Watched a David Pakman video recently and he was talking about how early voting in WI and MI is closer than one would've expected. Does anyone know where he might've gotten that information? I read an NBC piece that said something similar:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/two-weeks-till-election-day-democrats-have-big-lead-early-n1243991
but when I tried to find the hard numbers only a couple states report ballots by party affiliation (and WI and MI are not among them) so I'm unsure where the data is coming from for these conclusions.

Are they talking about early voting, or mail in? Early voting like just started, so I don't know how they could be doing that. 

As for mail in voting, in Michigan, according to the Washington times...


"White House officials said Saturday that mail-in balloting and early voting totals in Michigan show that 41 percent of the 1.4 million votes so far were cast by Republicans, and 39 percent by Democrats. Another 20 percent of the vote was by independents."

Can't find the White House official statement they're referring to. Michigan doesn't seem to track ballots by party affiliation, so yeah, that claim seems questionable.

What I've found tries to track early voting and mail-in. https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html

I think anywhere outside of the states that report it themselves (CA, CO, CT, FL, IA, KS, KY, LA, MD, ME, NC, NE, NJ, NM, NV, OK, OR, PA, SD) have to be projections based on some form of polling. Those states that we have data for the early voting is heavily in democrat favor compared to the state's usual voting pattern overall. 

Cool site. 

But yeah, it'd be very surprising if mail in ballots are close in Michigan when they aren't in Kentucky. Of course, assuming that whoever is reporting actually knows the party of the ballots, such a discrepancy could just be the result of something like republican leaning areas having returned ballots first. I wouldn't take such a claim too seriously.

found the source for NBC's data:

https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/

Unsure of their methods so no clue how legit their projections are but they have registered party for states that report it and modeled party for places that don't. 

Trump has never been against mail in ballots, he's been against Biden ballots in whatever form they take. 

Whether a Covid-surge will effect republicans depends on how enthusiastic Trump supporters are and how seriously they take the virus.

The difference is more likely to be felt among older voters and independents. I don't think that on the whole it will make or break the election, but in a place like Florida it may have enough of an impact to turn the tide, and if Florida votes Biden, then that's it.

Well whatever Trump true stance on vote by mail is, the effect of his action and position is clearly reflected in the early voting stats. 

"Whether a Covid-surge will effect republicans depends on how enthusiastic Trump supporters are and how seriously they take the virus." while democrats/republicans share of early voting probably represent the position of the president on mail-in voting. The record numbers of early voting represent how people take coronavirus seriously and on that front even republicans show records early voting numbers even if not quite as impressive as Democrats.

With Covid likely to make every news headline from now on, you could bet this would have an impact on voting on election day which will be, by the looks of it, predominantly republicans voters (logics tell me if it's not the case republicans are doomed anyway).

I know the effect of this will probably marginal but like you pointed out, marginal effect in some states maybe is more than enough.

Also others impact of Covid making most of the headlines again would probably includes a boost for Biden votes and a burying Hunter Biden most likely already false story. So again not good for republicans.

Trump appears to now be embracing the vote by mail after months of sowing doubt on it: https://globalnews.ca/news/7403460/trump-vote-by-mail-ads/
It's not surprising when looking at the early vote stats https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html
on States that reports ballots by registered affiliation:
8.4M Dems have voted so far VS 4M Republicans
24M Dems have requested a ballot and only 13.4M Republicans have done so

This is not surprising giving the president stance on mail in ballot certainly had more effectiveness on it's own electoral base. So Republicans are expected to vote en masse in person but the thing is: https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=us+covid&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Covid 19 daily cases are spiking and would probably be hitting all time high this week and additional federal/red state measures seems to be a far cry giving the president stance on this.

With all this information, it is possible that sowing doubt in mailing voting will backfire spectacularly on republicans?
Do you think republicans officials are now afraid their voter base gonna be afraid to go vote on election day and hand many surprise victory to Democrats based on early voting?

Its very possible a lot of states begin to lockdown scarring away election day voters.