The State of the Race---Two Weeks to ED

We are two weeks from ED (Election Day).

We can only hope that we are not two weeks from Electoral Dysfunction similar to what we saw in 2020.

If there is one thing we need it is a fair, equitable and clear cut victory for one side or the other in 2024.

However, the hope that we will see that does not seem to be shared by many people according to a Rasmussen poll earlier this year.

Two-thirds of all voters were concerned that the 2024 election outcome would be affected by cheating.

That view was also held by 55% of Democrats.

Seeing that level of distrust does not build a lot of confidence that we will see a fair, equitable and clear cut victory for one side or the other in two weeks.

That confidence is further shaken when we have seen the Secretary of State in several swing states suggesting that we should not expect final voting results for up to a week after election day.

How does that make sense considering over half of the vote in many states will be in the form of early votes?

I am at a loss as to how voting results during almost my entire lifetime were counted and tabulated on the night of the election when almost all voting was done on election day.  However, it now takes longer to get the count done when most of the voting is done early with voting machines?

This tweet sums it up pretty well.

By any measure, the Presidential race in the United States appears to be extraordinarily tight based on the polls.

In the RealClearPolitics composite average for national polls, Harris is +0.8.

Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris

However, in the all important Battleground states, Trump is +1.2.

In fact, Trump is leading in each state in the composite average although all of them are the slimmest of margins.

Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/elections/president/2024/battleground-states

The only clear signal in the polling is that Trump has been improving his position over the last month.

Democrats got a boost when Kamala replaced Biden but Trump has been steadily eroding that advantage.

The momentum for Trump increased right after the Vice Presidential debate in early October.

Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris

For context, let's look at the national popular vote margins for Democrats in 2016 and 2020 compared to the 0.8 point Harris lead has in the RCP poll average right now.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a 2.1 point margin in 2016 and lost the electoral vote.

Joe Biden won the popular vote by a 4.4 point margin and won the electoral vote.

The popular vote margin that Kamala has in the polling average does not appear to be large enough to translate to an electoral college win based on past experience.

It is also useful to compare where Trump stood in the polls two weeks out in the last two elections.

Two weeks before the election in 2020, Trump was down by 8.6 points to Biden. Trump was down 6.4 points to Hillary. The final results had Trump improving by 4.2 points in 2020 and 4.3 points in 2016 comparing polls two weeks before election day and the final results.

Are we going to see similar movement to Trump this year or has the polling improved to identify the silent Trump voter?

It is a huge factor in assessing the reliability of the polls.

The other big factor in the accuracy of any poll is the assumptions made on the make-up of the electorate.

It has generally been the case for many years that more voters identified as Democrats than Republicans. Therefore, pollsters sampled more Democrats than Republicans when they did a voter survey.

A typical poll in the past might have used a +2 or +3 Democrat sample.

However, recent trends have seen more voters identifying as Republicans. Republicans have also been outpacing Democrats in new registrants in many states.

For example, in Pennsylvania, Democrats had a registration advantage of 7.5 points in 2020. The latest data indicates that advantage is down to 3.7 points. That could be significant in that critical swing state.

Source: https://x.com/RealSKeshel/status/1841695712221806974

Gallup's most recent survey of national party identification actually has Republicans at +3 right now.

This is the highest it has been in a Presidential year going back to 1992.

Source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/651092/2024-election-environment-favorable-gop.aspx

If a pollster is using a +2 Democrat sample in a +3 Republican environment the chances are that the poll is going to be wrong.

Many people think back to the 2022 mid-terms and look at it as a massive disappointment and defeat for the Republicans.

It is argued that the predicted Red Wave never materialized.

However, if you actually look back at the popular vote totals broken down for  the 435 House seats, the Republicans actually won the national vote by....2.8 points.

Is it merely a coincidence that number is almost exactly in line with the recent Gallup data?

Source: https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/results/house?election-data-id=2022-HG&election-painting-mode=projection&filter-key-races=false&filter-flipped=false

The bottom line is that you can find positive news for either candidate depending on which polls you look at.

However, on balance, I would rather be Trump than Harris right now based on the trend and the party identification and registration data.

The biggest change in assessing the state of the race this year compared to 2016 is the degree to which early voting has taken hold.

We are not likely to see the same number of early and mail votes cast as we did in the Covid year of 2020 in which almost 70% voted before election day.

However, it is certain that we will see over half of all ballots cast by mail or in early in-person voting.

Source: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/what-methods-did-people-use-to-vote-in-2020-election.html

This non-traditional voting is providing additional insights into the state of political races that was not previously available.

Although we do not how any one person voted, it is possible to know who voted.

Data analysts know their age, their gender, their race and if they are registered or identify with a political party. They also know whether they have been high or low intensity voters in the past.

