TWO WEEKS – AT 8:28 AM. ET:  The election is two weeks from today.  What are the early indications?  From The New York Times: 

Early voting is underway in Nevada, and the numbers look bad for Democrats. Republicans and Democrats have voted in nearly equal numbers in Clark County, home to Las Vegas, where Democrats have a 13-point registration advantage. Only 10,000 voters have turned out, compared with 17,000 who turned out on the first day of 2010.

Nevada isn’t alone. The early voting numbers, a possible indicator of overall turnout, also look bad for Democrats in Ohio.

Fortunately for Democrats, Nevada doesn’t really matter. Neither does Ohio. There isn’t a Senate race in Nevada or Ohio, and the states’ Republican governors are expected to cruise to re-election.

So why am I bringing up the gloomy numbers for Democrats in irrelevant contests for them? Because they highlight the challenge of interpreting early voting data elsewhere.

Very few of this year’s competitive contests had close races in 2010. Colorado and Florida are notable exceptions, but Iowa, North Carolina and Georgia didn’t have especially competitive statewide contests four years ago.

That’s made it difficult to interpret the early voting numbers in these states. Democrats have emphasized that they’re turning out voters who didn’t participate in 2010. But the better question, and one that’s harder to know, is whether the new voters talked up by Democrats are people who would have participated in 2010 if the states had been competitive. If that’s it, I don’t see how it’s amazing news for Democrats.

The conventional wisdom is that Democrats need to outdo their mobilization efforts of four years ago, when they lost competitive contests in Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois. If that’s right, then Democrats don’t just need voters who didn’t participate in 2010; they need people who wouldn’t have participated in a hypothetically competitive race in 2010.

COMMENT:  In other words, there are some good signs, but they're not definitive.  Most indications we have is that the GOP stands a pretty good chance of taking the Senate, but that it's far from a sure thing.  That's been the case through most of this race.  Turnout, the ground game, will determine everything.

October 21,  2014