Liberal Veteran Journalist: If Early Vote Numbers Stay the Same, Trump Will Win
Halperin added that tracking the early vote is even more important than watching the polls right now.
According to the University of Florida Election Lab’s early voter tracker, as of 10 a.m. on Wednesday morning, nearly 23 million Americans had already cast their ballots in the 2024 election. Over 9.3 million people had voted in-person while 13.6 million had returned a mail ballot. The site notes that nationwide, voters have requested a total of 62,714,414 mail ballots so far this election cycle.
Noting the increase in early voting by Republicans compared to the 2020 election, veteran journalist Mark Halperin made an extremely bold statement. He told viewers on his podcast, “The Morning Meeting,” on Tuesday, “If the early vote numbers stay the way they are, and that’s a big if, we will almost certainly know BEFORE Election Day who’s going to win the election. … If these numbers hold up in the states where we can even partially understand what the data is like, we’ll know that Donald Trump is going to be president on Election Day.”
Halperin added that tracking the early vote is even more important than watching the current polls. “It’s giving us insight into a variety of factors that are accounting for a Republican overperformance by various metrics in the early voting in the battleground states.”
(Please note that Halperin is extremely well-connected in the political world. He was the first to report that President Joe Biden would drop out of the race shortly after the Biden campaign insisted he would stay the course. Halperin previously served as a political editor at ABC News and as a political analyst at MSNBC. He is not a conservative.)
Latest from Mark Halperin
'If the early vote numbers stay the way they are, we will almost certainly know BEFORE Election Day who's going to win. If these numbers hold up, we'll know that Trump is going to be president.'pic.twitter.com/bpqOSxQeDF
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) October 22, 2024
The full podcast can be viewed below. The relevant portion begins at the 4:20 mark.
Halperin began with a story from Nevada election expert Jon Ralston, who tracks early voting trends in the state on his website, The Daily Indy. Startled by the size of the Republican turnout so far, Ralston reported on Tuesday that if these trends continue, Vice President Kamala Harris will be in “serious trouble” in the state. According to Ralston, “A few more days like this, though, and the Democratic bedwetting will reach epic proportions.” He wrote:
Here’s your stat for the day: In the 15 rural counties, in-person voting, which is about 37 percent of the rural vote, the Rs lead the Ds by 73 percent to 11 percent. I kid you not.
In rural mail ballots, the Rs lead the Ds by a wide margin, 46-28, but those in-person numbers are startling. They account for about 8,000 of the Rs nearly 12,000-votes lead in the rurals, which are punching above their weight with 13 percent of the vote (nearly 3 points above their percentage of reg voters).
The R lead in rural Nevada is more than double the D lead in urban Nevada.
…
So what does this mean? It means Kamala Harris has to win indies by close to double digits if this turnout scenario holds. That is, unless she holds her base several points better than Trump holds his, which is possible but not necessarily likely. This is how the Dems still, think they hold on: They believe a lot of the indies, especially in Clark, are their indies.
Halperin warned viewers – again – not to overread the early vote as “it can change” and “we don’t know who is voting.” Having said that, Halperin noted that “every analyst” he had spoken to in the past 24 hours told him that, “if this continues, Donald Trump can’t lose. Because the Democrats can’t possibly do well enough on Election Day. … Every state is either bad for Democrats or not good for Democrats.”
Sean Spicer, a one-time White House Press Secretary for Trump and a regular on the podcast, called the data “unbelievable.”
“Like it’s almost too good to be true on our side,” he said. “So I don’t want to get giddy or excited. But when someone like Ralston,” whom he noted had not been a friend to Republicans over the decades, “has to admit something like this, that’s a big deal.”
“The folks in North Carolina I spoke to and the folks in Georgia, are absolutely giddy,” Spicer added.
The men cited the Republican Party’s significant get out the vote effort ahead of this election for the increase in early voter turnout. In addition, they pointed out that the voter rolls in many states have been cleaned up thanks to the efforts of red-state officials and activists across the country.
Whatever the reason for the spike in Republican participation in early voting, it is good news indeed. Let’s hope it continues.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
It’s the 3 AM ballot deliveries and oversees ballot mills that will tell the tale.
3 days latter
“9 million oversees ballots and 100% of them for Harris. Well, how do you like that?”
Who overseas the oversees ballots?
the seers
Lara Trump has said numerous times that Republicans are prepared for their shenanigans this time around. The RNC under Michael Whatley and LT is a lot different than it was under Ronna McDaniel.
Some of the issues seems to be timely challenges. NC and one other State had their Overseas/Military Voter criteria in State CT and were ruled against basically on grounds of timeliness not merit. Both NC and the other State allow people to claim residency for voting purposes who personally haven’t lived in the State. So in theory some college kid graduates State U in X State and their Parents move from X State to NC while Kid gets a job with EU division of Y Corp in Germany. NC allows that kid to use his Parents address to be the nexus to claim residency for voting purposes.
Yeah, the win is in the mail
That’s why in my family only some are voting early
Some of us same day.
Enough to keep the momentum, but enough in reserve so they don’t know how many ballots they have to forge ahead of time.
Keep working to turn out new voters for Republicans.
The Republican’s obvious success in their get out the vote efforts makes me believe they will be ready to preempt the dirty tricks Democrats got away with in 2020. My biggest concern are the voting machines themselves “flipping votes.” I’ve heard multiple stories in the last couple of weeks about this happening in multiple states.
I hope you are right!