This provides an additional tool beyond polling to better understand what outcome to expect. In most respects, early voting data is much more important than the polls right now.

In 2020, mail-in and early voting was heavily utilized by Democrats. Republicans tended to vote on election day.

You can see how large this effect was in 2020 by looking at the votes in Pennsylvania split between early voting and election day voting.

Biden won this important swing state by a margin of less than 81,000 out of almost 7 million total votes.

However, Biden had a 1.4 million vote advantage before election day even arrived.

Trump could not make that margin up and lost by 1.2 points despite garnering 1.3 million more votes on election day than Biden did.

Source: https://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/_ENR/General/SummaryResults?ElectionID=83&ElectionType=G&IsActive=0

Republicans have been encouraged to vote early this year.

However, voting early only becomes a net advantage for the GOP if they do not cannibalize their election day vote.

Democrats voted early in large masses in 2020. Will they turnout in the same numbers without Covid?

If they don't vote early, will they turn out on election day?

These are big questions to consider in looking at the early voting data in 2024.

Thus far, it can be generally stated that Republicans appear to be outperforming Democrats in expectations involving early voting.

This summary by ABC News on early voting in the key swing states provides a general idea of the state of the race.

Note first that the number of early votes in 2024 vs. 2020 at this time have dropped by some 3 million votes or 36% (5.2 million in 2024 vs. 8.2 million in 2020).

Democrats make up 50% of the early vote (down from 54% in 2020) and Republicans are at 38% (up from 32%).

However, in looking at actual early vote totals, both parties have fewer overall early votes.

Democrats are down 1.8 million votes compared to 2020.

Republicans are only down .6 million votes to the 2020 Covid year.

Early voting in Pennsylvania provides a closer look at early voting trends in what is clearly the most important swing state this year.

As I pointed out above, the Democrats won Pennsylvania in 2020 because of a huge early vote advantage. Similarly, John Fetterman beat Mehmet Oz in the 2022 race Senate for the same reason.

Oz won the election day vote by almost 500,000 votes but lost the early vote by 726,000 votes.

However, in 2024 the Republicans are not ceding that early advantage and are looking to keep the race close heading into election day.

Justin Hart in his Rational Ground substack provides this analysis.

Source: https://covidreason.substack.com/p/happenings-in-pennsylvania-latest

Democrats say they want a 500,000 vote firewall heading into ED. Some Republican analysts suggest that 800,000 is a more realistic number considering the Dems had a 1.4 million early advantage in 2020.

The Democrat firewall in Pennsylvania is a number to keep a close eye on over the next two weeks.

The big question here is whether Democrats can get the turnout they did in 2020 in the next two weeks.

They have traditionally proven to be good at getting out the vote. Are they going to be able to do it being this far behind 2020 early vote numbers and not having an electorate that has been voting late the last couple of cycles?

Any early voting shortfall for Republicans should not be as worrisome as their voters are accustomed to voting late on election day. However, how many of those early votes were just moved forward from election day voting in the past?

Again, it is not a clear picture on early voting but I would rather be Trump than Harris in looking at the data right now.

Some of the people that are looking at the data very closely would seem to be those placing wagers on the race in the betting markets.

The people who have put real money down on the outcome of the Presidential race now have Trump with a 66% chance to win the election.

Source: https://polymarket.com/elections

That is the highest Trump has performed against Harris since she replaced Biden.

Trump's all-time high in Polymarket was 72% vs. Biden in July of this year.

You can see in this graph of the long-term trend in the odds that Trump started pulling away in the first week of October right after the VP debate.

Source: https://polymarket.com/elections

Trump is also the odds on favorite in betting on Polymarket to win every swing state as we stand right now two weeks before ED.

Source: https://polymarket.com/elections

However, I am also old enough to remember when all of the bets were on Hillary to win in 2016 and it did not turn out well for her.

As I have also written before in these pages, two weeks is an eternity in politics. That is particularly true in the last two weeks before a Presidential election.

What lies ahead?

Could we see a real October surprise or a large gaffe by one of the candidates?

What external events might affect the outcome? 

In particular, what effect would an attack by Israel on Iran and the possibility that all-out war breaks out between the two countries have on the  election?

What about threats by Iran to hold the United States responsible if it comes to that?

What if Iran's response was to initiate terror attacks on American polling sites on election day to instill fear and suppress turnout. Turnout that would largely benefit Trump. Such a scenario would allow Iran to put Kamala Harris in the White House.

It is another reason to vote early.

Nobody knows what we might see over the next two weeks.

Such is the state of the race two weeks from election day.

My plan is provide another state of the race report one week before and the day before ED.

Stay in touch with BeeLine for what you need to know.