A question regarding early voting:

[MontanaFarmer]

We know that Democrats are casting their votes early, and we know that Trump voters are going to mainly vote on election day, per polling. Do we know how independents are planning to vote/are they voting now? The point of the question is this: Is Joe banking mainly dem votes, which in and of itself is not predictive of the final result, or is he banking independents, those he's persuaded to peel off Trump, now as well? If people are voting in a manner that's reflective of current polls, the pool of people that could even be affected by a late swing back to Trump (vaccine, bad debate for Joe, etc) is growing smaller each day. Every day that Joe holds high-single-digit leads in the potential tipping point states, and a 10 point national lead, makes a Trump comeback less likely. Does anybody know if there's going to be a way to know who these voters are that are voting now? Reliable dems only or centrist persuadables as well?

[genxlib]

1. One of the advantages of having your base vote early

Is that you can target your campaign better in the closing weeks.

It's like a long jumper who gets a good result on his first jump. He can really go for broke with the next try without worrying about fouling.

[Statistical]

2. Nobody outside the campaigns know that for sure.

In most states casting a ballot is public record. Not who you voted but that you voted. So once the Biden campaign sees that MontanaFarmer has voted they can stop wasting resources targeting you. You fall off mailers and GOTV call lists. You probably will get more fundraising requests. Early voters tend to be more enthusiastic and thus likely to donate.

Now in the last 20 years data mining in politics has become huge. A campaign probably knows if you were are a strong democratic voter or weakly attached. They can look at if you voted in primaries. They can look at how long you have been a voter. How many times you have voted in general. Are you are first time voter who skipped the primary this year or have you voted in 20 Democratic primaries in a row. They can also cross reference that with ActBlue donations.

So the campaigns have some insight the public doesn't. However that data and the computer models to make use of it is priceless. No campaign is going to leak that publicly. Note my username this is what I use to do for a living although not for politics.

[MontanaFarmer]

3. Interesting. Thank you for your insight.

I am sure voter files are very complex and very complete these days given the micro targeting we see. Hopefully bidens campaign is converting the 52% polling number into votes!