(wipes some sweat off brow) Thanks, Jay, I needed that this morning.
I talked a "bro" yesterday into voting for Kamala. He's a gamer type. He was undecided. When he told me that, I initially wanted to sedate him for the next week, but when he displayed a remarkable lack of knowledge about everything, I explained to him how tariffs would impact his next monitor purchase (he goes through monitors like some of us go through Keurig coffee pods).
He was like, "No way, dude." Followed by a few expletives. Then he said he's voting for Kamala.
You could also have told him that porn will be banned under Project 2025! It's remarkable that someone would care more about the price of a gaming monitor than the fact that tens of millions could be deported, the military unleashed on protesters, and women reduced to second-class citizens, but a win is a win!
For people like us who are plugged into politics, undecided voters are baffling. But in reality there are a large contingent of voters in this country who are not paying attention. Sometimes to make a difference, we've got to meet people where they are (despite wanting to grab them by the shoulders and scream "wake up")
Yeah, it's strange. A sixteen-year-old born and raised in this blue state (MA) was saying she "would vote for trvmmp because she doesn't know enough about Kamala". I sent along trvmp's plans to deport her entire family for being non-white immigrants, including her after canceling birthright citizenship.
I hope it got through to her. I talked to another person who questioned Kamala's qualifications. I had to simmer down. I listed the offices she's held. When I got to VP, he said, but she hasn't done much there. I said, "She shut up and did what she was told. That's the job." Another undecided voter. I think I swayed him, too. I'll be checking in on him during his dog walk this evening.
EDIT: Most people who bother walking their dogs are nice people. I will snare this guy, too.
Maybe throw in that Kamala was sent by Biden to meet with high-level officers and political leaders in numerous countries including twice with President Zelenskiiy, thus building her experience and relationships with many of our allies. In Africa, for instance, sending the vice-president of the U.S. as the president's emissary to meet with leaders of African countries is important to counter the growing influence of China in many African countries. I know you can think of other examples.
"She shut up and did what she was told. That's the job." True! You don't cut a swath as a VP. It's like being the XO on the Enterprise. Ask them what Commander Ryker ever "did" on TNG!
Yet clearly we all know EXACTLY who trump is because he's been in our lives on the daily for almost a decade and well known for years by New Yorkers, for the scab on humanity that he truly is. Oh, and he was prezzie for 4 years so there's that. VP Harris has shown us who she is over 3 months and she's more qualified than any republican currently in congress, the former guy, and his VP pick.
I can say that-- but what has got so many people, young and otherwise to feel so apathetic? There's a lot going on that leads to that. Media exposure and changes in how people get to socialize are only a dip from the bucket as far as the backstory to this.
Gotta point to the things that will make them take notice. Taking away women's rights, to a kid or someone not paying any attention, doesn't mean anything to them. Hit em where it hurts and they'll pay attention. Making it personal is the best way!
Sheesh, I know, right? I was surprised when he told me. I asked him casually if he voted yet and he said he wasn't sure who to vote for. This is a guy who works at Amazon, has told me how it feels to be profiled in some rural Georgia areas, rails against Bezos and his sweatshop, on and on. I assumed he was a sure Kamala voter. But I think he's a huge consumer of the Twitterverse, where he's bombarded with bullshit.
well sometimes, I think especially with young voters, it's a "how does this affect me personally". If you can sway them with monitors and porn then it's still a win.
The worst part about Project 2025's porn proposed porn ban, is according h to lawyers and various legal scholars- if you read between the lines, it's not really about banning porn so much as it's about censoring LGBTQ presence literature.
Not only that, but Project 2025 would have an enormous negative effect on the gaming industry since it wants to allow no violence or romance (what they term “porn”). To my Narrative Designer daughter, that was just one extra reason to vote for Kamala!
I attended the Harris/Obama/Tyler Perry/Springsteen et al rally in Clarkston Ga last week. I'm a white 74 year old female with a PHD. I'd say the crowd of 24,000 was relatively evenly split along race and gender lines. And I'll tell you what struck me.... no matter what speaker mentioned it, and every one of them did, when reproductive freedom was brought up? The crowd went nuts. It matters in this race.
