Some Reasons to be Optimistic About Next Tuesday

October 29, 2024

Philadelphia. Tuesday morning, October 29, 2024. Today is the last day to vote early in Pennsylvania. As of last night, 1.4 million people have voted in the Keystone State. Of this, nearly 800,000 (59%) are registered Democrats. Almost as many (56%) are women and more voters are from urban areas than rural areas relative to their shares of the pool of registered voters. Pennsylvania does not have true early in-person voting as many other states do. All early voting in the Commonwealth is mail voting, but counties allow for a time for voters to come into a designated office to request, complete, and return mail ballots in person. The counties have the discretion to begin this when they want to within a proscribed window of time, but all counties must cease early in-person mail voting today. If Democrats and women are voting for Harris at the rates polling is telling us they generally are, she has already banked a lead here. But, we don’t have any idea how these folks actually voted. And no one will before next Tuesday. I have been getting a lot of anxious texts, messages, and phone calls about the election. Election results are always uncertain in advance, so it is anxiety-producing. But it’s heightened this year with the possibility of a certain fascist being elected president. I don’t think that will happen, and here are some reasons why.

The polling suggests Democratic Senate candidates are going to perform several points - as much as 5 or 6 in some - better than Harris in a number of battleground states. Does it make sense that we are going to see the largest number of split-ticket voters in a generation? Or does it make more sense that Democratic Senate candidates are running roughly equal with Harris? Trump has never won more than 47% of the vote or even done better in approval ratings. Ever. So, does it make sense that this is the year that Trump breaks his 47% ceiling? How worried should we be about the election next week? Not existentially, but pragmatically. We can’t know the results until all the votes are counted, but we can try to make some sense out of the evidence we have so far. And polling is just one piece of evidence, and I am not even sure it is our best evidence anymore.

So, let’s look at what we are seeing:

Follow the money

Polling is helpful to campaigns not because it tells them who is winning, but because it helps them to frame messages and deploy resources. So, when we see campaigns or parties move resources around it tells us something about what they are seeing in their own polling data, as well as other indicators they might have. The Downballot podcast has reported that Republicans are cancelling buys in what earlier was considered pick-up opportunities to focus more on protecting incumbents. Democrats have moved money in alignment with Republican concerns. This suggests that both parties think Democrats are winning the House election. They could be wrong, or the movement of money could be tactical rather than strategic. But ad buys canceled this late are hard to buy back without it being very expensive - and they are running out of time. Concluding that the movement of money in this matter is a good sign for Democrats is not unreasonable. This means that Harris is also probably performing well in the districts Republicans are abandoning.

Early vote returns

Here is some hard data, but it needs some interpretation. The early vote returns are actual votes that will be counted. But we don’t know who has the most votes. There has been some polling suggesting Harris doing very well among early voters, but I am not sure this polling is all that reliable. What we do is look at what the characteristics of the voters might suggest to us about who they voted for. Harris and Trump are both getting over 90% support from registered members of their respective parties, so we can make some conclusions from party share. And here we see Democrats with strong turnouts in Michigan and Pennsylvania (higher than their share of the pool of registered voters) and performing as might be expected overall in others.

One thing that I think is significant is the share of women in key states. Women are voting in battleground states at about a 55% share. Even in Arizona, where men were voting in a slightly higher share last week, women are now at 52%. Even in Florida, women are outpacing men - with 54% of the 4.3 million early votes returned so far. Florida is one of the states with an abortion ballot measure, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has been giving voters an additional reason to turn-out as he tries to use some underhanded means to stop its passage.

There is no reason to be worried that early voting share for Democrats might not be as high as in 2020. As I have explained previously, there is likely to be a lot more Democrats voting on Election Day than in 2020. Consequently, there will be a higher share of Republicans in the early vote. That Democrats are doing as well as they are despite this in Michigan and Pennsylvania is not good news for Republicans.

Enthusiasm

Keeping in mind the adage that “lawn signs don’t vote,” I have explained in a previous post why visibility is important. You may remember that after 2016 many Democrats on the ground in Wisconsin and Michigan said that they could see the shift to Trump in the level of excitement and visibility for him as it increased closer to Election Day. We are seeing that kind of excitement level for Harris this year. Sure, Trump has his fervent supporters - there is a cult of personality about the man - but it is nothing like in the past. His rallies do not attract as much support as in previous years and folks tend to leave them as he demonstrates to them that they are supporting a demented narcissist (who they are going to vote for anyway). This is the most deceptive of indicators - again, lawn signs don’t vote - but combined with the rest it is probably telling us something.

