Democrats and Republicans are both using early voting numbers to make the case that there’s momentum behind their candidates.
The truth? No one really knows.
Despite political operatives on both sides of the aisle scrambling to characterize early voting data in their favor to make sense of a close presidential election, there’s not actually much to safely conclude from those numbers.
“Early voting analysis can be really perilous, and can lead you to think that a wave is coming, when, in reality, you’ve just got a close election where both sides are enthusiastic,” said Harrison Lavelle, co-founder of Split Ticket, a nonpartisan election forecasting organization. “We would definitely caution against reading too much into the early vote just because, again, patterns are only true until they’re not.”
Lavelle acknowledged Republicans did see early voting gains in key battleground states — like North Carolina and Pennsylvania — that report by party registration, which means they “will not need to do as well with Election Day voters as they did in 2020.” But, he added, it doesn’t mean Democrats are “finished” — it just means “Democrats will need a strong Election Day performance.”
Republicans across the country and up and down the ballot have been heavily encouraging early voting, a departure from their 2020 strategy. Donald Trump spent years questioning the validity of early voting but changed his rhetoric this election cycle, contributing to the slight uptick in registered Republicans voting early.
Other Republicans are making the case with him. Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville wrote an op-ed in the Washington Reporter encouraging people to “vote as early as possible.” Wisconsin Senate candidate Eric Hovde widely promoted that he voted during the first day of early voting and attended several early voting rallies. In a press conference following the second apparent assassination attempt on Trump, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik encouraged early voting in the “most consequential election of our lifetime.”
This year’s election will likely be the second in U.S. history where more voters have cast their ballots before Election Day than on it, as more than half of the nation’s voters have likely already turned out, according to Gallup polls. And both Democrats and Republicans are spinning early voting trends in their favor.
Trump’s campaign released a memo Monday claiming every battleground state’s early voting data show “Democrats are facing a massive turnout deficit” and that Trump “is going into Election Day stronger than he has in any previous election.”
According to The New Yorker, Kamala Harris’ campaign and groups supporting her have also interpreted early voting data from battleground states positively for the party’s prospects on Election Day.
Operatives from both sides of the aisle are struggling to find clarity in projecting presidential race results, which pollsters have characterized as virtually tied for weeks heading into the election. Strategists are grappling with the little data they have pre-Election Day, which, besides neck-and-neck polls, are mostly early voting turnout numbers. They’re also struggling with accounting for the change in tune in the Republican Party.
Wisconsin, for example, does not report any demographics or party registration data with its early vote tabulations.
“It’s obvious that the Republican efforts have increased the numbers of early voters. We just don’t know by what ratio,” said Brandon Scholz, a former Republican turned independent strategist based in Wisconsin. “You just can’t make those kind of judgment calls with that little tiny bit of information.”
The University of Florida’s Election Lab compiles data on early votes, but only from the states that report it. This year, only 26 states reported the party registration data of early ballots. Out of the 40.3 million with a party affiliation, about 38% were registered Democrats and 36% were registered Republicans as of late Monday afternoon.
Amy Morton, a Georgia Democratic strategist, told NOTUS in October that she is comfortable about where the Democratic Party is with early voting. While Georgia Republicans have made a concerted effort this year to encourage it, Morton thinks the “surge” in Republican early voters is primarily due to people who already vote just changing how they cast their ballot.
“In other words, I’m not seeing a big surge in early and people voting who are Republicans or likely Republicans in Georgia,” said Morton. “They just have changed the day they vote. So we’re not going to know who the nonvoters really are and how that’s going to impact the election until the ballots are counted after Election Day.”
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Torrence Banks and Emily Kennard are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows. Violet Jira contributed reporting.