As of May 24, 2016 at 5:00pm, 931,608 ballots have been mailed to registered voters throughout the county. 115,077 voters have voted (either by returning their ballot, or through early voting).
This equates to an overall voting rate of 9.88% among all ballots mailed.
Breaking down the ballots by party, total returns are comprised of 39.01% Republicans (6361% above registration), 42.20% Democrats (6.14%% above registration), and 18.79% independent (12.50% below registration).
(Click to enlarge)
In addition, please see the graph below for a breakdown of ballot returns by party over the first several days (City of San Diego).
(Click to enlarge)
I have put together a more detailed demographic breakdown for various jurisdictions in this excel file. Each jurisdiction is its own worksheet within the file. The jurisdictions included are: Countywide, City of San Diego, San Diego City Council (Districts 1, 3, 5, 7, 9), Supervisor District 3, 52nd Congressional District, and Chula Vista City Council – District 4.
If you have questions on any of these breakdowns, or would like a breakdown on a specific jurisdiction not listed, please e-mail me at mpherron@gmail.com.
Note: These returns are based on data provided by the Registrar of Voters to Political Data Inc. Accordingly, there is likely a delay of at least 1-2 days relative to the actual number of ballots returned.
Comments 6
You can almost see the beads of sweat forming on the upper lip of Kevin’s pursed mouth.
So how do these numbers compare to past elections?
Any interesting trends?
Author
Here was how the final numbers broke out (in terms of AV returns) in City of SD in the 2014 primary and general:
2014 General
40% Dem
35% GOP
24% other
2014 Primary
41% Dem
37% GOP
22% other
Currently, for this primary, the breakdown is:
48% Dem
31% GOP
20% other
Which is not ideal if you’re with us on Team GOP. The numbers would indicate a more Democrat electorate than usual. One would assume the spike is driven by the Bernie/Hillary war, so the question becomes how many of those folks are going to also vote down ballot.
Have these numbers been indicative of overall turnout in the past? Or do they merely point to a preference among Ds for mail in voting over and against a preference among Rs for precinct voting?
Author
The general conventional wisdom is that Republicans perform better among AVs, and Dems perform better among polls/late voters (which is why on election night you’ll see the gap close in favor of Democrats as they count polls voters).
And yes there is correlation between AV return rate and turnout.
Based on past precedent, there is nothing in these numbers that would give a Republican any reason to be optimistic. On the other hand, as we have learned in this election cycle, past precedent is only an indication of future results until it isn’t.