🗳️ AZ EARLY BALLOTS ⚪ INDEPENDENTS (MEGATHREAD) as of Oct 23 | 11 days out 190,806 independents have voted. 23.0% of every ballot returned. In 2022 they were 25.5% of the early vote. Independents are the slowest bloc to return a ballot. Return rate: 🔵D 30.6% 🔴R 27.6% ⚪Other 17.9% Where the 184,641 we can score sit on our partisan lean: 🔵Hard Dem 13.9% 🔵Lean Dem 30.3% ⚪Middle 15.8% 🔴Lean Rep 37.1% 🔴Hard Rep 2.9% 🔵44.2% lean D. 🔴40.0% lean R. The August primary says the same thing. Independents who have voted and pulled a primary ballot: 🔵D 21,494 🔴R 18,393 68.8% skipped the primary entirely. There is a Democratic edge, and it is small. Nothing here is a 60-40 break. The widest Democratic edge measurable here is 🔵D+7.8, on primary ballot choice. 60-40 needs 🔵D+20. Most of that tilt is registration sorting, not persuasion. Of 2022's hardest-Rep independents, 84.3% are registered Republican today. The hard-Rep independent pool fell from 101,775 to 30,441. They did not change their minds. They changed their registration. Taken as a control: how often each lean group returns early is flat against 2022, no more than a point in any of the five groups. The behavior did not move. The label did. – at Arizona, USA