Early voting in swing states plummets for 2 key Democrat groups, but pollster accuses Trump campaign of ‘spinning’ the data
The Donald Trump campaign published early-voting numbers that showed a massive decrease in both urban and female voters. Both categories tend to vote Democrat.
Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted a campaign memo that stated: “Democrats are facing a massive turnout deficit.”
“In every single battleground state, we see President Trump and Republicans outperforming elections past in absentee ballots and early votes cast,” the memo claimed.
“Democrats are facing a precipitous decline in urban turnout according to their own ‘data experts’ and we are tracking an uptick in rural turnout.”
The Trump campaign published numbers from Tom Bonier from TargetSmart, which the party described as a “Democrat data expert.”
The data was a comparison of early-voter turnout in 2024 compared to the 2020 presidential election.
For Arizona, urban early-voter turnout was down over 385,000 while female turnout was down about 170,000. At the same time, rural turnout was up more than 14,000.
Other stark contrasts were shown for Michigan, where 320,000 fewer urban citizens voted early. There were also 200,000 fewer women who voted, as well. Additionally, rural turnout was up 55,000 in Michigan.
Pennsylvania, where many think the election will be decided, saw a decrease in early urban voters by more than 380,000. Meanwhile, a whopping 450,000 fewer women voted early in the swing state.
‘There is a whole lot of spinning going on.’
Bonier himself denied the characterization of the data, calling it “not shocking” that the Trump campaign was spinning the numbers in its favor.
“There is a whole lot of spinning going on in this Trump campaign memo that mischaracterizes our data, and I’m pretty sure I know why,” he said on X.
However, on its face, the data seems to obviously favor Trump and the Republicans.
In 2020, two out of three urban voters reportedly voted for Joe Biden over Trump, a 33-point advantage according to Pew Research.
However, the number has narrowed since 2018, when it was a 48-point advantage for Democrats. It was 46 points for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
At the same time, Trump took the rural vote by 32 points in 2020, with 65% of the share. He has widened that gap since 2016 when he had just a 25-point advantage over Hillary Clinton among rural voters.
According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, women favored Biden with their 2020 vote at an average of 56%, while male voters favored Trump at around 52%.
The numbers were generally the same with the gender gap at around 10-11 points in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Despite the claim that the Trump campaign has misrepresented the numbers, it stands to reason that, in general, a decrease in turnout for urban and female voters in swing states would at the very least result in fewer overall votes for Democrats than it would Republicans based on historical voting.
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