As a woman, I don’t think a lot of men get that we feel abandoned by the Dobbs decision. I’m 84, but I have granddaughters and great granddaughters who will suffer from an abortion ban. I fought for abortion rights in the 70s, I can’t believe I have to do it again.
Women are extremely angry, and whenever we hear of women going through terrible pain, both physical and emotional, we get more angry. This won’t go away until women are full citizens again.
and as an older male, I also have a granddaughter, a daughter in law, and potentially other grandchildren in the future. Of course, a husband is also affected by the restrictions imposed on his wife.
Thank you for fighting for my healthcare rights Sharon. I'm paying it forward by fighting hard for all of the younger women now and future generations of women. We are in it to win it!
Came here to speculate on that also, and I don't think the converse would be true that would neutralize that effect. We need to gird ourselves against Bannon and Miller-esque shenanigans over which faux pious creeper Johnson is positioning his sticky fingers....
Many of those Republican votes can be for Harris correct? I think there are far more Republicans voting for Harris this year or voting for someone other than Trump, so they may have an impact on the numbers as well.
I would guess at least 10%. Look at how the various voter initiatives on abortion fared even in very red states such as Oklahoma. People are pissed off on both sides of the aisle.
and if you were switching parties, are you more likely to vote early and not have to fret about it? I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that a reasonable proportion of the early voting registered Republican women are voting for Harris.
I switched parties to vote in the GOP primary and haven't yet switched back. So technically, I am a registered republican who will vote blue down ballot.
Same here. I’ve been registered Reslug so I get all their propaganda which helps me know who to vote against in the down-ballot “non partisan” races (judges, school board, etc). Every Dem gets my vote.
I was a _real_ Republican until around 2000. However I had been voting mostly Democratic for years (minus some local and state legislative races, where I was trying to prop up the last few true moderates in my then-party) before I had had enough and changed registration.
There was a time when Republicans were a big tent party like the Democrats, with liberal Republicans as well as moderates and conservatives (with a right tilt overall, but leadership did much to keep the extreme right at bay). Unfortunately that time was a long time ago. I was around to watch it die, and the last straw for me was the Brooks Brothers riot.
I see the political axis now as something other than left and right, D and R. Now I see it as fantasy versus fact, autocracy versus democracy, fascism versus representative government. It'll be hard to get out of the tradition lines of thinking, but that's what it's going to take to preserve our form of government.
The last straw for me was the whisper campaign against John McCain in South Carolina when it looked like he's snatch the nomination from W. After that cheating become SOP for the GOP, and then during a full moon their faces got hairy and they became the magas.
Yes but like any other election you have to think R for R, D for D until proven otherwise. I am looking at it as "we have a bigger percentage of them than they have of us". How much remains to be seen
About early voting: I dropped off my Oregon ballot 2-3 days later than usual because my ballot arrived 2-3 days later because the USPS moved mail sorting in Portland, 2 hours from here. . Most everyone I know is mailing/dropping off their ballot as soon as they receive it.
Another USPS screw-up reported in today's news is that people in another Oregon county haven't received their ballots, 2 weeks after they were mailed. My official Voter's Pamphlet was a week late this year. My order of postcard stamps took a week to arrive here from Kansas City, in a package marked by the USPS 'Priority Mail.' It's starting to look like Louis DeJoy's priority is interfering with elections and screwing the public.
When will Louis DeJoy be replaced by someone who actually likes the US Postal Service and democracy and wants them to thrive?
Given the level of security around internet sites like my checking account and other banking services, I can't wait for the day when I can vote on-line. I'm pretty sure if I get close enough, my laptop camera could do a pretty good retinal scan to confirm my identity. If I can follow my vote to it's destination for counting, I can stop worrying about mail box arson, other forms of voting suppression.
Said it before, and I'll say it again: The women's vote will save democracy! And however the men's vote break will determine the magnitude of the win, bank it.
