The natural cynic in me is reluctant to ever get involved in analyzing the early election numbers, but there is an exception. Jon Ralston has a long history of breaking down the data in Nevada and has proven that his model should be taken seriously. With that in mind, it’s time to panic for Kamala Harris.
Ralston published his latest blog about the early returns, and they paint a picture of a race that diverges from the Harris campaign. The situation is so bad that it would now have to significantly outperform the independents to make up the difference.
SEE ALSO: Focusing on key poll data that could spell disaster for Kamala Harris
The early voting blog is updated!
Rs have added 2K to the lead which is now 31,000 or 5%. The GOP surge slowed somewhat Saturday, but Republicans still gained.
The Democrats need to win the Indies decisively to make this a delayed election night.
Also down bot update!https://t.co/Pl43XBMcPA
– Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) October 27, 2024
Republicans have increased their national lead 31,000. That’s exactly right 5 percent. After day 7 there were 29,000, so the raise slowed. But the Rs still have one 6.1 percent voter turnout lead over the Democrats in a state where the Democrats no longer have a significant voter registration lead, so the Democrats have to win India to win Nevada. They need to win the Indies by about 5 points if the Republican turnout margin among the final electorate is 5 percent; If it’s 6 percent, that means they have to beat the Indies by a few more points.
So Democrats need to start changing the electorate more to have a chance, even if they’re currently doing well with the indies. They don’t want to be 30,000 ballots behind by Election Day. Why? If the final vote were to take place with the current electoral distribution, the Ds would have to win over the Indies by 10 points, even if Trump lost 5 percent more of his base than Harris lost hers.
Possible? Maybe, but pretty unlikely.
What’s notable is that Ralston is a left-wing Democrat. When he says this, it’s not to make Republicans feel better about themselves. On the contrary, the fact that he is so outspoken shows that the situation is dire for Harris. Talking about a candidate “doing more to change the electorate to have a chance” is never a good sign. There is no good reason to believe that Harris will reshape the electorate and achieve much success with independent voters. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but there’s no reason for it think it will happen.
We can talk about the composition of the electorate and the Democrats likely doing well with the Indies (remember Biden won them by 6 votes in 2020 according to exit polls), but this turnout pattern favors the Rs. And there are almost no way to say anything other than that Democrats have a lot of bulky work to do to make this a race between now and November 5th (and beyond).
Ralston touches on this just a little in the excerpt above, noting that Biden won independents by six points. Kamala Harris is not Biden in 2020. She’s not even close to Trump far He is outperforming his position this cycle compared to four years ago. The Vice President has the independents win by a wide margin or else she’ll lose Nevada, and it’s becoming increasingly hard to imagine her doing that.
What does this mean for the other swing states and the election as a whole? Nevada should be Harris’ best chance to capture a battlefield in the Sun Belt. If she loses there, it is very likely that she also loses Arizona and Georgia. Additionally, early vote totals in the Rust Belt, while harder to estimate, don’t look good for Harris either.
Could the vice president lose Nevada but tidy up elsewhere to win the election? It’s not impossible, but at this point we get into scenarios that just don’t make sense. It’s been obvious for some time that the Harris campaign and the Democrats (including the press) are freaking out, and now we know why.
