As early voting turnout breaks records in key battleground states, large numbers of Republican voters are showing up, potentially paving the way for a victory for the former president Donald Trumpaccording to veteran political journalist Mark Halperin.
Speaking on Tuesday’s episode of Morning meeting podcast, Halperin discussed reports suggesting Republicans are overperforming Democrats during early voting, especially in battleground states like Nevada and North Carolina.
“If the early voting numbers stay the way they are — and that’s a big if — we’ll almost certainly know before Election Day who’s going to win,” Halperin said.
“Make no mistake, if these numbers hold up in states where we can partially understand the data, we will know that Donald Trump is going to win on Election Day,” he added.
Republicans I used to excel at early voting before Trump turned against mail-in voting in 2020, spreading baseless conspiracy theories about the process and encouraging his supporters to vote on Election Day instead. However, the party is once again pushing its voters to vote early, with Trump endorsing the change.
“I tell everyone to vote early,” Trump said last week on a radio show hosted by conservative Dan Bongino, who has widely spread false claims about early voting and the 2020 election.
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The Republicans seem to be reacting. In North Carolina, where Democrats had an advantage of more than 30 percentage points in early voting at this point in 2022, they are ahead by just one percentage point this year.
In Nevada, where Democrats traditionally rely on strong early voting to counter Republican voter turnout, about 1,000 more Republicans than Democrats voted early this year.
Despite these trends, the implications for elections remain unclear. Early voting data only reveals party registration, not how voters voted. The makeup of early voters can change from day to day, and what appears to be a trend in early voting could change once ballots are counted on Election Day.
Although Halperin cautions that these early numbers could be “overinterpreted,” he also noted that every analyst he has spoken with over the past 24 hours has said that if this trend continues, Trump’s chances of victory are very high.
“If this continues, Donald Trump can’t lose because the Democrats won’t be able to do well enough on Election Day,” Halperin said.
Sean Spicer, co-host of the podcast and Trump’s first White House press secretary, shared his thoughts on the trend, attributing it to three factors: voter cleanup in many states, effective efforts voter registration before the election and the influence of issues and governance on their side.
“It’s almost like preseason: it was important to sign people up, get them excited and stay in touch with them,” Spicer said.
The return to bipartisan early voting has broken records. North Carolina and Georgia both reported record turnout on the first day of in-person early voting, and that surge even spread to states like South Carolina, which set its own record by opening early voting on Monday, although it is not competitive in the presidential election. level.