I am trying so hard to remain calm and believe that the voters will materialize in sufficient numbers to keep Harris ahead in the electoral college. I don’t trust the poorly informed American voters enough to feel any sense of safety right now. I think I’m too anxious to even understand your essay today! I’m literally barely sleeping right now as I can’t fall asleep for the longest time then I wake up ridiculously early!
Are these R women actually voting for Harris? How can any woman, or any human with a beating heart, for that matter, vote for that horrendous orange felon?
This ⬆️ is the scary part for me. I want to be and am in solidarity with women. It’s also true that there are plenty of whack a doodle evangelical women and who knows what they’ll do. An otherwise smart 18 year old woman, daughter of divorced parents (dad an evangelical, mom who is transgender but whose kids still call them “mom”) is a trumper. It tears me up.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will be our next President and Vice-President!
- more women vote than men
- the percentage of women who vote for Harris will be considerably higher than the percentage of men who vote for Trump
In other words, women will rule the day; Harris/Walz will be elected because of women.
In my opinion, women, who did not even have the right to vote until 1918, should be in charge of running the U.S. The time has come for women to take charge! For common sense to prevail!
So many things are done better by women than men! If it were up to men, we'd be long since extinct. Men have their place in human society, but it's not in any arena where getting along, cooperating and compromise are a prerequisite to success. We're pretty good about breaking rocks, though.
Not a pollster or even great at math, but lots of talk about under estimating Trump votes, I think it’s very possible many women registered Republican will vote for VP Harris for May obvious reasons. Perhaps women for Harris is being under estimated
"Underestimating the tRump vote" is now a stock-in-trade tool used by pollsters and political boffins to hedge their bets when assessing "who's actually winning" in any race where tRump is on the ballot. This election cycle, all the former are bending over backwards to accommodate the so-called "low-propensity voter", who they say is heavily pro-tRump but rarely vote. So far, not a lot of indication that the "bro" vote is turning out, and even if a fraction do, they will be overwhelmed by women already voting and committed to vote on Election Day...numbers don't lie, people.
I have little doubt that we are looking at a Harris win. I was once upon a time trained as a political operative by the Republicans, I have worked a few campaigns, and I smell a women-propelled victory.
The Trump team does too -- they have access to much better polling information than you see in the news, and you can see their increasing desperation. Desperate campaigns (poorly run, at that) make big mistakes that often make things worse for them (like the rally at MSG).
That does not mean that the election can't still be lost -- vote vote vote! If you don't get your ballot, go in person, if your mailed vote is never received, go in person, if there is funny business with your registration, straighten it out while you can or vote a provisional ballot. Walk over hot coals and broken glass to vote if necessary. But I am expecting a decent sized victory for Harris, possibly even a landslide.
you left out the distinct possibility that Republican women are now voting for Harris. and as such they are part of the early Red surge- only it is a red to Harris surge!!!
I always thought this election would be won by women, and that the bro-type politicos of this world had no idea how fired up women were. They are blind to that fury.
We can all analyze the turnout, and drive ourselves crazy in the process. I'm doing my best to just ignore the polls, and will try to wait patiently for the *actual* vote count to be revealed after the voting polls close on November 5th. In the meantime, my advice is to simply breathe, and be sure that you vote.
Thank you for speaking out! All these people are spending a great deal of time conjecturing and writing about polls. It's a waste of time! Polls don't vote. We vote. Like many of us, I mailed in my ballot. I know it's been received but it won't be counted until Election Day. People need to stop stressing out about this. I'm not even going to read these articles anymore. Here is an article I read about surviving election season without losing your mind!
I voted early a couple of weeks ago. Here in California, we have Ballot Trax, so I know that my vote has been received, and counted. Now...we must wait for the final count. Fingers crossed, and hopeful that we will prevail.
Ballot Trax and our county Registrar of Voters are outstanding. I put my ballot in my outgoing mail on a Tuesday (picked up same day), rec'd email early on the following Thursday morning that it had been received and counted.
