Tangle - Early voting data

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

23 million Americans have already voted, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. On September 20, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Virginia became the first three states to allow voters to return mail-in ballots for the 2024 election. As of Wednesday, October 23, 39 states have started in-person early voting, with four states — Delaware, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey— opening up voting later this week.Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Check out Episode 7 of our podcast series, The Undecideds. Please give us a 5-star rating and leave a comment!Take the survey: What do you think the early voting data tells us about this year’s election? Let us know!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Working in the trades is intense. It can be stressful and painful. Some guys use drugs and alcohol to cope. But when we ask for help, or we see someone struggling with addiction... Our silence speaks volumes. See how you can help, or get help, at Canada.ca slash ease the burden. A message from the Government of Canada. From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain, one of the most moving and funny films of the year.

Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year, garnering rave reviews and acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th. Based on

Charles Yu's award-winning book. Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world

beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like

to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of Isaac's take. I'm your host, John Long, filling in for Isaac, who is in San Diego,

having a great time, I'm sure, coaching his Frisbee team to hopefully a national championship. That'd be pretty sick. We'll keep you posted on that. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about early voting data. That's right. Early voting has begun in a few states in the 2024 election, and we are going to break down some of the analysis around that. A couple of notes in case you missed it. We released a new episode of The Undecideds. Episode 7 just came out for your listening enjoyment, and we only have one more episode scheduled before the election. So take a listen to episode 7 and get ready for episode 8 coming soon.

We also rolled out our ad-free premium podcast. Some of you are probably listening to that right now, so you can ignore this message. But for the rest of you, if you'd like to subscribe, you can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for a membership. You'll get not only our daily podcast ad-free, but you'll also get the Sunday podcast and Friday editions as well. We also announced that we are doing a live election watch party in Philadelphia. Getting pretty pumped for that. We're going to be live streaming it as well on YouTube for those of you who can't make it. But tickets for the in-person event are selling out pretty quickly.

So I don't know how many, maybe a dozen left. So if you are interested in coming, there is a link in today's episode description to get your tickets. Finally, we released a Friday edition for paid subscribers where Isaac gave his predictions for the election. This coming Friday, we'll be releasing a premium edition to all subscribers about how to spot misinformation online with the upcoming election. So that's going to be one to pay attention to.

Lastly, if you really want to help us out, we are finalists for the Shorty Awards in News and Media. That's a pretty big deal for us. And we would finalists for the Shorty Awards in News and Media. That's a pretty big deal for us, and we would love it if you could just take a moment and go to the link in today's episode description to vote for us. It's very cool to be nominated, and it would be incredible to get a win. So if you have it in you, you can vote once a day until the voting period ends on October 30th, and we appreciate it. All right, that was a lot of announcements. With all those out of the way, let's move on to today's quick hits.

First up, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he expects to receive $1.6 billion from the United States to finance domestic production of long-range weapons, enhancing the country's ability to strike military targets in Russia. Separately, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed a report from South Korea's main intelligence agency that thousands of North Korean troops are currently training in Russia. Number two, a federal judge ordered Rudy Giuliani to turn over his New York City apartment and other assets to two former Georgia election workers who won a $148 million defamation verdict against the former mayor and advisor to former President Trump. Number three, an E. coli outbreak linked to ingredients in McDonald's Quarter Pounder

Burgers has sickened at least 49 people from 10 states and killed one person. Number four, News Corp., the parent company of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence startup Perplexity for allegedly plagiarizing news and opinions articles from the media outlets and republishing their work without permission.

And number five, police in Tempe, Arizona, arrested a 60-year-old man suspected of shooting at a Democratic National Committee office over the last two months, charging him with multiple felonies, including committing an act of terrorism. Just two weeks until Election Day and more than 15 million people have already voted. Some of the highest turnouts in early voting we've seen. Tonight more than 1.8 million Georgians have cast their ballots early for this November election and just today. Early voting is off to a strong start in North Texas.

Yesterday proved to be a record breaker here in Texas. South Carolina voters are now heading to the polls to cast their vote on the first day of early voting. And a lot of people decided to take advantage of it. As Queen City News anchor Derek Dellinger tells us, in some cases, voters waited more than an hour to vote. 23 million Americans have already voted, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab. On September 20th, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Virginia became the first three states to allow voters to return mail-in ballots for the 2024 election. As of Wednesday, October 23rd,

