Democratic strategists are alarmed by former President Trump’s track record of topping the polls and hope Vice President Harris will benefit from a surge in Democratic “ghost voters.” These are adolescent women who they hope will show up in huge numbers on Election Day, but who are not captured by recent election polls.
Polls in battleground states like Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are not promising for Harris, considering Trump has a history of winning more votes in those states on Election Day in 2016 and 2020 than polls previously showed.
Harris held a rally with Beyoncé in Houston on Friday to further emphasize abortion rights in the final days of the campaign, reinforcing a national message aimed at women ages 18 to 35 who are “low-propensity voters.” ” are.
“In 2018 and 2022, the ghost voters existed because that turnout was higher – particularly in 2022 – higher than Republicans predicted and there was a surge in young women getting out there,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake .
She said Harris could benefit significantly from adolescent women who have never voted, voted only occasionally and are not covered by many polls.
Trump himself benefited from ghost voters in 2016 and 2020, when he performed better in the polls because working-class voters without college degrees supported his candidacy in huge numbers.
Some Democrats fear Trump could top the polls again next month, which would be bad news for Harris as polls show the two candidates deadlocked in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The politically disadvantaged say Harris needs to win these three blue wall states to ensure victory.
“There is the potential for a ghost voter on both sides. The ones on the Harris side would be young women,” said Lake, who noted that younger women were more likely to vote in Kansas’ 2022 abortion referendum than any other group of men on the state constitution.
The women who could become a wave of “ghost voters” for Harris are not typically involved in politics or following campaign developments through customary news channels.
“Usually we miss them because they are people with no voting history or have a very irregular voting history,” Lake said, explaining why these voters are not measured by pollsters.
“First, they have the wrong estimate of voter turnout, which is the hardest thing to get,” she added. “These people are often registered but have a very spotty voting history, if any.”
She said some states, such as Wisconsin, allow voters to register on Election Day, “which encourages the ghost voter phenomenon.”
Some Democrats are pinning their hopes on the prospect of a “stealth surge” of adolescent women voters amid discouraging polls.
The latest blow to Democrats came from the latest national poll by the New York Times and Siena College Published Fridaywhich shows Harris and Trump deadlocked at 48 percent.
Democrats had hoped Harris would build a sturdy lead over Trump nationwide before Election Day that could carry over to critical swing states.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) is one of many Democrats hoping the polls are missing huge swaths of younger women voters who don’t have much of a constituency but are motivated in droves by abortion rights and their dislike of Trump’s personality and character to go to the polls.
“I think we’re going to see a lot of women go to the polls who haven’t been counted and may not even participate in the elections. We saw this in 2022. If people are now saying, ‘Well, there’s a Trump outnumbered,’ then I think women are going to turn out in droves,” Khanna said in an interview with NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo on Thursday night.
“Ultimately, I think people will be concerned that Donald Trump hasn’t made a gesture … to say, ‘Look, I’m going to govern from the center.’ “I want to try to bring us together,” he said.
Harris has been trying to reach those voters through social media and earlier this month Participation in the “Call Her Daddy” podcast.Spotify’s second most popular podcast, attracting many younger female listeners.
Strategists say celebrity endorsements from megastars Taylor Swift and Beyoncé could aid motivate adolescent women who tend to abstain from politics to vote.
Analysts who track election data say fresh voter registrations spiked after Swift endorsed Harris and urged her 272 million followers to “make their voices heard.”
According to Jessica Herrera, senior director at Supermajority, a group dedicated to building women’s political power, Swift’s Instagram endorsement of Harris helped generate nearly half a million fresh registrants.
The supermajority saw a major upsurge in enthusiasm and hope for the future among adolescent women who rarely vote after President Biden announced he would not seek a second term, paving the way for Harris to potentially become the first woman to serve as acts as president.
“Presidential elections are top elections. Whoever manages to attract more voters to the polls who don’t normally vote will win. “What we’ve seen in our data, I strongly believe that these will be young women, particularly those who are newly registered and those who don’t show up to vote frequently,” Herrera said.
She said the “mood was really bad” when Biden was expected to be the Democratic presidential nominee earlier in the year, but that changed when Harris entered the race.
“We conducted one New survey in Septemberand we asked the same questions and the positive answers almost doubled across the board. Women have a more positive outlook on their own future, they have a more positive outlook on the country’s future and they feel that while the government isn’t working now, it could work in the future,” she said.
“That hope is critical to engaging in civic engagement,” she added.
The September survey of 1,300 women ages 18 to 35 nationwide found that 42 percent said they were confident about the country’s future, compared to just 25 percent in May.
The survey also found that 86 percent of adolescent women nationwide felt positive about their own future, compared to 66 percent who said the same in May.
The unexpected augment in turnout among adolescent women in the 2022 midterm elections was a gigantic reason Democrats retained control of the Senate and did not lose as many House seats as the politically disadvantaged had predicted.
This augment in voter turnout was largely due to the Supreme Court’s bombshell decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck down the nation’s right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade in 1973.
