From the Editor: Reading the tea leaves for early voting clues

Before the Nov. 8, 2016, election, I voted early in Lafayette Parish. Democrat Hillary Clinton was supposed to have a small but comfortable lead over Republican Donald Trump for president nationally.
Lafayette, on the other hand, may actually be more Republican than Ronald Reagan.
The waiting area at the Registrar of Voters Office downtown, the only place to vote early then, was packed in a way that seems nostalgic in this time of COVID-19.
Voters waited an hour or more.
Back in my car, the radio said Texas early voting locations were being swamped, too.
Clearly, something unexpected was happening. But what?
Now we know what. Trump pulled off close victories in a few Midwestern states and Pennsylvania, enough to give him an electoral vote victory.
This time around, that early turnout from 2016 seems quaint.
In St. Mary Parish, about 6,900 people voted early for president in 2016. This time, nearly 11,000 people voted early.
In Texas, fewer than 9 million people, early and on Election Day, voted in the 2016 presidential election. More than 9 million Texans had cast early ballots as of Friday for this election.
Clearly, something unexpected is happening. But what?
We can’t say for sure in the absence of polling how St. Mary will vote for president, but Trump victories here and statewide seem safe. The parish went for Trump 63%-35% in 2016 (a story in Monday’s edition confused parish and state results) while Louisiana went 58%-38% for the eventual president.
It’s obvious that fear of COVID-19 is driving some of the early voting this time around. Mail-in balloting is up, too, as states have encouraged people to do what they can to avoid packed polling places on Election Day.
But it’s also clear that this nation, where people who don’t vote for anything else vote in the presidential election, is even more invested in this election.
You can see it as a referendum on the outsize personality and policies of our president. But there’s more at stake, and in ways that reach all the way to St. Mary Parish.
At the top of the list is a set of parallel mysteries: What happens with COVID-19 and what happens with the economy?
Media reports are talking about a third wave of coronavirus infections. We’re not seeing that in Louisiana, where new infections and fatalities have remained relatively low. But an active hurricane season has reduced the amount of testing. And there has been an increase in the number of hospitalizations over the last couple of weeks.
What we don’t know is how the remaining economic restrictions imposed to prevent COVID’s spread will continue to affect the economy.
Personally, the remaining rules don’t have much impact on me as a consumer. My barfly days are long gone. I go to get gas and groceries as always.
Now, though, I have a new routine: Stop at a store, get out of the car, walk up to the store’s entrance, remember I’m not wearing my mask, go back to the car, put on the mask and walk back to the store.
I count this as cardio.
But that’s just as a customer. If I owned a business that relied on high turnover and low margin, my view of the restrictions might be different.
Our Morgan City mayor candidates, Lee Dragna, Don Hicks and Kevin Voisin, have talked about the need to expand the tax base, seeking grants for housing construction and rehabilitation, attracting more employers and tax-paying businesses, and working to keep important commercial waterways dredged open.
How does all that work when businesses are limited in their capacity, and the federal government is tossing trillions of dollars around for COVID relief?
Where’s the proper balance between allowing something like normal business to resume and protecting the public?
That’s a lot of weight to put on one trip to the polls on one day in November — or October, as the case may have been for you.
But those are among the things, maybe the most important things, we’re being called on to decide.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.