The Election, According to Science
Everything you need to know for Friday, Oct. 16: The Census ends + early voting begins + the Triangle falls out of the top 10
Hey, everyone! I apologize again for my absence this week. I’m happy to be back, and I’m very glad you’re here. So let’s get to it. —JCB
Friday, Oct. 16, 2020
18 days until the election
11 days until the deadline for absentee ballot requests
15 days until early voting ends (you can register when you vote at EV sites)
59 days until Electoral College slates send their votes to Congress
82 days until Congress counts Electoral College votes.
96 days until the inauguration
Today’s Number: $1.52 million
The difference between what the city of Raleigh’s daily parking operation collected through August 2019 (about $2.5 million) and what it collected through August 2020 ($979,000). (Source: Triangle Business Journal.)
ABOVE THE FOLD
—> The Census Consensus
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to prematurely end the Census count while the administration appeals a court ruling saying it can’t prematurely end the Census until the end of the month. (Makes sense.) The Census Bureau pulled the plug last night.
The administration’s rationale is … actually, don’t even bother with that. This is pure, grade-A cynicism.
A Supreme Court ruling this week allowed the Trump administration to end the 2020 census two weeks early, risking an undercount of members of the population who are difficult to reach—particularly immigrants, transients, and the poor. From the beginning, the administration has attempted to meddle with what is usually a scrupulously nonpartisan process in order to advance its goal of disenfranchising and immiserating parts of the country which do not vote Republican. And following this court ruling, it is on track to get away with it.
What does it mean? Start here:
“The count determines how approximately $1.5 trillion in federal spending is directed and how House seats are apportioned among the 50 states.”
The gist: By ending the count early, you’ll intentionally miss people who vote for Democrats and live in Democratic areas. Those areas will, in turn, get fewer federal resources and less power in Congress.
What about North Carolina?
Community organizers and data experts say the decision could result in an undercount, especially in hard-to-reach communities. And they say it calls into question the accuracy of the data, as census workers had limited time to visit the 1.6 million households statewide who had not responded when they started going door to door in August.
Per Carolina Demography, as of the week ending Oct. 13:
63.2% of households had self-responded.
The U.S. Census Bureau says the 99.9% of North Carolina households have been “enumerated,” which sounds good, right? Not exactly.
Only self-response rates tell us how many North Carolina households have been counted. The 36.5% of North Carolina housing units enumerated under non-response follow-up (NRFU) tells us the remainder of the housing units processed by the Bureau, but not whether (and how) they were counted. … Responses collected during NRFU are less accurate and less complete than responses obtained during self-response. Additionally, we do not know how housing units counted under NRFU were resolved.
LOCAL & STATE
—> Early Voting, Day 1
More than 272,000 people cast ballots yesterday, the first day of early voting, some waiting in two-hour lines to do so. Just under three weeks before the election, and, counting absentee voters, 11% of North Carolina’s registered voters have already voted. This will not be a low-turnout contest.
In 2016, during the last presidential election, 56% of Wake County voters who cast ballots did so during the early voting period.
This year with coronavirus guidelines encouraging—but not legally requiring—voters to wear masks, more people began voting even earlier.
As of Thursday morning, 85,207 Wake County voters had cast absentee ballots, according to the State Board of Elections. That was already nearly three times the 28,994 absentee ballots cast four years ago.
Still, lines stretched around buildings in Wake, Durham, and Orange counties Thursday for those voting in person.
RELATED: To celebrate, Greenville got a visit from Donald Trump, who rambled about stuff before uttering what I suspect will soon go down as an all-time self-own.
“I’m running against the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics. How do you lose to a guy like this?”
Trump will win Mississippi, West Virginia, and Alabama; he will lose New York, California, and pretty much every major urban center and college town in between. Why do I mention that? No reason: “By the way, we’re leading in North Carolina. We’re leading everywhere where people are intelligent.”
ALSO RELATED: The NCGOP war on voting notched another victory last night, as the state Court of Appeals temporarily blocked a settlement changing witness signature and deadline rules. A federal court had previously thrown out a change to the signature rule. Republicans are now trying to disqualify absentee ballots that don’t arrive by Election Day and forbid voters from placing mail-in ballots in collection boxes at polling places.
—> How Many Ex-Felons Can Vote?
You’ve probably heard that Florida’s legislature went out of its way to circumvent a voter-approved constitutional amendment reinstating ex-felon voting rights by instituting a de facto poll tax—requiring ex-felons to pay all of their fines and court fees, even if no one has kept track of who owes what.
North Carolina has a similar law on its books, dating to 1877. It prohibits people from voting until they are “unconditionally discharged” from their sentence. However, in September, Wake County Superior Court judges ruled that people can’t be blocked from voting only because they still fines and fees from their conviction.
Sounds good. But here’s where it gets tricky:
To qualify to vote while still serving a felony sentence, the decision said, a person must still be serving the sentence only for a failure to pay financial costs.
That means that the person is on “community supervision,” a catchall term for probation, parole or post-release supervision, and had that supervision extended beyond the original sentence only because he or she did not pay fines or fees associated with the felony conviction.
