Early voting numbers are in. Here’s why Democrats shouldn’t panic

There’s a lot of talk of alarm bells ringing. But the truth is a little more nuanced than that

Americans line up to vote early in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Monday, October 21, 2024 (AFP via Getty Images)

Political pundits need to come up with a new word to describe Democrats being worried about polls. “Bed-wetting” is officially overplayed.

With two weeks to go until the election, early voting is in full swing in many states. That’s led to a new outbreak of fretting and nervousness among Democrats.

Or, at least, that’s how it seems from their allies in the media — not necessarily known as a measured and calm bunch. Take Jon Ralston, the center-left leaning Nevada pundit extraordinaire who sounded the alarm about a surge in turnout among Republicans in Nevada on Monday: ”Republicans lead statewide in Nevada after three days of early voting and mail ballot counting. This has not happened in a presidential year in The Reid Machine Era, which encompasses the races since 2008. This could signal serious danger for the Dems and for Kamala Harris here,” he said.

If you’re on the Harris campaign, that certainly sounds bad. But wait! There’s also this news break from The Hill: record numbers of early voters in Texas, primarily concentrated in blue areas. In Austin, a deep-blue area, first day early voting smashed records set during the past three presidential election cycles.

What’s going on? In short, we don’t know yet. And no one should be saying otherwise.

There’s no real need for “alarm bells” for either campaign in early voting just yet, because we have no idea what the Democrat-Republican split will be, or even how those individual voters are casting ballots. The only numbers we have so far are total votes cast, and the party registrations of those who have voted — a helpful, but possibly misleading, statistic. Especially given that Kamala Harris is clearly leaning into a full-hearted effort to win over as many Republicans as possible in the race’s final days.

The beltway media is likely to continue in a state of frantic clamoring for the next two weeks; it knows how to do little else. But the campaigns themselves are likely instead to simply drill down on the strategies they believe will turn out important constituencies in the final days as the race looks to be tighter than ever.

For Donald Trump, that meant shoring up ground in North Carolina on Monday with a snoozefest of a rally at East Carolina University. The Independent was there, and saw students pouring out, leaving only the true believers in the stands by the end.

Harris, meanwhile, has embarked on a multi-state tour with Liz Cheney, the January 6-committee Republican whose stand against Trump came with the sacrifice of her political career. On Tuesday, the vice president sat down with NBC News for a primetime interview. She’s is also keeping an eye on Michigan and Georgia, two states key to her victory at Joe Biden’s side in 2020.

The election officially entered the home stretch today. Now, the real question: Will we actually have a result on November 5? Or, to put it more concisely: When will it end?!

Unfortunately, that’s a question whose answer also seems out of reach.