Early Voting Map: NAJ screen shot

Election Analysis –
By Glynn Wilson –

HARRISBURG, Ark. – Not much is at stake in this election. Only the future of democracy itself.

The stakes were so high in 2020 that nearly 63 percent of eligible voters in the United States cast ballots in the election, enough to block Donald Trump from remaining in power in the Covid-stained White House and pushing Joe Biden over the top.

The last time voter turnout was that high came in 1960, when Democrat John F. Kennedy bested Eisenhower’s Vice President Richard Nixon.

About 240 million Americans were eligible to vote in the 2020 presidential election. About 158 million voted, while 81 million did not.

It’s a little too early to say what turnout will look like in the 2024 election, but according to some reliable sources, enthusiasm for early voting seems to indicate that while the final turnout might not quite match the 62.8 percent numbers in 2020, millions of Americans are showing up to vote early and by mail.

Alternatives to in-person Election Day voting made up a staggering 70 percent of overall turnout in the 2020 election, up from 40 percent in 2016, as states temporarily expanded their options for how voters could cast their ballots during the coronavirus pandemic. Two years later, in the 2022 midterms, half of all votes were cast early.

This year, enthusiasm still appears high in several battleground states, according to the Associated Press tracker of state early-voting tallies. Georgia and North Carolina broke advance-turnout records on their first days of early voting.

High levels of mail voting is also occurring in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, by law those ballots can’t be processed until Election Day, which could delay knowing the presidential election outcome for the entire country, according to The Washington Post. Slow counting in California could also delay the results, although early indications are that the Democrats will most likely retake control of the House.

The Democrats will retake control of the House in January

According to Politico, there’s a gender gap showing up in the 2024 election, as women are voting early in huge numbers, far outpacing men, which is giving anxious Democrats hope heading into the final week of the campaign. They see female voters as key to a Kamala Harris victory.

Across the key battleground states, there is a 10-point gender gap in early voting so far. Women account for roughly 55 percent of the early vote, while men are around 45 percent. The high female turnout is encouraging to Democratic strategists, who expected that a surge in Republican turnout would result in more gender parity among early voters.

“It’s impossible to know who these women are voting for, including whether Democrats are winning over unaffiliated or moderate Republican women disillusioned with former President Donald Trump,” Politico reports. “But the gender gap has been one of the defining features of the 2024 campaign, and Harris allies see the lack of a surge of male voters as an encouraging sign.”

“In some states women are actually exceeding their vote share from 2020, which is at this point shocking to me,” said Tom Bonier, a Democratic strategist and CEO of the data firm TargetSmart. “I never would have bet on that.”

The optimism over female turnout comes as Harris tries to appeal to moderate suburban women, including non-college educated, white women. Democrats are trying to drive them to the polls with the enthusiasm they showed in the midterm elections, right after the conservative Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Harris stepped off the battleground campaign trail on Friday to deliver an abortion-focused speech in Texas, which has arguably the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, and she’s continuing this week to hammer a message focused on the economy and what she argues is Trump’s lack of fitness for office, all top issues for women.

In Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, there is at least a 10-point gap between men and women in the early vote, according to data from the University of Florida’s United States Election Project.

“It’s unprecedented excitement,” said Michigan Congressman Haley Stevens. “I’m out knocking doors, you get to people’s doors, they really feel like this is a moment for their daughters, and that has been very resonant.”

Polling continues to show that driving up female turnout is helping the vice president. A recent ABC/Ipsos poll shows Harris with a 19 percentage point lead among suburban women, up from 10 points in October and Joe Biden’s six-point lead in 2020. Harris has also cut in half Trump’s 27-point margin of victory in 2020 with white women without a college degree, according to a recent Marist Poll.

For Democrats, the surge in women voting comes as a welcome counterbalance to fears of increased Republican turnout. Democrats have dismissed Republicans’ early successes as a shift in voting methods, not as a sign of a coming red wave. While Trump has abandoned his tactic of attacking mail and early voting from 2020, there’s no sign of a surge in the “bro vote” — the low-propensity, MAGA-supporting men Trump and his allies are counting on.