39 states have started in-person early voting, with four states, Delaware, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey opening up voting later this week. U.S. citizens can place their votes in federal elections early in two different ways. Early voting, or early in two different ways. Early voting, or early in-person voting, is a process to allow voters to legally cast their ballots in person before election day. Absentee voting, or mail-in voting, allows voters to mail in or drop off their ballots before election day. 14 states require an excuse to vote by mail,

but 28 others do not. Offering no-excuse absentee ballot voting. The eight remaining states automatically send every voter a mail-in ballot. States do not release vote tabulations ahead of Election Day, but most states that allow early voting do release the political affiliation and demographic information associated with received ballots. Election analysts are now comparing that data to recent elections in 2022 and 2020, seeking clues as to whether the 2024 election is trending towards Republicans or Democrats. According to the University of Florida Election Lab's Early Voter Tracker, registered Democrats account for 4.9 million, or 43 percent, of early votes nationally, Republicans account for 4 million, or 35 percent,

and unaffiliated or third-party voters account for 2.5 million, or 22 percent. and unaffiliated or third-party voters account for 2.5 million, or 22%. According to TargetSmart, a Democratic polling data services firm, the national data shows that a greater proportion of registered Republicans are voting early compared to recent presidential elections. In 2020, when mail-in voting was at an all-time high, Democrats returned 20.4 million, or 51.4% of early and absentee ballots by this time before the election, while Republicans had returned 15.2 million, or 51.4 percent, of early and absentee ballots by this time before the election, while Republicans had returned 15.2 million, or 38.2 percent. In 2022, Democrats accounted for

7.4 million, or 53.4 percent, of both early and absentee votes to 5.1 million, or 36.8 percent, of Republicans. This year, Democrats account for 9.3 million, or 49.6% of early and absentee votes, to 7.9 million, or 42% for Republicans. Partisan identification for early voters across the swing states shows a similar story. Republicans have returned more early and absentee votes this year than they had at this point in 2022 in every swing state except Wisconsin, the others being Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Though Democrats lead Republicans in early and absentee voting in both 2020 and 2022, analysts disagree over whether the voting returns so far indicate that Democrats are losing their advantage

or rather that a greater share of Republicans are turning in their ballots ahead of Election Day. Today, we'll break down the analysis of the early voting data from the right and the left, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick break. Working in the trades is intense. it can be stressful and painful some guys use drugs and alcohol to cope but when we ask for help or we see someone struggling with addiction our silence speaks volumes see how you can help or get get help at Canada.ca slash ease the burden. A message from the Government of Canada.

From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain, one of the most moving and funny films of the year. Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin. A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions

resurface against the backdrop of their family history. A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year, garnering rave reviews and acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th. All right, let's get it started with what the right is saying. The right says Trump is in a strong position to win the election based on early vote numbers so

far. Some express frustration about how slowly early votes will be counted in some key swing states. Others say Democrats' advocacy for early voting could be a double-edged sword. In red state, Ward-Clark said Trump could be president on election day if early voting numbers hold up. If current early voting trends hold, Donald Trump will win the presidential race on election day, Clark wrote. This is a seismic shift in voting patterns. Democrats have always been very, very good at their ground game, getting their voters to the polls regardless of whether or not those voters have a heartbeat. They also have been historically very good at banking those votes in states that have early voting. But that's changing now. The increase in Republican early vote turnout is

erasing the Democrats' previous advantage. Republicans are finally learning to bank their votes. While there's no survey data to cite, one has to wonder if this is a sign of voter enthusiasm on the part of Republicans. The prospect of a Kamala Harris presidency has many Republicans willing to crawl on their hands and knees through a half a mile of scrap iron and busted glass to vote, Clark said. Of course, all this may be misleading. This is an odd election. We are quite literally in an undiscovered country in this cycle, with a former president who's been out of office for four years, trying to Grover Cleveland himself into a non-consecutive second term, and who is running against an inarguably incompetent opponent who is the sitting vice

president, but who was not nominated for the candidacy by any normal process, and who did not receive a single primary vote. In the New York Post, Rich Lowry criticized the early vote counting system of key states. We no longer have election night, we have election days. In 2020, the general election was held on Tuesday, November 3rd, but most media organizations didn't call it until Saturday, November 7th. This kind of delay is a national embarrassment. It creates uncertainty and breeds distrust and is also completely unnecessary, Lowry said. The culprit is early voting or how some states go about processing, or to be more accurate, not processing the early vote.

