Slate’s VoteCastr experiment has turned out to be less mesmerizing than I had hoped, partly because I’m not totally sure what it’s telling me. Plus I don’t know how much early turnout is predictive of final voting. That said, the Florida data is pretty interesting:
This snapshot was taken at 5 p.m. Eastern time. There are two things to note here. First, turnout in Florida is sky high: With two hours of voting left, it’s already nearly as high as it was in 2012. Second, Hillary Clinton is ahead by 3.4 percentage points. Out of 8 million votes, that’s a lot. At this point, it looks like Clinton is a lock to win Florida, and if she does, that’s the race. There’s no way for Trump to win without Florida.
Among the other states in the Eastern time zone, Clinton is ahead by 4.1 percent in New Hampshire; 2.9 percent in Pennsylvania, and 0.7 percent in Ohio. In the other three states VoteCastr tracks, she’s ahead by 7.5 percent in Wisconsin; 1.8 percent in Iowa, and 0.8 percent in Nevada.
I have no idea how meaningful any of this is. No one’s ever done it before. But if it means anything at all, it suggests Clinton is very close to becoming president-elect.
UPDATE: Well, apparently the VoteCastr folks have some work to do on their model. Trump won Florida handily.
