We are one week from election day in the United States.
At this point it is hard to imagine that there are many voters who do not have a view of who they favor between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
That is why the most important factor in the last week of an election is execution rather than influence.
Turning out the voters who favor your candidate is the top priority in the final week of any election.
When the votes are tallied, and the results are analyzed, I am almost certain that turnout will be the deciding factor in this election.
Let's look at a few recent elections to see how important turnout is in the final result.
Barack Obama won the 2008 election by turning out 10 million more votes (69 million vs. 59 million) than John Kerry had just four years earlier. John McCain actually received 1 million fewer votes than George W. Bush did in 2004. The result was a landslide victory for Obama primarily due to turnout.
However, four years later Obama received 3 million fewer votes vs. Mitt Romney in his reelection bid while the Republican turned out 1 million more voters than McCain. Obama went from a landslide in 2008 to winning by less than 4 points in the popular vote in 2012.
Hillary Clinton got the same 66 million votes in 2016 that Obama did in 2012. However, it was still 3 million less than Obama received eight years earlier. In the meantime, Trump got 3 million more votes in 2016 than McCain got in 2008.
The fact that Hillary turned out 3 million fewer votes than Obama did in 2008 and Trump got 3 million more votes than McCain was enough for an electoral vote victory for the Republicans even though Clinton eked out a 2 point popular vote margin.
Of course, all records on turnout were obliterated in the Covid year of 2020.
Trump turned out 74 million votes in 2020---11 million more than he did in 2016 but lost.
81 million votes were counted for Biden---15 million more than Hillary received four years earlier.
In total, almost 158 million votes were cast for President in 2020---22 million more than were cast just four years before.
We have never seen anything like that turnout before. The relaxed rules on absentee ballots in which voters were mailed unsolicited ballots clearly had a lot to do with it.
The large number of mail ballots together with the inherent greater risk of fraud is one of the big reasons that many questioned the results of the 2020 election.
The best recent evidence of how turnout impacts an election can be found in looking at the election results in Kentucky comparing the 2020 Presidential race and the 2023 Gubernatorial election.
Donald Trump carried Kentucky with 1.327 million votes in 2020 to Biden's .772 million.
However, Democrat Andy Beshear won reelection as Governor in 2023 by .695 million to .627 million over Republican Daniel Cameron.
The Democrats turned out 90% of the vote in 2023 that they did in 2020.
However, Republicans only turned out 47% of the vote for Cameron as showed up for Trump three years earlier. The Trump voters stayed home and the Republicans lost in Kentucky.
Such is the power of turnout.
In 2020, the power of turnout was in mail-in ballots for the Democrats.
An analysis after the election found that 46% of voters in 2020 voted by mail.
Of the 46% who voted by mail, almost two-thirds voted for Biden.
Interestingly, Trump enjoyed the same advantage among those who voted on election day---65% of those who voted on election day voted for Trump.
Trump also won those who voted early, in-person by 5 points.
The biggest question in the last week of the 2024 election is what the turnout will be without the wide use of mail-in ballots we had in 2020.
Will Democrats be able to get the same turnout if their voters have to show up and vote early in-person or on election day?
Additional questions are how many Republicans will vote early now that it is being encouraged and will any early vote cannibalize the strong showing Republicans have had on election day in recent years.
As of October 29 at 900pm, 53 million votes have been cast nationally per the University of Florida Election Lab that tracks the vote.
27.5 million have been in-person early votes and 25.5 million have been mail-in ballots.
Only about half of the 50 states actually have voters declare party registration.
The early vote is remarkably close compared to 2020 in those states that have party registration.
Democrats have less than a 3 point advantage in early votes with less than a week to go.
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| Source: https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/ |
At this point Democrats only have a 10 point advantage in mail ballots compared to a 28 point advantage they had in 2020 one week before election day.
In-person early voting shows Republicans with 8.6 point advantage over the Democrats compared to the 5 point advantage they had in 2020.
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| Source: https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/ |
Let's look at the challenges that each party faces in turning out the vote over the next week based on early voting patterns right now.
In 2020, 158 million total voters were counted of which 73 million were mail-in votes . 65% of these mail-in votes went to Biden.
Six days before election day there have only been 26 million votes cast by mail this year,
It is clear that mail-in votes will fall well short of 2020 totals. We are talking about 47 million votes that have to come from somewhere in the next six days to equal where overall turnout was four years ago. Two-thirds of those votes the last time went to Biden. Will those voters show up in person to vote in the next week? The election might be determined on the answer to that question.
In 2020, 50 million of Trump's total votes (74 million) came from in-person early voting or on election day. Trump is doing much better with early voting this time but is that voting just pulling votes from election day?
Trump's challenge is to stay somewhat close in early voting and still win the election day vote convincingly. He is unlikely to get 65% of the election day vote this year because many votes have been moved forward,. However, if the early votes stays in the same range as it is today and he gets 55%-60% of of the election day vote, he will be tough to beat.
The early voting returns that I am seeing in the Sun Belt states at this stage looks promising for Trump.
North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada are all seeing Republican voters outperforming expectations in early voting. At the same time, Democrats are just not voting anywhere near the numbers we saw in 2020 early voting (especially by mail).
Of course, no one knows who those voters are voting for. Registered Republicans could have turned on Trump and are voting for Kamala. Just the same, there could be registered Democrats voting for Trump.
The good news for Kamala is that women are outvoting men in early voting by pretty significant margins. The higher turnout combined with the fact that women traditionally vote Democrat in higher numbers is positive for Harris right now. Trump is going to need a large turnout of men on election day.
If there is one thing we do know based on past elections is that there is no Republican in our lifetimes that can turnout votes like Trump can. We saw it in the primaries in 2016 and 2020. We saw it in the general elections in both years. Trump brings a lot people to the polls who would otherwise stay home.
The important takeaway from those Sunbelt states is that if Trump can sweep those four states, he only needs two more electoral votes using the 2020 electoral map as the baseline.
Trump has many paths to 270 electoral votes if he can turn Georgia, Arizona and Nevada into his column.
Trump's camp has recently signaled that they also believe he has realistic chances in New Hampshire, Virginia and New Mexico. Some pollsters have even suggested that Minnesota could be in play.
Kamala Harris has to hold all of these states and sweep Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to tie and win one electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District to give her 270 electoral votes.
This is what that map would look like.
You could say that would be akin to pulling an inside straight in a poker game.
Of course, the same thing was said about Trump's chances in 2016 against Hillary one week before election day when the electoral map was even more daunting.
Trump had to win all of those Rust Belt states but also Florida and Ohio which were still considered battleground states at that time. He won them all.
All of the polls, data and analysis mean nothing until the votes are counted.
The state of the race remains uncertain.
The trend is still Trump's friend.
However, the Democrats have the money and organization to turnout votes better than anyone, including Donald Trump.
Whether Democrats can do it in the next six days will determine this election.
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