“We’re confident we’re going to win, and it’s not because we’re running away with it,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters. “It’s because we’re confident we’re on path to win a very close election.”

The substantial female turnout also comes as a reversal of fortunes for Democrats, who just months ago were fretting about Biden’s lackluster performance among women. Democrats are particularly encouraged by what they’re seeing in the early vote data from young women of color, who they saw register to vote in droves after Harris entered the race and who have become increasingly engaged in the political process over the past three months.

Analysis of early voting data in Pennsylvania found that women registered as Democrats made up nearly a third of early votes this year. According to TargetSmart’s analysis, Black and Latino women under the age of 30 are not only showing up at higher rates than their male peers, but by even a larger margin than they did in 2020.

In North Carolina, women are outpacing men among registered voters in the early vote reporting there.

I voted early in Harrisburg, Arkansas, across the street from the Poinsett County Courthouse: Glynn Wilson

In Arkansas, when I voted on Wednesday, Oct. 23 across the street from the Poinsett County Courthouse, there were not many people around and no line at all. But according to reporting from the Arkansas Advocate, a non-profit news outlet, nearly 309,000 voters cast ballots during first four days of early voting.

“Overall it’s going really well and all the prep work, I think, is really coming to fruition,” said Chris Madison, director of the State Board of Election Commissioners. “We’re working real hard to make sure that our voters have a good voting experience [and] are confident in the results.”

In Pulaski County, the most populated county in Arkansas, 40,364 ballots were cast during the first four days of early voting, according to unofficial county data. Election coordinator Amanda Dickens said she feels confident in the preparedness of the county’s poll workers and hasn’t been surprised by any major issues.

The county’s count was up about 8 percent from the 37,470 ballots cast in four days of early voting during the 2020 general election, she said.

In Benton County, election coordinator Kimberly Dennison said turnout at its 15 early voting sites “started strong and [was] extremely busy at all of our sites…”

Benton County reported 38,646 ballots cast, which is about 6 percent higher than 2020 figures for the same duration.

As of Oct. 24, Benton County had a total of 192,308 registered voters, County Clerk Betsy Harrell said.

“I can only hope that we see a huge percentage of our voters turn out because we do a lot of work in here to prepare for an election, and it makes us feel good when people actually get out and vote,” Dennison said.

Saline County has also experienced a high voter turnout, election coordinator Allison Cain said.

With 17,708 ballots cast in the first four days of early voting, the county is up about 6 percent from its 2020 reports for the same duration.

“We were anticipating a high turnout,” Cain said. “Usually it will be a high turnout the first day or two and then it kind of tapers off, but it’s been continuous every day — all four sites being busy with a lot of voters coming out.”

This gives Democrats some hope of winning back some seats in Congress from Republicans in The Natural State, including the seat in the First District in Eastern Arkansas, where Democrat Rodney Govens may be poised to pull off an upset over little known MAGA Republican Rick Crawford.

A Political Upset is Brewing from the Grass Roots Up in Rural Arkansas

Kristal Kuykendall, who is running Govens’ campaign, said every day except one so far has seen early turnout that significantly exceeded the turnout in 2020 in Craighead County, where Jonesboro is by far the district’s largest city.

“In Mississippi County they had 800 show up to vote on the first day,” she said, while in 2020, “they had a total of just 2000 vote the entire voting period.”

In Greene County, she said, turnout has been higher most days this year than in 2020.

“The early voting numbers are encouraging,” Kuykendall said. “Encouraging, yes, but we gotta do better if we want to unseat a well-entrenched incumbent — so well-entrenched he didn’t bother campaigning at all ’till after the debate, and he still hasn’t updated his website all year. He still isn’t posting on social media or allowing constituents to message him there either. He clearly thinks he doesn’t need to communicate at all with the people who pay his salary. That’s unacceptable.

“But if every eligible voter doesn’t show up to cast a ballot this year, things will never get better and in fact will likely get much worse,” she said. “People often say ‘your vote matters’ and it feels like a cliche. Well, I’ve never seen our votes matter as much as they do right now. Everything we take for granted in this country is on the line. We have to show up and vote.”

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