With Vice President Kamala Harris holding a consistent but slim lead in the polling aggregates, it’s now—and has been—a turnout battle.
As I’ve noted repeatedly, pollsters are pretty good at determining what various demographics think, but as to turnout, they have to make an educated guess based on historical trends and other data. There’s a big difference if 17% of voters under 30 turn out, or 25%. And no one can know what that number will ultimately look like.
But given Harris’ persistent leads, however narrow, and Democratic performance in recent cycles, we have the numbers. If we turn out, we’ll win. It’s weird that anyone thinks that Democrats may underperform—we won’t—but that’s the GOP’s best hope: that our low-performing voter groups stay home.
But if the (very) early vote is any indication, that’s not happening.
To be absolutely clear, the early vote gives us zero insight into whether Harris or Donald Trump is currently leading. Democrats could crush Republicans in the early vote, only to be swamped by high Republican turnout on Election Day. It could be that the most motivated Democrats vote early, but less motivated or apathetic ones forget to vote later on. Or that Republicans, putting more energy into the early vote, goose those numbers by cannibalizing day-of voting.
Don’t look at early-vote numbers, like many people are, and say, “Democrats are ahead of their 2020 pace,” as if that is inherently good. It’s not. The name of the game is “get more votes than the other side,” and an early vote counts the same as a day-of vote.
But what it can do is suggest that our worst nightmare—a depressed Democratic electorate—is not happening. In other words, if Democrats were unenthused or checked out or otherwise less inclined to vote, we would presumably see hints in the early vote. And we’re not.
Early-vote data is provided by the data firm TargetSmart, which works with Democratic campaigns. As you’ll see on the chart below, things will be broken down by party—but that party is “modeled,” meaning it’s not voters’ verified partisanship, nor does it indicate the candidate they voted for. Instead, it reflects TargetSmart’s model of early voters’ likely partisan leanings. The model is regularly refined, which means comparing between cycles is not perfect.
With those caveats out of the way, let’s look at the battleground states, where a robust get-out-the-vote operation is working hard to drive Democratic turnout. Here are the numbers as of Friday afternoon:
So far, the Democratic early vote in swing states is outpacing where things were at this time in 2020 and 2022. Again, one would expect the gap to narrow in the weeks ahead, and we’re at less than 3% of what TargetSmart estimates will be the election’s turnout, but as of now, Democrats are off to a strong start. (As an aside, this year’s early vote is basically guaranteed to fall short of 2020, when people were more likely to vote by mail because of the COVID-19 pandemic.)
But as Tom Bonier, senior advisor at TargetSmart, pointed out on Friday, “Looking at gender, women are accounting for a larger share of the early vote in [Pennsylvania] than they did at this point in 2020, and in-line with 2022, suggesting the post-Dobbs environment continues (as we have seen elsewhere an in other data).”
Women historically vote more Democratic than men. According to data from Pew Research Center, 55% of women voted for Joe Biden in 2020, with only 44% voting for Donald Trump. But among women of color? Biden won Latina women by 24 points and Black women by 90 points.
That signals good things for this. year.
“Now, looking at the racial breakdown of women early voters in [Pennsylvania], we see the biggest increases among women of color, especially Black women whose turnout is 248% of their turnout at this point in 2020, compared to 146% for white women,” Bonier tweeted on Friday.
“While Republicans have converted a number of election day voters to vote early, Democratic turnout, especially among voters of color, has negated those potential gains for the Trump campaign,” he added.
With Black women leading the charge, and women overall crushing the early vote, the very early signs are good for the Democratic ticket.
Now let’s bring it home.
