Record-Breaking Turnout in Georgia as Harris Extends Lead to 5 Points in National Polls
Alright, alright, alright
I didn’t see this coming, and neither did Donald Trump or his MAGA base. Even the Democrats couldn’t have predicted this. Breaking early voting records on the first day is impressive, but doubling the previous record? That was completely unexpected.
I can already predict how Trump and his allies will spin this. They’ll initially try to twist every available data point into a victory for themselves. And if that doesn’t work, they’ll claim the data is fake. In their narrative, they always have to be the winners, always in the right.
Some pundits like to push the idea that high voter turnout might actually benefit the GOP.
Nopeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Below, you’ll find a table I created using 2020 voter registration data from the U.S. Census Bureau and vote share data from the Pew Research Center.
Had everyone voted in 2020, Joe Biden would have won by a margin of 24 million votes. From the beginning, Trump correctly assumed that high turnout benefits Democrats. Consequently, the odds are strongly in favor of Democrats if voter turnout in 2024 approaches or surpasses 2020 levels.
The record-breaking turnout in Georgia was no accident — it was intentional and carefully planned.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said “his office’s goal at early voting sites and at the 2,400 polling places on Election Day is to have voters spend as little time as possible filling out their ballots. It took the average voter only a few minutes to cast a ballot on Tuesday morning”.
“We want to make sure that they’re less than an hour. We loved when we had in 2022 the average wait time was less than three minutes and got down as low as two minutes at times. This morning, there appeared to be no slowdowns and lines have been moving everyone in less (time) than that”.- Brad Raffensperger
Simplifying the voting process at polling stations significantly increases voter participation. Convenience is a key driver of higher turnout. The way Georgians have voted in the past 24 hours is likely to have a ripple effect, serving as a catalyst to inspire people across the country to take their voting rights more seriously.
But that’s not the only good news I have for you today. Few weeks ago, during one of my assessments, I wrote that based on current polling trends, we could expect Kamala Harris to reach 52% in national polls. It’s happening.
Earlier this month, their own poll showed Kamala Harris leading Trump by two points nationally. That lead has now increased by three, to hit a five point lead over Trump. This kind of shift isn’t unusual. As independent voters begin to break toward a candidate, polls tend to fluctuate. Right-leaning pollsters are well aware of this trend, and they often seize this moment of volatility to flood the field with biased polls, muddying the waters.
It’s a strategic move on their part. The core of the MAGA ideology is to sow distrust in every pillar of American democracy. Pollsters already face challenges adapting to the fast-changing demographics of the U.S., and making people lose faith in polls aligns perfectly with MAGA’s agenda.
Polling is a tough job. Mistakes will happen, and there’s always noise in the data. But that doesn’t mean polls are useless. We can still sift through the noise and find reliable ones. A good practice is to focus on the trendline rather than fixating on a single poll. One poll is just one data point — nothing more.
Harris’s trendline is moving in the right direction. She started the race with a modest 1 to 2 point lead over Trump. Though the gap tightened slightly over the past two weeks, it’s now widening again.
One thing is undeniable: since Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination, Donald Trump hasn’t led in national polls — not even for 24 hours. This is despite an onslaught of biased polls from Republican sources trying to distort the averages. With the prospect of record voter turnout in 2024, the outlook is promising for Harris and increasingly bleak for Trump.