2024 Pre-Election Political Polls | POLL - Trump would have had 7 point lead over Biden

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Bigs23 said:
What are the major takeaways?
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My mom forwarded me this email by Thomas Mills from PoliticsNC with his take on the early voting data:


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Early voting has ended in North Carolina. I’ll give a brief analysis but first want to give a general update on items that should give Democrats hope. First, Harris campaign advisor David Plouffe tweeted Friday that the campaign’s internal data shows late deciders are breaking for Harris by double digits. I think that makes sense. A few weeks ago, a friend who’s spent decades working in politics postulated that undecided voters who have known Trump for eight years and still aren’t sold on him aren’t likely to vote for him. The fiasco at Madison Square Garden and his erratic behavior going down the stretch may have sealed the deal for some of those voters. For the most part, I have successfully ignored the polls down the stretch. It was easier than I thought, though I have paid some attention to the debate over polling that’s played out on twitter and elsewhere. I think the election has been too close and getting realistic samples too difficult to make them reliable. I don’t even look at the averages.
That said, one poll came out yesterday that made everybody following politics take notice. Ann Selzer is a legendary pollster from Iowa. She knows her state and stays in her lane. In 2026, she got national attention because her final presidential poll picked up trends that showed Trump winning by margins nobody expected. She proved to be right, as she usually is.
Yesterday, Selzer released a poll showing Harris leading in Iowa by three points, 47-44. Republicans immediately screamed, calling the poll an outlier, though nobody trashed the pollster. More astute observers noted that even if the toplines are off, the underlying data should make Trump very worried. Older women are backing Harris by more than two-to-one, 63-28. And independent voters are breaking for Harris by a margin of 46-39 and independent women support her by 23 points.
The poll suggests that other pollsters may be missing a shift among older conservative women, especially in the Midwest. Women may be supporting Harris by larger margins than other polls show. In North Carolina, according to exit polls, Biden won women by seven points while Trump won men by eleven. If Harris wins women by the same margin Trump wins men, she’ll win the state since women have about a ten point advantage in the electorate.
Finally, Trump is going into the final days of the election still trying to win with his base. He’s made little attempt to win moderate voters. Instead, he’s kept to bombastic rhetoric that appeals to the people who show up at his rallies. Trump’s voters turned out in sky high numbers in 2020 and he doesn’t have many ways to expand the electorate except among a tiny slice of predominantly white voters who sat out the election four years ago. They are likely non-college educated, low information voters who he is now trying to scare into the polls. His other goal is to suppress votes from low-information Black and brown voters who are more conservative on social issues. That’s a narrow strategy to win.

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All in all, I think Harris is in a pretty good position. I would rather be her than him. Still, the election is far too close to know what will happen with Election Day turnout.
And that gets us to the end of early voting here in North Carolina. We don’t really have any great comparisons for the electorate that has voted so far. Overall, there are almost 400,000 more votes at this point in the election than there were four years ago. Unaffiliated voters make up the largest share, with 1,492,000 voters. Republicans trail them by about 14,000 votes and Democrats trail Republicans by about 40,000. Mail-in ballots will continue to come in for the next two days, dominated by Democrats and unaffiliated voters.
Republicans have their first early vote program ever in the state and they should be satisfied with the results. They increased their early vote total by 110,000 over 2020. That’s solid.
Democrats, for their part, are down about 14,000 from their 2020 early vote total, but back then, they were voting by mail in large numbers due to the pandemic. The comparison is a bit concerning, but it’s not apples-to-apples, either.
About 17,000 more Black voters showed up for in-person early voting than four years ago. In total, 791,000 African Americans voted early. Democrats need about 300,000 Black voters to show up on Election Day. A little more than half of that number are likely voters and another 190,000 or so are sporadic voters. About 325,000 would be first time voters.
The big question is about unaffiliated voters. About 250,000 more unaffiliated voters voted early this year than four years ago. About a third of them are 40 years old or younger. They skew slightly more female than male by about 52-47. Eighteen percent of the unaffiliated voters are first time voters and almost two-thirds of them are under 40 years old.
It’s hard to discern too much from the early vote totals in North Carolina other than to bet the election is going to be close once again. Election Day turnout and how unaffiliated voters break will determine the election. Democrats need to have a better showing on Tuesday than they have had in past elections, but that’s doable in the post-pandemic world. Republicans need to make sure they hold onto their turnout advantage from 2020 and hope they aren’t losing women or Haley voters. It’s another nail-biter in the Old North State.
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GQNC said:
Seems that our local Harris campaign organizer I talked to today would agree with you. He is basing his optimism on campaign internal data. As far as timing, he thinks NC will be called for Harris election night.
Early voting ballots and mail in ballots will be counted before polls close Tuesday according to him.

