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    • What does early voting data show about new voters? A group that can influence the election
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    What does early voting data show about new voters? A group that can influence the election

    Harry Posted on

    With nearly 60 million votes already cast, everyone interested in the presidential election is trying to understand where the race stands.

    Even with so many votes cast, it’s hard to know what this means. Many more people have not yet voted, and it is unknown exactly how many there will be or how they will be divided. But there is one measure in the early voting data that may be more telling about the final results: the number of new voters who have already voted.

    NBC News Decision Desk’s analysis of state voter data shows signs of an influx of new Democratic female voters in Pennsylvania as of Oct. 30 and new Republican male voters in Arizona, two of the top swing states.

    Early votes from new voters (voters who did not participate in 2020) are of particular interest because they are votes that could change what happens in 2024 based on the last presidential election. (It also matters who voted in 2020 and who didn’t this time, but it’s impossible to know before Election Day.)

    Already, the number of new voters in many of the seven closest battleground states exceeds the 2020 gap between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. For example, in Pennsylvania, Biden defeated Trump by 80,555 votes in 2020. More than 100,000 new voters have already cast ballots in Pennsylvania this year, with more to come.

    We can’t know how these new voters vote, but looking at who they are could provide clues about how 2024 might change compared to 2020. Party registration does not fully predict voter preference, but new voters who choose to register as Democrats are more predictive. They are more likely to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, and new voters who register as Republicans are more likely to vote for Trump. As a result, in swing states where voters can officially register with a party (Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania), new voters joining a party may offer some clues about the 2024 elections.

    (In Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where voters are not formally registered with a party, the best we can do to estimate the partisanship of new voters is based on local voting patterns and demographic data; these data can be quite noisy and sometimes inaccurate.)

    The gender of new voters in these states is also public data, shedding light on the relationship between gender and party registration among new voters in an election environment tied to a range of gender-related political issues, such as abortion. (Some states also offer “non-binary” or “other” on voter registration forms, and so far few voters are using it.)

    Female Democrats dominate new voter numbers in Pennsylvania

    Let’s start with Pennsylvania – not just because it’s thought to be closest state according to pollsbut also because the number of new voters voting there has already exceeded the 2020 margin. If everyone voted for the same candidate again starting in 2020, these new voters would determine the race.

    Data from Pennsylvania shows large differences in the number of votes cast by new voters by both party registration and gender. New voters are more registered Democrats than Republicans, and new female voters are widening this partisan gap. New male voters are slightly more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, but among new female voters, Democrats outnumber Republicans almost 2 to 1.

    The picture is complicated by the number of new voters who decide not to officially register with either party; because the number of new unaffiliated voters is about the same as the difference between the number of new Democrats and new Republicans. That means independent voting could erase or expand the advantage registered Democrats have among new early voters.

    Reverse trend in Arizona: Male Republicans lead the way

    Back in Arizona, the opposite pattern emerges. While there were fewer new voters than in Pennsylvania — in part because early voting started later in Arizona — the 2020 margin in Arizona was also much smaller: just 10,457 votes.

    Already, the number of new voters (86,231 as of Tuesday) is more than eight times the Biden-Trump margin in Arizona in 2020. By far the largest share of this new group of voters in Arizona is male Republicans.

    Unlike Pennsylvania, new female voters in the state are slightly more likely to be registered Republicans than Democrats. But so far the Republican advantage in new Arizona voters is largely driven by male voters.

    Once again, though, the number of new voters choosing not to join either party is significant, and the way they vote could easily shift Republicans’ apparent registration advantage among new voters who vote early.

    A mixed picture in other swing states

    Looking at the remaining five oscillation cases, various patterns emerge and there is no clear conclusion.

    There is a large visible difference in the behavior of new male and female voters in Michigan, but the results in Michigan are complicated by the lack of registration by party in Michigan and the difficulty of estimating the partisanship of Michigan voters without that data. There have been major mistakes in the past. But based on these estimates, it appears that predicted Democratic women slightly outnumbered predicted Republican women among new voters, while predicted Republican men nearly doubled the number of newly predicted Democratic men.

    Like Michigan, Wisconsin suggests a strong connection between gender and partisanship among new voters; New female voters are slightly divided for Democrats, while new male voters are slightly divided for Republicans. However, the number of new voters estimated to be disengaged requires extreme caution in trying to extrapolate too much from these estimates.

    In other states with actual party registration data (North Carolina and Nevada), there is a new pattern: Voters unaffiliated with either party are the largest group of new voters ever among both men and women. How these independents will vote is clearly critical and unknown; This once again highlights the difficulty of reaching strong conclusions using early voting data.

    Josh Clinton/NBC News

    However, one thing is clear: These voters could be decisive, as the number of votes cast by new voters in 2024 already exceeds the margin in many of the closest states in 2020. They are entering a polarized electorate and an election that many expected. closed. Except for a few states where available data begins to tell a broader story, the number of new voters unaffiliated with a party or the lack of party registration in key states makes it difficult to know exactly how early voting will play out. this year’s election results.

    In such cases, looking at the innards of aggregated early voting reports in hopes of gaining some insight into what will happen seems like a futile effort. Our pro tip: Go for a walk and enjoy the fall weather instead.

    Harry
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