The N.C. State Board of Elections, in collaboration with the Department of Public Safety, identified and contacted 3,400 people who are serving extended sentences.
Only a subset of those people, though, will be eligible to vote. DPS does not keep electronic records of why people’s sentences are extended, a department spokesperson told Carolina Public Press.
Here’s the thing: Not everyone on parole or probation know why they’re on parole or probation.
“It’s very possible some people won’t know why their probation or parole was extended or recall if monetary conditions were a reason or the reason,” Dixon said. “I think the only way they can figure that out is if their supervising officer has that paperwork or by checking courthouse records.”
What happens if an ex-felon thinks they’re eligible to vote but isn’t? That’s a felony.
After the very close 2016 gubernatorial election, the NCSBE researched how many ballots were cast by ineligible voters and found 441 felons had voted. Many of those cases were referred to prosecutors. …
The current director of the NCSBE, Karen Brinson Bell, said under oath in a deposition for the lawsuit that the Board of Elections has no plans to conduct a similar audit this year. That could potentially change, though, if the board members direct the elections staff to do so or if the legislature passes a law requiring such an audit.
THOUGHT BUBBLE: Say Joe Biden wins North Carolina narrowly, as current polls suggest. Say Donald Trump is claiming widespread voter fraud, as he’s threatened to do. What are the chances the NCGOP wouldn’t immediately demand—demand!—a voter fraud audit posthaste?
—> Here Comes the Building Spree
Development No. 1: Seaboard Station is undergoing a $300 million renovation to, uh, turn it into North Hills, I think? I mean, look at this concept art.
Washington, D.C., developer Hoffman and Associates on Wednesday unveiled plans for a three-phase development including three apartment buildings, street-level retail, restaurants, entertainment concepts, underground parking, and a hotel.
The expansion will feature more than 600 residences and roughly 130,000 square feet of retail space.
Development No. 2: Developer Crosland Southeast announced plans for a mixed-use project at Guess and Latta in Durham, which is (I believe) the site of that ill-fated Publix proposal from a few years ago. It even includes a grocery store.
A developer has plans for a new mixed-use community in Durham calling for hundreds of townhomes, a grocery store and retail parcels north of the city.
This week, Charlotte-based Crosland Southeast, with offices in Raleigh, unveiled plans for Latta Park, a 31-acre mixed-use community. Plans for the property feature 200 townhomes and 55,000 square feet of retail space in a walkable community. …
The land was previously slated for a project by another developer, Crosland said, but those plans fell through. Crosland has since changed the plans for the property, reducing the commercial space by 60 percent and traffic by 45 percent.
I’m genuinely curious if halving the commercial space and traffic—supposedly—is going to mute neighborhood opposition.
Development No. 3: John Kane’s Downtown South—are we sure we’re going with that name, John?—is still being put through its rezoning paces, soccer stadium or no soccer stadium, but a coalition of faith leaders and nonprofits held a video chat with Kane, Mayor MAB, Josh Stein, and a handful of Wake commissioners about preserving affordable housing, a subject that’s gotten short shrift lately, in light of [gestures at everything].
The Rev. Jemonde Taylor of St. Ambrose Episcopal Church in southeast Raleigh spoke about the Downtown South sports and entertainment project proposed for the church’s neighborhood. …
Taylor is concerned about the impact the project could have on the neighborhood’s affordable housing and environment.
“The project seeks substantial public investment, rezoning and a $250 million tax increment financial deal, but as of today, there are no specific community investments in exchange for this public support,” Taylor said. …
Kane said he is willing to speak with ONE Wake members about their concerns by the end of October.
“It is my hope that we will establish a consistent and trusted dialogue between us. Especially in the current environment, dialogue is vital to creating the transformative opportunities that our community deserves,” Kane said. “Even in disagreement, we must remain committed to our shared goals until we find solutions we can mutually support. We are really excited to work with you.”
Allow me to translate: Get ready for disappointment.
—> We Missed a Top-10 List 😢
The Raleigh-Durham area—why do they insist on lumping it together?—dropped out of U.S. News & World Report’s “10 Best Places to Live” list, falling all the way to number 11. (In related news, U.S. News & World Report is still in business. I legitimately did not know that.) Charlotte—eye roll—is number 6.
Lists are dumb, but this actually bothered me: Boulder, Colorado is number 1. Have you been to Boulder? It’s beautiful. Like hippie Pleasantville with weed shops and a million breweries and no trash on the streets and weirdly gorgeous people everywhere and everyone is riding a bike.
However:
No one can afford to live there. The city went full NIMBY years ago, and prices are ridiculous.
I spent four consecutive days there, most of it exploring, and I’m not sure I saw a person of color.
If that’s your thing, go for it.
—> Weather
Morning showers = cold front. High of 65, cooler as the day goes on.
NATION & WORLD
—> How the Election Will Go, According to Science
You guys don’t mind if I geek out a little, do you? Too bad. It’s my newsletter. I’m doing it anyway.
Every election, the journal PS: Political Science & Politics puts together a presidential election symposium, in which top academics who have crafted forecasting models show their work before people vote. This time around, PS dropped its insane paywall through November, so we can all get a look around.
