Are early voting numbers predictive of anything?

[Amishman]

1. only slightly, recent years have been subject to such change in voting patterns

Recent years are not a good frame of reference due to the swings in how people are voting.

The only value I see in them is where there are radical changes from recent years.

FL is a good example, early voting is way down compared to other years. Does this mean we should panic? No, we don't know what it means. But the value we can find is that things are happening differently - which means the models that pollsters use to normalize data might also be inaccurate as they would also be based on prior trends and activity.

Changes in early voting just mean that state probably has more uncertainty.