Analyst watching party gap narrowing between Arizona’s early voters

PHOENIX — The double-digit gap between Republican and Democratic early voters in Arizona has been dropping, and it won’t be long before it’s in single digits, a senior analyst with the Secretary of State’s Office said.

With less than a week before the Nov. 6 general election, more than 1 million early ballots had been turned in by Wednesday, Garrett Archer, aka, the Guru Doctor, said on KTAR News 92.3 FM Arizona’s Morning News.

“The gap between the parties had kind of settled at 11-12 points and the last week or so and consistently since then, the gap between the parties has been at plus six, plus seven Republican,” Archer said.

“We are certainly looking at ending the election with a gap in the single digits,” he said, “which is very close for Arizona for midterm.”

By Thursday, the gap was 8 percent.

The number of early ballots returned was expected to climb to 1.2 million at the end of Wednesday.

“That will be more early ballots that we have this year than we had in 2014,” Archer said.

“The last couple of weeks have been quite exciting.”

Only about a quarter of the state’s voters go to the polls on Election Day, Archer said.

Of that group, “half will be polling place voters and half will be people dropping off their early ballot — at any polling place. Usually that electorate is very reflective of what the final electorate for the early ballots are.

“Sometimes … they do favor Republican ballots by ever so slightly, maybe one or two points. At that point in the game, there are already so many ballots baked into the cake, that the party split … won’t change that much based on the final Election Day number.”

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