That's a great analysis. But if the Trump bro strategy were to work, we would expect those voters to be late voters. So while the gender gap info possibly means Dems still go into election day with a lead, we simply won't know about Trump's risky strategy at least until we have turnout figures next Tuesday.
They are often new voters and young voters, both of which do not tend to vote early. That is speculation of course, but based on some history. But this is also more true for Dems as the younger generations that are a larger part of the electorate are less likely to vote early than Boomers like me.
I would add that the growth in Republican early voting is a return to the norm. I live in the state which originated mail voting. And before Trump, Republicans voted early and by mail more than Democrats. That only flipped with Trump. That potentially takes one advantage away from Dems - but only if Republicans have a strong ground game to take advantage of it, which this year they do not.
(wipes some sweat off brow) Thanks, Jay, I needed that this morning.
I talked a "bro" yesterday into voting for Kamala. He's a gamer type. He was undecided. When he told me that, I initially wanted to sedate him for the next week, but when he displayed a remarkable lack of knowledge about everything, I explained to him how tariffs would impact his next monitor purchase (he goes through monitors like some of us go through Keurig coffee pods).
He was like, "No way, dude." Followed by a few expletives. Then he said he's voting for Kamala.
You could also have told him that porn will be banned under Project 2025! It's remarkable that someone would care more about the price of a gaming monitor than the fact that tens of millions could be deported, the military unleashed on protesters, and women reduced to second-class citizens, but a win is a win!
For people like us who are plugged into politics, undecided voters are baffling. But in reality there are a large contingent of voters in this country who are not paying attention. Sometimes to make a difference, we've got to meet people where they are (despite wanting to grab them by the shoulders and scream "wake up")
Yeah, it's strange. A sixteen-year-old born and raised in this blue state (MA) was saying she "would vote for trvmmp because she doesn't know enough about Kamala". I sent along trvmp's plans to deport her entire family for being non-white immigrants, including her after canceling birthright citizenship.
I hope it got through to her. I talked to another person who questioned Kamala's qualifications. I had to simmer down. I listed the offices she's held. When I got to VP, he said, but she hasn't done much there. I said, "She shut up and did what she was told. That's the job." Another undecided voter. I think I swayed him, too. I'll be checking in on him during his dog walk this evening.
EDIT: Most people who bother walking their dogs are nice people. I will snare this guy, too.
Maybe throw in that Kamala was sent by Biden to meet with high-level officers and political leaders in numerous countries including twice with President Zelenskiiy, thus building her experience and relationships with many of our allies. In Africa, for instance, sending the vice-president of the U.S. as the president's emissary to meet with leaders of African countries is important to counter the growing influence of China in many African countries. I know you can think of other examples.
"She shut up and did what she was told. That's the job." True! You don't cut a swath as a VP. It's like being the XO on the Enterprise. Ask them what Commander Ryker ever "did" on TNG!
*Riker
Sadly, sometimes the facts, even publicly shared videos Trump made himself don't seem to be enough.
Yet clearly we all know EXACTLY who trump is because he's been in our lives on the daily for almost a decade and well known for years by New Yorkers, for the scab on humanity that he truly is. Oh, and he was prezzie for 4 years so there's that. VP Harris has shown us who she is over 3 months and she's more qualified than any republican currently in congress, the former guy, and his VP pick.
As I said, my instinct was to invite him into the house so I could sedate him. With one of those big black iron frying pans. :-)
LMAO!
like my grandma woulda done.... lol
🤣
Agreed! Just like Charles, one voter at a time!
I can say that-- but what has got so many people, young and otherwise to feel so apathetic? There's a lot going on that leads to that. Media exposure and changes in how people get to socialize are only a dip from the bucket as far as the backstory to this.
Gotta point to the things that will make them take notice. Taking away women's rights, to a kid or someone not paying any attention, doesn't mean anything to them. Hit em where it hurts and they'll pay attention. Making it personal is the best way!
