An Election story from a Left of Center source:Turnout from Black voters, a reliably Democratic demographic, is down compared to this point four years ago, though some Democrats have said it's a mistake to compare early voting turnout this year to 2020, noting the upheaval caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. And GOP early voting is in a better place than in 2020
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The early voting data has come as a relief to the GOP. One prominent Republican in the state, granted anonymity to speak freely, predicted Trump will be able to focus elsewhere in the final two weeks because "the ground has shifted here in North Carolina."
A Harris campaign official, granted anonymity to speak freely about the state of the race here, said "Trump is cherry picking early vote data," while claiming that internal Harris campaign data shows Trump "has consequential slippage with suburban women voters" in the state compared to 2020. The official also noted an uptick in early voting turnout in the Raleigh and Greensboro areas, "both key parts of our path to victory in the state."
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"We now have five days of early voting data, and so what we're seeing is that Republicans are in a stronger position than they've ever been historically," said Jason Simmons, chair of the North Carolina Republican Party.
Republicans "have out voted, out performed" Democrats during two of those five days, Simmons said. At this point in 2020, "they held a 19 point advantage." Today, Simmons said, the Democratic advantage after five days of early voting is 1 point.
"When you're looking at just the early voting data," Simmons said, "it continues to show that Republicans are over performing and Democrats are underperforming."
It's not a sign Democrats want to see. At least 67,000 fewer Black voters have cast ballots so far compared to this point in 2020,
noted North Carolina Democratic consultant Thomas Mills, calling it "a huge deficit that Democrats should be scrambling to address," and urging them to increase money and time spent on mobilizing Black voters to the polls here.
An Election story from a Right of Center source:The presidential election might be slipping away from Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats indicated Wednesday.
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"Everyone keeps saying, 'It's close.' Yes, it's close, but are things trending our way? No. And no one wants to openly admit that," a Democrat strategist
told the Hill's
Amie Parnes. "Could we still win? Maybe. Should anyone be even slightly optimistic right now? No."
Some Democrats, however, are ringing the alarm bells after early voting data in Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania looked to benefit Republicans. "In Wilmington, they are frantically trying to figure that out," Democrat and cohost of
The Morning Meeting Dan Turrentine
said Tuesday about early vote trends. "If you look at, not just in Nevada, but so far, Democrats are underperforming in Philadelphia and Atlanta, and now we're seeing Las Vegas."
"The Harris campaign appears to be struggling with Latinos, black men, and young voters," Turrentine said. "It appears that those problems have not been solved … Things like this, you know, give you a little bit of heartburn … Nevada is supposed to be, you know, one of our best states. And so it appears that some of our base voters are not very energized right now."
Early voting is ongoing and the data is incomplete, but that has not stopped Democrats from noting the absence of momentum. "If this is a vibe election, the current vibes ain't great," another strategist told the Hill.
A former aide in the Obama administration believes that Harris might still win, but a loss would not be surprising.
"It feels like two things are true at the same time," an aide told the Hill. "It's either … of course she was always a flawed candidate, nobody likes her, she's tainted by Biden, and all of the macro-factors have slid away from Team Blue it's becoming a border, economy, foreign affairs election."
"Or, of course he was a terrible candidate, ran a horrible, crazy campaign, had no real ground game or fundraising and then acted like an insane person," the aide added. "It's sort of the opposite of 2016, which was, 'How could this happen?' This feels more like, 'Of course this happened.' … We just don't know which yet."
The Harris campaign appears to believe that if it wins, it will not win big. The same cannot be said for the Trump campaign, which seems to feel optimistic about victory.
"Democrats wish Donald Trump wouldn't get more than 46% of the vote," Harris campaign senior adviser David Plouffe
told CNN. "That's not reality. He's going to get up to 48% in all of these states. And so we just have to make sure we're hitting our win number, which depending on the state, could be 50, could be 49.5."
"Historically, it would be unusual to have seven states come down to a point or less," he added. "But I think at this point, you have to assume that's a distinct possibility."
