Perhaps the biggest story in politics right now (besides GOP fascism and Trump’s criminality) is the fact that record numbers of people are voting early this midterm. In truth, no one knows exactly what that means in terms of outcomes. But at the very least, the potential for a high turnout election is what Democrats want because a low turnout midterm would almost surely favor Republicans this cycle. A high turnout election, however, gives Democrats a fighting chance but doesn't necessarily equate to victory.
Still, the turnout numbers are encouraging. It suggests that get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations are firing on all cylinders. Democrats have emphasized voting early for a number of reasons, one of which is the fact that every early vote is a vote GOTV canvassers and callers don't have to track down leading up to Election Day.
As New Democrat Network president Simon Rosenberg also noted this week on That Trippi Show podcast, early voting has a snowball effect.
"It creates social pressure on people who are not sure if they're going to vote or not. It creates the bandwagon effect," Rosenberg explained. “People who are wondering if they're going to vote—do I really care, do I really have a candidate? And then they're looking around and they're saying, 'God, everybody's voting. I have to vote too.'"
Rosenberg adds that in days of old, GOTV operations only had one day to create that effect: Election Day. "Now, this early vote—for a party that has more episodic and infrequent voters—this becomes really important for us," he adds.
Indeed, voters are already surging to the polls in many places. More than 6.2 million votes have already been cast nationwide. Georgia, for instance, is on pace for record turnout, based on votes cast so far.
But trying to interpret early vote data is full of all sorts of pitfalls because there are not good historical parallels. That comes down to two key reasons: 1) In 2018, Donald Trump hadn't started trashing early voting yet, so Republicans are more likely to vote on Election Day now than they were then; 2) 2020 was a presidential year (usually higher enthusiasm overall), and during the pandemic, more people resorted to early voting due to safety concerns.
TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier, who released a great early tracking tool this week, has boiled the best-case scenario for Democrats down to this: "For comparisons of early vote to '20 and '18, Dems will want to see an electorate that is more Dem than '18, and at least close to the Dem threshold of '20, which is largely what we are seeing at this point."
So far, in Arizona and Pennsylvania, Democratic voters are outpacing Republicans, according to CNN.
In Arizona, ballots cast by Democrats make up 44% of the pre-election ballots cast, while ballots cast by Republicans make up 33%. That’s similar to pre-election ballot returns at this point of the cycle in 2020, when Democrats made up 45% and Republicans made up 31%.
CNN notes that the Democratic lean in Arizona’s returns so far is also a marked shift compared to where things stood in 2018 at this point, when Republicans accounted for 46% of returned ballots while Democrats claimed a smaller 34% vote share.
In other words, Arizona's early vote so far is behaving about as Democrats would hope, according to Bonier's analysis.
Pennsylvania is also seeing similar early vote share to 2020 at this point, with Democratic returns so far dwarfing GOP ballots cast, 73% - 19%. Believe it or not, that's a slight improvement for Republicans since 2020, when Democrats were outpacing them 75% - 17%. But again, Democrats are about keeping pace with their 2020 vote share numbers.
As University of Florida professor and elections expert Michael McDonald noted, that's a good thing for Pennsylvania's Democratic candidates, particularly Senate nominee John Fetterman, who's locked in an increasingly tight race with GOP Senate nominee, TV huckster Dr. Mehmet Oz.
“Election Day will very red,” McDonald tweeted Friday morning, “but Fetterman has fewer of his eggs in the Election Day basket in the event of a disruption like bad weather, and his campaign can focus more on turning out those id'ed supporters who haven't voted yet.”
Bottom line: Get out and vote. Do it early and with friends, if possible. Then tell everyone you know you voted and made your voice heard because this election is too damn important to ignore.
Vote. Vote Early. Spread the word.
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