Voting Trends, Hurricane Trends & The Apple & The Tree – Top 3 Takeaways – September 25th, 2024
- It’s not 2020 anymore. Yes, that’s a captain obvious statement. No, this isn’t my having woken up from a greater than three-and-a-half-year slumber (although if you were going to hibernate for three-and-a-half-year period the Biden-Harris years would have been a good time to have done it). No, what my top takeaway today is, is the first indication about the differences in this year’s presidential election cycle compared to the 2020 presidential election cycle. 2020 changed just about everything behaviorally across the country (though much less so in Florida than elsewhere). That included how people voted and most specifically how many people were mailing in votes. The election took place during a time of rising COVID cases and widespread lockdowns. That led to record numbers of voters mailing in ballots as opposed to heading to polling stations. It also led to widespread mailouts of ballots to voters who may have not even requested them in key states like Pennsylvania as well. But it’s not 2020 anymore. COVID is but a seasonally spread flu (which is basically what it turned out to be originally), Joe Biden is the acting president of the United States, Kamala Harris has taken Joe’s place in the race, and Donald Trump is once again seeking to Make America Great Again. Basically, like what it was prior to onset of the “China virus”. And the early returns in the race in three key states are encouraging for the former and perhaps future president of the United States. Overall requests for vote-by-mail ballots are down in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania over four years ago, which without the pandemic isn’t really a surprise. But the declines aren’t coming equally. A lack of requests by Democrats for ballots are driving the declines. Democrats have still requested more ballots than Republicans in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, however the lead they have over Republicans has shrunk considerably. In Florida, the Democrat vote-by-mail ballot request advantage is 5% lower than four years ago. In North Carolina it’s a steep 15%. But the biggest news of all is in what may prove to be the most pivotal state of all Pennsylvania, where the Democrat advantage over Republicans in vote-by-mail ballot requests is 35% lower than four years ago. What’s clear at this early stage of the voting process is that many more voters will be voting in person compared to four years ago. What’s also clear is that the Democrat’s biggest advantage from four years ago, the proliferation of vote-by-mail ballots in states like Pennsylvania, doesn’t appear to be anywhere near as big of an advantage as four years ago. Recent polling shows that most voters, 51%, still intend to vote prior to Election Day, which means that Democrats have some serious making up to do in a state like PA if they want to keep with the 2020 pace in an election won by Joe Biden by fewer than 1.2 points.
- Windy trends. Debby, Idalia, Ian, Nicole, Sally, Michael, Irma, Hermine. Over the past 19 hurricane seasons those are the names of the eight hurricanes that have struck our state. Tomorrow Helene will be added to the list as what’s expected to become a category 3 hurricane. In the grand scheme of things, since the historic 2004-2005 cycle that seemingly brought everything that developed in the tropics into Florida as though the storms were on conveyor belts, nine hurricanes in 19 years for the most vulnerable state doesn’t sound so bad. On the other hand, it’s been, and is once again about to be especially bad for residents on one side of the state. You might have noticed that somewhat remarkably, of the eight hurricanes to strike Florida over the past 19 years, seven of them struck on the west coast of the state. Only Nicole, a category one hurricane, which struck Vero Beach, has made landfall on Florida’s east coast during the past nearly two decades. It’s been an especially fortunate run for one half of the state seemingly at the expense of the other half of the state. Dating back to the onset of official tracking of the Atlantic hurricane season in 1851, a total of 119 hurricanes have made landfall in Florida over the course of 173 years. Of those, 61% have happened somewhere along the west coast of Florida, making Florida’s east coast 22% less likely to have the landfall of a hurricane. A total that’s even more dramatic when only major hurricanes are considered. 50 major hurricanes have made landfall in Florida since the advent of official hurricane tracking. Of those, 65% have happened on Florida’s Gulf coast – making the east coast of Florida 30% less likely to experience the impact of a category three hurricane or above. In Florida, geography matters when it comes to where hurricanes tend to strike. Though southeast Florida may appear to be the most susceptible as we stick out into the Atlantic... History, recent and past, continues to show just how much more susceptible those on Florida’s Gulf coast are to the impact of hurricanes of all sizes.
- The apple and the tree. Just over a week ago in the aftermath of the second Trump assassination attempt by Ryan Routh, that his son Oran made worldwide news for saying something to the Daily Mail that many in the news media liked. In defending his father he said: He’s a “hard worker”, a “great dad” and “He’s not violent. He’s a great guy, someone who’s worked hard his entire life”. Now, Ryan’s extensive rap sheet proved all of those things to be untrue – including the fact that he’d be found libel in civil court for ripping off dozens of victims for tens of thousands of dollars for supposed work he’d performed on people’s homes. But the money quote that got him extensive attention was this: “He hates Trump like every reasonable person does. I don’t like Trump either”. Well, as it turns out the person who evidently views himself as reasonable, can continue to not like Trump just like his dad. In prison. That’s because self-declared ever-reasonable Oran Routh was arrested on Wednesday for possessing multiple electronic devices with hundreds of files of sexually exploited children. The material was found by investigators during the course of the investigation into his “great dad’s” assassination attempt. Btw, Oran’s dad was formally charged with the attempted assignation of Donald Trump by federal authorities yesterday. The apple obviously didn’t fall far from the tree here.