What can early voting data tell us about support for Trump, Harris? Experts weigh in

Millions of Americans have already cast their ballots for the November presidential election — either in person or through the mail.

Data collected on these early votes offers a valuable, real-time glimpse into the contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

It can be used to gauge voter enthusiasm and turnout, particularly in hotly contested battleground states, according to political experts.

However, they caution that it shouldn’t be used to make broad predictions about the final outcome.

Early voting data

Early voting has begun in at least thirty-seven states and Washington, D.C., according to the New York Times. Among them are several key swing states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.

In these states, upwards of 48 million ballots have been requested so far, with more registered Democrats requesting them than registered Republicans, per the outlet.

Further, about 2.5 million in-person and mail-in ballots have already been cast, according to NBC News.

Of these, 54% were cast by Democrats and 30% by Republicans. Sixteen percent came from voters not registered with either party, the outlet reported.

These figures roughly comport with the early vote breakdown in 2020, when around 60% of Democrats and 32% of Republicans voted by mail, according to a study done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

What can be learned from this data?

This data can shed light onto several key aspects of the presidential race, political experts said.

“It’s helpful in part to get a sense of how energized different segments of the electorate are to the extent that you can glean that from the early votes being requested and cast,” Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, told McClatchy News.

“It tells you, if you have party registration information, the partisan candidate breakdown of people who have decided how they will vote and are not going to change,” Robert Shapiro, a professor of government at Columbia University, told McClatchy News. “This is of most interest in the seven battleground states.”

From these findings, one can infer the overall proportion of early voters who are mobilized, he said.

Using that logic, it would appear that Democrats have a leg up on the early voting front — as they did in 2020 — including in crucial swing states like Pennsylvania and Georgia.

However, experts also cautioned that it’s still too early to make sweeping predictions.

“I worry about drawing any inferences from early voting data,” Paul Beck, an emeritus professor of political science at Ohio State University, told McClatchy News.

“In some ways it’s too early to glean too much from early voting,” Panagopoulos said. “But in the next few weeks as it becomes available in more and more states and more voters take advantage of it in different places we may have a clearer picture of what things are starting to look like.”

How might the early vote compare to 2020?

Multiple experts said they expected the share of Americans who vote early this year to be smaller than in 2020 — when the country was engulfed by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Due to the unusual nature of 2020 due to Covid and more stringent state rules limiting mail-in/absentee ballots, there are not the enormous number of mail-in ballots,” Shapiro said. “This will lead to more early in-person voting and Election Day voting…”

Echoing this sentiment, Beck said, “I would expect fewer Americans to take advantage of early voting than they did during the pandemic.”

However, there is also reason to believe early voting could expand — at least among some groups — this year.

For one, Trump has changed his stance on the practice, which he repeatedly and baselessly labeled as fraudulent in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

At a September rally in Pennsylvania, he urged his supporters to vote early, though he also criticized it in the same speech, calling it “stupid,” according to Politico.

Because of this change in messaging, more Republicans could cast early ballots than in the last election, experts said.

Many voters also just prefer voting early — and that’s not likely to change, Panagopoulos said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we had more early mail in voting than previous election cycles because voters find it more convenient and they have busy lives,” he said.

“Early voting is here to stay and will likely become even more popular as time goes on,” he said. “There is no single Election Day anymore. It’s a series of election days that last weeks, all of which are as important, if not more important, than Election Day itself.”

This story was originally published October 9, 2024 at 4:00 AM with the headline "What can early voting data tell us about support for Trump, Harris? Experts weigh in."