Even with so many votes cast, it is difficult to interpret the results. There are still a lot of people who have not cast their ballots, and it is unclear how many there will be or how they will be divided. However, the number of new voters who have already cast their ballots is one indicator from the early voting data that might be more indicative of the outcome.
As of October 30, there are indications of a surge of new male Republican voters in Arizona and new female Democratic voters in Pennsylvania, two of the most significant swing states, according to an NBC News Decision Desk review of state voter data.
The early votes of new voters, or those who did not cast ballots in 2020, are particularly significant since they have the power to alter the outcome of the 2024 presidential election in comparison to the previous one. (It is crucial to know who cast a ballot in 2020 but does not turn up this time, but it is impossible to tell before election day.)
In many of the seven closest battleground states, the number of new voters has already surpassed the gap between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in 2020. For instance, Biden defeated Trump in Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes in 2020. In Pennsylvania, more than 100,000 new voters have already cast ballots this year, and more are on the way.
Although we cannot predict how these new voters will vote, knowing who they are can give us some indications about how 2024 may turn out in comparison to 2020. Although party registration does not always accurately predict a voter’s choice, new voters who register as Republicans are more likely to vote for Trump, and new voters who register as Democrats are more likely to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. The new party-affiliated voters may therefore offer some clues regarding the 2024 election in the swing states (Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania) where voters can legally register for a party.
The best way to anticipate the partisanship of new voters in Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, where voters do not formally register with a party, is to use local voting histories and demographics, which can be noisy and occasionally inaccurate.
In the midst of an election that hinges on a variety of gender-related political issues, including abortion, the gender of new voters in the battleground states is also publicly available information, providing insight into the relationship between gender and party registration among new voters. (An additional option on certain states’ voter registration forms is “nonbinary” or “other,” however few voters have used it thus far.)
Female Democrats dominate new voter numbers from Pennsylvania
What have we learned thus far from the new voters? Not only is Pennsylvania regarded by pollsters as the closest state, but the number of new voters who have already cast ballots there has surpassed the 2020 margin, so let us start there. The election would be decided by these additional voters if every voter from 2020 cast a ballot for the same candidate. According to data from Pennsylvania, there are significant variations in the quantity of new voters’ ballots cast by gender and party registration. This partisan divide is being driven by new female voters, who make up a larger percentage of newly registered Democrats than Republicans. Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost two to one among new female voters, while Democrats are just marginally more likely to be new male voters than Republicans.
However, the picture is complicated by the number of new voters who choose not to formally register with either party, since the number of new unaffiliated voters is about equal to the difference between the number of new Republicans and Democrats. Accordingly, the advantage that registered Democrats presently enjoy among new early voters may be eliminated or increased by the unaffiliated vote.
The opposite trend in Arizona: Male Republicans lead the way
The pattern reverses when looking at Arizona. The 2020 gap in Arizona was significantly lower, at just 10,457 votes, even though there are fewer new voters than in Pennsylvania, partly due to the fact that early voting in Arizona began later.
As of Tuesday, there were 86,231 new voters, more than eight times the Biden-Trump margin in Arizona in 2020. And male Republicans currently make up the largest portion of that cohort of new voters in Arizona.
Additionally, compared to Pennsylvania, new female voters in the state are somewhat more likely to be registered Republicans than Democrats. However, male voters are primarily responsible for the Republican advantage in new Arizona voters thus far.
Once more, however, a sizable portion of new voters did not identify with either party, and their voting behavior may easily alter the apparent Republican registration advantage among early-voting new voters.
A mixed picture in the other swing states
There is no obvious lesson to be learned from examining the remaining five swing states, which show a range of patterns. Though conclusions in Michigan are complicated by the lack of party registration and the difficulty of predicting partisanship of Michigan voters without that data, which has seen significant errors in the past, there appears to be a significant difference in the behavior of new male and female voters. However, modeling based on those numbers indicates that among new voters, Democratic women are marginally surpassing Republican women. According to the same projections, the number of new Republican men is almost twice that of new Democratic men.
Similar to Michigan, Wisconsin seems to indicate a substantial correlation between partisanship and gender among the new voters, with new male voters marginally favoring Republicans and new female voters favoring Democrats. But given the amount of new voters who are expected to be unaffiliated, extreme caution must be used when attempting to extrapolate such figures.
There is a new trend in the two states with actual party registration statistics, Nevada and North Carolina: the largest group of new voters to date, both male and female, are those who are not affiliated with any party. It is evidently crucial and unknown how those independents vote, underscoring the challenge of drawing firm conclusions from early voting statistics.
One thing is certain, though: Given that the number of votes cast by new 2024 voters already surpasses the margin in many of the closest states in 2020, these voters could make the difference. They are going into an election that many predict will be tight and with a divided electorate. Furthermore, it is difficult to predict precisely how early voting will affect this year’s election outcomes due to the large number of unaffiliated new voters or the absence of party registration in important areas, with the exception of a few states where the data begins to point to a more comprehensive picture.
In these situations, it seems pointless to pore into the bowels of compiled early voting reports in an attempt to make a forecast about the future. Our expert advice is to enjoy the fall weather by going for a stroll.
