With many local races still too close to call, what’s to count?

To find out more, The Show spoke to ABC 15 data guru Garrett Archer, who has been tirelessly tracking the numbers throughout all of this.

whole conversation

Lauren Gilger: So let’s start with the rest of the things that count here. This morning, KJZZ’s Wayne Schutzke was on the show to talk about how Democrats are counting on early votes cast on Election Day. How many people are left?

Garrett Archer: It looks like there’s probably about a million ballots left to be counted here. This is the total of all of what is called early voting. election day.

Gilger: So one million seems like a lot. How much of an impact could it have on these close races? What are you monitoring in the coming days as vote counting continues?

Archer: In my experience, I’ve found that late early dropouts tend to be a mix of both early voting and Election Day voting. That is, muted versions of each.

For example, last night, or excuse me, Election Day, Donald Trump tended to win a significant amount of the Election Day vote. Voting, voting was the opposite. Harris tended to get a decline in early voting, so Election Day voting tended to be, excuse me, a mix of both. So it really depends on what you mix it with.

So we start seeing them come in today and we see what their trends are and whether they’re Democratic friendly or friendly or if they’re Basically, you know, you’ll be able to see if it’s just a wash so to speak.

Gilger: Oh, laundry. So do these trends tend to hold as we start seeing these numbers today?

Archer: Well, the trend for early early voting is certainly true, sorry, the trend for late early voting is certainly true, that’s how statistics work. Because of their large populations, certain counties tend to vote similarly.

In other words, latecomers in Pinal County are bound to act a certain way, no matter what their badge is. Maricopa can vary from place to place because it depends on where the batch of Maricopa comes from. It’s very big. Sometimes, by chance, one area of ​​the county has an advantage over another in late early voting, and that can change slightly.

Gilger: Interesting. It’s very granular. I want to talk about what I know so far about overall turnout, at least in Arizona, and how it breaks down along partisan lines. You mentioned what happened on Election Day, including who came to the polling places to vote. Why did it favor Republicans and Democrats?

Archer: We’ll know what the actual numbers are a little later when all the history is loaded into the county’s records system. But what I can tell you is that, just looking at the results, it looks like Arizona will be the most polarized presidential election between Republicans and Democrats for some time. And the registration split alone was the largest in history for the Arizona Republican Party. And the voters who actually went to vote are likely to do the same.

There may not even be enough records to go back in voting history and see even greater partisan divisions than what is seen after the history is loaded. I think it will probably be a Republican +8.

Gilger: That’s very interesting. And yes, the benefits of voter registration for Republicans are huge. So, Garrett, how did the independent work stack up to what we’ve seen before?

Archer: It depended on when they voted. Therefore, independents who vote early tend to support Democratic candidates, and independents who vote on Election Day tend to support Republican candidates. So, and that’s another reason why the late early elections will be very interesting is which independents actually stopped voting. Is it people who are more likely to vote early and therefore support Democrats, or vice versa?

Gilger: That’s very interesting. What do we know so far about the demographic breakdown here? You know some of the demographic breakdown of the counties where these votes are being counted. Yesterday, we heard a lot about how the Latino vote is swaying, especially among men, and how it appears to be leaning toward Trump. Can you guess that in Arizona right now?

Archer: yes. yes. So we can make a little extrapolation of that right now based on the two counties with the highest Hispanic populations in the state. Those are Santa Cruz and Yuma counties. This means that Santa Cruz is approximately 85% Hispanic. …

Donald Trump didn’t win Santa Cruz, but he won 31.7% in 2020. Currently, it remains at 40.4%. So that’s an eight-point advantage, eight points better than his performance in Santa Cruz in 2020. And Yuma County is about 60% Hispanic. Donald Trump certainly has the potential for Republicans to win that county, and they have done so in the past. In 2020, he won with 52% of the vote, but this time he won with 65%. That’s a 12-point change in his favor this year. So it looks like Hispanics have actually changed quite a bit, and this time they’ve really just changed to support Donald Trump.

Gilger: Wow. got it. Last question in about 30 seconds. What do we know about the gender breakdown here? It’s been talked about a lot that this election had a lot to do with gender.

Archer: yes. What I can say about that is that early voting trended in favor of women voters, and that women ended up making up the majority of voters. However, early voting gave female voters an advantage.

But at least in Maricopa County, where we had live check-ins, those people were checking in to vote and voting yesterday. I did a gender breakdown on them and found out they were actually male. Most of the people who came to vote yesterday were men. And that’s one of the reasons why we got such a big vote for Trump last night, because as we’ve seen in the polls, men tend to support Donald Trump.