Only in government is it possible to have people do something well in advance and still have it end up delaying everything out of easily fixable bureaucratic ineptitude. Consider Pennsylvania. It embraced no-excuse mail-in voting in 2019 without making the necessary changes to count these ballots in a timely manner. In their wisdom, the Pennsylvania authorities don't allow election employees to begin processing the early and absentee vote until 7 a.m. on Election Day, ensuring that they can't cope, Lowry said. An erstwhile swing state,

Florida, provides a model. It has a massive early vote and yet rapid tabulation. Counties in the state process early ballots before Election Day. It helps that the state doesn't allow ballots arriving after 7 p.m. on Election Day to be counted, avoiding the problem of states that, shockingly, permit post-election ballots. In the Daily Caller, Gage Klipper wrote, Democrats' championing of early voting could come back to haunt them. Remember when Democrats tried to convince us that any opposition to mail-in voting was a threat to democracy and public health? Well, that short-sighted position could come back to haunt them this time around. Early votes are already coming in, and they're coming in fast, Clipper

said. The numbers really don't matter yet anyway. It's far too early to speculate what they may mean. However, it's safe to say the Democrats generally seem to have the lead. Registered Democrats make up 51% of ballots returned so far, while only 32% come from registered Republicans. The more salient point is that this is even happening at all. Nearly 7 million votes is a shockingly high figure for mid-October, especially when you consider that the race feels like it's just starting to heat up. Yet this is the bed the Democrats made for America. In 2020, COVID became a convenient excuse to normalize the decidedly not normal concept of voting weeks before an election, Klipper wrote. While we're still a far cry from the 2020 figures, it's safe to say that early mail-in voting has become the uncontested norm.

Rather than inefficiently fight it as they did in 2020, Republicans are finally getting in on the action, encouraging their voters to turn out sooner rather than later. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left thinks Republicans are overconfident about the early vote numbers, and Harris is still in a strong position. Some acknowledge that the GOP is outperforming past elections in the early vote. Others say Republicans' early vote improvement was expected and not yet concerning. In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore suggested early voting looks good for Harris but could be an illusion. Reports about which party or presidential candidate is doing

well in early voting should come with a number of huge asterisks. Only 23 states report early voting numbers according to voters' party registration status. Among those, roughly half of early votes cast so far, according to Election Lab, registered Democrats represent 46.5% of early votes and registered Republicans represent 32.5%, with the rest, 20.9%, being unaffiliated, Kilgore wrote. Should the Kamala Harris campaign be enthused about this heavy asterisk lead? Maybe. Votes already cast are banked votes, which allows the campaign to focus on undecided or unmobilized voters.

But almost everywhere, early voters are very likely to be people who would have voted in any circumstance. So a given party's heavy early vote share doesn't necessarily mean a heavy overall vote. It's also worth remembering that early voting breakdowns in non-battleground states may affect the national popular vote, but won't determine the election winner, Kilgore said. may affect the national popular vote, but won't determine the election winner, Kilgore said. How this will play out on election night this time around is a little more unclear, depending on how rapidly votes are counted and which votes are counted first, which varies from state to state. In CNN, Zachary B. Wolf wrote about what we know from early voting numbers.

In these early reports, there are some hints that Republicans may be cutting into the Democratic edge in early voting. More Republicans than Democrats have cast ballots in Nevada, and the parties are on par in North Carolina, according to the early data. That might cause concern for Democrats who want to remember 2020, when Democratic mail-in votes were critical to Joe Biden's victory. It could also simply mean Republicans are doing more to encourage early voting, Wolf said. In any event, more early Republican votes could cut down on what was perceived as a blue shift

when Democrat-leaning mail-in ballots were counted after Republican-leaning Election Day ballots in key states in 2020. In Nevada, where fewer than 1.5 million voters cast ballots for president in 2020, a little fewer than 250,000 have cast votes so far in 2024. But unlike in Georgia, more men than women have cast ballots, according to the available data, Wolf wrote. It's the opposite in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the Rust Belt states where more women have cast early ballots. Fewer than 400,000 ballots have been cast so far in Wisconsin, compared to more than 3 million ballots cast for president in 2020. Close to a million ballots have been cast early in Pennsylvania in 2024, compared with nearly 7 million total votes in 2020. In the Hopium Chronicles, Democratic

pollster Simon Rosenberg said the election is still far more likely to break for Harris than Trump. 2024 is not going to be like 2020 or 2022. It is going to be 2024, and the early vote is not behaving anything like these two previous elections. In attempting to analyze the early vote this time, we are also handicapped by having our baseline for comparison as 2020, the COVID election, which was anomalous in so many ways, Rosenberg wrote. The bottom line? We should expect Republicans to perform better than 2020 in the early vote this year. First, they are trying much harder to drive the early vote this time, learning from having

