10/28/2020
With less than a week to go, LEAD Public Strategies took a snapshot of ballot returns in Ventura County using PDI's daily updates. We have this data available for various districts in the county as well.
So far, 38% of ballots have been returned -190,179 out of 499,466. For comparison, Ventura County had a total 73% turnout in the 2016 General. What is evident is that Republicans, which are reliable vote by mail voters, are waiting to vote in person - possibly due to false claims about the safety of mail-in ballots.
On demos, we're looking at a demographic's share of registered voters vs. their total share of the vote so far. White voters are 65% of total registered voters and are over-indexing on their vote share, at 73%. Latinos are 28% of registered voters, but are under-indexing with 20% of the total share of the vote as of 10/27. Latinos are also turning in their ballots at a slower rate than other demos.
With the various age groups, voters over 65 are, as usual, over-indexing in their share of the vote - 24% of registered voters vs. 37% share of the vote. In contrast, voters 18-34 are under-indexing by 10 points with a vote share of 16% even though they make up 26% of registered voters. The remaining age groups are more or less on par with their vote share.
Why is this data important? Political scientists and campaigns look at these trends to measure which voter groups have power and influence and whether or not it is proportional to the number of voters in their group. Policy in Ventura County and many other places has been shaped by "Baby Boomers" - they have the 3rd largest voter registration numbers, but consistently, the highest vote share. The result is that they elect candidates that represent their views - what those views are we'll save for another post.