Sheesh, I know, right? I was surprised when he told me. I asked him casually if he voted yet and he said he wasn't sure who to vote for. This is a guy who works at Amazon, has told me how it feels to be profiled in some rural Georgia areas, rails against Bezos and his sweatshop, on and on. I assumed he was a sure Kamala voter. But I think he's a huge consumer of the Twitterverse, where he's bombarded with bullshit.
well sometimes, I think especially with young voters, it's a "how does this affect me personally". If you can sway them with monitors and porn then it's still a win.
The worst part about Project 2025's porn proposed porn ban, is according h to lawyers and various legal scholars- if you read between the lines, it's not really about banning porn so much as it's about censoring LGBTQ presence literature.
Not only that, but Project 2025 would have an enormous negative effect on the gaming industry since it wants to allow no violence or romance (what they term “porn”). To my Narrative Designer daughter, that was just one extra reason to vote for Kamala!
Ooooh, thanks! I’ll need to remind him of that.
Well done!
Ha, thanks. He’s a neighbor, so I am definitely following up, but his reaction seemed genuine, not a, “gotta shut this guy up” type of response.
Me too Charles!! Thank you Jay.
Brilliant Charles! Keep talking w your bros!
And all the other folks on your oath! You may have a very special ’touch’ with ‘undecideds’…. Guide them! Please🎶🤗
I attended the Harris/Obama/Tyler Perry/Springsteen et al rally in Clarkston Ga last week. I'm a white 74 year old female with a PHD. I'd say the crowd of 24,000 was relatively evenly split along race and gender lines. And I'll tell you what struck me.... no matter what speaker mentioned it, and every one of them did, when reproductive freedom was brought up? The crowd went nuts. It matters in this race.
As a woman, I don’t think a lot of men get that we feel abandoned by the Dobbs decision. I’m 84, but I have granddaughters and great granddaughters who will suffer from an abortion ban. I fought for abortion rights in the 70s, I can’t believe I have to do it again.
Women are extremely angry, and whenever we hear of women going through terrible pain, both physical and emotional, we get more angry. This won’t go away until women are full citizens again.
and as an older male, I also have a granddaughter, a daughter in law, and potentially other grandchildren in the future. Of course, a husband is also affected by the restrictions imposed on his wife.
Especially if she has a serious pregnancy complication and dies.
Thank you for fighting for my healthcare rights Sharon. I'm paying it forward by fighting hard for all of the younger women now and future generations of women. We are in it to win it!
Came here to speculate on that also, and I don't think the converse would be true that would neutralize that effect. We need to gird ourselves against Bannon and Miller-esque shenanigans over which faux pious creeper Johnson is positioning his sticky fingers....
Many of those Republican votes can be for Harris correct? I think there are far more Republicans voting for Harris this year or voting for someone other than Trump, so they may have an impact on the numbers as well.
It’s somewhere between 5-10 of voters in the GOP by most estimates
I would guess at least 10%. Look at how the various voter initiatives on abortion fared even in very red states such as Oklahoma. People are pissed off on both sides of the aisle.
and if you were switching parties, are you more likely to vote early and not have to fret about it? I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that a reasonable proportion of the early voting registered Republican women are voting for Harris.
I switched parties to vote in the GOP primary and haven't yet switched back. So technically, I am a registered republican who will vote blue down ballot.
Same here. I’ve been registered Reslug so I get all their propaganda which helps me know who to vote against in the down-ballot “non partisan” races (judges, school board, etc). Every Dem gets my vote.
I was a _real_ Republican until around 2000. However I had been voting mostly Democratic for years (minus some local and state legislative races, where I was trying to prop up the last few true moderates in my then-party) before I had had enough and changed registration.
There was a time when Republicans were a big tent party like the Democrats, with liberal Republicans as well as moderates and conservatives (with a right tilt overall, but leadership did much to keep the extreme right at bay). Unfortunately that time was a long time ago. I was around to watch it die, and the last straw for me was the Brooks Brothers riot.
