The early voting numbers are in — and they’re crushing for Democrats.
President Donald Trump has “more reasons for optimism” going into Tuesday’s election, The Washington Times reports, as new data on the results of early voting shows Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden falling far short of expectations.
“Not hitting the marks”
Democrats by and large have made a strong push for absentee and mail-in voting this year, and as such, many expected Joe Biden to get off to a running start as early voting numbers started to come in. In fact, many analysts have suggested the former vice president needs to build up a substantial lead among early voters if he wants to secure a victory despite an anticipated surge of Republican votes on Election Day.
According to The Washington Times, Dems were hoping to rack in as much as 70% of the early vote in states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Arizona, and North Carolina. But Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh says they aren’t even close.
“The Democrats have not opened up a large enough lead in the early vote totals, and they know it,” Murtaugh told the Times.
“They have now realized that they put too many eggs in the vote-by-mail basket,” he said, “and they’re not hitting the marks they need.”
The latest numbers from the U.S. Elections Project — a resource created by University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald that compiles election data — show that for states where party affiliation is reported among voters, Democrats only lead Republicans by a margin of 47.7% to 29.3% when it comes to total ballots returned.
It should be noted, however, that less than half of the 50 states report the party affiliation of voters, and a voter’s party affiliation doesn’t always comport with which candidate’s box the voter checks on their ballot.
“The equation that we can’t solve”
Of course, to hear the left-leaning Washington Post tell the story, Democrats are doing just fine, and are banking on the fact that widespread vote-by-mail and in-person early voting will translate to favorable results for their party and its presidential nominee.
That said, the Post acknowledged in its recent report that nobody will know until Election Day exactly how many Republicans will ultimately turn out to vote, and an unnamed source “close” to the Biden campaign admitted to the paper that it is “absolutely possible” that Trump could make up lost ground.
Even liberal insiders like Tom Bonier, who the Post described as “the head of TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm,” has admitted that while early data shows “record levels of turnout,” it’s still anybody’s race.
“The open question,” Bonier told the Post, “is whether that level of Republican engagement and enthusiasm can match or exceed [that of] Democrats. That’s the part of the equation that we can’t solve until Election Day.”
The post Trump campaign spokesman says Democrats are 'not hitting the marks they need' in early voting first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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