It's hard to describe the stress that comes with following an election closely every day. Political junkies like me will scour polls, projections, betting markets — pretty much anything to gain insight as to what might happen on Election Day. But it's time to forget what the polls say.
As someone who regularly reports on polls and will likely continue to do so, I should probably explain. Here's the deal: The polls aren't going to tell us who is going to win. Some have Kamala up; some have Trump up. Most are within the margin of error or close to it.
If there's anything we've learned from the past few election cycles, it's that the persuadable portion of the electorate is getting smaller, and elections are being decided on a smaller number of votes. Joe Biden's "victory" in 2020, for example, hinged on less than 50,000 votes across three battleground states. The general consensus is that the election is going to be close, so in the end, it's not what the polls say that matters; it's the ground game of the campaigns that will ultimately decide this election.
So far, we're seeing some positive signs. In 2020, we got destroyed in the early/mail-in voting. Democrats knew what they were doing, and used the pandemic to their advantage, banking early votes, freeing up their Election Day ground game while Republicans were scrambling to get a larger share of their voters to the polls.
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As much as we hate early voting, as long as Democrats were devoting resources to banking early votes, they'd have a far more efficient Election Day ground game than the GOP. Thankfully, the Republican Party realized that they have to play by the same rules in order to close the gap.
The good news is that were's making progress.
PA mail-in ballot requests:
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 17, 2024
2020, 50 days before the election:
🔵Dems: 1,101,962 (+725,000)
🔴GOP: 376,956
2024, 50 days before the election:
🔵Dems: 798,946 (+477,869)
🔴GOP: 321,077
If this is how the mail-in breakdown ends up, we are in a phenomenal position.
As the above numbers show, the Democrats' advantage in the ever-so-important state of Pennsylvania has been greatly reduced compared to four years ago. When you consider the fact that Biden's margin of victory in Pennsylvania in 2020 was just over 80,000 votes, this is a big deal.
While it's great that Republicans in Pennsylvania are improving their performance in mail-in voting compared to the last presidential election, they still face a significant gap of nearly half a million votes. We know that Republicans typically turn out in greater numbers on Election Day, so if we want Pennsylvania's 19 Electoral College votes, we have to continue to compete in mail-in voting and have an impeccable election ground game on Election Day.
Most see Pennsylvania as this year's tipping point state. Whoever wins Pennsylvania will most likely win the election. I don't care how much better the GOP is doing compared to the Democrats with early/mail-in voting, Republicans have to assume that they're behind and fight tooth and nail for every vote.
Trump's currently leading in the RealClearPolitics average in Pennsylvania but barely. It's so close that we can't take it for granted in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, or Wisconsin.
Let's not screw this up.