There are 12 forecasts. Here’s an overview of the first six:
Alan Abramowitz (a simplified model based on presidential approval in June, Electoral College votes): Biden 319–219, Trump win probability 29.5%. To win, Abramowitz believes Trump’s approval has to be even by late October. He’s currently 11 points underwater.
Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien (economic indicators, polls): Trump gets 45% of the two-party vote (i.e., without third-party candidates).
Michael S. Lewis-Black and Charles Tien (political economy model): Trump wins 43.3% of the two-party vote; 95% chance Biden wins a majority of the two-party vote; Trump wins 68 (!) electoral votes. Republicans lose 32 House seats; Democrats gain 12 Senate seats.
Helmut Norpoth (primary model, Electoral College votes): Trump wins 362-176, 91% chance of Trump victory. (This model is … interesting.)
Brad Lockerbie (political pessimism model): Trump wins more than 55% of the two-party vote, has a 94% chance of winning the popular vote. Republicans will lose six House seats.
Andreas Graefe (the “issues and leaders” model): Trump wins 48.6% of the two-party vote, with a 31% chance of winning the popular vote
—> The Gist: Today’s Five Big Stories
NBC held a town hall with Donald Trump at the exact same time ABC held a town hall with Joe Biden—not a good look, guys—so instead of the debate Trump refused to do, we got a split-screen: “President Trump spoke positively about an extremist conspiracy-theory group, expressed skepticism about mask-wearing, rebuked his own F.B.I. director and attacked the legitimacy of the 2020 election in a televised town hall forum on Thursday. … At the moment that Mr. Trump was effectively defending a fringe corner of the internet, Mr. Biden, the former vice president, was speaking about corporate tax rates and citing the business-analysis service Moody’s, underscoring the extraordinary gulf separating the two candidates in their worldviews, policies, and connections to factual reality.”
After four days of hearings in which Amy Coney Barrett called climate change “controversial” and dodged questions on, well, everything, the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled a vote to forward her nomination to the full Senate for Oct. 22: “Democrats protested the swift action less than three weeks before the Nov. 3 election but are powerless to stop it. ‘We have the votes,’ Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters in Kentucky. He said the full Senate will begin debate on the nominee on Oct. 23.”
Earlier this week, the New York Post published totally real and absolutely not fake correspondence it obtained from Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon—trusted sources—related to Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine. While the Trump campaign has been trumpeting this revelation, it turns out intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that Giuliani was the target of Russian misinformation ops: “The intelligence raised concerns that Giuliani was being used to feed Russian misinformation to the president, the former officials said.” Meanwhile, Republicans had a conniption after Facebook and Twitter (unwisely, IMHO) restricted distribution of the Post’s unsubstantiated story (Twitter reversed course).
Even as they were telling the world that COVID was no big deal, the Trump administration was tipping off their rich friends in private: “On the afternoon of Feb. 24, President Trump declared on Twitter that the coronavirus was ‘very much under control’ in the United States, one of numerous rosy statements that he and his advisers made at the time about the worsening epidemic. … But hours earlier, senior members of the president’s economic team, privately addressing board members of the conservative Hoover Institution, were less confident. Tomas J. Philipson, a senior economic adviser to the president, told the group he could not yet estimate the effects of the virus on the American economy. … The next day, board members—many of them Republican donors—got another taste of government uncertainty from Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council.”
COVID cases are rising toward their third peak in the U.S., following earlier peaks in April and July: “The number of new coronavirus cases in the United States is surging once again after growth slowed in late summer. While the geography of the pandemic is now shifting to the Midwest and to more rural areas, cases are trending upward in most states, many of which are setting weekly records for new cases.” North Carolina saw a record one-day increase in COVID cases yesterday, too.
—> Polling Update
National
Biden 52-43 (Morning Consult)
Biden 54-43 (UMass-Lowell)
Biden 54-42 (Whitman, D)
Biden 50-42 (IBD)
Biden 54-41 (USC)
Biden 53-42 (NBC)
Biden 48-35 (Edison)
Biden 54-43 (Marist)
State
Arizona: Trump 46-45 (Targoz)
Arizona: Biden 50-46 (Monmouth)
Pennsylvania: Biden 52-45 (Civiqs)
Michigan: Biden 52-43 (Civiqs)
Ohio: Trump 50-47 (Civiqs)
Wisconsin: Biden 53-45 (Civiqs)
Pennsylvania: Biden 46-43 (Insider Advantage)
North Carolina: Biden 51-46 (Civiqs)
Senate
NC Senate: Cunningham 51-45 (Civiqs)
SC Senate: Graham 46-40 (NYT)
—> The Roundup
One-third of American workers are working remotely. Two-thirds of them want things to stay that way.
The California GOP is refusing to comply with a state order to remove unofficial ballot boxes it has distributed across the state.
After two people on Kamala Harris’s plane tested positive for COVID, the VP candidate canceled her events through Monday.
The Trump administration has approved a plan that will allow Georgia to (illegally) waive part of the Affordable Care Act.
Initial jobless claims rose to nearly 900,000, their highest level since mid-August.
Enjoy your weekend, everyone.