across and laughing when one of their husband’s threatened suicide.

[MrChips]

Schumer sent him $40 million.

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Yes, and Dan Forest for Governor!

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Major Ads.

[sam_whiskey]

Is he though?

[ReelectTrump2020]

Fair enough. I should have clarified - the MSM keeps claiming he is

[fortheDeclaration]

I really don’t think these Democrats can do math.

[fortheDeclaration]

Last I saw he was ahead in the polls.

[100%FEDUP]

Because unfortunately we have quite a few vindictive republicans who will not vote for Tillis. These are the same asshats that didn’t vote for McCrory and we see how that turned out!

[ReelectTrump2020]

I know they can’t -— consider pretty much every economic plan they’ve ever had

[ReelectTrump2020]

I know they can’t -— consider pretty much every economic plan they’ve ever had

[MHT]

Is there a Free Republic live thread running?

[monkeyshine]

I haven't looked at the polls in that race, but in general those "average of polls" many media talk about are useless. Say you have 9 polls that show 50:50, and 1 poll that shows 60:40. A reasonable person would throw that 60:40 poll out as an outlier, an aberration, something must be wrong with its methodology or it is a very old poll. But an "average of all polls" would show that one candidate is ahead by 1 point. That's one way how someone could be ahead depending on what the source of the information is.

Many other ways individual polls can be way off, too. Comes down to some or another form of statistical bias; for example if only 2% of people are willing to talk to pollsters you are getting responses from only the most die-hard partisans, lonely people, crazy people, bored people etc who are not representative of the electorate. That's often called selection bias.