I see the political axis now as something other than left and right, D and R. Now I see it as fantasy versus fact, autocracy versus democracy, fascism versus representative government. It'll be hard to get out of the tradition lines of thinking, but that's what it's going to take to preserve our form of government.
The last straw for me was the whisper campaign against John McCain in South Carolina when it looked like he's snatch the nomination from W. After that cheating become SOP for the GOP, and then during a full moon their faces got hairy and they became the magas.
Yes but like any other election you have to think R for R, D for D until proven otherwise. I am looking at it as "we have a bigger percentage of them than they have of us". How much remains to be seen
About early voting: I dropped off my Oregon ballot 2-3 days later than usual because my ballot arrived 2-3 days later because the USPS moved mail sorting in Portland, 2 hours from here. . Most everyone I know is mailing/dropping off their ballot as soon as they receive it.
Another USPS screw-up reported in today's news is that people in another Oregon county haven't received their ballots, 2 weeks after they were mailed. My official Voter's Pamphlet was a week late this year. My order of postcard stamps took a week to arrive here from Kansas City, in a package marked by the USPS 'Priority Mail.' It's starting to look like Louis DeJoy's priority is interfering with elections and screwing the public.
When will Louis DeJoy be replaced by someone who actually likes the US Postal Service and democracy and wants them to thrive?
It’s not just elections - he’s been sucking DeJoy out of all mailing services for years!
Until the Senate approves a new member or two to the USPS Board of Governors, we’re stuck with him. That’s why we need to abolish the filibuster.
Given the level of security around internet sites like my checking account and other banking services, I can't wait for the day when I can vote on-line. I'm pretty sure if I get close enough, my laptop camera could do a pretty good retinal scan to confirm my identity. If I can follow my vote to it's destination for counting, I can stop worrying about mail box arson, other forms of voting suppression.
Said it before, and I'll say it again: The women's vote will save democracy! And however the men's vote break will determine the magnitude of the win, bank it.
I am trying so hard to remain calm and believe that the voters will materialize in sufficient numbers to keep Harris ahead in the electoral college. I don’t trust the poorly informed American voters enough to feel any sense of safety right now. I think I’m too anxious to even understand your essay today! I’m literally barely sleeping right now as I can’t fall asleep for the longest time then I wake up ridiculously early!
Are these R women actually voting for Harris? How can any woman, or any human with a beating heart, for that matter, vote for that horrendous orange felon?
This ⬆️ is the scary part for me. I want to be and am in solidarity with women. It’s also true that there are plenty of whack a doodle evangelical women and who knows what they’ll do. An otherwise smart 18 year old woman, daughter of divorced parents (dad an evangelical, mom who is transgender but whose kids still call them “mom”) is a trumper. It tears me up.
Well, I’m not worried, at all.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will be our next President and Vice-President!
- more women vote than men
- the percentage of women who vote for Harris will be considerably higher than the percentage of men who vote for Trump
In other words, women will rule the day; Harris/Walz will be elected because of women.
In my opinion, women, who did not even have the right to vote until 1918, should be in charge of running the U.S. The time has come for women to take charge! For common sense to prevail!
(note that I am a man)
So many things are done better by women than men! If it were up to men, we'd be long since extinct. Men have their place in human society, but it's not in any arena where getting along, cooperating and compromise are a prerequisite to success. We're pretty good about breaking rocks, though.
Agreed that women will save this country from another 4 years of Trump.
But that's no reason to get complacent. Everyone should make sure they actually vote!
Not a pollster or even great at math, but lots of talk about under estimating Trump votes, I think it’s very possible many women registered Republican will vote for VP Harris for May obvious reasons. Perhaps women for Harris is being under estimated
"Underestimating the tRump vote" is now a stock-in-trade tool used by pollsters and political boffins to hedge their bets when assessing "who's actually winning" in any race where tRump is on the ballot. This election cycle, all the former are bending over backwards to accommodate the so-called "low-propensity voter", who they say is heavily pro-tRump but rarely vote. So far, not a lot of indication that the "bro" vote is turning out, and even if a fraction do, they will be overwhelmed by women already voting and committed to vote on Election Day...numbers don't lie, people.
