What early voting data shows about new voters, a group that could swing the 2024 election
With nearly 60 million ballots already cast, everyone interested in the presidential election is trying to figure out where the race stands.
With nearly 60 million ballots already cast, everyone interested in the presidential election is trying to figure out where the race stands.
Despite so many votes having been cast, it is hard to know what it means. Many more people have yet to vote, and exactly how many there will be or how they will split are unknown. But there is one measure in the early voting data that could be more suggestive about the final results: the number of new voters who have already voted.
An NBC News Decision Desk analysis of state voter data shows that as of Oct. 30, there are signs of an influx of new female Democratic voters in Pennsylvania and new male Republican voters in Arizona, two of the most important swing states.
The early votes of new voters — voters who did not show up in 2020 — are of particular interest because they are votes that could change what happens in 2024 relative to the last presidential election. (Who voted in 2020 and doesn’t show up this time is also important, but it’s impossible to know before Election Day.)
Already, the number of new voters in many of the seven closest battleground states exceeds the 2020 margin between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. In Pennsylvania, for example, Biden beat Trump in 2020 by 80,555 votes. This year, over 100,000 new voters have already cast ballots in Pennsylvania, with more to come.
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