He is pumped and didn’t appear to have just been smoking the good stuff.
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1) North Carolina historically counts its ballots quickly - Western North Carolina might be slower than normal; but, the mountains have historically been slower to report than the rest of the state. If WNC is slower than normal to report, it’s fairly easy to extrapolate how it’ll vote and then project the state’s results.

2) I doubt a “local Harris campaign organizer” is privy to “campaign internal data.”
 
Bigs23 said:
What are the major takeaways?
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Strong women turnout as percentage of electorate, disappointing Black turnout in early voting.

GOP turnout exceeded GOP registration as % of electorate. [GOP 29.9%!of registrants but 33.7% of early voters; Ds also over-performed slightly, with 31.3% of registered voters and 32.2% of early voters — the difference comes out of lower turnout among unaffiliated]. Dems had a 6-point edge in early voting turnout in 2020.

Dems lead mail-in ballots but that’s probably only going to be 5% or so of the total votes cast. Key to see what turnout looks like on Tuesday b

NC has 7.8 million registered voters total, and nearly 4.2 million have voted early (will go up incrementally for mail-in votes that arrive tomorrow or Tuesday).

if we are returning to pre-pandemic voting patterns, between 30-33% of the total votes cast will happen on Election Day. If so, NC will have about 6 million total votes cast at the low end of that range, which at 76.9% of registered voters would surpass the 2020 turnout record of 75%, which feels a bit unlikely.

If Election Day turnout is as light as 2020 (only 16% of the total), the total turnout will end up being about 5 million for a much lower overall turnout of about 64.1% — about the same as 2004 and well below range of 68% - 75% turnout since.
 
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nycfan said:
Strong women turnout as percentage of electorate, disappointing Black turnout in early voting.

GOP turnout exceeded GOP registration as % of electorate. [GOP 29.9%!of registrants but 33.7% of early voters; Ds also over-performed slightly, with 31.3% of registered voters and 32.2% of early voters — the difference comes out of lower turnout among unaffiliated]

Dems lead mail-in ballots but that’s probably only going to be 5% or so of the total votes cast. Key to see what turnout looks like on Tuesday b

NC has 7.8 million registered voters total, and nearly 4.2 million have voted early (will go up incrementally for mail-in votes that arrive tomorrow or Tuesday).

if we are returning to pre-pandemic voting patterns, between 30-33% of the total votes cast will happen on Election Day. If so, NC will have about 6 million total votes cast at the low end of that range, which at 76.9% of registered voters would surpass the 2020 turnout record of 72%, which feels a bit unlikely.
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If what Thomas Mills said above is accurate, how is the Black early voting turnout disappointing? It’s 17k more than the turnout from 2020, and that was a year where early turnout was more likely due to the pandemic. I guess I would have to see the numbers from 2016, 2012, and 2008 to get a better understanding.
 
Honestly, the numbers look like a more favorable version of 2020 in NC so far. The gender gap for turnout is about the same and Black voter turnout is lower. I keep hearing the Harris campaign is bullish and Trump campaign is worried, so maybe the issue is not so much the essentially unchanged voter turnout gap by gender but that the actual voting gap of women voters is net larger than it was then b/c so many more women are voting Democratic(?)

Otherwise, I would guess Trump +2-3 absent a surge of blue voters on ED and/or a reversal of GOP dominance on ED now that they are using EV more, so that Dems percentage of the total votes cast improves significantly on ED.

That said, CNN’s most recent poll found Harris with a +6 margin among early voters — if true, the unaffiliated votes must be breaking her way in EV. If that’s true and if GOP early voting diminishes their usual significant lead among Election Day voters by spreading the votes of all parties more evenly across the voting period, then Harris would have a very good shot at picking off NC.
 
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Calheel said:
Well, that might depend whether you are using mean, median or mode. I'm not sure mean is the logical way for Nate to present the electoral college "average". Median probably makes more sense.
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He does it both ways, in effect. % win of simulations conveys information like median. Average EV is mean.
 
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