I have little doubt that we are looking at a Harris win. I was once upon a time trained as a political operative by the Republicans, I have worked a few campaigns, and I smell a women-propelled victory.
The Trump team does too -- they have access to much better polling information than you see in the news, and you can see their increasing desperation. Desperate campaigns (poorly run, at that) make big mistakes that often make things worse for them (like the rally at MSG).
That does not mean that the election can't still be lost -- vote vote vote! If you don't get your ballot, go in person, if your mailed vote is never received, go in person, if there is funny business with your registration, straighten it out while you can or vote a provisional ballot. Walk over hot coals and broken glass to vote if necessary. But I am expecting a decent sized victory for Harris, possibly even a landslide.
you left out the distinct possibility that Republican women are now voting for Harris. and as such they are part of the early Red surge- only it is a red to Harris surge!!!
I don’t want to speculate about how many voters like that there are…
It seems in an earlier post, you estimated that number to be 5-10%, unless you were referring to some other voter group.
Thank you Jay—so very much appreciate you and all this info! I also want to share this regarding the betting market nonsense we are seeing: https://www.yahoo.com/news/polymarkets-pro-trump-election-predictions-133157723.html
I always thought this election would be won by women, and that the bro-type politicos of this world had no idea how fired up women were. They are blind to that fury.
We can all analyze the turnout, and drive ourselves crazy in the process. I'm doing my best to just ignore the polls, and will try to wait patiently for the *actual* vote count to be revealed after the voting polls close on November 5th. In the meantime, my advice is to simply breathe, and be sure that you vote.
Thank you for speaking out! All these people are spending a great deal of time conjecturing and writing about polls. It's a waste of time! Polls don't vote. We vote. Like many of us, I mailed in my ballot. I know it's been received but it won't be counted until Election Day. People need to stop stressing out about this. I'm not even going to read these articles anymore. Here is an article I read about surviving election season without losing your mind!
https://time.com/7024710/election-season-stress-anxiety-coping-tips/
I voted early a couple of weeks ago. Here in California, we have Ballot Trax, so I know that my vote has been received, and counted. Now...we must wait for the final count. Fingers crossed, and hopeful that we will prevail.
Ballot Trax and our county Registrar of Voters are outstanding. I put my ballot in my outgoing mail on a Tuesday (picked up same day), rec'd email early on the following Thursday morning that it had been received and counted.
If more republicans than Dems voting early, but the gender gap hasn't moved, that means republican women are voting for Harris? Can you say, "Dobbs"?
It doesn't necessarily mean that. I mean it would seem but you can't count on it. Still see way too many woment for TFG, baffles me to this day
I don't understand how any decent woman could vote for Trump. But, perhaps, therein lies the answer.
Or any decent man.
YES!
I read in the local county news today that over 50% of absentee ballots that were sent out in our county have been returned.
Usually the return rate on absentee ballots is below 40% for any given election in my county.
True, I live in a not important state, my state is generally red, my county is blue.
I am just amazed at the return rates of the absentee ballots at this point.
I have statistically no idea what this means.
I'd like to interpret that as eagerness to vote for Harris/Walz.
You and your county and your state are important. I know what you mean though. 💙
That's a great analysis. But if the Trump bro strategy were to work, we would expect those voters to be late voters. So while the gender gap info possibly means Dems still go into election day with a lead, we simply won't know about Trump's risky strategy at least until we have turnout figures next Tuesday.
Why do you say we would expect them to be late voters, Dean?
They are often new voters and young voters, both of which do not tend to vote early. That is speculation of course, but based on some history. But this is also more true for Dems as the younger generations that are a larger part of the electorate are less likely to vote early than Boomers like me.
I would add that the growth in Republican early voting is a return to the norm. I live in the state which originated mail voting. And before Trump, Republicans voted early and by mail more than Democrats. That only flipped with Trump. That potentially takes one advantage away from Dems - but only if Republicans have a strong ground game to take advantage of it, which this year they do not.