Polling

There are good reasons to think this year’s polling is missing Harris voters, not Trump voters. The Harvard Youth Poll, which is a poll only of young voters across the nation, shows big enthusiasm and support for Harris. Despite what subgroup findings from other polls, which have much higher error bars generally, dedicated polling of young people tells us this may be a bigger segment of the electorate this year than most pollsters are assuming and they may be supporting Harris in far greater numbers than some polls are finding. Likewise, since much of the polling is looking back to 2020 to frame the electorate. That year, women made up 52% of the electorate. There is reason to believe that share will be higher this year. If the early vote data is an indicator (and it might not be), women may gain as much as three points of the share across most battleground states.

Then there are the polling averages, which continue to make the race look close. There are at least three reasons: (1) the overall number of polls; (2) the amount of crap polling mainly from Republican firms; and (3) methodological assumptions about the electorate that appear designed to compensate for missing Trump voters in 2016 and 2020 (such as recalled-vote weighting). We have been over these issues already, but there is something that should be nagging at you as you see the results: how can Democratic Senate candidates be doing better than Harris so consistently? This does not make sense.

Source: Vantage Data House

Vantage Data House has an analysis which finds Harris fairly far ahead - more so than the polling averages, anyway. While a lot of data goes into their analysis, they do not believe that the difference between the Senate and presidential vote is plausible. For the results to come out as the polling averages currently suggest, there would have to be an unusually high amount of ticket-splitting. There is no reason to believe that this is true. Ticket-splitting is largely a thing of the past, although like all things political it could, and probably will, come back again. But now? In this political environment? Hard to believe.

• VDH’s Senate numbers align with the 538 and RCP averages, showing consistency.

• VDH’s presidential numbers diverged from the 538 and RCP averages.

• VDH’s presidential/Senate numbers are highly correlated with historical voting trends, whereas the 538 and RCP averages are not.

So what gives? VDH offers three reasons: “1) we're wrong, and an unprecedented level of split-ticket voting will occur in the swing states, 2) a significant portion of Trump voters remain undecided in Senate races, or 3) these averages are reflecting a significant amount of noise.”

None of those answers appear to have much support. There is no evidence of significant numbers of Trump supporters undecided on the Senate races. The noise is largely attributable to Republicans flooding the zone with crap (as discussed here). But is the ticket-splitter theory plausible? Perhaps? Well, consider what VDH has to say about it:

The split ticket theory doesn’t hold much water, especially considering the high correlation between partisanship and voter behavior. One particularly confusing case is in North Carolina where Lt. Governor Mark Robinson’s disastrous gubernatorial campaign is sinking every race on the ticket. Robinson is trailing by 22 points overall and a staggering 41 points among women. Yet, Trump is leading by 0.4-1.2 in the averages. It’s hard to imagine a Republican losing by 41 points among women while Trump is supposedly running a close race. Even without the gender gap, the idea that Robinson is down 22 points while Trump is ahead defies logic. This would be a 23% split ticket margin, which would be astonishing. 

https://app.vantagedatahouse.com/analysis/TheBlowoutNoOneSeesComing-1

In the end, does it make sense that in this political environment voters will support Democratic Senate candidates in significantly larger numbers across several key states than the Harris/Walz ticket? Or is it more likely that voters will stick to one party when they cast their voters for these offices? It seems to me that in then we are going to see Harris and Democratic Senate candidates performing similarly in these battleground states. And it seems more likely to me that any ticket splitters in any meaningful number will vote against Harris and for the Republican nominee, considering Trump’s unpopularity and Harris’s relative popularity (she actually has an approval rating that is net positive, something neither Trump or Biden could accomplish this year). And if this is true, then it calls something else into question as well: Florida.

Sen. Rick Scott (R) has been in a very tight race with former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D). Scott has never been very popular in Florida, eking out the tiniest of wins in each of his races for governor and Senate. If Powell can beat him, even if by a small margin, does it make sense that Harris would lose the state by 5 points or more? Not to me. Seems to me that one could win and the other could lose, but it would only be if both races were very close. While Scott appears to be reeling from the slurs to the Puerto Rican community at Monday night’s rally in Madison Square Garden (you know, the “Nazis for Trump” closing ceremony inspired by the 1939 version), he is not otherwise suffering from a serious scandal like Robinson in North Carolina which might otherwise sink his candidacy. Powell is genuinely competing with him. And that suggests Harris is competing with Trump also. We’ll see soon. Harris doesn’t need Florida to win, but Trump does.

One week to go! Don’t pay attention to polling or social media if it produces anxiety for you. There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic, so get energized. Get out and get people to the polls! Keeping a democracy is up to us!