There’s a lot of chatter about the early vote with Donald Trump changing his tune and suggesting that the GOP is breaking all early vote records. (“Nobody’s ever seen anything like it!) It does appear that the early vote is going well but it’s worth taking a look at some analysis as to what it means. Tom Bonier is the early vote data guy and he wrote this on his substack today, discussing why this year is different: Well, for one, we’re not in the peak of a deadly pandemic. The 2020 election saw the biggest liberalization of access to early voting as states adapted to the realities of the pandemic. And it was a great success, with over 100 million Americans safely casting their vote before Election Day. Of course, there was an asymmetry here. Democrats were more covid-conscious, and therefore more likely to cast an early vote (take Pennsylvania, where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the early vote by an almost 3 to 1 margin). And at the same time, Republicans largely abandoned voting by mail, due to Donald Trump claiming that mail voting was fraudulent. Republicans acknowledge that their failure to drive their voters out early in 2020 put them at a strategic disadvantage, and have since committed significant resources to turning that around in this election. Just yesterday the New York Times reported “Republicans have spent months and millions of dollars on an effort to push former President Donald J. Trump’s most loyal supporters to change their minds about voting…