The first votes have been cast in the election

Return rate was 6.5% higher by Dems than Pubs in 2020. They are 6.1% higher already in 2024. Rural areas were lower return rates which skew heavily Pub. Same is happening this year.

 

Voting early is fine, but PA had passed a law that said they couldn't even start counting mail in ballots until after voting closed on election day.

That is what caused the big shift once those started getting counted. And Trump and crew knew full well that would be the case, and tried to make it out like it was "suspicious". Dude lies about everything.

 

This is still the biggest known unknown in the election this year. Trump's unproven approach to GOTV.

 

I know a few folks who have run for office. Volunteerism isn’t what it used to be. Time is money. If you want someone to take off from work and do your grunt work for you, you better have something to offer them for their time or you’re not going to get very far. Remember it is Harris with the money edge, so there will be no excuses. Also, not unproven at all.

 

Being reported that the DSCC has told their candidates to start running with their own messaging in the home stretch and to break with Harris. That is not a good sign for Harris at this point.

 

Yeah, I've just now had a chance to digest most of the highlights from her CNN "town hall" performance Wednesday night. Anderson Cooper was visibly pissed at her for evading questions. Axelrod and Bash threw her under the bus afterward. Not only were Kamala's answers awful, but the way she carried herself was as a person who lacks confidence. You could see her grimace as Anderson pressed her a couple of times. My initial human instinct is to feel sorry for her, but then I realize she's running for POTUS.

 

She’s simply not fit to be the POTUS.

 

More concern from Democrats being reported by Axios.

https://www.axios.com/2024/10/25/election-democrats-trump-harris-lose

 

And she happens to be running against an opponent who is far less fit for the office.

 

Sorry my friend.
It’s just not true.
Crazy as it sounds.
She is THAT bad.

 

And the sad part is, Kamala knows it deep down. You can see it in her body language. Hillary had the confidence and she believed she was up to the job. I don't agree with a lot of Hillary's policies or actions, but I never got the sense from her that she doubted her own abilities (whether for right or for wrong).

 

As expected, Dem firewall gains continue to slow to a crawl in PA with GOP now returning at a 2 to 1 advantage daily as a percentage of total ballots approved/sent out. Still lots of room for the GOP to run with this as there are still a higher percentage of GOP ballots still outstanding. Dems well is simply running dry.

 

To follow up to this, if you look at some of the deeper blue counties in PA that have the higher Dem ballot return counts, many of these counties Trump won handily in 2020. I've circled a few in yellow below. Here were Trump's percentages of final vote in those counties in 2020:

Greene 71.2% Trump
Fayette 66.3% Trump
Lawrence 64.2% Trump
Beaver 58.2% Trump
Lancaster 57.2% Trump
Luzerne 56.7% Trump
Berks 53.4% Trump

Oh and by the way, there is not one single county in red on this map that Trump lost in 2020.



** The current statewide ballot return count in PA is missing one county's (Huntingdon county) data, which Trump won 74.9% of the vote in 2020.

 

If current pace continues for both parties, then the Ds will have a firewall of 415,000 votes. There is also no guarantee that people are voting parting line. There's a reason why Harris was recently in PA with Liz Cheney.

 

Interesting numbers out of Georgia as of today:

So far 148,787 (6.3%) of 2024 early voters voted on election day in the 2020 general election.

That tends to run against the narrative that the GOP have turned into the party of early voting.

Georgia Votes

 

Everything I can see in North Carolina looks awful for Harris. Democrats have slightly more voters registered in the state, but are turning out a lower percentage of those voters so far and again.. you'll have a very difficult time convincing me Election Day in person voting won't heavily favor Trump. Dems should be leading big in NC right now.

 

Do you think the concern among Democrats is just normal Democrat Panic that they get about now or is it something they are seeing in the polls/early voting?

 

I'm not sure why Democrats should be leading big in NC. From what I can tell, the Democrats have only won the presidential race in North Carolina one time since 1976 - when Obama won in 2008 by 0.3%.

 

I think the biggest Dem state electoral win was Cooper's reelection in 2020, ran way ahead of Biden. 2016 was super close, similar to the Obama margin.