Looks like most people agree that early voting is best. I passed two polling places today. At one, traffic was backed up about 3/8 mile, at the other the parking lots were full and the line extended far outside the building.
In person early voting is IMO the way to go if the State has it as an option. It ‘banks’ the vote and then if shenanigans arise of election ‘day’ (wrong size paper to print ballots, no paper at all, incorrect printer settings and so on) or just bad weather, power outages …your vote has already been cast and your ballot is on site and in many States already been tabulated (a few States don’t count early votes until 07:00 AM on election day, and a very few require in person election day ballots be counted before they start counting any early/absentee votes).
I lived in El Paso for a decade and early in person voting was well run and well managed….at least in my precinct.
I have the advantage of having lived in the same place for 25 years, and many if not most of the people running elections here have been doing so for many years. I trust them.
I feel that. I moved back to my hometown area a few years ago and know many of the folks working in the process. Makes a difference to comfort level for sure.
There is too much overconfidence on the right side of the aisle.
Naw, we never forget that the GOP has a talent for throwing victories away.
Not only a talent but an enthusiasm.
Subotai Bahadur
I am afraid that just enough early vote ballots will be withheld when the time comes.
That’s not really a problem if your local authorities do as Texas does, and publishes the names of all persons voting as soon as the next day – plus, the SoS website publishes the number of votes per day, although they don’t disclose details. In the March primary, my vote was cast as a provisional because of a minor discrepancy between my TxDL and my registration form. I was able to confirm the next day that my vote had been accepted. I don’t worry about it because this is a very conservative county and the same individuals have been doing this for many years
So much for the secret ballot.
It’s just a record of the registered voters who have already cast a ballot in the election. I don’t see how a secure election can be run if we don’t collect that info. They don’t release the contents of the ballot just that John Q Public of 123 Main St has already voted.
The names of who voted has never been secret. It’s who you vote for that’s the secret. The names have always been public record because that’s the only way to really ensure the votes are authentic. If there were no record of who – specifically – the actual voters were, Democrats would win every election, easily.
its ok
most of the roll call is from the houston and austin cemeteries
dc: Those would only show up by name in the Harris and Travis County records. The Texas authorities in the past have been active in prosecuting voter fraud and a few get nailed every election. I expect that quite a few illegals will be caught this election because Democrats are actively courting them. You have us confused with Illinois, where many living voters vote Republican, but the dead always vote Democrat.
Huff POS headline: Democrats’ keeping large block of ballots in reserve for election day.
The Dems have boxes and boxes of signed ballots, waiting to be delivered. They don’t want Trump to destroy democracy.
Hopefully there is “an enthusiasm gap” where Trump voters will turn out more than in an average election, and Harris voters don’t bother to vote for someone who doesn’t excite them.
I voted yesterday at about 10:30 a.m. and turnout seemed quite strong for mid-day, mid-week. No way to tell the leaning of the voters, but it doesn’t really mater since my state is in no way a “swing state”.
Still I can’t get it out of my mind that the mail-in ballot printing press has been running in the basement of Democratic Party HQ for weeks now.
I want to believe. I really do. I see a lot of anecdotal evidence Trump is doing well. For instance, his net favorability, while still negative, is almost 7-points better than it was in 2020. But, I really don’t put much stock in the ‘early/mail-in’ vote count because the GOP has focused for 4-years on increasing mail-in voting. Seeing an improvement over 2020 may mean absolutely nothing…because that was the goal.
I think Trump will improve his vote count from 2020. If he gets to 80M, he almost certainly wins. If Harris gets to 85M (or more), then it was absolutely a ‘manufactured’ victory.
Trump’s favorability/unfavorability was actually 50/48 in the latest Gallup poll. And Kamala’s was the reverse – 48/50.
Yes, that’s true. I’ve been relying on RCP’s average. RCP doesn’t use Gallup for some reason. But, he’s also seen improvement w/other pollsters and I think pulled even or +1 with someone other than Gallup.
I watched in the early days 2way, his podcast, One thing to understand about Halperin. He was part of of the coup plotters. He was sort of the media wing of the group that moved to “fix things: after the debate, In fact those zoom meetings for Harris ( Black men , White women, white dudes … ) were pretty much used 2way as their template.
He is driving the narrative the way he thinks most benefits the democrats, whether it will be before the election or after.
I don’t understand early voting. It’s the total that matters, not when it’s cast.
The dems in fact use late voting to win.
For Republicans, the argument for early voting is to avoid the election day equipment glitches and failures like those that hindered voting in some Republican heavy districts in Arizona last election. Plus, as I pointed out elsewhere, you have the ability to check to see if your vote was actually recorded.
its not over till the
liz cheney sings
Its not the early voting that is cause for concern
its the Late voting
Not late voting, its the late BALLOTS>
Less so than it used to be.
These days it’s just ballots that don’t correspond to any voter registration at all.
Halperin also recently said that a Trump win will likely spark the worst mass mental breakdown in American history. Imagine 2016 X Eleventy. It’s going to be beautiful.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/10/16/mark_halperin_a_trump_victory_would_spark_the_worst_mental_health_crisis_in_american_history.html
Read that article earlier this week. Glad I’m prepared and that I live out in the sticks in a solid red congressional district. I’m feeling pretty confident in saying that I think Trump is going to win. And if he does, the left are going to lose their collective minds.
2016 X Eleventy indeed.
Good! Keep pumping the liberal airwaves with these stories so Democrats become so demoralised they stay home!
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