Also hardly new information. Psychologists have been sounding the warning bell on Trump's issues for at least 2-3 years now. His people already know he's crazy. They like him *because* he's crazy. These are the same people that made Honey Boo Boo a star, because they enjoy watching a trainwreck for entertainment.
Anywho, I've crunched the early voting numbers and they're impressive.
Data is sourced from Prof. Michael McDonald at the University of Florida, who in turn is sourcing it from open news sources and state boards of elections wherever possible. In some cases the numbers are actually trailing behind actuals, and 9 states (including NY) have no data available as yet. So these numbers are actually an understatement.
Total registered voters in the US (this is very much a moving estimate, especially as people can continue to register at early voting sites): 152,666,000
Number of ballots already cast: 22,289,366 (14.6%). I know for a fact this number is higher, as NC logged an additional 350-400k in-person votes today that aren't tallied yet in McDonald's numbers.
Total votes cast in the 2016 general election totalled 136,669,276, so we're already at 16% and remember we have no data for NY or 8 other states.
At least a whopping 77 milion mail-in ballots have been requested so far, and 17.5 million have been received (22.7%).
An additional 4.76 million people (actually over 5 million due to the missing NC numbers) have voted in-person absentee ballots, including 2.18 million just from Texas alone.
Mail-in ballots have been roughly 2-to-1 coming from registered Democrats as opposed to registered Republicans, a big change from the normal pattern in which mail-in ballots are typically coming from elderly heavily-Republican voters who might be mobility-challenged.
This may set up an interesting reverse dynamic on Election night, where instead of a simple blue shift as the larger urban precincts report in later, you may have a V-shift, where a number of states start off with a sizeable Democratic lead due to early voting, then a red shift as rural precincts report in shortly after polls close, followed by a blue shift as the urban precincts report in later. Don't be surprised if this gets spun as "See, we were starting to win so the Democrats had to make up fake ballots late in the night to steal the election!"
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan all deserve a closer look, as none will start tallying mail-in ballots until Election Day and all are potentially crucial battleground states.
-PA has so far received 683,136 mail-in ballots, an increase of almost 10x from 2016 (and we still have 2.5 weeks left).
-WI has received 821,300 mail-in ballots, an increase of about 6x from 2016.
-MI has received a stunning 1.4 million mail-in ballots so far, and no one is allowed to even take them out of the envelope to prepare them for tabulation until 10 hours before polls open on Election Day. They're also, by law, allowed to count any mail-in ballots arriving up through Nov. 17th, as long as postmarked by Election Day, the latest such deadline in the country.