Johnson County Number Crunching, Part 4: Who Voted

Six weeks post-election I'm well on the road to recovery. I went non-stop for about a year and a half - from the time I started booking caucus rooms in April 2019, through the primary and into the presidential. That's three whole Taylor Swift albums if that's how you keep score.

It takes some time post-election to process voter history records - a recount slows that down a bit - but we wrapped up a couple weeks back and now I've had some time to figure out who voted by party, how they voted by method, and I've done some guessing about how the no party voters went here in the People's Republic.

Voter history records are a different thing than canvassed vote totals, and the two different sets of numbers are rarely a perfect match. The main problem is that 99 counties are all balancing the books at once and that registration activity is constant. So sometimes another county takes a voter away from us before we can give them credit for voting - which is NOT the same thing as counting the vote. The statistical report for our county is within 20 of the canvassed number of voters, which is about as close as it ever gets.

Here's the party breakdown of voters by party, with a grand total and split into by election day and early voting. 

Voters	Early		Eday		Total
total	60915		23262		84177
Democratic	39034	64.08%	7150	30.74%	46184	54.87%
Republican	8714	14.31%	7114	30.58%	15828	18.80%
Libertarian	250	0.41%	271	1.16%	521	0.62%
Green	100	0.16%	51	0.22%	151	0.18%
No Party	12817	21.04%	8676	37.30%	21493	25.53%

 

The post-election registration percentages were 52.2% Democratic, 18.4% Republican, and 28.5% no party.  Overall turnout is very, very close to that. It's just a little more Democratic and a little less no party.

While the early voters were overwhelmingly Democratic, the Democrats and Republicans were nearly tied on Election Day. More no party people voted on Election Day than either major party.  Libertarians were the only voters more likely to vote on Election Day than early. I suspect that's student-age election day registrations; statistically Libertarians lean very young.

The 72.4% of the total vote that was cast early is down a little bit from the record 76.7% from the primary, probably due to the mail scare and due to COVID fatigue. The primary voting window in May was during the peak of what little semi-shutdown down Iowa had.(One stat we didn't keep: how many mailed-out ballots were returned through the postal system vs. our drop boxes.)

---

 

There's four voting plans available to most voters: the polls, mail, satellite sites, and in person at our office - which this year was actually drive-thru voting in our parking ramp. There's also "UOCAVA" voting, which stands for Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. People outside auditor's offices often call these "military" ballots, but a lot of overseas civilians get them too. In most years there are also "absentee team" ballots, sometimes called "nursing home" ballots. We had a tiny number of these, to hospital in-patients; I lumped them into in-person below.

 

Here's how voters in each party chose their voting plan. 

Party	Overseas		Mail		In-Person		Satellite		total early		Polls		Total
Democratic	424	0.92%	23619	51.14%	10696	23.16%	4282	9.27%	39021	84.49%	7163	15.51%	46184
Republican	58	0.37%	4504	28.46%	2974	18.79%	1174	7.42%	8710	55.03%	7118	44.97%	15828
Libertarian	4	0.77%	87	16.70%	112	21.50%	47	9.02%	250	47.98%	271	52.02%	521
Green	1	0.66%	44	29.14%	33	21.85%	22	14.57%	100	66.23%	51	33.77%	151
No Party	180	0.84%	6515	30.31%	4192	19.50%	1917	8.92%	12804	59.57%	8689	40.43%	21493
Total	667	0.79%	34679	41.30%	18007	21.39%	7442	8.84%	60885	72.33%	23292	27.67%	84177

Democrats were much much more likely to vote by mail and much, much less likely to go to the polls.  Everyone was about equally likely to vote at a satellite or at our drive-thru. No partys (I really hate the word "independent") and Republicans were similar in behavior - less likely mail, more likely polls. Libertarians were the only people MORE likely to go to the polls than vote early,

---

Here's the vote totals, which we're more familiar with. This is also lower than the total turnout of 84,198. There were 347 presidential under-votes, which may seem hard to believe but is in the normal range. Sorry, Kanye, but I've combined the lower tier and the write-ins into an "other" category.

Votes	Early		Election Day		Total
total	60672		23179		83851
Biden	48664	80.21%	10513	45.36%	59177	70.57%
Trump	11024	18.10%	11901	51.16%	22925	27.23%
Libertarian	522	0.86%	442	1.90%	964	1.15%
Green	148	0.24%	65	0.28%	213	0.25%
Other/write in	314	0.52%	258	1.11%	572	0.68%

 

In my years here, Democrats have been more likely to vote early than Republicans, but this year the trend was especially exaggerated. There seemed to be intent and purpose to Republicans wanting to vote on Election Day. Even though about 3/4 of the vote was early, Trump got more votes on Election Day than early. He actually won Election Day. 

 

As I noted earlier, the big voting shift in Johnson County this cycle was voters moving from third parties to Biden. Of those who didn't, Election Day voters were twice as likely to vote Libertarian or Other Third Party than early voters.

 

---

Now I indulge in sheer speculation and try to figure out what the no partys did. There's no way to tell, of course, but I'll play with numbers and make some false assumptions: that all members of a party voted for their party's candidate, and that only No Party people did write ins or voted for miscellaneous candidates. Then I just subtracted the difference. 

Estimated No Party Votes	Early		Election Day		Total
total	12574		8593		21167
Biden	9630	76.59%	3363	39.14%	12993	61.38%
Trump	2310	18.37%	4787	55.71%	7097	33.53%
Libertarian	272	2.16%	171	1.99%	443	2.09%
Green	48	0.38%	14	0.16%	62	0.29%
Other/write in	314	2.50%	258	3.00%	572	2.70%

No party early voters voted much like the rest of the early voters, nearly four to one Biden, and just a little bit more third party. But the Election Day no party voters leaned about 5 points more Trump than the rest of election day voters. As we saw, the Election Day voters by party affiliation leaned disproportionately R as well. 

The Election Day no partys likely had a lot of weak voters or people who though COVID was Fake News, both groups that would lean Trump. End result was that no party overall was very blue by the standards of a normal Iowa place but a little redder than the standards of the People's Republic.

This really nails down my long time theory: No party voters are just like partisan voters, they just don't like checking the box for whatever reason, and once you get them in the booth they pretty much behave like partisans.