Vice President Kamala Harris maintains a narrow advantage in two of the three “blue wall” states that collectively represent her clearest path to an Electoral College victory over former President Donald Trump, according to new CNN polls conducted by SSRS.
So there are two competing narratives coming out of this story. One is that Trump is already running away with it in regards to Republican voter turn out. The second is that Harris is running away with it in regards to woman voters. I think the weight goes to the former, since white women are a historically un-reliable voting block for Democrats.
So early votes are very solidly Republican in (NC). Like, if we assume Republicans voted for Trump and Democrats voted for Harris, we’d be calling NC already for Trump. If this were a normal election, we could pretty confidently say that NC is going to go for Trump.
The conflicting result, is that women are voting at an eye-blurring 10% more than male voters. This requires we speculate that women voters (and specifically, Republican women) are breaking disproportionately for Harris. But its notable that +10 to women is a remarkable result. But the historical data would suggest that this favors Trump, since white women mostly vote Trump ('16, and '20) in this state.
So the naive, historical interpretation is that Trump is/ has already won NC. This could be backed up with an additional line of evidence that the Harris campaign has given up on NC.
The speculative interpretation is that Republican women are turning tides on their individual ballots and breaking for Harris. This would be ahistorical given '16 and '20.
The naive historical interpretation fails to explain the gender gap.
https://carolinaelections.com/tracker/61
There was a better dashboard that I found yesterday that I can’t seem to track down again, but its the same data feeding into it.
This is the “mixed results” or unclear signal we’re seeing. Republicans are leading in turnout by about one percent. This was apparently sufficient for the Harris campaign to start cancelling already purchased ad space in the state. Which is a bit telling considering that the campaign has basically more money than god and no way to spend it all before Nov 5th.
However, scroll a bit further down, and you’ll see a 10 point gap of women voters over male voters. Keep in mind, white women voted in favor of Trump in 2020.
So there are two competing narratives coming out of this story. One is that Trump is already running away with it in regards to Republican voter turn out. The second is that Harris is running away with it in regards to woman voters. I think the weight goes to the former, since white women are a historically un-reliable voting block for Democrats.
Can you square this for me?
So early votes are very solidly Republican in (NC). Like, if we assume Republicans voted for Trump and Democrats voted for Harris, we’d be calling NC already for Trump. If this were a normal election, we could pretty confidently say that NC is going to go for Trump.
The conflicting result, is that women are voting at an eye-blurring 10% more than male voters. This requires we speculate that women voters (and specifically, Republican women) are breaking disproportionately for Harris. But its notable that +10 to women is a remarkable result. But the historical data would suggest that this favors Trump, since white women mostly vote Trump ('16, and '20) in this state.
So the naive, historical interpretation is that Trump is/ has already won NC. This could be backed up with an additional line of evidence that the Harris campaign has given up on NC.
The speculative interpretation is that Republican women are turning tides on their individual ballots and breaking for Harris. This would be ahistorical given '16 and '20.
The naive historical interpretation fails to explain the gender gap.