The State of Play on Election Day – Top 3 Takeaways – November 5th, 2024
- Donald Trump will be the 47th President of the United States. I’m not going to buy the lead. Today is Election Day and it’s my belief that Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States. In my final Anatomy of a Swing State story today I’ll break down how I think swing states will break, but for now I’ll summarize it this way. Every data point I’ve studied shows Donald Trump in the best position he’s ever been in on Election Day. By that I mean that he’s performing better in the national political polls than in 2016 and 2020. He’s performing better in the battleground polls than he’s performed in either of the previous presidential elections as well. Anytime you have polling comparisons that are better than what you had when you previously won an election, that’s a pretty strong indication that you’re well positioned to win. But political polls are one thing, votes at actual polls are of course the only ones that matter. And the trend heading into Election Day is very much Trump’s friend. The early votes tell an impressive story. Four years ago, heading into Election Day, Democrats had a 14.3% lead in partisan voter turnout across the country in the 20 states (including Florida) with partisan reporting. As of today, the Democrat lead in voter turnout in those states is down to 2%. In Florida, Republicans are performing 11.4% better in turnout with votes cast prior to Election Day compared to four years ago. Among swing states with direct reporting data, Republicans are performing 8.8-points better in Arizona, 6.5-points better in North Carolina, 8.1-points better in Nevada and 18.1-points better in the most pivotal swing state in the country this cycle, in Pennsylvania. That’s a clean sweep in turnout improvement by Republicans, and by wide margins. And it’s as simple as this. If Trump wins those four swing states he will be the next president of the United States. It’s a strong sign heading into Election Day. So is this. According to vote modeling company TargetSmart... Republicans carried a 7.2% turnout deficit into Election Day in 2020. As of now the deficit is estimated to be 3.2% nationally for a 4% GOP improvement heading into today’s voting. Also, notably, according to Gallup, among likely partisan voters, Democrats indicated they are 16% more likely than Republicans to vote before the election. That’s exactly the same margin between the two parties that Gallup sampled four years ago. What that means is that there remains a reason to believe that Republicans will once again hold the advantage in Election Day turnout over Democrats. Republicans already hold outright turnout advantages over Democrats in Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina. That’s a strong position to be in heading into Election Day. Oddly it’s been a common theme in media circles to say that there’s not much that can be gleaned by the early votes. What a load of nonsense that is. 82,713,594 voters have already voted heading into today. While we don’t know exactly how many people will vote today, what I’m confident in saying is that...
- Over half of the country that’s going to vote has already voted heading into Election Day. To suggest that we have loads of data from who has voted and from where they have voted with most voters who will vote and to suggest that it isn’t instructive is nonsensical. It’s clear that Republicans heeded Trump’s message to “Swamp the Vote” by getting out and voting early in record numbers. Now of course there are unknowns. We don’t know how partisans who’ve already voted, voted (though history suggests about 90% would be straight ticket). We also don’t know what turnout will look like today. It’s been my hypothesis for some time the turnout in this election would be below the 2020 presidential election to the general benefit of Donald Trump. That remains my expectation as we’ve arrived on Election Day. There’s also one other huge dynamic that’s a great unknown. How will independent voters (or NPAs in Florida), vote? Yesterday I pulled the average independent vote from the six most recent national polls, and here’s what the surveys said... ABC News/Ipsos: D+5, Atlas Intel: R+6, CBS News: D+2, HarrisX: R+9 , Morning Consult: D+2, NY Times/Siena: D+5. So clearly the polls are all over the map when it comes to how non-partisan voters will break. But there are two takeaways from this. 1) The best polling for Democrats is winning the independent vote by 5-points. 2) The average of the polls shows independents evenly split with an ever so slight advantage for Trump and Republicans. Why’s that especially interesting? In 2020, Joe Biden won independents by 9-points. What this means is that...
- Even the most favorable polling for Democrats today shows that they’re performing four points worse with indie's compared to four years ago...and 9-points worse in an average of the polls. That’s another super important trend that appears to be Trump’s friend. It’s been an election cycle for ages. We’ve had two presumptive Democratic candidates for president for the first time in American history. We’ve had the former president of the United States make a political comeback by winning his party’s nomination all while having been indicted four times, convicted once, having survived two assassination attempts including one that resulted in him being shot. Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, is the only president to make a complete comeback. Today Donald Trump seeks to become just the second. I believe he’ll do it. But he’ll only do it if everyone who wants to see him become the 47th president of the United States gets out and votes today. So, if that’s you it’s time to do your civic duty. Today is the day that we save America. I’ve long said that one day South Florida would save this country from itself. Today’s that day. Vote like your freedom, your future, your children’s future, your country depends on it. Because it does.