CHRIS CRUCIAL: The early vote isn't saying what you think it is 🤔

PLUS: Are the polls wrong?

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1. Early voting

When I note that polling averages and election models over the past few weeks have moved slightly in Donald Trump’s favor, Democrats immediately push back with this: The early vote is surging! Turnout is through the roof! This is actual votes! And this is good for Kamala Harris!

To which I say: Not so fast. Some of that is right. Early vote is surging! But what we’ve seen in the early vote does not mean what some Democrats want it to mean.

Let’s take Georgia as an example. There is no doubt that early voting in Georgia has exceeded all expectations. As of this morning, more than 1.9 million people have voted early, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.

But, the assumption that that turnout is a de facto good for Harris is, well, not accurate.

“I think one of the particularly important trends is we're seeing Republicans accept and embrace, to some extent, early voting more so than in past cycles,” Emory University political science professor Zachary Peskowitz told Georgia Public Broadcasting. “If you look at the data, a lot of the Republican counties and congressional districts in the state have had quite a bit of early voting in the first week that the polls have been open.”

Or take Nevada where 330,0000 people have voted early so far. According to Jon Ralston, Nevada’s best political journalist, Republicans have a 2.5% turnout edge over Democrats in the early vote. As Ralston wrote on X: “Dems need more mail, lots of indies, or big trouble in NV.”

That trend is reflected in lots of states that have early voting. Decision Desk HQ’s Scott Tranter, an invaluable resource, estimated that by Tuesday night roughly 15 million early votes have already been cast across 45 states. (He projects that approximately 70 million early votes will eventually be cast and that overall turnout will be around 145 million — down from the 155 million+ who voted in 2020.)

Here’s Tranter’s analysis of the early vote so far: “Overall we see higher GOP participation in early voting (expected as the GOP has made an effort to encourage early voting this cycle).”

He notes that in North Carolina about 20% of the expected vote has already voted. And that while Democrats had a 7% early vote edge going into the 2020 election, it’s just a 1.3% lead now.

The New York Times agrees, running this headline earlier this week: “More Republicans Appear to Be Voting Early, Despite Trump’s Mixed Messages.”

Mark Halperin, a former political director at ABC News who now writes on Substack, has been even more aggressive in analyzing what the Republican-friendly early-vote totals could mean.

“Things are very tense now,” he said. “The early vote looks very good for Republicans. Not that they're going to win the early vote, but that the delta is going to be small enough. If it stays on this trajectory, Election Day would be anticlimactic. Democrats are going to have to do better, and they say they will ... We're talking to Democrats. They're telling us things don't look good.”

I am not there yet. As Scott and Halperin — and anyone who really knows this stuff — makes clear, early vote isn’t over! In some states, it’s just getting going! Which means these numbers could well change, and they could get better for Democrats.

There’s also this possibility: If Republican voters are truly embracing early voting more than in election cycles past, it could well narrow their usually large leads among voters who cast a ballot on November 5.

We just don’t know! But what we definitely haven’t seen to date is evidence that Democratic enthusiasm is surging — as expressed by the early vote. The numbers don’t lie.

2. The poll question

Here’s what we know: In 2020, both national and swing state polling underestimated Donald Trump’s vote share. Nationally, the polling averages suggested Joe Biden would beat Trump by 8.5 points. He won by 4.5. And, just to take one swing state: There was a Wisconsin poll in October 2020 that showed Biden winning by 17 points; he won the state by 20,000 votes.

Here’s what we don’t know: Have pollsters made the necessary fixes in their methodology between 2020 and now to ensure that the data we are seeing in the final weeks of the campaign is an accurate reflection of where the race actually stands?

The New York Times Nate Cohn, who has done terrific work trying to demystify the polling world, did a piece explaining the specific changes that polling operations have made to account for their 2020 miss.

And here they are:

• Pollsters adopted different methods of data collection, like surveys taken by text or mail, rather than by phone.

• Pollsters adopted new methods of “weighting,” where they made statistical adjustments to try to better account for underrepresented groups.

• Pollsters didn’t change their practices, but benefited from new data that improved longstanding methods.

• The makeup of the pollsters changed, as some pollsters left the game and others joined the fray.

Nate explains all four of these changes in MUCH more depth in his piece, which you should read!

Will these changes fix the glitch? Neither Nate nor I nor anyone else knows! As he writes: “The changes pollsters have made this cycle may or may not yield a more accurate result this November. That’s impossible to predict. But many of these changes are substantial, and, on balance, they probably do reduce the risk of another high-profile polling misfire — even if there are no guarantees.”

Having talked to pollsters I know and respect, they feel the changes they have made are the right ones — and will allow them to come much closer to the final result than they did in 2020.

We shall see…

3. Joe Biden is killing Kamala Harris

On Tuesday at an event in New Hampshire, President Joe Biden said in reference to Donald Trump that “we gotta lock him up.” Biden quickly sought to clarify — that he meant that Trump had to be politically locked up (whatever the hell that means!).

But the damage was done. Biden is NOT helping Harris’ chances. I made a video about it for my YouTube channel. Check it out!

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

“The man would rather chew on broken glass than vote for Donald Trump.” — A spokesman for retired Marine Gen. John Kelly

ONE GOOD CHART

Part of Donald Trump’s appeal among men is his macho and muscular view of what it means to be a man. This Pew poll shows the substantial gap between Democratic men and Republican men when it comes to whether they view themselves as “highly masculine.”

SONG OF THE DAY

I consume ALL music from The Head and the Heart. They have a new tune called “Arrow” out right now. And it’s apparently going to be on the band’s next album — their 6th! — but we don’t know yet when that will be out.

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