been burned by their poor performance in 2020 and 2022. Second, some of our core vote, young Democrats who are running 2-1 for Harris, are going to show up this time as unaffiliated. As we did not have a presidential primary to encourage young voters to register as Dems, some of our votes will be hiding in the unaffiliated column this time, Rosenberg said. Having said that, I still think we are where I have believed we have been for weeks now, favored to win. We have a steady, sturdy lead in the national popular vote and are closer to 270 in the battlegrounds. While it is still early in the early vote, we are showing real strength in Michigan, Nebraska right and the left are saying, which brings us to Isaac's take. Just a reminder, this is Isaac's opinion, and I'm just reading it in the first person. So, I know that this is the part where I'm supposed to give you a bunch of geeky analysis

about the early hints on where this election is trending, but I have promised readers to be honest and transparent when sharing my own opinion. So let me be as honest as I can. I don't think any of this data proves actual clues to the outcome of this election. I really hate to burst everyone's bubble, especially as we all look for narratives to latch onto going into the homestretch of the 2024 election. But this early voting data is not very revealing. The absolute most it tells us is that Republicans are listening to their political leaders like Donald Trump, who are finally encouraging them to get out and vote early, unlike the last two cycles.

This is meaningful, at least in the sense that it demonstrates some kind of voter enthusiasm. It also means that Republican organizers can cross some voters off of their turnout list and focus on people who haven't voted yet. This is helpful, and it's why early voting has its advantage in elections and why Democrats have focused so much on it over the last few years. But if you think it's news that Republicans are motivated to oust the Biden-Harris administration, you haven't been paying attention. We all have short memories.

Otherwise, we'd be discussing the fact that heading into the 2022 midterms, the early vote results seemed to indicate Republicans were going to crush Democrats across the country. It turned out there was a very simple thing happening. More Republicans were voting early and more Democrats were voting on Election Day than in 2020, when we were in the midst of a pandemic. On Election Day, Democrats turned out and the race fundamentally changed. This year, Democrats are still turning out more early voters than Republicans. Their advantage is simply less than it was in 2020.

I'll repeat something I said when I made my election predictions on Friday. The presidential race is basically a coin flip. Either candidate could end up sweeping the swing states or crushing the other in the electoral college, or, as I expect, they could split the swing states and the race could come down to tens of thousands of votes across a few battlegrounds. Everything is within the polling margin of error, and all the forecasters are giving each candidate roughly a 50% chance to win, and neither Harris nor Trump is clearly separating themselves in the early vote. Remember, Harris has had a steady 2, 3, or 4% national polling lead since her campaign got off the ground.

The battlegrounds are, well, battles. If the polls skew as they did in 2022, Harris will dominate. She'll win Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona. If the polls skew as they did in 2020, Trump will win all those states, plus Georgia. If we get something in between, it'll be a very close finish. Across the battlegrounds, the polling averages are shifting ever so slightly toward Trump, which could be a sign of late momentum. Or it could be a sign of Republicans flooding the zone with unreliable partisan polls.

Or that could be a Democratic talking point. The House remains a toss-up, though a few key races are moving toward Democrats. In the Senate, Pennsylvania is trending toward Republicans, while Nebraska is trending toward Democrats. Wrap your head around that one. This is where we are, a very close and competitive election. Something else interesting is happening right now, too. Both candidates are hitting non-battleground states in the final days. Trump is going to New York, presumably to help Republicans

in Congress, and Harris is going to Texas and Kentucky, presumably to help Democrats in Congress. This is a sign both of their campaigns believe they are in strong positions down the homestretch, and they are starting to reach out to voters that they may not typically get. The 30,000-foot view, to me, looks like this. Democrats have a financial advantage and a better, more organized ground game. They are running against a historically unpopular candidate many view as a threat to democracy, and they have a decisive issue, abortion, that is turning out voters in droves and widening the already historic and increasingly fascinating gender gap. They're pulling ahead of

Republicans in battleground Senate races, but will likely lose their majority because of how many seats they're defending. They poll better on generic ballots, and they took the unprecedented step of replacing their incumbent candidate just months out from Election Day, which makes all of these signals very noisy and difficult to parse. Republicans, meanwhile, are running against an incumbent administration in an environment where Americans are dissatisfied with the economy, an incumbent administration in an environment where Americans are dissatisfied with the economy, panicked about immigration, fearful of crime, and disappointed in the foreign policy outcomes of the last four years. They're running against a candidate who, by some measures, is even more unpopular than their own. They have a presidential candidate whose floor of support never moves, an incredible opportunity to flip the Senate, and the ability to run on a campaign of change

in an era where most voters often cast ballots to get rid of whoever is in office. These are all significant and critical advantages, which is why I think Trump will ultimately win the election. Nobody knows what's going to happen, and none of these trends are definitive one way or the other. The early voting data tells us only what we already knew. A lot of people are going to vote in this election, and both parties are successfully motivating their bases. We'll be right back after this quick break. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond

Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain, one of the most moving and funny films of the year. Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this

year, garnering rave reviews and acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th. Whether renting, renewing a mortgage, or considering buying a home, everybody has housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances, visit Canada.ca slash it pays to know. A message from the Government of Canada. All right, that is it for Isaac's take. Let's move on to your questions answered. This one comes from Josiah on Instagram. The question is, how do we go about getting money out of politics and make our voices

heard a little more? Lobbyist voices count more because of money. All right, Isaac says, let me start by asking what might sound like an easy question. What is the money you want to take out of politics? When you think of money in politics, you probably think of campaign donations, corporate lobbyists raising funds for politicians in a silent quid pro quo, or mega-rich donors dangling gobs of cash to support their own interests. These are all important issues that we need to consider. Super PACs this year are dumping unprecedented cash into elections, and it's getting harder and harder to tell where the

money is coming from. It's a serious problem. What you might not think about is why a politician might want that kind of money, which isn't all put towards TV ads and PR campaigns. And of course, pocketing campaign donations for themselves is illegal. Politicians need to meet their constituents to travel across the states or the country in the case of presidential candidates, to hire staff, to contract pollsters, to feed and train volunteers to help them understand their voters and be able to reach them. That may be putting too friendly a spin on campaign donations. And yes, I think the sheer quantity of campaign dollars distorts our process in an unhealthy way. But mainly, I want to stress that I don't think the headline-grabbing figures of

hundreds of millions of dollars is the only kind of money we should be looking into limiting in politics. When it comes to getting money out of politics, I think there are two better places to start. Restricting members of Congress from being allowed to trade stocks and make active investments while in office, and prohibiting politicians from taking jobs as lobbyists or industry regulators after they leave office, which can lead to regulatory capture. Those two categories probably influence our legislative process just as much as big money in elections, and legislation has been proposed to counter both of them before. If we, as an electorate, can unify around those issues and push for reform, I think we can actually achieve it.

All right, that's it for your questions answered, which brings us to our Under the Radar story. Deceptive fundraising schemes have misled elderly Americans into donating millions of dollars to political campaigns, according to a CNN investigation published this week. Many of these donors are battling dementia or other cognitive impairments and either forget their donation history or unwittingly approve recurring donations due to confusing language on donation sites. For example, both Republican and Democratic fundraising platforms use a controversial feature that authorizes repeat donations by default if a donor does not uncheck a box while attempting to make a small one-time contribution. The report found that some elderly citizens don't realize they've

been regularly sending campaign money for months or years. In one case, an 80-year-old communications engineer with dementia inadvertently became one of the country's largest grassroots supporters of the Republican Party after donating nearly $500,000 to former President Donald Trump and other candidates as his cognitive abilities declined. CNN has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of mail-in and early in-person votes requested nationally as of October 23rd is 55,056,724, according to NBC News' aggregation of Target, Smart, and State data. The number of early and absentee votes cast in Michigan as of October 23rd is 1,137,638.

The total number of early and absentee votes cast in Michigan in 2020 was 3,260,375. 3,260,375. The number of early and absentee votes cast in Pennsylvania as of October 23rd is 997,383. The total number of early and absentee votes cast in Pennsylvania in 2020 was 2,636,203. The percentage of Democrats who said any U.S. voters should have the option to vote early or absentee without having to document a reason in 2018 was 83%, according to Pew Research. The percentage of Democrats who said any U.S. voters should have the option to vote early or absentee without having to document a reason in 2024 is 82%. The percentage of Republicans who said any U.S. voters should have the option to vote early or absentee without having to document a reason in 2018 was 57%. And the percentage of Republicans who said any U.S. voters should have the option to vote early or absentee without having to document a reason in 2024 is 37%.

All right, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. Caritas Bakhita House in London provides refuge for women who have been exploited and trafficked. Four years ago, the house gained a new feline addition, a black and white cat named Marley. Karen Anstis, the head of the house, describes Marley as a wonderful example of the power of love. Often, Marley placing a paw on the guest's legs is the first kindness they've experienced in years. He has the incredible gift of empathy and has assisted many, many women along the road to recovery. In honor of his contributions to the house, Marley recently won Cat Protection's Cat of the Year Award. The Guardian has this story,

and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to retangle.com and sign up for a membership. And you can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for a premium podcast membership, which gets you ad-free daily podcasts, Sunday podcasts, Friday editions, interviews, bonus content, and so much more. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all.

Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by Duke Thomas. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. by Diet 75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go check out our website at readtangle.com. That's readtangle.com.